/
43009
UB*
T
on
A WEEKLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO
POLITICS, LITERATURE, SCIENCE
DRAMA, MUSIC, ART
FINANCE
FOUNDED 1865
43009
VOLUME CXI
FROM JULY 1, 1920, TO DECEMBER 31, 1920
THE NATION, Inc.
20 VESEY STREET, NEW YORK, N. Y.
INDEX TO VOLUME CXI
JULY 1, 1920, TO DECEMBER 31, 1920
(Nos. 2870-2895)
The following key is used
to indicate
the
kind
of article :
A
Art
BR
Book Review
BRs
Book Reviews (group
of books under
one title)
Cr
Correspondence
D
Drama
Dft
Driftway
EdA
Editorial Article
EdP
Editorial Paragraph
IRD
International Relations,
Document
IRFP
International Relations,
Foreign Press
IRSA
International Relations,
Signed Article
M
Music
P
Poetry
SA
Signed Article
Book reviews are indexed separately in
the
Book
Review Section.
A
Aaland Islands :
Settlement of dispute between Finland and
Sweden by the League; EdP 363
Academic Freedom :
Dictatorship of the ? D. A. Lyons;
Cr 131
Meddling with the schools ; EdA 33
More about academic freedom. H. F. ; Cr 14
Acting. Note on acting. L. Lewisohn ; D 569
Actors. Strolling players ; EdA 582
Adams, Faith :
Question to democracy ; SA 524
Reply to C. D. Rivers's letter. Question to
Faith Adams 643
Reply to Question to democracy by A. H.
Bird; Cr 617
Reply to Question to democracy by C. D.
Rivers ; Cr 642
Advertising :
Deep stuff ; EdA 6
Editorial policy and advertising as shown
by the Gorham Co.; EdP 721
Africa. Eternal Africa. W. E. B. Du Bois ; BRs 350
Africa, East. Native labor in East Africa : IRD 600
Africa, South. See South Africa.
Against treason. J. Drinkwater ; P 783
Akins, Zoe. William Marion Reedy; SA 155
Alaska. F. O'Brien ; BRs 537
Albania : Two ways with Albania. H. K. Mo-
derwell ; SA 399
Alien land laws :
California passes laws prohibiting Japanese
ownership of land; EdP 547
No more race discrimination; EdA 146
No more race dis' nminations : Reply to by
H. P. Perkins; Cr T 350
Alien property. See Enemy property.
Aliens :
Protection of aliens in any country; EdP.. 173
"We watch them furriners" ; Dft 348
Alsberg, Henry G. :
Russia's industrial problem; SA 293
Russian impressions ; SA 207
Russo-Polish peace ; SA 587
Social reforms in Soviet Russia ; SA 319
Soviet domestic program; SA 238
Tyranny by prophets ; SA 268
Will Russia drive the British from Asia?
SA 179
Amalgamated clothing workers of America. See
Clothing trade.
America and the pursuit of happiness. J. Dos
Passos ; S A 777
American drama : Underworld. L. Lewisohn ; D 383
American farm bureau federation : Meeting at
Indianapolis ; EdP 765
American federation of labor :
A. F. of L. and Amalgamated association
of steel and iron workers to organize the
steel industry; EdP 17 1
American labor is pledged to Cox; EdP.. 286
Laboi demands a ban on immigration; EdP 633
Not for revolution such as threatens
Europe ; EdP 392
American federation of teachers; EdP 202
American fiction :
Fiction and its producers; EdA 396
American Legion:
American Legion'-! indorsements (at Cleve-
land convention) : Cr 504
K. of C. offer of their unexpended balance
to the Legion ; EdP 633
K. of C. offer to the Legion. J. B. Kennedy ;
Cr 732
Leon Soniat Post in New Orleans expelled ;
EdP 313
Membership not representative of army
and navy in 1917 and 1918; EdP 392
National convention ; EdP 392
American literature :
Certain neglected books; EdA 369
Certain neglected books : Where to obtain
them; NN 538
Flower of Puritanism. C. Van Doren ; SA. 649
New England and the novel. R. Herrick ;
SA 323
American poetry :
Foreign criticism of American poetry ; EdP 437
American Red Cross. See Red Cross.
American Woolen company:
Great woolen strike. G. Soule ; SA 181
Who won't buy can't work. E. Ogle; Cr. . 44
Woolen mills closed; EdP 87, 313
Americanization, in pay envelopes ; Dft 131
Ancon, treaty of. Text ; IRD 112
Anderson, George Weston :
Yankee verdict: Judge Anderson's decision.
L. S. Gannett ; SA 7
Anderson, Maxwell :
Epigrams 689
Prometheus bound ; P 187
Apes :
Apes of Gibraltar; Dft 404
Apple crop, 1920 ; EdP 259
Arabia :
Allies fail to keep promises to Arabia ; EdP 117
Archibald, Jean :
Call th» doctor ; D 354
Argentine Republic :
Quits the League of Nations; EdP 677
Arica :
Bolivian revolution and Tacna-Arica. Lati-
nus ; SA 96
Arica. See also Ancon, treaty of.
Armenia :
Affairs settled through intervention of Rus-
sians while Wilson and the League par-
ley ; EdP 678
League submits Armenian question to the
mediation of friendly powers; EdP 678
President Wilson accepts task of diplomatic
intervention ; EdP 678
President Wilson's suggestion for Armenian
loan; EdP 720
Armin :
Eight per cent ale and eight cent milk ; Cr 325
Armistice. See European war — Armistice.
Army. United States. See United States — Army.
Art — Exhibitions :
C. R. W. Nevinson ; A 674
Art — Italian :
Story of Jesus. Picture from paintings of
Giotto, Fra Angelico, Duccio, Ghirlandaio,
and Barna da Siena; BR 654
Ashford, Daisy:
Young visiters ; D 736
Asia :
Will Russia drive the British from Asia?
H. G. Alsberg; SA 179
Atlanta University. E. T. Ware; Cr 565
Austin, Mary :
Cantu in Baja California; SA 184
New York : Dictator of American criticism ;
SA 129
Austria :
Wants to join Germany; EdP 464
Autumn :
Call of the city through autumn's beauty ;
Dft 475
B
Babcock, Elizabeth :
Passage. P 300
Bagger, Eugene S. :
Central European conspiracy; SA 552
Importing the white terror; SA 99
Return of the Hapsburgs ? SA 374
Baker, Karle Wilson :
Cocoons ; P 72
Balakovich, General; EdP 546
"gan. See Ireland.
Baldwin, Colin :
Right to talk sedition; Cr 187
Balkan s'ates :
Little entente agreement : IRD 789
Ballot :
"Don't throw away your vote": EdP 339
Don't throw away your vote; EdA "11
R-niy to: Making the ballot count. C.
Nagel. Cr 349
Reply to ; Wherein the difference lies. H. E.
Kahn ; Cr 505
Making the ballot count? Reply to "Don't
throw away your vote." C. Nagel; Cr. . 349
Banks and banking:
Bank closures in North Dakota and Colo-
rado ; EdP 679
Democracy in banking; EdA 315
Barnard, Seymour :
To a presidential candidate; P 187
Barnett, Major-General George :
Murder will out : Major-General Bamett's
report on Haiti; EdA 467
Baruch, Bernard :
Review of book on the Treaty of Versailles,
by J. M. Keynes; EdP 764
Baseball :
Baseball and football; EdA 610
Baseball scandal ; EdA 395
Baseball vernacular ; Dft 43
Bavaria :
French influence in Bavaria; EdP 144
Beard, Charles A. :
What a budget means ; BRs 275
Beauty :
"Murdering beauty"; EdA 494
Beer, George Louis (appreciation). G. Frank;
Cr 14
Beethoven, Ludwig van :
Beethoven, 1770-1920. H. von Hofmanns-
thal ; SA 776
Bell, Bernard Iddings :
National civic federation investigates ; EdP 721
Benavente, Jacinto :
Receives Nobel prize ; EdP 721
Berkeley Divinity school : m ,
Bolshevism at Middletown ; EdA 90
Berman, Herman :
Rights of conscience ; Cr 452
Bernstein, Herman :
Mandarin, adapted from the Viennese; D. . 623
Bemstorff, Count: *
Bernstorff in America. N. Hapgood ; BR.. 132°
Beveridge, Albert J. :
Repeating American history; SA 270
Bickett, Thomas W. :
Prevents lynching in North Carolina ; EdP 116
Bird, Aurelia H. :
Democracy worthy the name. Reply to
Faith Adams ; Cr 617
Birth control :
Birth control and the world crisis. S. A.
Knopf; SA 589
General federation of women's club indorses
birth control ; EdP 579
Sorrowful maidenhood. Reply to S. A.
Knopf's Birth control ; Cr 690
Blake, William :
William Blake the man. C. Gardner; BR.. 107
Blankenhorn, Heber:
Exhibit A in re Mr. Colby; Cr 476.
Influence in the Steel report summaries ;
EdP 145
Bliss. Tasker H. :
Limitation of armaments; EdP 719
Limitation of armaments; SA 727
Blok, Alexander:
Scythians, tr. by Babette Deutsch and
Abraham Yarmolinsky ; P 271
Boardman, Mabel T. :
Commissioner of the District of Columbia :
EdP 312
Bodenheim, Maxwell:
Criticism; P 533
Bok, Edward:
Americanization of Edward Bok; BR 783
Bolivia :
Bolivian revolution and Tacno-Arica. Lati-
nus ; SA 96
Truce between Chile and Bolivia; IRD 113
Bolivia. See also Ancon, treaty of.
"Bolsheviki meeting in the Garden": Dft 348
Bolsheviki. See Russia — History — Revolution —
Bolsheviki.
Bolshevism :
Exhibit A in re Mr. Colby. (Quotation
from N. Y. Evening Post.) H. Blank
enhorn ; Cr 476
Irreconcilable blind. G. Zilboorg ; BR 423
Bolshevism at Middletown: EdA 90
from the blue. H. Broun ; SA 128
Bomb plots :
Have the bomb plots been "framed"? EdP 578
Bonbright, James C. :
High finance on the railroads; SA 637
Book publication :
Cost of production increases: EdP 465
Nos. 2870-2895]
4*
t3UtL
Index
[Vol. cxi
Book reviews :
Pity the poor reviewer ; Ed A 290
Books :
How are lost books found ? EdP 766
Books and reading :
Catalogues for reading; Ed A 234
Certain neglected books; EdA 369
Certain neglected books : Where to obtain
them ; NN 538
Boy dreams. R. M. Rilke ; P 618
Breckinridge, Mrs. Desha: Obituary; Dft 689
Briey Basin :
French guns near steel furnaces; Cr 44
Brindell, Robert P. ; EdP 606
Brindell, Robert P. :
Building scandal. G. Soule ; SA 560
Great building conspiracy. V. Harwood ; SA. 770
Broun, Heywood :
Bolt from the blue ; SA 128
Browne, Porter Emerson :
Bad man ; D 354
Brubaker, G. Marianna :
Mr. Wilson's limited democracy; Cr 532
Bruns, Friedrich :
Max Klinger; SA 271
Buck, Robert M. :
Farmer-labor party ; SA 156
Budget — United States :
What a budget means. C. A. Beard; BRs. 275
Building industry :
Building scandal. G. Soule; SA 560
Exposure of the building scandal by the
Lockwood committee ; EdP 491
Facts revealed by legislative inquiry ; EdP . 606
Great building conspiracy. V. Harwood ; SA 770
Our industrial anarchists ; EdA 768
Responsible for building conditions; EdP.. 313
Burkinshaw, Neil :
Labor's Valley Forge ; SA 639
Butler, Nicholas Murray:
More about academic freedom. H. F. ; Cr. . 14
Buxton, Horace :
Up-to-date supply and demand ; Cr 642
C
Cabell, James Branch :
Again the literary censor: suppression of
Cabell's Jurgen ; EdA 343
Cabinet — United States. See United States —
Cabinet.
California — Alien land laws. See Alien land
laws.
California, Lower:
Cantu in Baja California, M. Austin ; SA 184
Callahan. Tim and Mike:
Callahan's football history; Dft 616
Campaign funds : EdP 257
Arc the funds lawfully and properly used?
EdP 278
Canals. See Panama canal.
Cantor, Bernard: Obituary; EdP 145
Cantu, Estaban :
Cantu in Baja California. M. Austin ; SA 184
Carnegie Endowment for international peace:
(lift of $50,000 to Westminster Abbey; EdP 679
Carnot, Paul:
"How to save two million French women
from sterility": EdP 117
Carol, Prince of Rumania; Dft
Carsey, Ed. :
Single tax ; Cr 506
Carty, James :
Dublin ; night and day impressions : a frag-
ment
Ireland's republican government; SA....
• ; Cr
Catholics. ui Catholics.
Catalogues for reading : Ed \
Censorship :
Again the literary censor ; suppression of
Cain Ms Jurgen; BdA 313
Censorship of the press. See Freedom of the
press.
Census — United States:
Dft
City population in 1020; EdP 393
CentrnI !
Central European conspiracy. K. S. Hag-
- SA 652
Economic condition. Industrial collapse of
irai Europe ; BdP
Changing drama. E. Eewisohn ; D 18
Chapman, Charles E. :
Chilean elections; SA 446
Child of Adam. S. Middletoa ; P 218
Child-Feeding fund of the , Digest;
EdP 579
Children, Precocious ; Dft 593
Chilil i ■ and hygiene :
Women and children first: EdA
Children Euro]
Christmas giving for Europe's children;
E.IP 766
Hoover asks for millions to feed children ;
BdP 679
Children — Germany :
American soldiers give children Christmas ;
EdP 719
Children in nerd. W. E. Nies ; Cr 131
Children of the sun. J. Rorty ; I" 627
Chile:
Bolivian revolution and Tacna-Arica. Lnti-
nus ; SA 96
Truce between Chile and Bolivia; IRD 113
See also, Ancon, treaty of.
Elections. See Elections — Chile.
China consortium ; EdA 468
Christensen, Parley Parker :
Christensen's convention. A. Warner; SA. 92
Christensen's convention. A. Warner, Cor-
rection ; Cr 188
Entrance into presidential campaign; EdP. 115
Church :
Terpsichore as missionary ; EdA 317
Church. See also, Community church ; Names
of churches ; Sunday.
Churchill, Winston :
Russian policy ; EdP 30
Clark, Evans :
Third party issues ; Cr 188
Clarke, John D. :
Elected on stand against militarism; EdP. 519
Clemens, S. L. :
Prince and pauper; D 598, 696
Clothing Trade:
Closed factories and open shop. W. H.
Crook ; SA 725
Our industrial anarchists; EdA 768
Coal miners :
A. F. of L. at Montreal did not act on
trouble in West Virginia ; EdP 3
Behind the British coal crisis. F. Morley ;
SA 402
British coal miners strike; EdP 464
British coal strike; IRFP 540
British industry in a deadlock; EdA 521
Injunction served on United mine workers
in West Virginia; EdP 339
Labor's Valley Forge. N. Burkinshaw ; SA 639
Life in Mingo Co., West Virginia, still
precarious ; EdP 721
Miners and operators still at war in West
Virginia; EdP 59
Mines under martial law in Alabama ; EdP 518
Moving toward nationalization. F. Morley ;
SA 730
Coal mines and mining:
Behind the British coal crisis. F. Morley ;
SA 402
Senators Calder and Edge threaten to na-
tionalize the coal mines ; EdP 547
Coal-Prices :
W. J. Lauck shows up profiteering in coal :
EdP 59
Coal supply :
Empty coal bin; EdA 289
Cobb, Irvin Shrewsburg:
Politics on the Cobb; EdA 62
Coburn, Charles Douville and Ivah Wills :
French leave; D 598
Cochrane, Charles H. :
Community church ; Cr
Cocoons. K. W. Haker ; P 72
Codina. Feliu y :
Spanish love; D 278, 696
CofT
I'p-'n-date supply and demand. H. Buxton:
Cr 612
M. :
-.est man in the world : D 598
Colby. Bninbridge:
Dibit A in re Mr. Colby. H. Blanken-
horn : Cr 476
Press correspondents and the State Depart-
ment : EdP 391
Coll .ors and instructors — Salaries :
Rush to the colleges ; EdA 521
tits :
Teacher's real dilemma. M H Hedges:
SA 214
Colleges and unirenlth
Rush to the colleges; EdA 521
Collins. Pf.r \\- . :
• •rning bigotry. G. J. Knapp ; Cr. . . . 691
Comedy :
Note on comedy. L. Crocker; SA 317
Committee of Forty-eight :
Christensen's convention. A. Warner: BJ
Christensen's convention. A. Warner, Cor-
■ ion : Cr 188
tion. A. IfeCnrdy: SA. 126
What has happened to the Forty-eighters.
S. I 243
Comm tic hundred on Ireland:
Committee on Ireland: EdA 367
Irish committee nt work : EdA . .130
Membership of the committee 397; 530
No war with England: EdA 3t0
Purpose of the commission. F. C. Howe., fill
Turning the light on Ireland : Bd \ . 442
Committee of one hundred on Ireland — Commis-
sion of inquiry :
American commission on conditions in Ire-
land :
First report. I nd 19 703-18
Second report, Dee. 8 and I
Commission of inquiry being chosen; EdP
T*-iih committee chosen ; BdA R"0
Irish commission members
Portraits 7"J
Communism : Dft 187
Communist labor pnrtv:
Trial in Chicago; EdP 174
Trial of the communists. R. M. Lovett :
SA 186
Communist party (United States) :
Croatians arrested because members of Com-
munist party ; EdP 3
Yankee verdict: Judge Anderson's decision.
L. S. Gannett; SA 7
Communist party. See United communist party.
Communists : Legal decisions on the deporta-
bility of communists ; EdP 490
Community church. C. H. Cochrane; Cr 452
Concerning great cities. R. M. Rilke; P 618
Congress. See United States — Congress.
Congress of Vienna, 1815 :
Free trade and peace; EdA 581
Connolly, P. F. :
Suggestions from Ireland for American aid ;
Cr 617
Conscience :
Rights of conscience. H. Berman ; Cr. . . . 452
Conscientious objectors :
Conscientious objectors set free; EdA.... 634
Thirty-six still in prison ; EdP 285
Conscription :
Draft evaders are still hunted; EdP 30
Conservatism :
Tradition and freedom. L. Lewisohn ; SA. 651
Constantine I, king of Greece (abdicated 1917) :
Greek people recall Constantine to the
-throne ; EdP 677
Constitutional amendments :
Eighteenth amendment. L. Wells; Cr. . . . 71
Our outworn Congress in session; EdA.... 680
Proportional representation for violation of
the fourteenth amendment ; EdP 230
Convention and revolt. L. Lewisohn ; D 787
Conventions. See National conventions.
Coolidge. Calvin :
Writes an introduction to Carl Schurz's life
of Lincoln: EdP 393
Cooperation :
American cooperative convention meets in
Cincinnati ; EdP 607
Cooperation, the people's business. J. P.
Warbasse ; SA 555
Corbin, Alice:
Redwoods : P 443
Corn crop, 1920:
May be used as fuel in some sections ;
EdP 607
Cost of living :
Changing prices and the cost of living.
W. J. Lauck; SA 471
Cost of living coming down? EdP 365
Reduced by union owned shops; EdP 144
nty years ago and now; Dft 13
See also Prices ; Profiteers.
Costa Rica :
United States recognition of President De
Costa ; EdP 174
Costello, E. J. :
Expulsion from England: EdP 491
No explanation or investigation of his ex-
pulsion : EdP 607
Cotter. Father:
Testimony before the American commission
on Ireland 713
Council of action. S™e. Labor and laboring
Britain — Council of action.
Courts, International :
Mr. Root's world court: EdA 341
Root plan "went further than the cove-
nant" : EdP 519
Secret proceedings allowed at the Hague
meeting: EdP 116
Cox. James Middleton:
American labor pledged to Cox; EdP 286
Attacked for war record : EdP 57
Conference with President Wilson; EdP..
85: 115
\ and the Democrats definitely defeated:
EdP 463
Cox — A provincial for president. L. Lewi-
sohn : SA 68
Cox's program : FdP 29
Side s'epping with Cox; EdA 368
h. Paul D. :
How to make Germany pay: foreword to
briefs submitted at the Spa conference:
IRD 384
Quoted on reconstruction in Germany ; EdP 338
Criticism. M. Bodenheim ; P 533
Criticism :
Critic and his uses: EdA 178
also Literary criticism.
Criticism, literary. Sec Literary criticism.
Crocker. I/ouis :
• on comedy ; SA 347
Crook, W. Harris :
etories and open shop; SA 725
Cullinan, Ralph :
Hon. .rs ; D 279
Curfew, for Negroes in Jersey City; EdP.... 766
Curtis, Natalie:
Western reverie ; SA 591
Czechoslovak Republic :
Little Entente agreement: IRD 789
Under Czech rule; IRFP 64
Dail Eireann. See Ireland — Sinn Fein move-
ment.
Daljord. Stella Crossley:
le tea room at Gimbel's : SA 11
What will they do with the vote? SA 264
Vol. cxi]
Index
[July-Dec, 1920
Dancing: „
Terpsichore as missionary; EdA o± <
Dannemora prison :
Nation in Dannemora prison; Dft oo4
Danton: drama by R. Bolland. See Rolland, R.
Dark ages:
Reading the New York WoWd, March 19,
1913; Dft .-; 564
Dartiguenave, Sudre, President of Haiti:
Asks for a congressional inquiry ; EdP 578
Debs, Eugene Victor :
P. P. Christensen asks for Debs's release ;
EdP 115
President Wilson declines to pardon; EdP. 606
Result of the election ; EdP 546
De Costa, Julio ; President of Costa Rica :
Recognition by United States; EdP 174
Deep stuff ; EdA 6
Dell, Robert:
End of the Entente; SA 496
French menace to Europe; Cr 690
Poland and the Entente; SA 321
Democracy :
French revolution : a study in democracy.
N. H. Webster ; BR 300
Democracy in banking; EdA 315
Democratic party :
Should the Democratic party die? EdA 580
Whom Gompers supports. A. Henderson :
Cr 505
Wilson administration a failure; EdP 435
Denikin, General :
Fastov pogroms ; IRD 646
Denver, Colorado :
Denver tramway strike; EdP 258
Deportation :
Yankee verdict: Judge Anderson's decision.
L. S. Gannett ; SA 1
Deported, The. A. Yezierska 102
Derham, John :
Testimony before the American commis-
sion on Ireland 713
Deserters :
Who wouldn't desert — for Paris: EdA.... 177
Deutsch, Babette, tr. See Blok, Alexander.
Disarmament:
Disarm I EdA 767
Limitation of armaments. T. H. Bliss ; SA 727
Limitation of armaments; EdP 719
Divorce :
Divorce in Texas ; EdP 87
Dominican Republic :
American occupation disgrace to Wilson
administration ; EdP 231
American rule in Santo Domingo; IRD.... 79
Conquest of Santo Domingo. L. S. Gan-
nett; SA 64
Consulting board and the occupation ; IRD
79-83
Court martial of three Dominicans; EdP. 202
Facts about the Marine Corps in Santo
Domingo ; EdP 392
Sentence of Fabio Fiallo, Amerigo Lugo and
Flores Cabrera ; EdP 392
See also Haiti.
Don't throw your vote away; EdA 314
Reply to ; Making the ballot count. C.
Nagel; Cr 349
Reply to ; Wherein the difference lies. H. E.
Kahn; Cr 505
Dos Passos, John :
America and the pursuit of happiness ; SA 777
Draft. See Conscription.
Dramas : Criticisms, plots, etc. :
Anna ascends. H. C. Ford ; D 458
Bab. M. R. Rinehirt; D 598
Bad man. P. E. Browne ; D 354
Bat, The ; D 696
Byrne, Dolly. See Conti, Giulia.
Call the doctor. J. Archibald; D 354
Checkerboard. Frederic and Fannie Hat-
ton ; D 279
Conti, Giulia and Dolly Byrne. Enter
Madame : D 279
Crooked gamblers. S. Shipman and P.
Wilde; D 278
Daddy Dumplings ; D 696
Danton. R. Rolland ; D 51
Enter Madame. Gilda Varesi ; D 279; 696
French leave. C. D. and I. W. Coburn ; D. 598
Genius and the crowd ; D 354
Gold diggers : D 696
Heartbreak house. G. B. Shaw; D..623; 696
Honest lodgings. Ralph Cullinan ; D 279
Just suppose. A. E. Thomas: D 598
Kathleen na Houlahan. W. B. Yeats; D.. 279
Lady of the lamp; D 279
Lightnin' : D 696
Little old New York. R. J. Young; D..334; 696
Mandarin, The. H. Bernstein; D 623
Meanest man in the world. G. M. Cohan ; D 598
Mecca ; D 695
Merchant of Venice. W. Shakespeare; D. . 623
Mirage. Edgar Selwyn ; D 458; 096
Mob. John Galsworthy ; D 483 ; 696
One. E. Knoblock; D 458; 696
Poldekin. B. Tarkington ; D 354: 458
Prince and the pauper. S. I. Clemens ;
D 598; 696
Riders to the sea. J. M. Synge : D 279
Rollo's wilil oat. C. Kumraor; D 696
Samson and Delilah. S. Lange : D....676; 606
Skin game. John Galsworthy; D 539: 696
Spanish love. Feliu y Codina ; D....278: 696
Tavern ■ D ^58
Three live ghosts. F. S. Isham : D. ...458: 696
Thy name is woman (Der Weibsteuf el ) .
Karl Schonherr; D 623; 696
Treasure, The. D. Pinski ; D 4»g
Unwritten chapter. S. Shipman; D 598
Varesi, Gilda. Enter madame ; D 696
Way down east (Moving picture) 332
Welcome stranger. A. Hof man ; D 458
Whispering well. F. H. Rose ; D 7<$7
Woman of bronze. Henri Kistemaeckers :
j) 354 ; 696
Workhouse ward. Lady Gregory ; D 279
Young visiters. D. Ashf ord ; D 736
Youth. M. Halbe; D 539
Drinkwater, John :
Against treason; P "°A
Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt:
Eternal Africa ; BRs 350
Duncan, William:
Strike-breaking in the canal zone; IRSA. 138
Durant, Kenneth:
Bertrand Russell self-revised; Cr 188
Maxim Gorky, brown, hale, and hearty ; Cr 299
E
Easley, Ralph M. ; EdP 87
East Africa. See Africa, East.
Eastern question : .
Alliance of the Turks and the Bolsheviki ;
EdP ...632
Greece withdraws from Aidin and Anatolia ;
EdP 632
Honest diplomacy needed in the Near East;
EdP 86
Near eastern chaos ; EdA 261
Eating:
Championship worth while; EdA 636
Economics:
Essay on medieval economic teaching.
G. O'Brien: BR 480
Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard; Dft 325
Egypt :
British-Egyptian agreement ; IRD 700
British government to retreat from Egypt ;
EdP 436
Independence reported in the London
Times; EdP 230
Labor's plan for Egypt ; IRD 699
Elections — Canada :
Manitoba's startling election. A. V.
Thomas: SA 66
Elections — Chile :
Chilean elections. C. E. Chapman; SA.... 445
Elections — Greece :
Venizelos defeated ; EdP 577
Elections — Russia :
Petrograd elections: IRFP 408
Elections — United States :
Some things to rejoice over; EdP 545
Triumph of reaction; EdA 548
Elections— Georgia ; EdP 311
Elections— Maine ; EdP 339
Elections — Montana :
Non-partisan league controls Democratic
party in the primary; EdP 286
Elections — New Hampshire:
Senator Moses renominated; EdP 311
Elections — New York (state) :
Political interests center in Governor Smith
and Senator Wadsworth ; EdP 463
Elections— North Dakota ; EdP 546
Elections — Wisconsin ; EdP 311
Emergent. J. Rorty ; P 638
Enemy property :
American property in Germany. K. ; Cr. . 44
British attitude toward confiscation. Cor-
rection of The Nation's editorial on Great
Britain's renunciation of confiscation of
German property. J. B. Moore; Cr 593
Great Britain renounces confiscation of
German property ; EdP 518
Return of alien property by United States ;
EdP 59
Spread eagle vs. alien property rights.
A. E. Hinrichs ; S A 528
English, Father Michael M. :
Testimony before American commission on
Ireland 711
Engravings :
Our national print room. N. N. ; A 512
Entente Cordiale:
End of the Entente. R. Dell : SA 496
Entertainments. L. Lewisohn ; D 597
Epigrams. M. Anderson 689
Epigrams. C. Shanafelt and E. L. Walton; P. 95
Erskine, John :
Poetry and work ; SA 473
Espionage. See Spies.
Espionage law :
In the wake of the espionage act. W.
Nelles, SA 684
"No prosecutions since th" armistice" ; EdP 366
Ethical culture school, New York (ci
Democracy worthy the name. A. H. Bird :
Cr 617
Europe :
Europe's old doctors and new: EdA 60
French menace to Europe. R. Dell; Cr.... 690
Menace of another war ; EdA 118
Truth rising agnin : Philin Gibbs's cure for
the woes of Europe; EdA 395
Europe, Central. See Central Europe.
European war :
Brief history of the great war. C. J. H.
Hayes ; BR 4$
Economic studies of the war. C. C. Plehn ;
BR 378
Inside story of Austro-German intrigue : or.
How the world war was brought about.
J. Goricar and L. B. Stowe ; BR 420
Strategy of the great war. W. L. McPher-
son; BR 106
European war — Armistice:
Who in France insisted on the armistice?
EdP 632
European war — Cost:
Human costs of the war. H. Folks; BR.. 410
Exchange :
Chart 562-3
Course of European exchanges in relation
to the American dollar ; EdP 547
F
Faces in the subway ; Dft 781
Fantasies. L. Lewisohn ; D 736
Far East gets a respite. M. Zippin ; SA 210
Farm produce :
Shortage of cars to ship grain ; EdP 364
Farm produce — Prices :
Farmers' distress; EdA 492
Farmer-Labor Party :
Christensen's convention. A. Warner; SA. 92
Christensen's convention. A correction ; Cr 188
Farmer-Labor campaign. C. P. Sweeney ;
SA 344
Farmer-Labor Party. R. M. Buck; SA 156
Launches its campaign in South Dakota ;
EdP 201
Platform of the Farmer-Labor Party 476
Showing in the election; EdP 545
When farmers turn politicians. A. Warner ;
SA 183
Wherein the difference lies. Reply to "Don't
throw away your vote," and F. L.
Hutchins. H. E. Kahn; Cr 505
Farmers :
American farm bureau federation meeting
at Indianapolis ; EdP 765
Farmers' distress ; EdA 492
Illinois farmers make survey of railroad
yards ; EdP 364
Why be a farmer ? Mrs. F. L. Houston ;
Cr 101
Fastov pogrom ; IRD 646
Fastov pogrom. M. Mahler ; Cr 782
Feasters, The. R. Torrence ; P 102 ■
Federal board for vocational education. See -
United States — Federal board for voca-
tional education.
Feisal, crown prince of the Hedjas :
Declared ruler of independent Syria; EdP. 117
Deposed ; EdP 144
Fiallo, Fabio:
Sentence of Fabio Fiallo, Amerigo Lugo
and Flores Cabrera; EdP 392
Fiallo, Rene :
To Mrs. Terence MacSwiney ; P 731
Fichandler, Alexander:
Socialism yesterday and today. Reply to
F. L. Hutchins, "A perplexed voter"; Cr 451
Fiction :
Happy ending ; EdA 63
Fiction. See also American fiction.
Finance — China :
China consortium ; EdA 468
Finance — Cuba :
Cuba's moratorium ; EdP 518
Finance — Dominican Republic:
Dominican finances ; IRD 80
Finance — Haiti :
Businessmen's protest ; IRD 308
"By order of the American minister" ; IRD 308
Concession of the National City Bank : IRD 310
Non-payment of salaries "By an order of
the American minister"; IRD 303
Why Haiti has no budget ; IRD 307
Finance — International :
China consortium ; EdA 468
Finance — Ireland :
Irish local government finances; IDFP.... 281
Fisher, Bishop Fred B. :
Boldness of a bishop. F. Smith: Cr 158
Fisher, Sir John Arbuthnot:
Fisher. Obituary ; EdA 90
Fishermen :
New England fisherman; EdA 523
Fiume:
Constitution of Fiume; IRD 484
Independent state; EdP 312
Treaty of Rapallo. Text and map: IRD.. 788
Flower of Puritanism. C. Van Doren ; SA.... 649
Football :
Baseball and football; EdA 610
Callahans' football history; Dft 616
Ford. Harry Chapman :
Anna ascends : D 458
Forests and forestry :
Squandering our heritage. G. Pinchot ; SA 444
Fort Leavenworth! Kansas. Military prison:
Satisfactory punishment. E. J. McCoshen
and R. P. Stewart ; Cr 45
Franco, Ana*ole pseud. :
Other France ; EdA 342
France :
Foster mother of art and invention; EdP. 20S
Nos. 2870-2895]
Index
[Vol. cxi
My second country. R. Dell; BR 103
Who in France insisted on the armistice?
EdP 632
France — Boundaries :
Doctrine of the natural frontiers of France.
J. W. Thompson; IRSA 513
France — Foreign relations :
Central European conspiracy. E. S. Bag-
ger; SA 552
French menace to Europe. R. Dell; Cr. . . . 690
Other France, The ; EdA 342
Polish peace unacceptable to French im-
perialists ; EdP 464
France — Foreign relations — Germany :
French influence in Bavaria; EdP 144
France — Foreign relations — Great Britain :
Anglo-French oil agreement ; IRD 334
Anglo-French relations strained ; EdP 464
End of the Entente. R. Dell; SA 496
Franco-British rift grows over treatment
over Germany ; EdP 490
France — Foreign relations — Hungary :
Hungarian ambitions and French support ;
IRD 573
France — Foreign relations — Russia :
France and General Wrangel ; IRFP 406
Wrangel defeated ; EdP 578
France — History — Revolution, 1789-1799 :
French revolution : A study in democracy.
N. H. Webster; BR 300
France — Presidents. See Presidents — France.
France — Treaties :
French-Hungarian treaties; IRD 575
Francke, Kuno :
New German spirit ; SA 612
Frank, Glenn :
George Louis Beer, appreciation; Cr 14
Free speech :
Free speech at Mt. Vernon, N. Y. ; EdP.. 437
Major Putnam prevented from giving lec-
ture in Brooklyn ; EdP 464
Dft 475
Right to talk sedition. C. Baldwin; Cr.... 187
Suppression of freedom of speech during
war; EdP 30
Free trade and protection:
Free trade and peace ; EdA 681
Freedom. See Liberty.
Freedom of the press (Dominican Republic) :
Military censorship in Santo Domingo;
IRD 81
Freeman, Joseph L. :
Golden cage ; P 127
Freight cars :
Shortage of cars to ship grain; EdP 364
Freight handling:
Freight handling improved; EdP 437
Friedlaender, Israel :
Joseph not Israel Friedlaender compiled
Rook of Jewish verse. S. F. Mendelsohn ;
Cr 218
Friedlaender, Israel: obituary; EdP 145
Friends, Society of :
Quaker messages (Conference, 1920) ; IRD 335
From an island. L. Speyer ; P 326
Furs, summer ; Dft 216
Galsworthy, John:
Mob: D -183; 696
Skin game ; D 539 : 696
Gannett, Lewis S. :
Conquest of Santo Domingo; SA 61
I. W. W. ; SA 448
Socialist campaign: SA 401
Yankee verdict: Judge Anderson's decision;
SA 7
Gardiner, A. G. :
Supreme council a "Menace to the World" :
EdP 1
Garland, Marie Tudor :
Women's internationalism; SA 167
Gamier. Noel; Dft 532
Garvey, Marcus:
Organizer of Universal Negro improvement
association; EdP 175
Gary. Elbert Henry:
Anti-union campaign receives his support;
EdP 81
Gases in warfare:
U. S. has developed n new poison ga» ; EdP 605
General federation of women's clubs:
Indorse birlh control; EdP 679
my :
Allies demand for cows; EdP 618
Col. House suggests a separate peace with
Germany; EdP 116
Germany and the Hohenzollern. R. Mai :
SA 772
New German spirit. K. Francke; SA . . . . 612
What Germany thinks. W. J. Robinson ;
Cr 666
Germany — Economic conditions :
Cf-rman solvency and reparations; IRD.... 384
Germany — Occupation by nllics. 1918- :
Germnn flag may not fly in occupied ar
EdP Ml
Germany— Reconstruction :
! at* of Germany depend* on allied nations
and the United States. P. D. Cravath :
EdP .-m
"If thine enemy hunger — " L. Nissen : Cr 349
Gibbs, Philip:
Truth rising again : Philip Gibbs's cure for
the woes of Europe; EdA 395
Gimbel Brothers :
Little tea room at Gimbel's. S. C. Daljord ;
SA 11
Ginzburg, Benjamin :
Tragedy that is Poland; SA 65
Glaspel, Susan :
Plays. L. Lewisohn ; BR 509
Glazer, B. F. See Schonherr, Karl.
Golden cage. J. L. Freeman; P 127
Goldman, Emma :
Denies newspaper reports of her attacks on
the Soviet government; EdP 632
Gollomb, Joseph :
Split in the socialist movement; SA 774
Gompers, Samuel :
Whom Gompers supports. A. Henderson ;
Cr 505
Gorgas, William Crawford: obituary; EdP 29
Gorham Co. :
Editorial policy and advertising as shown
by the Gorham Co. ; EdP 721
Gorky, Maxim, pseud. :
Letter to H. G. Wells; Cr 377
Maxim Gorky, brown, hale, and hearty.
K. Durant ; Cr 299
Government employees :
May government employees strike? EdA.. 33
Postman cannot strike : EdP 230
Government ownership. See Government regula-
tion of industry.
Government regulation of industry:
Case for nationalization. A. E. Davies :
BR 426
Moving toward nationalization. F. Morley ;
SA 730
Nationalized power. H. Hoover; SA 318
Senators Calder and Edge threaten to na-
tionalize the coal mines; EdP 547
Great Britain :
British-Egyptian agreement; IRD 700
Confiscation of German property renounced ;
EdP 518
Correction of Nation's editorial by J. B.
Moore 593
Great Britain — Colonies :
Will Russia drive the British from Asia?
H. G. Alsberg ; SA 179
Great Britain — Commerce:
British trade with Soviet Russia: IRD.... 542
Great Britain — Foreign relations:
Britain wants peace and trade in Eurone ;
EdP 257; 464
Great Britain — Foreign relations — France:
Anglo-French oil agreement; IRD 334
Anglo-French relations strained: EdP M4
End of the Entente. R. Dell: SA 496
Franco-British rift grows over treatment of
Germany: EdP 490
Great Britain — Foreign relations — Russia:
Further Russian-British notes: IRD 224
Lloyd George baeked the wrong horse? EdP 117
More notes to Russia; TRD ?S3
Russian-British notes: IRFP 194
Greece :
Greek peon'e recall Constant ine to the
throne: EdP 677
Greek situation : Two views of Venizelos's
defeat. 1. by A. Th. Polyaoidea. 2. by
Dcmetrios Michalaroe ; S\ rsm
Greek throne on th" bargain counter : EdP 190
Withdraws from Aidin and Anatolia; EdP 632
Greenwood. David :
I .I'y : P 43
Gregory, Lndy :
Workhouse ward ; D 279
Griffin. Father: obituary; EdP 605
Griffi'h. Arthur:
Arthur Griffith and Prof. M->cNeill seized
bv British government; EdP 631
Grim. R. G :
"Where'd you get that stuff?" Cr 45
H
Hackett, Francis :
Testimony before the American commission
on Ireland 716
ronferenc. •« :
Building on the Hague; EdA 682
Haiti :
American occupation disgrace to Wilson ad-
ministration : EdP... . 231
By order of the American minister; IRD.. 308
Conquest of Haiti. EL J. Se'iirmann ; SA.. 35
Conquest of Haiti in H. J. Seligmann's re-
port : FdP 30
Conquest of Haiti. Letter in reply to. by
i A. Lejeune; Cr 101
Haitian counter-project: IRD 859
Ian president's proclamation: IRFP... 255
J. A. Lejeune's report on the Marine Corps
in Haiti ; EdP 436
Mistis« of America's power. S. M. Ken-
drick ; Cr 106
: r will out : Ed \ 467
Nation's reply to M. McCormick's "Our fail-
ure in Haiti" 616
Naval ronrt of inquiry on conditions in
Haiti; F.r>r BIT; 678; 720: 7r,R
New constitution of Haiti : TRD
Our failure in Haiti. M. McCormick ; SA. 615
"Pitiless publicity" for Haiti; EdA 366
President Dartiguenave asks for a congres-
sional inquiry ; EdP 578
Proposed convention with Haiti; IRD 253
Publicity for misrule in Haiti; EdP 337
Self-determining Haiti. J. W. Johnson :
SA 236; 265; 295; 345
What to do in Haiti; EdA 493
Why Haiti has no budget ; IRD 307
Haiti — Finance. See Finance — Haiti.
Haiti — Foreign relations — United States :
Haitian-United States convention; IRD 254
Haiti. See also Dominican Republic.
Haiti. See also National City Bank, New
York City.
Halbe, Max:
Youth ; D 539
Hale, Robert:
Another convention — The Democratic; SA. 69
Hale, Swinburne :
U. S. Steel vs. Margolis ; SA 498
What has happened to the Forty-eighters ?
SA 243
Hall, Hazel:
Seams ; P 473
Hall of fame for great Americans :
Haul of fame; EdA 651
Hamlet. See Shakespeare, William.
Hamsun, Knut. Appreciation. A. W. Porter-
field ; SA 652
Hanna, Paul :
State department and the news; SA 398
Hanson, Ole ; Dft 158
Hapgood, Norman :
Bernstorff in America; BR 132
Happy ending, The; EdA 63
Hapsburg, House of :
Some eighty Hapsburgs penniless; EdP.. 393
Hard boiled order. See H. A. Littledale. Our
debt of honor.
Harding, Warren Gamaliel:
Against the treaty ; EdP 435
Ancestry questioned; EdP 517
Consolation. P. Warren; Cr 14
Front porching with Harding; EdA 342
On race segregation in Oklahoma; EdP.. 435
On the Russian blockade; EdP 202
Questions Cox and Col. House on the peace
treaty; EdP 115
Quotes F. D. Roosevelt on the United States
votes in the League ; EdP 364
Refuses to hasten state action on suffrage;
EdP ... 1
Seeks middle of the road plan for the
league and treaty; EdP 763
Harrison, M. C. :
Potent power for propaganda; Cr 71
Harwood, Van Ness :
Great building conspiracy; SA 770
Hatton, Frederic and Fanny :
Checkerboard ; D 279
Hawthorne, Nathaniel :
Scarlet Letter: The flower of Puritanism.
649
690
214
605
100
323
203
458
776
772
C. Van Doren; SA.
Hayes, Ellen :
Sorrowful maidenhood. Reply to S. A
Knopf's, Birth control; Cr
Hedges, M. H. :
Teacher's real dilemma ; SA
Henderson, Alfred:
Whom Gompers supports ; Cr
Heroes ; Dft
Herrick, Robert :
New England and the novel; SA
Hindus in the United States:
Hindus at South Bethlehem, Penn. ; EdP.
Hinrichs, A. E. :
Spread eagle vs. alien property rights ; SA 628
Hofman. Aaron :
Welcome, st ranger ; D
Hofmanns'hal, Hugo von:
Beethoven: 1770-1920; SA
Hohenzollern family:
Germany and the Hohenzollern. R. Mai :
SA
Holmes, John Haynes :
Fragment, from the great war by Prof.
Yuan Ben published, Pekin, 1993; tr.
by J. H. Holmes 267
Lesson in history; SA 640
Homeless muse. L. Lewisohn; D 622
Hoover, Herbert :
Asks for millions to feed Europe's chil-
dren ; EdP 679
First campaign statement; EdP 2
Liberal leader: EdP 2; 3
Nationalized power ; SA 318
Hopes :
Things that we hope will never come to
pass ; EdP 287
Hors d'ocuvres. I,. Lewisohn; D 278
House decoration :
Practical book of interior decoration. H. D.
Bberlein, A. McClure, and E. S. Hollo-
way ; BR 328
Housing law and legislation :
Twenty-one housing laws passed by New
York; EdP 392
Housing problem :
Building scandal. G. Soule ; SA 660
hie sn'.itions; EdP 839
Proper 1 government action: EdP 287
Tal c every empty house; EdA 232
Vol. cxi]
Index
[July-Dec, 1920
Twenty-one housing laws passed by New
York; EdP 392
What housing shortage means; EdA 261
Housing problem. See also Building industry.
Houston, (Mrs.) F. L. :
Why be a farmer? Cr 101
Howe, Frederic C. :
Address at opening session of American
Commission on Conditions in Ireland. . . 703
Purpose of the commission on Ireland.... 611
Syrian imbroglio and the Turkish settle-
ment; SA 37
Hughes, Charles E. :
Speech at Harvard commencement ; EdP.. 3
Humoresque. E. M. Hunt ; P 159
Hungary :
Agents of propaganda in Austria; IRD.... 574
Austrian intellectuals on the boycott ; IRD 111
Boycotted by International Federation of
Trade Unions ; EdP 2
Boycott of international labor abandoned :
EdP 286
Boycotting reaction in Hungary; IRD.... 27
British labor and the Hungarian terror ;
IRFP 53
Count Karolyi's manifesto; IRFP 110
Hungarian methods in Slovakia; IRD 55
Hungarian propaganda in America; IRD.. 575
Importing the white terror. E. S. Bagger ;
SA 99
Political results of the Hungarian boycott ;
IRD Ill
Rumania's attitude toward Hungary. Cor-
rection of statement by Col. Reich. B.
Stoica ; Cr 782
Under Czech rule ; IRFP 55
Hungary — Education :
"Scene at the University" ; IRFP 56
Hungary — Foreign relations :
Hungary's intrigues, irredentist plot, etc. :
IRD 571-6
Hungary — Foreign relations — France :
Hungarian ambitions and French support ;
IRD 573
Hungary — Foreign relations :
Return of the Hapsburgs ? E. S. Bagger ;
SA 374
Hungary — Treaties :
French-Hungarian treaties; IRD 575
Hunger strike :
Ancient hunger strike; EdA 469
Hunt, Ernest M. :
Humoresque ; P 159
Hutchins, F. Lincoln :
Perplexed voter ; Cr 377
Perplexed voter : Reply to by A. Fichan-
dler ; Cr 451
Perplexed voter : Reply to by H. E. Kahn ;
Cr 505
Suggested solution. (Reply to "Transport
breakdown") ; Cr 159
Huszar, Charles :
Departure from the United States: EdP.. 203
Importing the white terror. E. S. Bag-
ger ; SA 99
War record of ex-Premier Huszar; IRFP. 110
Illinois Agriculture association :
Survey of railroad yards for freight cars ;
EdP 364
Immigration and emigration :
A. F. of L. demands a ban on immigration ;
EdP 633
Commissioner of immigration and transat-
lantic steamship lines' statistics; EdP.... 633
Emigrants and immigrants ; EdA 316
Immigration by selection ; EdA 722
In summer. D. Morton ; P 132
India :
Political future of India. Lajpat Rai ; BR. 16
Industrial workers of the world :
Education by celluloid. A. Oak; Cr 451
I. W. W. L. S. Gannett ; SA 448
Infroit, Charles : Obituary ; EdP 679
Intellectuals :
Intellectuals in world politics ; Dft 632
Intellectuals — Austria :
Austrian intellectuals on the Hungarian
boycott; IRD Ill
Intellectuals — Europe :
Distress of the intellectuals of Europe ; EdP 519
Intellectuals — Great Britain :
Oxford professors propose amicable relations
with German and Austrian scholars; EdP 490
Intellectuals — Russia :
Blockade of thought ; IRFP 789
Interchurch world movement of North America :
Collapse of the Christian soviet ; EdA 34
Steel and the Inter-church; EdA 120
Interior decoration. See House decoration.
International, The :
Conditions for admission to the Third In-
ternationale ; EdP 465
Conditions of the Third Internationale:
IRFP 406
Third Internationale in conference at Mos-
cow; Ed P 86
International congress of ex-soldiers:
Re*] war to end war (Charter) ; IRD 56
International federation of trade unions:
Boycott of Hungary ; EdP 2
Boycott of Hungary abandoned: EdP 286
International finance. See Finance — Interna-
tional.
International ladies garment workers' union :
To try union-owned shops ; EdP 144
International Socialist Conference :
Third Internationale ; EdP 86
International woman suffrage alliance :
Women's internationalism. M. T. Garland ;
SA 157
Ireland :
Balbriggan : police reprisals; IRFP 461
Balbriggan : Testimony of J. Derham, town
commissioner of Balbriggan 713
British criticism of Great Britain's Irish
policy ; EdP k 393
British labor party report on "Irish nation-
alism and labor internationalism"; IRD. 625
British view of Ireland. J. T. Wentworth :
Cr 504
Continued bloodshed in Ireland; EdP 393
Cork in flames ; EdP 719
Court-martial in Ireland ; IRFP 461
Dublin dominion conference ; EdP 258
Dublin, night and day impressions : Irish
fragment. J. Carty ; Cr 782
Dublin sees more murder ; EdP 631
Effort in England and Ireland for a truce ;
EdP 677
Help must go to the wounded and destitute ;
EdP 763
"Irish rebel leaders to be used as shields" :
EdP 763
"It is war" ; EdP 646
Lloyd George on vacation and Irish trou-
bles increasing ; EdP 230
Lloyd George will not face facts in Ireland :
EdP 436
Londonderry riots ; EdP 2
Message Mr. Wilson might have written ;
EdA 723
New coercion bill for Ireland; EdP 173
Newspaper men protest at treatment of
military authorities in Ireland; EdP 719
Passive resistance should be Ireland's policy ;
EdP 631
Peace negotiations between Father O' Flan-
agan and Lloyd George come to naught ;
EdP 763
Perishing Ireland; EdA 611
Possible compromises between Ireland and
Great Britain ; EdP 143
Present state of Ireland : statement by the
Cardinal Primate and the archbishops
of Ireland ; IRD 624
Reprisals and counter reprisals continue ;
EdP 465
Sir Horace Plunkett suggests dominion
basis ; EdP 143
Suggestions from Ireland for American aid.
P. F. Connolly ; Cr 617
Templemore attacked by British soldiers ;
EdP 517
Ireland — Education :
Irish educational system (part of M. Mac-
Swiney's testimony) 759
Ireland — Finance. See Finance — Ireland.
Ireland — Sinn Fein movement:
British correspondence and Sinn Fein ; IRD 459
From a great-great grandson of T. A. Em-
met. R. E. Sherwood ; Cr 617
Ireland's republican government. J. Carty ;
„ SA 241
Reply to R. E. Sherwood on the Irish ques-
tion. D. Ronayhe : Cr 691
Resolutions of Dail Eireann ; IRD 280
Sketch of the republican movement in Ire-
land (part of M. MacSwiney's testimony)
757 ; 760
Ireland. See also Committee of One Hundred on
Ireland.
Irish in the United States :
Irish America deeply stirred by events in
Ireland ; EdP 631
Irish in American universities ; Dfl 617
Irish sympathizers in the U. S. ; EdP 578
Irish nationalism and labor internationalism.
G. B. Shaw ; IRD 625
Isham, F. S. :
Three live ghosts ; D 458 • 696
Italians in the United States:
Italians in West Frankfort, Illinois ; EdP 173
Italy:
Plot for reaction in Italy. G. Prezzolini ;
SA 686
Italy — Foreign relations — Russia :
Count Sforza recognizes Soviet Russia ; EdP 202
Italy's "eastward orientation." H. K. Mo-
derwell ; SA 292
Italy — Industrial revolt, 1920:
Italian revolution— Act Three? EdP 363
Italian workers demand joint control of in-
dustry ; EdP 337
Italian workers revolt : EdP 312
Italy : How the government m»t the revolu-
tion. H. K. Moderwpll ; SA 553
Revolution in Italy; IRD.... 733
What happened in Italy. H. K. Mo'derl
well: SA 470
Italy — Territorial problems :
Territorial claims settled : EdP S77
Italy— Treaties :
Treaty of Rapallo. Text and map ; IRD 78«
Ivory tower. The ; EdA . . ..[[]] 263
J
James, Henry :
Gulf of Henry James ; EdA 441
Japan :
Japan's attitude toward U. S. enlarged
navy ; EdP 720
Japanese in California and U. S. fleet grave
questions in Japan ; EdP 364
Japan invades Siberia ; EdA 205
Japanese in Siberia :
Nikolaievsk "massacre." M. M. Sherower;
SA 211
Japanese in the United States :
Anti-commotion. Reply to "No more race
discrimination." H. P. Perkins; Cr.... 350
Japanese ownership of land prohibited in
California ; EdP 547
No more race discrimination; EdA 146
Jastrow, Joseph :
Psychology of the day ; BR 15
Jennings, Leslie Nelson :
Old key-maker ; P 443
Jersey City, N. J. :
Curfew for negroes ; EdP 766
Jews — Political a.id social conditions :
Reaction and the Jew ; EdA 493
Jews in Poland :
Facts about the Polish pogroms : Text of
the Samuel report ; IRD 165
Present state of the Polish Jews: IRD 644
Jews in the Ukraine :
Fastov pogroms. IRD 646
Fastov pogrom. M. Mahler; Cr 782
Johnson, C. R. :
Nonpartisan league defeated; SA 614
Reply to "Nonpartisan league defeated." O.
S. Morris ; Cr 733
Johnson, James Weldon :
Self-determining Haiti ; SA 236, 265, 295, 345
Jones, Harmon Henry :
"Strong man" ; Cr 217
Jones merchant marine act :
President Wilson refuses to obey the man-
date of the act ; EdP 364
Joselito :
New Spanish hero ; EdA 61
Jugoslavia :
Little Entente agreement ; IRD 789
Treaty of Rapallo. Text and map; IRD... 788
Jurgen : novel. See Cabell, James Branch.
Jury ( slackers ) ; EdP 59
K
Kahn, H. E. :
Wherein the difference lies. Reply to F. L.
Hutchins and "Don't throw away your »
vote"; Cr T 505
Kahn. Otto H. :
Failure of the league ; SA 499
Kamchatka :
Pacific coast "magnates" and Vanderlip take
Kamchatka as concession from Soviet
Russia ; EdP 518
Karolyi, Michael, Count:
Count Karolyi's manifesto; IRFP 110
Kelly, John F. :
Pro-British Nation; Cr 642
Kendrick, S. M. :
Misuse of America's power ; Cr 505
Kennedy. John B. :
K. of C. offer to the Legion ; Cr 732
Kenyon, E. R. :
Letter to London Spectator on the apes of
Gibraltar ; Dft 404
Kessner, George :
Suppressing Polish atrocities ; Cr 101
Keynes, J. M. :
RevieAv of Bernard Baruch's book on the
Treaty of Versailles ; EdP 764
King, Agnes B. :
Testimony before the American commission
on Ireland 715
Kirchwey, George W. :
Outlawry of war. Reply to "The Nation's
Constructive world league program ;" Cr 732
Kirk. E. Buckner:
Maxim Gorki to H. G. Wells ; Cr 377
Kistemaeckers, Henri :
Woman of bronze ; D 354, 696
Klagenfurt :
Klagenfurt and Vilna test of the league :
EdP 489
Klinger, Max. F. Bruns ; SA 271
Knapp, G. J. :
Concerning bigotry. Reply to "Bigotry in
the South" by C. P. Sweeney ; Cr 691
Knights of Columbus :
Concerning bigotry. G. J. Knapp; Cr 691
K. of C. offer to the Legion. J. B. Kenne-
dy ; Cr 732
Offer of unexpended balance to the Ameri-
can Legion in Washington; EdP 633
Knoblock, Edward :
„ One: D 458,696
Knopf, S. Adolphus :
Birth control and the world crisis ; SA 589
Reply to "Birth control and the world
crisis." E. Hayes; Cr 690
Kosciusko squadron :
Recruits needed ; Dft 70
Ku Klux Klan:
Atlanta University. E. T. Ware; Cr 565
Revival of the Klan ; EdP 619
Nos. 2870-2895]
Index
[Vol. cxi
Kummer, Clare :
Rollo's wild oat ; D 696
L
Labor and capital :
Our industrial anarchists ; EdA 768
Labor and laboring classes :
Attitude on war ; EdP 259
Boycott of Hungary by International fed-
eration of trade unions ; EdP 2
Boycott of Hungary by International Fed-
eration of Trade Unions abandoned ; EdP 286
Democracy in banking ; EdA 315
Panorama of labor. G. Soule ; BRs 533
Labor and laboring classes — Africa, East :
Native labor in East Africa ; IRD 600
Labor and laboring classes — Great Britain :
British coal strike ; IRFP 540
British industry in a deadlock ; EdA 521
British labor delegation to Russia. Text of
report ; IRD 355
What the workers want. A. Gleason ; BR. 133
Labor and laboring classes — Great Britain —
Council of action :
British labor and direct action. H. J.
Laski ; SA 291
Labor and laboring classes — Italy :
Dockworkers' strike spreads to the metal
workers ; EdP 285
Italy : How the government met the revolu-
tion. H. K. Moderwell ; SA 553
Revolution in Italy ; IRD 738
What happened in Italy. H. K. Moder-
well; SA 470
Workers demand joint control of industry ;
EdP 337
Labor and laboring classes — United States :
American labor history. G. Soule; BR 17
Closed factories and open shop. W. H.
Crook ; SA 725
Federal reserve board's monthly report ;
EdP 175
Fight to break the unions ; EdA 609
Labor and the employer. S. Gompers ; BR. 302
Labor in the party platforms ; EdA 61
Labor and laboring classes. See Coal miners.
Labor party (Great Britain) :
British labor and the Hungarian terror.
IRFP 53
British labor party conference. J. R. Mac-
donald ; S A 94
British labor party report on "Irish nation-
alism and labor internationalism"; IRD.. 625
British labor reports on Russia ; IRD 53
Labor's plan for Egypt ; IRD 699
Petrograd unions to the British proletariat ;
IRFP 141
Refuses to join the Third Internationale ;
EdP 144
Shows signs of weakness and recalls R.
Smillie; EdP 87
Ladd, E. F. :
Elected to the Senate; EdP 546
Lange, Sven :
Samson and Delilah: drama, criticism. L.
Lewisohn ; D 676, 696
Laski, Harold J. :
British labor and direct action ; SA 291
Latinus, Pseud. :
Bolivian revolution and Tacna-Arica : SA.. 96
Lauck, W. Jett:
Changing prices and the cost of living ; SA 471
Report on profiteering; EdP 59
League of nations :
American world policies. D. J. Hill; BR.. 426
Building on the Hague : EdA 682
Constructive world league program; EdA.. 519
Constructive world league program. Reply
to, G. W. Kirchwey ; Cr 732
Council settles Aaland island dispute : EdP 3f>3
Failure of the league. O. H. Kahn ; SA.... 499
Issue which differentiates major platforms :
EdP 67
Outlawry of war. Reply to "Tkt V" -ti'n
Constructive world league program."
G. W. Kirchwey: Cr
Preachers nnd the league ; EdA 635
Vilna and Klngenfurt first test of the
League ; EdP
League of nations — Council:
"Menace to the world" : EdP 1
League of nations (Geneva) :
Argentine Republic quits the League ;
EdP 677
Countries admitted to the L«ague ; EdP.... 764
Disarmament a question before the league ;
EdP fill
Opening If ■ion of the League : EdP 577
tiona before the League; EdP 632
Submits Armenian question to mediation of
friendly powers ; EdP 678
League of nations — Permanent court of inter-
national justice :
Mr. Root's world court : EdA 8 tl
Root plan "went further than the cove-
nant" ; EdP 519
Secret proceedings allowed: EdP 116
Lenc'ie at nations — United States:
\ ' •
Voting strength of the United States: Ed!
Lejeune. John A
Report on Marine Corps in Hni'i: EdP... 136
R«plv to H J. SeligmannV ^t of
II lit!" : Cr 101
Lenin, Nikolai :
Letter of Maxim Gorky to H. G. Wells;
CR 377
Leon Soniat post. See American legion.
Leonard, William Ellery :
Lynching bee ; P 778
Lesson in history. J. H. Holmes ; SA 640
Let us have peace ; EdA 205
Leviathan ; Df t 641
Lewisohn, Ludwig :
Changing drama ; D 18
Convention and revolt ; D 787
Cox— A provincial for president ; SA 68
Entertainments ; D 597
Evening at the movies ; D 332
Fantasies ; D 736
Homeless muse ; D 622
Hors d'oeuvres ; D 278
Max Reinhardt ; D 405
Note on acting ; D 569
Plays for a people's theater; D 306
Poet and his moment ; SA 42
Real thing, The ; D 483
Ripeness and Youth ; D 539
Samson and Delilah : drama by Sven Lange ;
D 676
Survey of the character of the theater ; D . 695
Susan Glaspel. Plays; BR 509
Trade-Goods ; D 458
Tradition and freedom ; SA 651
Triflers and playwrights ; D 354
Underworld ; D 383
Liberalism :
New Republic distressed over liberalism
since 1912 ; EdP 489
Third party effort ; EdA 88
Tradition and freedom. L. Lewisohn; SA. . 651
Liberty :
Boldness of a bishop. F. Smith ; Cr 158
Dictatorship of the ? D. A. Lyons; Cr 131
In the wake of the espionage act. W.
Nelles : S A 684
Meddling with the schools : EdA 33
More about academic freedom. H. F. ; Cr. . 14
Mr. Wilson responsible for suppression of
liberty and free speech ; EdP 30
"No injustice to anyone." H. L. Smith ; Cr 245
Liber'y (Dominican Republic) :
Libertv under military law ; IRD 81
Liberty. See also Free speech ; Academic free-
dom.
Lievano, Roberto:
Thus my dreams. Tr. by Thomas Walsh: P 453
Lind, Jennv (Mmo. Otto Goldschmidt) :
Jenny Lind ; EdA 411
Literary criticism :
Ivory tower. Reply to Mr. Mencken's criti-
cism of The Nation : EdA 263
New York : Dictator of American criticism.
M. Austin ; SA 129
Literature :
Literature nnd politics: EdA 01
Paradox of literature ; EdA 495
Lithuania :
Poland invades for "Strategic reasons" :
EdP 286
T.ittle entente. See Balkan state?!
Little tea room at Gimbel's. S. C. Daljord ; SA 11
I.ittledale. Harold A.:
Our debt of honor; SA 6S1
I.loyd George. David :
Prime minis'or. H. Spender : RR 118
Speech at the Lord Mayor's banouet ; EdP
Will not I in Ireland: EdP ISfl
Tyoans. Foreign :
Up-to-date supply and demand. H. Buxton :
Cr 612
Lock wood committee:
Gre.it building conspiracy. V. Harwood : SA 770
liOgue. Cardinal :
Pronouncement against killing in Ireland ;
EdP 6*1
London Dn>bi flrrntd:
Refuses Russian money : EdP 838
Lord's Day alliance:
Dictatorship of the Sahhatariat : EdA 681
"Lost nnd found" : Dft 215
Louvain. University of:
To be restored by Whitney Warren; EdP.. 633
Lovers :
Where may 'hey -o ? EdP 31
B
Trial of the Communists ; SA 1S5
'•v D. Greenwood ; P 43
Lusitanin :
D. F. Milono reveals Tart that she carried
munitions : EdP 579
Lynch
Lynching bee. W. E. Leonard: P 778
Thomas W. Pir-ke'f prevents lynching in
Nor'h Carolina : Ed 116
Lyons. D. A. :
Dictatorship of the T Cr 131
M
M. C, :
C. R. W. Nevinson : A 674
McCormick, MediH:
to. Our failure in Hai'i 616
Our failure in Haiti ; SA 615
McCoshen. E. J. :
Sati.sfar'ory punishment. Letter from Fort
en worth : Cr 45
McCurdy. Allen :
position ; SA 126
McDonald, Francis J. :
Patriotism vs. fanaticism ; Cr 217
Macdonald, J. Ramsay :
British labor party conference; SA 94
MacDonald, William :
Appraising the Peace conference; BR 246
MacSwiney family :
History of a patriotic family 761
MacSwiney, Mary :
Portrait 749
Testimony before the American commission
on Ireland 757-62
MacSwiney, Muriel (Mrs. Terence MacSwiney) :
Arrival in America ; EdP 677
Portrait 749
Testimony before the American commission
on Ireland 748
MacSwiney, Terence ; Dft 272
MacSwiney, Terence:
Death ; EdP 517
Death (part of Mrs. MacSwiney's testi-
mony ) 755
From a great-great grandson of T. A. Em-
met. R. E. Sherwood ; Cr 617
Mayor MacSwiney's hunger strike and
death 754-6
Mayor MacSwiney's speech at his trial 753
Soul of MacSwiney ; EdA 491
Madison Square church :
Destruction of ; Dft 215, 503
Magalhaes, Fernao de :
Magellan ; EdA 769
Magellan, Ferdinand. See Magalhaes, Fernao de.
Mahler, Max :
Fastov pogrom ; Cr 782
Mai, Richard :
Germany and the Hohenzollern ; SA 772
Malone, Dudley Field :
Reveals fact that Lusitania carried muni-
tions ; EdP 579
Manitoba :
Manitoba's startling election. A. V.
Thomas ; S A 66
Mannix, Archbishop ; Dft 43
EdP 203
Man o' War :
Sports and arts ; EdA 469
Margolis, Jacob:
U. S. steel vs. Margolis. S. Hale ; SA 498
Martens, Ludwig C. A. K. :
Ordered deported from the U. S. ; EdP .... 764
Martha's Vineyard:
Edgartown ; Dft 325
Thoughts on the south shore ; Dft 245
Martin, John F. :
Testimony before American commission on
Ireland 712
Masters, Edgar Lee :
Maupassant and Spoon river. B. M. Wood-
bridge ; Cr 451
Maupassant, Guy:
Maupassant and Spoon river. B. M. Wood-
bridge ; Cr 451
Maynard, Theodore :
English poet in America. Reply to, Letter
to J. C. Squire by S. Roth; Cr 691
Menace of another war ; EdA 118
Mendelsohn. S. Felix :
Dr. Friedlaender ; Cr 218
Mencken, H. L. :
Ivory tower: Reply to Mr. Mencken's criti-
cism of The Nation; EdA 263
Mexico :
Obregon announces the new cabinet; EdP.. 678
Mexico seems peaceful ; EdP 258
United States' protest on legislation affect-
ing American oil interests; EdP 312
Michalaros, Demetrios :
Greek situation: View of Venizelo's defeat;
SA 688
Middle West:
Northwest ; EdA 206
Middleton, Scuddt r :
Child of Adam; P 218
Militarism :
Delaware Co.. N. Y., decided against mili-
tarism ; EdP 619
Milk :
Eight per cent ale and eight cent milk.
Armin ; Cr 325
High price of milk ; EdP 175
Mills, Harriet May :
On state ticket in New York ; EdP 178
Ministers of the gospel:
Preachers nnd the league : EdA 635
Minneapolis, Minnesota — Rapid transit:
And the public pays. W. Williams: SA.... 447
Mr. Flood's party. E. A. Robinson: P 594
Moderwell. Hiram K. :
Italy: How the government met the revo-
lution : SA 558
Italy's "Eas'ward Orientation"; SA 292
Two way^ with Albania : SA 399
What happened in Italy : SA 470
Montfort. Eugene:
Convinces Paris writing is a business: EdP 259
Moon : Dft 216
Mooney. Tom :
Victim of "frame-up" ; EdP 606
Moore, John Bassett :
British attitude toward confiscation. Cor-
on of 7Vie Nation's editorial on Great
in's renunciation of confiscation of
rty ; Cr 693
Vol. cxi]
Index
[July-Dec, 1920
"More thrilling than fiction"; Ed A 522
Morgan, Denis :
Testimony before American commission on
Ireland 705
Morley, Felix:
Behind the British coal crisis; SA 402
Moving toward nationalization; SA 730
Morocco: ,„
In Morocco. E. Wharton ; BR 479
Morris, Oliver S. :
Nonpartisan league. Reply to C. R. John-
son; CR 733
Morton, David :
In summer ; P 132
Reported missing ; P 13
Moses, Montrose J. :
Making Shakespeare presentable; BR 660
Mt. Vernon, N. Y. :
Free speech at Mt. Vernon ; EdP 437
Moving picture plays :
Education by celluloid. A. Oak ; Cr 451
Evening at the movies. L. Lewisohn ; D... 332
Murder will out ; EdA 467
"Murdering beauty" ; EdA 494
Music :
Our musical liches ; EdA 316
N
N. N.:
Our national print room ; A 512
Nagel, Charles :
Making the ballot count? Reply to "Don't
throw away your vote" ; Cr 349
Names, personal ; Dft 158, 731
Nasmyth, George. Obituary ; EdP 364
Nasmyth, George W. :
What Europe thinks of us, about our treat-
ment of political prisoners ; Cr 532
Nation, The:
Constructive world league program; EdP.. 549
Criticism of The Nation. H. E. Wood-
bridge; CR 564
Ivory tower. Reply to Mr. Mencken's criti-
cism of The Nation; EdA 263
Nation in Dannemora prison ; Dft 564
Pro-British Nation.. J. F. Kelly; CR 642
Pro-Sinn Fein Nation. C. E. Stowe: CR. . 642
Reply to M. McCormick's Our failure in
Haiti* 616
National City bank, New York City:
Concession of the National City Bank ; IRD 310
Self-determining Haiti : government of, by,
and for, the National City bank. J. W.
Johnson ; SA 295
Why Haiti has no budget ; IRD 307
National civic federation ; EdP 87
Investigates Episcopal church and Dr. B. I.
Bell ; EdP 721
National consumers league:
Results of survey of women night workers
of Passaic, N. J. ; EdP 765
National conventions — Democratic :
Another convention — The Democratic. R.
Hale; SA 69
Not an unbossed convention; EdP 1
National Nonpartisan league :
Election returns ; EdP 546
Farmer butts back. A. Warner ; SA 240
Nonpartisan league defeated. C. R. John-
son; SA 614
Nonpartisan league. Reply to C. R. John-
son ; Cr 733
Northwest breaks from the old parties ; EdP 365
To make their campaign with the Farmer-
labor party ; EdP 201
When farmers turn politicians. A. War-
ner; SA 183
Won control of Democratic party in Mon-
tana primary ; EdP 286
National parks and reserves :
National parks' peril. R. S. Yard; SA 208
National Young men's Republican league :
Are we marching or marking time ? E. W. ;
Cr 451
Nationalization of women. See Woman — Russia.
Nature; Dft 13
Near East. See Eastern question.
Needed functionary. G. Showerman ; SA 449
Negro suffrage :
Woman voter hits the color line. W. Pick-
ens; SA 372
Negroes in the United States :
Curfew for negroes in Jersey City; EdP. . . . 766
Democracy worthy the name. Reply to
Faith Adams. A. H. Bird ; Cr 617
Faith Adams's reply to C. D. Rivers's Ques-
tion to Faith Adams 643
Question to democracy. F. Adams; SA.... 524
Question to Faith Adams. Reply to her
Question to democracy. C. D. Rivers ; Cr 642
Mr. Wilson's limited democracy. M. G.
Brubaker : Cr 532
Negroes in the United States. See also lynching.
Neighborhood play house:
Real thing, The. L. Lewisohn; D 483
Nelles, Walter : •
In the wake of the espionage act ; SA 684
Nevinson. C. R. W. ; A 674
New England :
New England and the novel. R. Herrick ;
SA 323
New England fisherman; EdA 523
New England wayside; EdA. 233
New Mexico :
God's country. E. S. Sergeant; SA 39
New Republic:
Criticism of The Nation's Constructive
world league program. (In, Building on
the Hague. ) 682
Distressed over liberalism since 1912 ; EdP 489
"Test of the news" published; EdP 174
New York (city) :
Crime in the city ; EdP 765
Guide to New York, its buildings, churches,
banks, etc., etc., 1867; Dft 450
Meeting of Board of Estimate ; Dft 43
New York City at night; Dft 376
New York (city) — Churches:
Community church. C. H. Cochrane; Cr. . 452
Madison Square church; Dft 215; 503
Old churches in the city ; Dft 503-4
"Profits of religion." Trinity parish ; Dft. 131
New York (city) — Education:
Meddling with the schools ; EdA 33
New York (city) — Strikes:
Port strike ; EdP 31
New York (city) :
Transport breakdown. G. Soule ; SA 9
Transport breakdown : Suggested solution.
F. L. Hutchins; Cr 158
New York (state) — Elections:
Delaware Co. decided against militarism ;
EdP 519
New York (state) — Legislature:
Republicans plan to exclude Socialists ; EdP 231
Traitors and anarchists; EdA 368
New York Call:
Victory over Postmaster-General Burleson ;
EdP 258
New York Evening Post:
Exhibit A in re Mr. Colby. (Quotation
from N. Y. Evening Post.) H. Blanken-
horn ; Cr 476
Ignores Paul Landowski, sculptor of
Wright statue; EdP 203
Trials of the independent editor; EdP 285
New York Herald :
Sun and Herald divorced ; EdP 393
New York state prison survey committee :
Notable prison report ; EdA 550
New York Sun :
The Sun becomes an evening paper; EdP.. 393
Newspapers :
Editorial policy and advertising as shown
by Gorham Co. ; EdP 721
Exhibit A in re Mr. Colby. H. Blanken-
horn ; Cr 476
Newspaper reading ; EdP 31
Press correspondents and the State depart-
ment ; EdP 391
Times, Associated press, and New York
Times (and the Samuel report) ; EdA.. 148
State department and the news. P. Hanna ;
SA 398
Newspapers — Ireland :
Newspaper men protest at treatment of
military authorities in Ireland; EdP.... 719
Nies, William E. :
Children in need ; Cr 131
Nights and days. J. Rorty ; P 244
Nikolaievsk "Massacre." See Japanese in
Siberia.
Nineteen twenty:
- Anniversaries of famous people in nine-
teen-twenty ; EdP 633
Nissen, Ludwig:
"If thine enemy hunger " ; Cr 349
Nobel prizes :
Jacinto Benavente receives prize; EdP.... 721
Knut Hamsun : Appreciation. A. W. Port-
erfield ; SA 652
Nobel prize poet ; EdA 683
Nonpartisan league. See National nonparti-
san league.
Northwest, The ; EdA 206
O
Oak, Allen :
Education by celluloid ; Cr 451
Oberon ; Dft 215; 503
O'Brien, Frederick :
Alaska ; BRs 537
O'Flannagan, Father:
Asks Lloyd George what he offers as first
step to peace in Ireland; EdP 677
Peace negotiations come to naught; EdP.. 763
Ogle. Ellis:
What Europe thinks of us, about our treat-
ment of political prisoners; Cr 532
Who won't buy can't work; Cr 44
Old key-maker. L. N. Jennings ; P 443
Olympiad :
Olympian error in the A. P. O. W. Zeigler ;
Cr 325
On the earth and under it. G. Taggard ; P.... 559
Open and closed shop :
Closed factories and open shop. W. H.
Crook ; SA 725
Fight to break the unions; EdA 609
Oil. See Petroleum.
Oxford professors :
Propose amicable relations with German and
Austrian scholars ; EdP 490
P
Packing industry:
Packers' profit. L. D. H. Weld; Cr 217
Painting, Miniature :
Miniatura, or The art of limning. E. Nor-
gate ; BR 222
Future of Palestine ; IRFP 334
Industrial prospects in Palestine; IRD.... 334
Palmer, Alexander Mitchell :
Palmer and the Espionage act since the
armistice ; EdP 365
Panama :
Taboga island incident; IRD 139
Panama canal, The :
Strike-breaking in the canal zone. W. Dun-
can ; IRSA 138
Paradise, Viola I. :
Catching up with George Washington; Cr.. 452
Paris :
Street lighting; Dft 564
Street traffic; Dft 186
Who wouldn't desert — for Paris? EdA 177
Parks. See also National parks and reserves.
Parsons, Herbert :
Reply to editorial note on the location of
French guns near Briey Basin; Cr. . . . 44
Passage. E. Babcock ; P 300
Passports :
Passportless travel should be reestablished ;
EdP 338
Patriotism :
Patriotism vs. fanaticism. (Opinion of
Judge Bourquin.) F. J. McDonald; Cr. . 217
Peace :
Let us have peace ! EdA 205
Peace and beauty, search for ; Dft 216
Peace conference :
Appraising the Peace conference. W. Mac-
Donald ; BR 246
Last of the "Big Four" repudiated; EdP.. 605
Peace conference, 1920 :
Allied premiers meet at Boulogne ; EdP . . 2
Peace conference, 1920 (Spa) :
Disarmament of Germany ; EdP 58 ; 85
Germany given six months to disarm ; EdP.
58; 85
Indemnity and coal decisions; EdP.... 58; 85
Peace treaty :
Col. House suggests a separate peace with
Germany; EdP 115
End of Versailles; EdA 177
Review of B. Baruch's book on the Treaty
of Versailles ; EdP 764
Peace treaty — Reparations :
Allies' demand for cows from Germany ;
EdP 518
German indemnity discussed at Boulogne : '.
EdP 2
German solvency and reparations; IRD.... 884
Making of the reparation and economic
sections of the treaty. B. M. Baruch ;
BR 506
Minutes of a recent meeting of the Repa-
rations commission ; Dft 781
Perkins, Henry P. :
Anti-commotion : Reply to "No more race
discrimination" ; Cr 350
Persian literature :
History of Persian literature under Tartar
dominion (A. D. 1265-1502). E. G.
Browne ; BR 508
Petrograd unions to the British proletariat ;
IRFD 141
Petroleum :
Anglo-French oil agreement ; IRD 334
Control of the world's oil supply; EdP.... 632
United States protest on Mexican legisla-
tion affecting American oil interests ;
EdP 312
Pickens, William :
Woman voter hits the color line; SA 372
Pilgrims :
New England fisherman; EdA 523
Pinchot, Gifford:
Squandering our heritage; SA 444
Pinski, David:
Treasure, The ; D 483
Platforms, political :
Labor in the party platforms ; EdA 61
Platforms, political — Farmer-labor party:
Platform of the Farmer-labor party 476
Platforms, political — Democratic :
Democratic position on the league and
treaty ; EdP 115
Platforms, political — Socialist party :
National platform, Socialist party, 1920.. 502
Players. See Actors.
Plays for a people's theater. L. Lewisohn; D. 306
Plehn, Carl C. :
Economic studies of the g*eat war ; BRs . . 378
Poetry :
Nation's poetry prize.. 610; 674; 696; 737; 787
Poet and his moment. L. Lewisohn; SA. . 42
Poetry and work. J. Erskine ; SA 473
Superfine frenzy. Clement Wood; SA.... 375
Against treason. J. Drinkwater ; P 783
Child of Adam. S. Middleton ; P 218
Children of the sun. J. Rorty; P 527
Cocoons. K. W. Baker ; P 72
Criticism. M. Bodenheim ; P 533
Emergent. J. Rorty: P 638
Epigrams. C. Shanafelt and E. L. Walton ;
P 95
Feasters, The. R. Torrence : P 102
Five poems of R. M. Rilke ; P 618
From an island. L. Speyer ; P 326
Nos. 2870-2895]
Index
[Vol. cxi
Golden cage. J. L. Freeman; P 127
Humoresque. E. M. Hunt ; P 159
In summer. D. Morton ; P 132
Loyalty. D. Greenwood ; P 43
Lynching bee. W. E. Leonard; P 778
Mr. Flood's party. E. A. Robinson; P 594
Nights and days. J. Rorty ; P 244
Old key-maker. L. N. Jennings; P 443
On the earth and under it. G. Taggard ; P 559
Passage. E. Babcock ; P 300
Prometheus bound. M. Anderson; P 187
Redwoods. A. Corbin ; P 443
Reported missing. D. Morton; P 13
Rifts. E. Scott ; P 41
Scythians. A. Blok ; P 271
Seams. H. Hall; P 473
Thus my dreams. R. Lievano, tr. by T.
Walsh; P 453
To a presidential candidate. S. Barnard ; P 187
To Mrs. Terence MacSwiney. R. Fiallo ; P. 731
Twilight of the gods. L. Speyer ; P 497
Poets, English :
English poet in America. Reply to Letter
to J. C. Squire by S. Roth. T. Maynard ;
Cr 691
Letter to J. C. Squire from S. Roth; Cr. . 526
Poison gases in warfare. See Gases in warfare.
Poland :
Allies' treatment of the Vilna affair; EdP. 489
America and the Polish question; EdA.... 147
"Council of defense" ; EdP 29
Defeat 'of Bolsheviki in Poland; EdP 258
Free trade and peace; EdA 581
Peace in Poland ; EdP 436
Poland and the Entente. R. Dell; SA 321
Polish debt to the United States; EdP 312
Poland — Foreign relations — Russia :
Polish policy of Soviet Russia ; IRD 197
Present state of the Polish Jews ; IRD .... 644
Poland :
Russo-Polish peace. H. G. Alsberg ; SA. . 587
Suppressing Polish atrocities. G. Kessner ;
Cr 101
Tragedy that is Poland. B. Ginzburg ; SA. 65
Poland. See also Jews in Poland.
Poland. See also Russo-Polish war, 1920.
Political conventions. See National conventions.
Political parties — United States :
Forty-eighters' position. A. McCurdy ; SA. 126
Third party and its candidate; EdA 4
Third party effort; EdA 88
Third party issues. E. Clark; Cr 188
Slight distinctions between major parties ;
EdP 57
Political parties — United States. See a'so
Names of political parties, as Democratic,
etc.
Political platforms. See Platforms, Political.
Political prisoners :
What Europe thinks of us. G. W. Nasmyth ;
Cr 532
Politics :
Literature and politics; EdA 91
Polyzoides, A. Th. :
Greek situation : View of Venizelos's defeat ;
SA 688
Poor Man's music. M. P. Willcocks ; SA 297
Population — United States :
City population in 1920; EdP 393
Porterfield, Allen Wilson :
Knut Hamsun. Appreciation; SA 652
Power :
Nationalized power. H. Hoover; SA 318
Prayer of the virgins. R. M. Rilke ; P 618
Preachers. See Ministers of the gospel.
Presidential campaigns, 1920 :
Campaign has ended; EdP 489
Campaign to date; EdA 288
Democratic campaign comes to a close ; EdP 463
How will you vote? EdA 260
Issues of the campaign; EdP 143
Mr. Wilson rejoices over "genuine national
referendum" ; EdP 391
No interest and no program; EdP 364
Northwest breaks from the old parties ; EdP 365
Progressive bloc ; EdA 391
Triumph of reaction ; EdA 648
Presidential candidates, 1920:
Another candidate. C. P. B. ; Cr 350
Cox — A provincial for president. L. Lewi-
sohn ; SA 68
Impossible choice ; EdA 32
Last aid to voters ; EdA 466
Making the ballot count? C. Nagel ; Cr. . 349
Perplexed voter. F. L. Hutching; Cr 377
Speeches of acceptance of candidates ; EdP 201
Presidents — France ; EdP 363
Presidents — United States:
Consolation. P. Warren; Cr 14
Prezzolini, Giuseppe:
Plot for reaction in Italy; SA 686
Prices ; Dft 13
Prices :
Changing prices and the cost of living.
W. J. Lauck ; SA 471
Food prices rising ; EdP 201
Passing on the costs ; EdA 288
Railroad rate increase not to effect prices ;
EdP 201
Those declining prices; EdA 623
Up-to-date supply and demand. H. Buxton ;
Cr 642
Prints. See Engravings.
Prisons :
Notable prison report; EdA 550
Prisons, military:
Satisfactory punishments. E. J. McCoshen
and R. P. Stewart ; Cr 45
Profiteers :
Small profiteers get the punishment; EdP. 174
Progressive bloc ; EdA 394
Prohibition :
Eight per cent ale and eight cent milk.
Armin ; Cr 325
Soft Drink Journal ; Dft 43
Prometheus bound. M. Anderson; P 187
Propaganda :
Hungary's intrigues ; IRD 571-5
Secrets of Crewe house. C. Stuart; BR.. 594
Propaganda isn't tired ; EdA 262
Proportional representation :
To be applied in states that violate the
fourteenth amendment ; EdP 230
Provincialism :
On hating the provinces; EdA 550
Psychology :
Psychology of the day. J. Jastrow ; BR 15
Public service :
Public servant; EdA 89
Publishers and publishing :
Cost of production increases; EdP 465
Putnam, George Haven :
Prevented from giving lecture in Brooklyn ;
EdP 464
Dft 475
Q
Quakers. See Friends, Society of.
R
Radicals and radicalism :
Fusion against by the Republicans and
Democrats in the election; EdP 231
Railroad labor board :
Railway award ; EdA 119
Railroads — Cars :
Car shortage. S. P. Weston; Cr 71
Railroads — Employees :
Railway award; EdA 119
Railroads — Finance :
High finance on the railroads. J. C. Bon-
bright ; SA 637
Railroads — Freight. See Freight handling.
Railroad — rates :
Interstate commerce commission grants in-
crease ; EdP 143
Railroad rate increases; EdA 176
Railroads — wages. See Railroads — employees.
Rapallo, Treaty of:
Treaty of Rapallo. Text and map; IRD.. 788
Rathom, John Revelstoke:
Confession of John R. Rathom 557
"More thrilling than fiction"; EdA 522
Real thing. The. L. Lewisohn ; D 483
Red Cross :
Abandons its motto: "Neutrality — hu-
manity" EdP 287
Appeals for money ; EdP 579
Becomes a political tool; EdP 579
Redwoods. A. Corbin ; P 443
Reed, John : obituary ; EdP 465
Reedy, William Marion. Appreciation. Z.
Akins; SA 155
Referendum :
Harvey and Bryan make plea for referen-
dum prior to war ; EdP 764
Reich, Arpad:
Hungary's intrigues ; IRD 571-4
Rumania's attitude: correction of, Hun-
gary's intrigues. B. Stoica ; Cr 782
Reinhardt, Max. L. Lewisohn; D 405
Rent laws :
Test constitutionality of the rent laws, in
New York ; EdP 578
Reported missing. D. Morton ; P 13
Representation, proportional. See Proportional
representation.
Republican party :
Are we marching or marking time? E. W. ;
Cr 461
Potent power for propaganda. M. C. Har-
rison ; Cr 71
Promises if successful in the election ; EdP 175
"Strong man" is Mr. Harding. H. H.
Jones ; Cr 217
Revolution ; Dft 187
Rhein, Marie; Cr 45
Rifts. E. Scott; P 41
Rilke, Rainer Maria. Appreciation; EdP 607
Rilke, Rainer Maria:
Five poems; tr. by L. Lewisohn; P 618
Rinchart. Mary Roberts:
Bab : D 698
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil :
Asks for half million as a centennial gift ;
EdP 766
Ripeness and Youth. L. Lewisohn; D 639
Rivers, C. D. :
Question to Faith Adams. Reply to her.
Question to democracy ; Cr 642
Reply to. Question to Faith Adams, by
F. Adams 613
Robertson, Alice M. ; EdP 646
Robinson, Edwin Arlington :
Mr. Flood's party; P 694
Robinson, William J. :
What Germany thinks; Cr 665
Roland, Romain :
Rolland's Danton : criticism. H. Van Brugh
de Kay; D 61
Roman Catholic church in the United States :
Bigotry in the south. C. P. Sweeney; SA. . 585
Concerning bigotry. Reply to, Bigotry in
the South. G. J. Knapp ; Cr 691
Roman Catholic church in the United States.
See also Knights of Columbus.
Romance; Dft 70
Rome rolls round again ; EdA 583
Ronayhe, D. :
Reply to R. E. Sherwood, on the Irish ques-
tion ; Cr 691
Roosevelt, Franklin D. :
Harding quotes him on the votes in the
League ; EdP 364
Nominated vice-president; EdP 57
Root, Elihu:
Mr. Root's world court; EdA 341
Rorty, James :
Children of the sun ; P 527
Emergent ; P 638
Nights and days ; P 244
Starkweather writes a happy ending; SA. 154
Rose, F. H. :
Whispering well ; D 737
Roth, Samuel :
English poet in America. Reply to Mr.
Roth's letter to J. C. Squire. T. May-
nard; Cr 691
Letter to Mr. J. C. Squire; Cr 626
Ruhr region :
Allied operation of Ruhr mines not easy ;
EdP 86
Rumania :
Little Entente agreement ; IRD 789
Rumania's attitude toward Hungary. Cor-
rection of statement by Col. Reich. B.
Stoica ; Cr 782
Russell, Bertrand :
Soviet Russia — 1920; SA 121; 152
Soviet Russia— 1920. Correction; Cr 188
Bertrand Russell self-revised. K. Durant ;
Cr 188
Russia :
British labor delegation to Russia. Text
of report ; IRD 355
Letter of Maxim Gorky to H. G. Wells;
Cr 377
New war drive ; EdA 233
Mr. Wilson evidently means war with Rus-
sia ; EdP 259
Only way to deal with Russia; EdA 608
Russian republic. C. L. Malone ; BR 47
Soviet domestic problem. H. G. Alsberg ;
SA 239
Succession of Russian generals; EdP 546
Russia — Commerce :
British trade with Soviet Russia: IRD.... 542
Trade with Russia urged by W. D. Vander-
lip and mass meeting of trade unions ;
EdP 606
U. S. permitted to trade with Russia; EdP. 58
Russia — Foreign relations :
British labor reports on Russia; IRD.... 53
Will Russia drive the British from Asia?
H. G. Alsberg; SA 179
Russia — Foreign relations — Great Britain :
Further Russian-British notes; IRD 224
More notes to Russia ; IRD 253
Russian-British notes; IRFP 194
Russia — Foreign relations — Italy :
Italy's "Eastward orientation." H. K. Mod-
erwell ; SA 292
Russia — Foreign relations — Poland :
Polish policy of Soviet Russia; IRD 197
Russia — Foreign relations — United States :
Our Russian policy; EdA 204
Russia — History — Polish invasion, 1919. See
Russo-Polish war.
Russia — History — Revolution :
"Test of the news" published by the New
Republic; EdP 174
Russia — History — Revolution — Bolsheviki :
Barbarous Soviet Russia. I. McBride ; BR. 566
Evolution with an "R." Reply to B. Rus-
sell, Soviet Russia. B. Watson: Cr 245
Facts and fabrications about Soviet Russia.
E. Clark; BR 160
H. G. Wells assays Russia ; EdA 635
Russian impressions. H. G. Alsberg; SA. 207
Russo-Polish peace. H. G. Alsberg; SA. . 587
Social reforms in Soviet Russia. H. G.
Alsberg ; SA 319
Soviet Russia— 1920. B. Russell; SA..121; 152
Soviet Russia — 1920. B. Russell. Correc-
rection ; Cr 188
Tyranny by prophets. H. G. Alsberg ; SA. 268
Russia — Industries and resources :
Industry in Soviet Russia: IRFP 282
Russia's industrial problem. H. G. Alsberg ;
SA 293
Russia — Intellectual life. See Intellectuals — Rus-
sia ; IRFP 789
Russia — Social conditions :
Social reforms in Soviet Russia. H. G.
Alsberg; SA 319
Russia. See also Russo-Polish war, 1920.
Russian literature:
Guide to Russian literature. M. J. Olgin ;
BR 327
Russo-Polish war, 1920 :
Allies may request an armistice from Bol-
Vol. cxi]
Index
[July-Dec, 1920
sheviki; EdP • 58
Poland's plight due to policy of assault and
conquest of the Soviet government; EdP. 229
Polish peace unacceptable to French im-
perialists ; EdP 464
Russo-Polish peace. H. G. Alsberg ; SA.. 587
State department attitude as Poland in-
vades Lithuania ; EdP 286
Supreme council sends note to Russia sug-
gesting armistice terms ; EdP 86
Will Poland make peace? EdP 144
S
Salem, Mass. :
Salem custom house destroyed by fire ; EdP 679
Samson and Delilah : drama by S. Lange. See
Lange, Sven.
Samuel, Stuart M. :
Facts about the Polish pogroms: Text of
the Samuel report ; IRD 165
Samuel report on Polish atrocities sup-
pressed in English language newspapers.
G. Kessner; Cr 101
Times, Associated press, and New York
Times (and the Samuel report) ; EdA. . 148
Santo Domingo. See Dominican Republic.
Scarlet letter. See Hawthorne, Nathaniel.
Schiff , Jacob H. : obituary ; EdP 365
Schonherr, Karl and B. F. Glazer:
Thy name is woman (Der Weibsteufel) ;
D 623; 696
Schreiner, Olive :
Olive Schreiner: obituary; EdA 769
Scott, Evelyn :
Rifts; P 41
Scythians. A. Blok ; P 271
Seams. H. Hall; P 473
Seattle central labor council :
Ask A. F. of L. to call conference on
U. S. war with Russia ; EdP 259
Sedition :
Right to talk sedition. C. Baldwin; Cr 187
Seer. R. M. Rilke ; P 618
Seligmann, Herbert J. :
Conquest of Haiti ; SA 35
Conquest of Haiti. Letter in reply to, J. A.
Lejeune ; Cr 101
Report on conditions in Haiti ; EdP 30
Selwyn, Edgar :
Mirage; D r 458; 696
Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley :
God's country ; SA 39
Shakespeare, William :
Making Shakespeare presentable. M. J.
Moses ; BR 660
Merchant of Venice; D 623
On Hamlet and Hamlets. A. Symons ; SA. 97
Shanafelt, Clara and Eda Lou Walton :
Epigrams ; P 95
Shaw, George Bernard :
Heartbreak house ; D 623 ; 696
Irish nationalism and labor international-
ism ; IRD 625
Sheppard-Towner bill :
Women and children first ; EdA 724
Sherower, Miles M. :
Nikolaievsk "massacre" ; SA 211
Sherwood, Robert Emmet:
From a great-great grandson of Thomas
Addis Emmet; Cr 617
Reply to Mr. Sherwood. D. Ronayhe ; Cr. . 691
Shipman, Samuel :
Unwritten chapter ; D 598
Shipman, Samuel and Percival Wilde :
Crooked gamblers ; D 278
Shipping — United States :
German shipping plot ; EdA 440
Shoner, Carl. See Schonherr, Karl.
Shop committees :
Shop committee. The ; EdA 234
Shoplifters in southern jails; Dft 641
Showerman, Grant :
Needed functionary ; S A 449
Siberia :
Far East gets a respite. M. Zippin ; SA.. 210
From the Socialists of Siberia; IRD 227
Japan invades Siberia; EdP 205
Nikolaievsk "massacre." M. M. Sherower ;
SA 211
Silk shirt audiences safe from police interfer-
ence ; Dft 475
Single tax. E. Carsey ; Cr 505
Another candidate. C. P. B. ; Cr 350
Sinn Fein. See Ireland — Sinn Fein movement.
Sisson, Edgar:
Orders Fourteen Point speech for use in
Russia and Germany ; EdP 30
Slang :
"Where'd you get that stuff." B. G. Grim :
Cr 45
Slovakia :
Hungarian methods in Slovakia: IRD.... 55
Hungary's intrigues ; IRD 571-76
Smillie, Robert:
Leader of Rritish labor returns to the
party : EdP 87
Smith. Alfred E. :
Candidate for governor of New York : EdP 463
Smith, Fred.:
Boldness of a bishop ; Cr 158
Smith, H. L. :
No injustice to any one; Cr 245
Socialism :
Socialism yesterday and today. Reply to
F. L. Hutchins. A. Fichandler ; Cr 451
Split in the socialist movement. J. Gol-
lomb; SA '74
Socialist party (Siberia) :
From the Socialists of Siberia; IRD li.1
Socialist party (United States):
Election returns for the Socialists; EdP.. 546
National platform, Socialist party, 1920... 502
Socialist campaign. L. S. Gannett; SA. . . . 401
Socialists in New York legislature and poli-
tics ; EdP |31
Traitors and Anarchists ; EdA 368
Soldiers, Disabled:
Tuberculous ex-soldiers strike; EdP 145
Soldiers, Discharged:
Mind of the ex-soldier ; EdP 145
Soldiers — Reeducation :
Our debt of honor. H. A. Littledale ; SA. . 584
Song of love. R. M. Rilke ; P 618
Soule, George :
American labor history; BR.... 17
Building scandal ; SA 560
Great woolen strike. G. Soule; SA 181
Panorama of labor ; BRs 533
Transport breakdown ; S A 9
Transport breakdown : Suggested solution.
F. L. Hutchins; Cr 158
South Africa :
South Africa native affairs bill; IRD 599
South seas :
Rediscovering the South seas; EdA 723
Soviet Russia— 1920. B. Russell ; SA 121 ; 152
Soviet Russia — 1920. F. Russell. Correction;
Cr 188
Soviet government. H. G. Alsberg ; SA 239
Spa conference. See Peace conference, 1920
(Spa).
Speyer, Leonora :
From an island ; P 326
Twilight of the Gods ; P 497
Spies :
Spies and spying ; EdA 439
Spies, industrial :
Espionage in industry revealed in the In-
terchurch steel report; EdP 174
Spy, The; EdA 149
Spitteler, Carl :
Nobel prize poet ; EdA 683
Sports :
Sports and arts ; EdA 469
Squire, J. C. :
English poet in America. Reply to, Letter
to J. C. Squire by S. Roth. T. Maynard ;
Cr 691
Letter to J. C. Squire from S. Roth ; Cr. . 526
Stanton, Theodore :
Piety at Yale and Cornell; Cr 45
Starkweather writes a happy ending; SA. . . . 154
Steel industry and trade :
Attempt to defeat organized labor; EdP.. 721
Attempt to unionize ; EdP 174
Steel strike, 1919:
Great steel strike and its lessons. W. Z.
Foster ; BR 273
Steel and the Inter-church ; EdA 120
Stewart, R. P. :
Satisfactory punishment; Cr 45
Stoica, Basil :
Rumania's attitude toward Hungary. Cor-
rection of statement by Col. Reich ; Cr. . 782
Stowe, Charles E. :
Pro-Sinn Fein Nation; Cr 642
Street railroads — Fares :
And the public pays. W. Williams; SA. . 447
Strikes :
Is a strike violence? EdP 490
Strikes — Great Britain :
British coal strike; IRFP 540
British industry in a deadlock; EdA 521
Coal miners strike ; EdP 464
Moving toward nationalization. F. Morley ;
SA 730
Strikes— Italy :
Dockworkers' strike spreads to metal work-
ers ; EdP 285
Strikes — Panama canal :
Strike-brmking in the canal zone. W. Dun-
can : IRSA 138
Strikes — United States :
Denver tramway strike ; EdP 258
New York port strike ; EdP 31
Tuberculous ex-soldiers strike : EdP 145
Strikes. See also Steel strike, 1919.
Suffrage :
Disfranchised voters of the South; EdP.. 546
Rights of conscience. H. Berman ; Cr.... 452
Suffrage. See also Negro suffrage — Woman
suffrage.
Sunday :
Dictatorship of the Sabbatariat : EdA.... 681
Survey of the character of the theater. L.
Lewisohn ; D 695
Sweeney. Charles P. :
Bigotry in the South; SA 585
Bigotry in the South. Reply to by G. J.
Knann ; Cr 691
Sweeney. Chnrles Patrick:
Farmer-labor campaign : SA 344
Swift. & Co. S?e Weld, L. D. H.
Symons, Arthur:
On Hamlet and Hamlets; SA 97
Synge. J. M. :
Riders to the sea ; D 279
Syria :
Emir Feisal deposed ; EdP 144
Syrian imbroglio and the Turkish settle-
ment. F. C. Howe ; S A 37
Syrian independence declared with Prince
Feisal as . ruler ; EdP 117
T
Taboga Island :
Taboga Island incident ; IRD 139
United States occupy Taboga Islands ; EdP 116
Tacna :
Bolivian revolution and Tacna-Arica. Lati-
nus; SA 96
Tacna. See also Ancon, treaty of.
Taggard, Genevieve :
Frenchmen admit it. Reply to H. Pavsons's
letter on location of French guns near
Briey Basin ; Cr 44
On the earth and under it ; P 559
Tangier — Street names ; Dft 299
Tariff— United States:
Republicans to increase customs duties ;
EdP 720
Tarkington, Booth :
Poldekin ; D 354 ; 458
Taxation :
Secretary Houston's taxation recommenda-
tions ; EdP 720
Taylor, "Alf" ; EdP 545
Teachers :
Ventilating a profession; EdA 5
Terpsichore as missionary ; EdA 317
Third party movement. See Political parties —
United States.
Thomas, A. E. :
Just suppose ; D 598
Thomas, A. Vernon :
Manitoba's startling election; SA 66
Thomas, Wallace S. :
American Legion's indorsements ; Cr 504
Thompson, James Westfall :
Doctrine of the natural boundaries of
France ; IRSA 513
Thus my dreams. R. Lievano, tr. by T. Walsh ;
P 453
To a presidential candidate. S. Barnard; P.... 187
To Mrs. Terence MacSwiney. R. Fiallo ; P 731
Toksvig, Signe (Mrs. Francis Hackett) :
Testimony before the American commis-
sion on Ireland 718
Torrence, Ridgely :
Feasters, The; P 102
Trade. See names of countries subhead Com-
merce.
Trade-Goods. L. Lewisohn; D 458
Trade unions : ' ,
Anti-union campaign is nation wide; EdP. 3J
Cost of living reduced by union owned
shops ; EdP 144
Fight to break the unions ; EdA. . 609
Mass meeting of unionists urge reopening
trade with Russia ; EdP 606
Our industrial anarchists; EdA 768
Tradition and freedom. L. Lewisohn; SA.... 651
Traitors and anarchists ; EdA 368
Transport workers :
Transport breakdown. G. Soule; SA 9
Transport breakdown : Suggested solution.
F. L. Hutchins; Cr 158
Treaties :
Central European conspiracy. E. S. Bag-
ger; SA 552
Treaties. See also Names of countries sub-
head, Treaties.
Trieste :
"Trieste was normal this morning" ; Dft. 376
Triflers and playwrights. L. Lewisohn; D.... 354
Trinity church (New York City) :
"Profits of religion"; Dft 130
Truth rising again; EdA 395
Turkey :
Turks in Europe. W. E. D. Allen; BR 73
War with Turkish Nationalists discussed
at Boulogne ; EdP 2
Turkey — Treaties :
The Crime in Turkey ; EdA 5
Secret treaty concerning Turkey; EdP.... 547
Secret treaty dividing Turkey. Text and
map ; IRD 697
Syrian imbroglio and the Turkish settle-
ment. F. C. Howe ; S A 37
Turkish treaty (map); IRD 21
What will the Turkish treaty accomplish?
EdP 86
Turner, John Kenneth :
Standing behind the President — An impos-
sibility; SA 370
Twilight of the gods. L. Speyer ; P 497
U
Ukraine :
Fastov pogroms ; IRD 646
Underworld. L. Lewisohn ; D 383
Unemployment — Great Britain:
Unemployed seize public buildings; EdP.. 678
United Communist party ; EdP 632
United States — Army :
Army of occupation give German children
Christmas ; EdP 719
United States — Army — Expeditionary force.
Who wouldn't desert— for Paris? EdA 177
United States — Cabinet:
Social welfare and public workers depart-
ments for Mr. Harding's cabinet ; EdP.
436; 763
Nos. 2870-2895]
Index
[Vol. cxi
United States — Census. See Census — United
States.
United States — Chemical warfare service :
Develops a new poison gas; EdP 605
United States — Commerce :
Republicans to increase customs duties ;
EdP 720
State department permits trade with Rus-
sia; EdP 58
Trade with Russia urged by W. D. Vander-
lip and trade unionists ; EdP 606
United States — Congress :
Our outworn congress in session; Ed A. . . . 680
United States — Constitution. See Constitu-
tional amendments.
United States — Federal board for vocational
education :
Our debt of honor. H. A. Littledale ; SA. . 584
United States — Foreign relations :
Message Mr. Wilson might have written ;
EdA 723
Repeating American history. A. J. Bev-
eridge ; S A 270
Standing behind the President — An Impos-
sibility. J. K. Turner; SA 370
United States — Foreign relations — Haiti :
Haitian-United States convention; IRD.... 254
Our failure in Haiti. M. McCormick ; SA. 615
United States — Foreign relations — Japan ; EdP 363
Japanese in California and the U. S. fleet
grave questions in Japan; EdP 364
United States — Foreign relations — Latin America :
Latin-America questions our Dominican
policy; EdP 202
United States — Foreign relations — Poland :
America and the Polish question ; EdA. . . . 147
United States — Foreign relations — Russia :
Only way to deal with Russia; EdA 608
Our Russian policy; EdA 204
United States — History :
Catching up with George Washington.
V.' I. Paradise ; Cr 452
Repeating American history. A. J. Bev-
eridge ; S A 270
United States — Justice, Department of :
Apropos of Croatians suspected of being
Communists ; EdP 3
United States — Navy:
Daniels's program for an enlarged navy ;
EdP 720
Disarm ! EdA 767
Naval court of inquiry on conditions in
Haiti ; EdP 517 ; 678 ; 720 ; 765
United States — Post office department :
As government employees cannot strike ;
Ed 230
United States — Reconstruction :
Senate committee on needs for reconstruc-
tion ; EdP 313
United States — Senate :
Rome rolls round again; EdA 583
United States — Shipping board :
Is the Shipping board to go unpunished?
EdP 678
War, waste, and business ; EdA 582
United States — State department:
Exhibit A in re Mr. Colby. H. Blanken-
horn ; Cr 476
Press correspondents and the State depart-
ment ; EdP 391
State department and the news. P. Hanna ;
SA 308
U. S. steel vs. Margolis. S. Hale ; SA. ...... . 498
Universal Negro improvement association :
Convention ; EdP 175
Untermyer, Samuel :
Exposure of building scandal; EdP 491
On building trade profiteers; EdP 313
See also Lock wood committee.
V
Van Brugh de Kay, Helena :
Rolland's Danton ; D 51
Vanderlip, Washington D. :
Kamchatka as a concession: EdP 518
Urges reopening trade with Russia; EdP. 606
Van Doren, Carl :
Flower of Puritanism : SA 649
Varick St., New York City; Dft 376
Venizelos, Eleutherios :
Defeated in Greek elections: EdP 577: 605
Greek situation : Two views of Venizelos's
defeat. 1. by A. Th. Polyzoides. 2. by
Demetrious Michalaros ; SA 688
Ventilating a profession ; EdA 5
Versailles, Treaty of. See Peace treaty 177
Vilna. See Poland.
Voting. See Ballot.
W
Wadsworth. J. W., Jr. :
Candidate for rn'loction to Senate: EdP.. 463
Waiters and waitresses:
Little ten room at Gimbel's. S. C. Dal-
jord; SA 11
Wall Street, New York City:
Explosion ; EdP 337
Trai'ors and anarchists : EdA 368
W.i'^h, Thomas, tr. See Lievano, Roberto.
Walton, Eda Lou. See Shanafelt, Clara.
War:
'A 205
Limitation of armaments. T. II. Bliss; SA. 727
Menace of another war; EdA 118
New war drive ; EdA 233
Outlawry of war. Reply to Nation's Con-
structive world league program. G. W.
Kirchwey ; Cr 732
Real war to end war : Charter of Ex-
soldiers ; IRD 56
Referendum prior to war plea of Harvey
and Bryan ; EdP 764
War, waste, and business; EdA 582
War legislation :
Republicans promise to repeal war-time
legislation ; EdP 765
Warbasse, James Peter :
Cooperation, the people's business; SA.... 555
Ware, Edward T. :
Atlanta University ; Cr 565
Warner, Arthur :
Christensen's convention ; SA 92
Christensen's convention. Correction ; Cr. . 188
Farmer butts back ; SA 240
When farmers turn politicians; SA 183
Warren, Prescott:
Consolation ; Cr 14
Warren, Whitney :
To restore University of Louvain ; EdP.... 633
Washington, George :
Catching up with George Washington. V.
I. Paradise ; Cr 452
Watson, Blanche:
Evolution with an "R." Reply to B. Rus-
sell. Soviet Russia ; Cr 245
Watson, Thomas; EdP 311
Watson, Thomas E. :
Bigotry in the south. C. P. Sweeney; SA. 585
Weld. L. D. H. :
Packers' Drofit ; Cr 217
Wells, Herbert George :
H. G. Wells assays Russia; EdA 635
Letter of Maxim Gorky to H. G. Wells :
Cr 377
Wells. Lincoln :
Eighteenth amendment ; Cr 71
Wentworth, John T. :
British view of Ireland; Cr 504
West:
Western reverie. N. Curtis; SA 591
West. See also Northwest.
West Virginia :
Labor's Valley Forge. N. Burkinshaw ; SA. 639
West Virginia. Coal miners. See Coal miners.
Westminster Abbey :
Dean appeals to America for funds to main-
tain the Abbey ; Dft 70
Gift of $50,000 from Carnegie Endowment
for international peace; EdP 679
Weston, S. P. :
Car shortage ; Cr 71
Who wouldn't desert— for Paris? EdA 177
Wilde. Percival and Samuel Shipman :
Crooked gamblers ; D 278
Williams, Watson :
And the public pays; SA 447
Willcocks, Mary Paricia :
Poor man's music ; SA 297
Wilson, Woodrow :
Accepts task of diplomatic intervention
in Armenia : EdP 678
Conference with Cox: EdP 115: 85
Criticism of. The Nation's, criticism of
Mr. Wil=on. H. E. Woodbridge; Cr 5M
Defeat of Wilsonism : EdA 520
Fourteen points ordered from Rupsia : EdP 30
Meniere Mr. Wilson might have written :
EdA 723
Mr. Wilson's limited democracy. M. G.
Brubaker: Cr 532
"No injustice to any one." H. L. Smith :
Cr 245
Repeating American history. A. J. Bev-
eridge : SA 270
Refuses »o obey the mandate of the Jones
bill; EdP 364
Responsible for suppression of free speech :
EdP 30
Standing behind the Presid°nt — An Impos-
sibility. J. K. Turner: SA 370
Suggestion for an Armenian loan: EdP.... 720
Wilson and the Wilson administration a
failure : EdP 435
Wolfson. Arthur M. :
Dictatorship of the ? D. A. Lyons:
Cr 131
Meddling with the schools; EdA 33
Worn-- :
Women and children first; EdA 724
Women night workers in Passaic, N. J. :
EdP '..765
Woman — France :
"How to save two million French women
from s'erility" ; EdP 117
Woman— Rns-in :
Nationalising Russian women; EdP 117
Woman suffrage :
Action of Tennessee legislature: EdP 287
America last to grant Woman suffrage?
EdP 85
Citizenship of women married to aliens:
59
Harming refuses to hasten state action:
F.dP 1
Suffrage amendment passed: EdP 257
do with the vo'e? S. C.
' 264
Woman suffrage in the South; EdP 229
Woman voter hits the color line. W.
Pickens ; SA 372
Women's internationalism. M. T. Garland :
SA 157
Wood, Clement :
Superfine frenzy ; S A 375
Woodbridge, Benjamin M. :
Maupassant and Spoon river; Cr 451
Woodbridge, Homer E. :
Criticism of The Nation; Cr 564
Wool and worsted manufactures. See Ameri-
can woolen company.
Words :
New words for the dictionary as, buddie
and blighty ; Dft 404
Wrangel, Peter Nikolaievich :
France and General Wrangel; IRFP 406
General Wrangel defeated ; EdP 578
Wright, Wilbur:
Memorial statue unveiled at Le Mans,
France ; EdP 203
Writing is a business ; EdP 259
Y
Yard, Robert Sterling :
National parks' peril; SA 208
Yarmolinsky, Abraham, tr. See Blok, Alex-
ander.
Yeats, W. B. :
Kathleen na Houlahan ; D 279
Yezierska, Anzia :
Deported, The 102
Young, Rida Johnson :
Little old New York; D 354; 696
Z
Zeigler, Oscar Woodward :
Olympian error in the A. P.; Cr 325
Zilboorg, Gregory :
Irreconcilable blind; BRs 423
Zionist national conference:
Meeting, London, 1920 ; IRFP 333
Zippin, Max :
Far East gets a respite; SA 210
BOOK REVIEWS
Book reviews will be found by author and
title.
The following letters indicate the type of
review :
BR Book review
BRs Book reviews (group of books under one
title)
BN Book note
NN News and notes
R Name of the reviewer
A
Acosta, Mercedes de :
Moods. Prose poems ; BR 247
Advancing hour. N. Hapgood ; BR 427
Africa and the discovery of America. L.
Wiener ; BR 350
Agadir. J. Caillaux ; BR 350
Ago of innocence. E. Wharton; BR 510
Agresti, Antonio. See Zimmern, Helen.
Aiken, Conrad:
Skepticisms ; BR 509
Aladdin. A. Ransome ; BN 786
Albany : The crisis in government. L. Wald-
man ; BN 277
"Aleichem, Shalom" :
Jewish children. From the Yiddish by
Hannah Berman ; BR 352
Alexander, Hartley ; R 409
All things are possible. L. Shestov ; BR 693
Allen. W. E. D. :
Turks in Europe ; BR 73
Alvord, Clarence W. ; R 424
American business law. A. B. Frey : BN 457
American voters' handbook. H. O. Palen ; BN. 458
American world policies. D. J. Hill: BR 426
Americanization of Edward Bok ; BR 783
Americans all. B. A. Heydrick, ed. ; BR 692
Amos, Flora Ross :
Early theories of translation; BN 306
Anderson, B. M.. Jr.:
Effect of the war on money, credit, and
banking in France and the United States ;
BR 378
Anderson, Sherwood :
Poor white ; BR 536
Andreev, Leonid :
When the king loses his head and other
stories. Tr. by A. J. Wolfe: BR 48
Andrews, Irene Osgood and Margaret A. Hobbes :
Economic effects of the war upon women
and children in Great Britain; BR 378
Anthology of Jugoslav poetry: Serbian lyrics.
Ed. by II S. Stanoyevich ; NN 278
Apocalypse of John I. T. Beckwith : BN 163
Armageddon or Calvary. H. E. Holland: BR.. 220
Armstrong, Hamilton Fish; R 420
Armstrong, Helen Byrne ; R 73
Army mental teats. U. S. War department: BN 192
Arrows of desire. J. S. Mackenzie; RN 19
Art de monrir. Dr. Binet-Sangle ; BN 381
Asquith, Margot:
Autobiography ; BR 657
Vol. cxi]
Index
f July-Dec, 1920
Aumonier, Stacy :
One after another ; BR 428
Autobiography. M. AsquUh ; BR 657
Autobiography. W. F. Cody ; NN 164
Autobiography of a Winnebago Indian. Ed. and
tr. Paul Radin ; NN 164
B, I.; R 783
Bad results of good habits and other lapses.
J. E. Park; EN 224
Baker, Ray Stannard :
New industrial unrest ; BR 533
Balkan problems and European peace. N. Bux-
ton and C. L. Leese ; BR 218
Balkin, Harry H. :
New science of analyzing character; BR. ... 15
Barbarous Soviet Russia. I. McBride ; BR 566
Baroja, Pio :
Youth and egolatry ; BR 693
Barr, Amelia E. :
Songs in the common chord ; BR 247
Barton, William E. :
Paternity of Abraham Lincoln; BR 734
Baruch, Bernard M. :
Making of the reparation and economic sec-
tions of the treaty ; BR 506
Beard, Charles A.; R 275,418,480,664,783
Beard, Mary :
Short history of the American labor move-
ment; BR 17
Becker, Carl :
United States : An experiment in democ-
racy ; BR 416
Becker, Carl ; R 536
Beckwith, Isbon T., ed. :
Apocalypse of John ; BN 163
Beerbohm, Max :
Seven men ; BR 785
Before and now. A. Harrison; BN 224
Begbie, Harold :
Life of General William Booth, the founder
of the Salvation army. 2 vols. ; BR 507
Belgian Congo and the Berlin act. A. B'errie-
dale; BR 350
Beresford, J. D. :
Imperfect mother ; BR 74
Bernstorff, Count:
My three years in America ; BR 132
Berriedale, Arthur :
Belgian Congo and the Berlin act; BR.... 350
Betham-Edwards, Matilda :
Mid-Victorian memories ; BN 382
Bible :
Apocalypse of John. I. T. Beckwith: BN.. 163
Book of Genesis. J. Morgenstern ; BN.... 482
Gospel according to Saint Matthew; NN. . . 278
Modern reader's bible for schools. Ed. by
R. G. Moulton ; BN 305
Binet-Sangle, Dr. :
Art de mourir ; BN 381
Haras humain ; BN 381
Bin-ell, Augustin ; R 159
Birth of God. V. von Heidenstam. Tr. by K.
M. Knudsen ; BR 18
Black branches. O. Johns; BR 414
Black man's burden. E. D. Morel ; BR 350
Blake, William, the man. C. Gardner; BR 107
Blanchard, Raoul and Millicent Todd:
Geography of France ; BN 50
Blankenhorn, Heber ; R 594
Blasco, Ibariez, Vicente:
Mexico in revolutior ; NN 164
Blok, Alexander :
Twelve, The. Tr. by B. Deutsch and A.
Yarmolinsky : BN 786
Blue and purple. F. Neilson ; BR 414
Kluestone. Lyrics. M. Wilkinson ; BR 247
Blunt, Wilfred Scawen :
My diaries : Being a personal record of
events, 1888-1914. Vols. 1 & 2: BR 249
Boas, Franz ; R 656
Bode, B. H. ; R 658
Bogart, Ernest L. :
Direct and indirect costs of the great world
war ; BR 373
Bojer, Johan :
Treacherous ground. Tr. by Jessie Muir ; BR 303
Bok, Edward :
Americanization of Edward Bok; BR 783
Bolshevism : An international danger. P. Miliu-
kov ; BR 423
Bolshevism at work. W. T. Goode ; BN 109
Book of bravery. H. W. Lanier ; BN 674
Book of Genesis. J. Morgenstern; BN 482
Book of Susan. L. W. Dodd : BR 329
Booth, Gen. William, Life of: Founder of the
Salvation army. H. Begbie. 2 vols. ; BR 507
Boucke, O. Fred. :
Limits of socialism ; BN 304
Bourne, Randolph :
History of a literary radical and other es-
says ; BR 619
Boy in Serbia. E. C. Davies ; BN ...'.'. 672
Boy scouts' year book ; BN 674
Boyer, Wilbur S. :
Johnnie Kelly ; BN 674
Boys' book of sea fights. C. C. Fraser ; BN 674
Bradford, William:
History of Plymouth settlement. Rende'-ed
into modern English by Harold Paget ; BN 786
Bradley, H. Dennis:
Not for fools : BN oil
Brass check. U. Sinclair; BR 72
Brazilian mystic. R. B. C. Graham; BN 162
Brewster, Dorothy ; R 419
Bridges, James Winfred :
Outline of abnormal psychology ; BR 15
Brief history of the great war. C. J. H. Hayes ;
BR 46
Brighouse, Harold :
Three Lancaster plays. (The Northerners,
The Game, Zack) ; BR ; • • 18
British labor conditions and legislation during
the war. M. B. Hammond; BR 378
British war administration. J. A. Fairlie ; BR. 378
Brooks, John Graham :
Labor's challenge to the social order; BR.. 533
Brooks, Van Wyck :
Ordeal of Mark Twain; BR 189
Brown, John, Soul of. S. Graham ; BN 736
Browne, Edward G. :
History of Persian literature under Tartar
dominion (A. D. 1265-1502) ; BR 508
Browning, Robert:
Ring and the book, Commentary by A. K.
Cook; NN 695
Brownrigg, Douglas :
Indiscretions of the naval censor ; BN 51
Bruce, Stewart E. :
War guilt and peace crime of the Entente
allies ; BR 246
Bryant, Alice C, ed. :
Treasury of hero tales ; BN 674
Bryce, James :
World history ; BN 251
Buck, Arthur Eugene. See Cleveland, Fred-
erick A.
Buck, Howard:
Tempering, The ; NN 278
Budget and responsible government. F. A.
Cleveland and A. E. Buck; BR 275
Bulletin of the league of free nations associa-
tion; NN 193
Burke, B. U; R 103; 218
Burt, Maxwell Struthers :
Songs and portraits ; BR 414
Buxton, Noel and C. L. Leese :
Balkan problems and European peace ; BR 218
C
Cabell, James Branch :
Again the literary censor : suppression of
Cabell's Jurgen ; EdA 343
Caillaux, Joseph :
Agadir ; BR 350
Cairn of stars. F. Carlin ; BR 414
Caliban, W. L. George; BR 380
Callieres, Francois de :
On the manner of negotiating with princes,
ed. & tr. by A. F. Whyte ; BN 161
Canby, Henry Seidel :
Every-day Americans ; BN 512
Cannan, Gilbert :
Release of the soul ; BR 301
Windmills. A book of fables; BR 160
Capek, Thomas:
Czechs in America; BN 482
Captives. H. Walpole ; BR 735
Carlin, Francis:
Cairn of stars ; BR 414
Carlton, Frank Tracy :
Organized labor in American history; BR. 17
Carnegie endowment for international peace :
Publications ; BRs 378
Carswell, Catherine :
Open the door ; BR 134
Cart of many colors. N. La V. Meiklejohn ;
BN 304
Carver, Thomas N. :
War thrift and government control of the
liquor business in Great Britain and the
United States ; BR 378
Case for nationalization. A. E. Davies; BR.... 426
Casual laborer and other essays. C. H. Parker ;
BR 455
Cather, Willa :
Youth and the bright Medusa; BR 352
Centre, Stella S. :
Worker and his work : BN 50
Chafee, Zechariah, Jr. ; R 692
Chanteys and ballads. H. Kemp: BR 414
Chapters in the administrative history of medie-
val England, Vols. 1 and 2. T. F. Tout:
BR 666
Chauntller, Christine:
Thirteenth orphan ; BN 672
Chekhov, Anton:
Chorus girl and other stories, tr. by C.
Garnett ; BR 48
Chew, Samuel C. ; R 48; 249
Child welfare in Kentucky. National child labor
committee : BN 50
Children in the mist. G. M. Martin: BR 275
Chorus girl and other stories. A. Chekhov ; BR 48
Church and industrial reconstruction. Com. on
the war and the religious outlook; BR.. 533
Clark, Alice:
Working life of women in the seventeenth
century ; BR 419
Clark, Champ :
My quarter century of American politics ;
BR 424
Clark, Evans :
Facfs and fabrications about Soviet Russia ;
BR 160
R 47
Claudel, Paul:
Three poems of the war; BN 569
Clemenceau, Georges :
Surprises of life ; BR 352
Cleveland, Frederick A. and A. E. Buck :
Budget and responsible government; BR... 275
Coat without a seam and other poems. H. G.
Cone; BR 247
Cobden-Sanderson, T. J. :
Wordsworth: an anthology; NN 278
Cody, Louisa Frederici and Courtney Ryley
Cooper :
Memories of Buffalo Bill; NN 164
Cody, William F. :
Autobiography ; NN 164
Cole, G. D. H. :
Social theory: BR 413
Colum, Padraic :
Girl who sat by the ashes ; BN 304
Comfort, W. W. ; R 621
Commentary upon Browning's The ring and
the book. A. K. Cook; NN 695
Committee on the war and the religious outlook :
Church and industrial reconstruction; BR. 533
Cone, Helen Gray :
Coat without a seam and other poems ; BR 247
Conkling, Grace Hazard :
Wilderness songs ; BR 247
Conquest of the old southwest. A. Henderson :
BN 136
Constitution for the socialist commonwealth of
Great Britain. S. and B. Webb; BR 664
Contemporaries of Shakespeare. A. C. Swin-
burne ; BN 224
Cook, A. K. :
Commentary upon Browning's Ring and
the book ; NN 695
Cooper, Courtney Ryley. See Cody, Louisa
Frederici.
Coriat, Isador H. :
Repressed emotions ; NN 694
Cosmic relations and immortality. H. Holt ; NN 278
Country sentiment. R. Graves; BR 414
Couperus, Louis :
Tour, The : Story of ancient Egypt, tr. by
A. Teixeira de Mattos ; BR 190
Craig, E. T. :
Irish commune : History of Ralahine.
Adapted from nan-ative of T. E. Craig ;
BR 274
Crime, The (Das Verbrechen). Vols. 3 and 4. ,
R. Grelling; BN 49
Cromwell, Gladys :
Poems ; BR 247 :
Crowther, Samuel :
Why men strike; BR 53S-
Cruickshank, A. H. : *
Philip Massir.ger ; BR 48'
Czechs in America. T. Capek; BN 482
D
Diantha goes the primrose way, and other
verses. A. M. Hughes; BR 247
Dana, Ethel Nathalie, ed. :
Story of Jesus. Pictures from paintings
by Giotto, Fra Angelico. Duccio, Ghirlan-
daio, and Barna da Siena; BR 654
Danseuse de Shamakha. A. Ohanian ; BN.... 20
Dark mother, The. W. Frank; BR 480
Davidson, Gustav :
Songs of adoration; BR 414
Davies, A. Emil :
Case for nationalization; BR 426
Davies. E. C. :
Boy in Serbia ; BN 672
Davies, Mary Caroline :
Youth riding; BR 247
Davis, William Stearns :
History of France from the earliest times
to the treaty of Versailles ; BN 109
Day, Clarence, Jr. :
This Simian world; BN 76
Days of glory. F. Villiers ; BN • 785
Dean, Bashford:
Helmets and body armor in modern war-
fare; BN 108
Death of Titian. Hugo von Hofmannsthal, tr.
by J. Beard, Jr. ; BR 18
Defoe, Daniel :
Robinson Crusoe, illus. by N. C. Wyeth ;
BN ' 786
Delafield, E. M. :
Tension ; BR 567
De la Mare, Walter:
Three Mulla-Mulgars ; BN 304
Dell, Floyd:
Moon-calf ; BR 670
Dell, Robert:
My second country; BR , 103
Democracy and ideals. J. Erskine ; BN 277
Deshumbert, M. :
Ethical system based on the laws of nature,
tr. by Lionel Giles ; BN 455
Devine, Edward T. and Lilian Brandt:
Disabled soldiers and sailors: Pensions and
training ; BR 378
Dewey, Alice Chipman. See Dewey, John.
Dewey, John :
Reconstruction in philosophy: BR 658
Dewey, John and Alice Chipman Dewey:
Letters from China and Japan; BR 103
Dillon, E. J.:
Inside story of the Peace conference; BR. 246
Nos. 2870-2895]
Index
[Vol. cxi
Diplomacy and the study of international re-
lations. D. P. Heatley: BN 304
Direct and indirect costs of the great world
war. E. L. Bogart ; BR 378
Disabled soldiers and sailors : pensions and
training. E. T. Devine and L. Brandt ;
BR 378
Ditte: Girl alive! M. A. Nexo ; BR 303
■ Divine personality and human life. C. C. J.
Webb; BR 417
Dodd, Lee Wilson :
Book of Susan ; BR 329
Dodd, W. E. :
Woodrow Wilson and his work; BR 189
Domesday book. E. L. Masters; BR 566
Don Folquet and other poems. T. Walsh; BR.. 414
Douglas, C. H. :
Economic democracy ; BN 19
Dreier, Katherine S. :
Five months in the Argentine: From a
woman's point of view; NN 694
Dresser, Horatio W. :
History of the new thought movement ; BN 382
Drinkwater, John :
Poems 1908-1919; BR 414
Dryden, John, poetry of. M. Van Doren ; BR. 619
Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt ; R 350
Duckers, J. Scott :
Handed-over ; BR 220
Duclaux, Mary :
Twentieth century French writers ; BR .... 105
Duganne, Phyllis :
Prologue; BR , 454
Dunch. S. Miles; BR 247
Dynamic symmetry : The Greek vase. J. Ham-
bidge; BR 326
E
Early economic effects of the European war
upon Canada. A. Shortt ; BR 378
Early effects of the European war upon the
finance, commerce, and industry of Chile.
L. S. Rowe; BR 378
Early theories of translation. F. R. Amos : BN 306
Easton, Dorothy :
Golden bird and other sketches; BR 160
Eberlein, Harold Donaldson, Abbott McClure,
and Edward Stratton Holloway :
Practical book of interior decoration; BR. 328
Economic democracy. C. H. Douglas; BN 19
Economic effects of the war upon women and
children in Great Britain. I. O. Andrews
and M. A. Hobbes : BR 378
Educational psychology. D. Starch; BR 15
Edwards, Agnes :
Old coast road from Boston to Plymouth ;
NN 164
Effect of the great war upon agriculture in
the United States and Great Britain.
B. H. Hibbard; BR 378
Effect of the war on money, credit, and bank-
ing in France and the United States.
B. M. Anderson, Jr. ; BR 378
Effects of the war upon insurance with special
reference to the substitution of insurance
for pensions. W. F. Gephart ; BR 378
Emerson, Guy :
New frontier ; BR 478
Empire and commerce in Africa. L. Woolf ; BR 350
Employment psychology. H. C. Link: BR.... 15
England under the Yorkists. I. D. Thornley :
BN 304
English notes ; BN 382
Enslaved. J. Masefield ; BR 670
Erskine, John :
Democracy and ideals ; BN 277
Ervine. St. John G. :
Foolish lovers; BR 74
Essay on medieval economic teaching. G.
O'Brien ; BR 480
Etats-Unis inconnus. L. Thomas: BN 137
Ethical system based on the laws of nature.
M. Deshumbert; BN 455
Evarts, William Maxwell :
Arguments and speeches. 3 vols.; BR 692
Every-rlay Americans. H. S. Canby ; BN 512
Evolution of the budget in Massachusetts. L. H.
Gulick ; BR 275
F
Factory management wastes. J. F. Whiteford :
BN 50
Facts and fabrications about Soviet Russia.
E. Clark; BR 160
Fairlie, John A. :
British war administration; BR 378
Famous detective stories, ed. by J. W. Mc-
Spadden; BN 351
Famous Mrs. Fair and other plays. J. Forbes ;
BR 787
Fan's. John T. :
On the trail of the pioneers ; NN 164
Farnell, Ida:
Spanish prose and portry o'd and new, with
translated spr cimens ; NN 278
Farrar, John Chipman:
Forgotten shrines ; NN 278
Fay, C. R. :
Life and labor in the nineteenth century ;
BR 533
Federal military pensions in the United States.
W. H. Glasson ; BR 878
Feld, R. C:
Humanizing industry; BR 533
Fielding, William J. :
Sanity in sex; BN 135
Fight for freedom. D. Goldring ; BR 306
Financial history of Great Britain. F. L. Mc-
Vey; BR 378
Finding a way out. R. R. Moton ; BN 736
First plays. A. A. Milne ; BR 18
First world war. C. C. Repington ; BN 786
Fish, Carl Russell ; R 426
Fisher, Herbert :
Studies in history and politics; BR 133
Fiske, George Converse :
Lucilius and Horace : Study in the classi-
cal theory of imitation ; BN 786
Fitzgerald, F. Scott:
Flappers and philosophers; BR 329
Five months in the Argentine. K. S. Dreier ;
NN 694
Flappers and philosophers. F. S. Fitzgerald ;
BR 329
Fleischer, Alexander. See Frankel, Lee K.
Fletcher, C. Brunsdon :
Stevenson's Germany: The case against
Germany in the Pacific; BN 331
Folks, Homer :
Human costs of the war; BR 410
Foolish lovers. St. J. G. Ervine; BR 74
Forbes, James :
Famous Mrs. Fair and other plays ; BR. . 787
Foreign rights and interests in China. W. W.
Willoughby ; BR 421
Forgotten shrines. J. C. Farrar; NN 278
Foster, William Z. :
Great steel strike and its lessons ; BR 273
Four gardens. D. O. Hamilton; NN 278
France au Maroc. B. Georges-Gaulis ; BR.... 350
Franchi, Anna :
Little lead soldier, tr. from the Italian :
BN 304
Frank, Waldo:
Dark mother, The; BR 480
Frankel, Lee K., and Alexander Fleischer:
Human factor in industry; BR 533
Fraser, Chelsea Curtis :
Boys' book of sea fights; BN 674
Frederick, J. George:
Modern salesmanagement ; BN 224
French revolution : A study in democracy.
N. H. Webster; BR 300
Frey, A. B. :
American business law ; BN 457
Frontier in American history. F. J. Turner ;
BR 536
Function of the poet and other essays. J. R.
Lowell ; BN 191
Furness, Henry Howard, Jr. :
Gloss of youth ; BR 18
Furniss, Edgar S. :
Position of labor in a system of national-
ism; BR 533
G
G, L. S. : R 506
Gaines, Ruth :
Ladies of Grecourt ; BN 277
Gallipoli diary. Ian Hamilton; BR 653
Ganz. Marie:
Rebels: Into anarchy and out again; BN.. 456
Gardner. Charles :
William Blake the man; BR 107
Gardner, Gilson :
New Robinson Crusoe: BN 456
Gayley, Charles Mills and Benjamin Putnam
Kurtz:
Methods and materials of literary criticism.
Lyric, epic and allied forms of poetry ;
BN 277
General psychology. W. S. Hunter; BR 15
Geography of France. R. Blanchard and M.
Todd ; BN 50
George. W. L. :
Caliban ; BR 380
Georges-Gaulis, Berthe :
France au Maroc; BR 350
Gephart, William F. :
Effects of the war upon insurance, with
special reference to the substitution of in-
surance for pensions; BR 378
Gerould, Gordon Hall :
Youth in Ilarlev ; BR 454
Ghost in the White House. G. S. Lee; BN 276
Gibbons, Helen Davenport :
Paris vistas ; BN 135
Gillespie, James E. :
Influence of oversea expansion on England
to 1700; NN 539
Girl alive 1 See Ditte.
C.irl who sat by the ashes. P. Colum ; BN.... 301
Glaspell, Susan :
Plays ; BR 509
Glasson. William H. :
Federal military pensions in the United
States ; BR 378
Gleason, Arthur:
What the workers want; BR 133
R 302; 426
Gloss of youth. H. H. Furness, Jr.; BR 18
Golden bird and other sketches. D. Easton : BR 160
Goldoni and the Venice of his time. J. S. Ken-
nard : BN 511
Goldring, Douglas :
Fight for freedom : BR 306
Reputations ; BN 383
Gompers, Samuel :
Labor and the employer; BR 302
Goode, William T. :
Bolshevism at work ; BN 109
Goodwin, John A. :
Pilgrim republic ; BN 786
Goricar, Joseph and L. B. Stowe ;
Inside story of the Austro-German intrigue:
or, How the world war was brought
about; BR 420
Gospel according to Saint Matthew; NN 278
Graham, R. B. Cunninghame :
Brazilian mystic ; BN 162
Graham, Stephen :
Soul of John Brown ; BN 736
Grandgent, C. H. :
Old and new ; NN 695
Graves, Robert :
Country sentiment; BR 414
Great menace. G. W. Mead; BN 109
Great modern American stories, ed. by W. D.
Howells ; BN 251
Great steel strike and its lessons. W. Z. Foster ;
BR 273
Grelling, Richard :
The crime (Das Verbrechen), Vol. 3 and 4;
BN 49
Gresham, Matilda :
Life of Walter Quintin Gresham, 1832-1895 ;
BR 424
Gresham, Walter Quintin, Life of. M. Gresham ;
BR 424
Griffith, Helen Sherman :
O Virginia ; BN 672
Growing up. M. H. Vorse ; BR 275
Gruenberg, Benjamin C. ; R 104
Gruening, Ernest H. ; R 72
Guide to Russian literature. M. J. Olgin ; BR. 327
Guildsman's interpretation of history. A. J.
Penty ; BR 783
Gulick, Luther H. :
Evolution of the budget in Massachusetts ;
BR 275
H
Hackett, J. T. :
My commonplace book ; NN 278
Hail, man! A. Morgan; BR 247
Haiti and Santo Domingo. S. G. Inman ; BN.. 192
Hall, G. Stanley:
Morale: Supreme standard of life and con-
duct ; BR 595
Hambidge, Jay :
Dynamic symmetry: The Greek vase; BR.. 326
Hamilton, David Osborne :
Four gardens ; NN 278
Hamilton, Ernest:
Irish rebellion of 1641 ; BR 274
Hamilton, Ian :
Gallipoli diary; BR 653
Hammond, M. B. :
British labor conditions and legislation dur-
ing the war ; BR 378
Handed-over. J. S. Duckers; BR 220
Hannah Bye. H. Morris ; BR 621
Hapgood, Norman :
Advancing hour ; BR 427
R 132
Happy prince and other tales. O. Wilde; BN! 786
Haras humain. Dr. Binet-Sangle ; BN 381
Harris, H. Wilson :
Peace in the making; BR 246
Harrison, Austin :
Before and now ; BN 224
Hart, Sehaffner and Marx labor agreement;
BN 456
Hartley, C. Gasquoine (Mrs. Walter Gallichan) :
Women's wild oats; BN 135
Hartmann, Sadakichi :
Last thirty days of Christ; BN 137
Haskins, Charles Homer:
Some problems of the Peace conference ; BR 246
Haunted hour. M. Widdemer ; NN 278
Have we a Far Eastern policy ? C. H. Sherrill ;
„ BR 250
Ha worth, Paul L. :
United States in our own times, 1865-1920 ;
BR 416
Hayes, Carlton J. H. :
Brief history of the great war ; BR 46
Heatley, D. P.:
Diplomacy and the study of International
relations ; BN 304
Heidenstam, Verner von:
Birth of God. tr. by K. M. Knudsen ; BR.. 18
Helmets and bodv armor in modern warfare.
B. Dean; BN 108
Henderson, Archibald:
Conquest of the old southwest, 1740-1790 ;
BN 136
Hesitant heart. W. Welles; BR 247
Hewlett, Maurice:
Light heart ; BR 190
Outlaw. The; BR 190
Heydrick, Benjamin A., ed. :
Americans all. Stories of American life to-
day : BR 692
Hibbard. Benjamin H. :
Effect of the great war upon agriculture
in the United States and Great Britain ;
BR 378
Hidden treasure of Rasmola. A. M. Rihbany ;
Vol. cxi]
Index
f July-Dec, 1920
BN 672
Hill, Caroline R. See Smith, Corinna Havens.
Hill, David Jayne :
American world policies ; BR 4<Zb
Hill, J. Arthur:
Psychical miscellanea ; BIN 4a
His own life story. J. McCormack ; BR 75
Hispanic anthology, ed. and comp. by T.
Walsh ; BR 784
History of a literary radical and other essays.
R. Bourne; BR 619
History of France from the earliest times to
the treaty of Versailles. W. S. Davis ;
BN 109
History of Germany in the nineteenth century.
Heinrich von Treitschke. Vols. 5, 6, 7 ;
BR 422
History of Persian literature. E. G. Browne ;
BR 508
History of Plymouth settlement. W. Bradford ;
BN 786
History of the New England society of Charles-
ton, S. C. W. Way; NN 164
History of the new thought movement. H. W.
Dresser ; BN 382
Hobbes, Margaret A. See Andrews, Irene
Osgood.
Hobhouse, Mrs. Henry :
I appeal unto Caesar; BR 220
Hobson, J. A.; R 189; 415
Hobson, S. G. :
National guilds and the state ; BR 73
Hofmannsthal, Hugo von :
Death of Titian, tr. by J. Heard, Jr. ; BR 18
Holland, H. E. :
Armageddon or calvary ; BR 220
Holloway, Edward Stratton. See Eberlein, H. D.
Holmes, John Haynes :
Is violence the way out ? BR 220
Holt, Henry :
Cosmic relations and immortality; NN.... 278
Hopkins, Nevil Monroe :
Outlook for research and invention; BR.. 104
Howe, M. A. De Wolfe:
Memoirs of the Harvard dead in the war
against Germany ; BN 512
Howells, William Dean :
Vacation of the Kelwyns ; BR 510
Howells, William Dean, ed. :
Great modern American stories; BN 251
Hudson, Henry, 2nd :
Spendthrift town ; BR 692
Hughes, Adelaide Manola :
Diantha goes the primrose way, and other
verses ; BR 247
Human costs of the war. H. Folks; BR 410
Human factor in industry. L. K. Frankel and
A. Fleischer ; BR 533
Human psychology. H. C. Warren; BR 15
Humanizing industry. R. C. Feld ; BR 533
Hunter, Walter S. :
General psychology ; BR 15
I
I appeal unto Caesar. Mrs. H. Hobhouse; BR. 220
Ibanez, Vicente Blasco. See Blasco Ibaiiez,
Vicente.
Imperfect mother. J. D. Beresford ; BR 74
In Morocco. E. Wharton ; BR 479
Indisci-etions of the naval censor. D. Brown-
rigg; BN 51
Influence of oversea expansion on England to
1700; NN 539
Inman, Samuel Guy:
Haiti and Santo Domingo ; BN 192
Inside of the Austro-German intrigue : or, How
the world war '.as brought about. J.
Goricar and L. B. Stowe ; BR 420
Inside story of the Peace conference. E. J.
Dillon ; BR 246
Introduction to social ethics. J. M. Mecklin ;
BN 381
Introduction to the Peace treaties. A. P. Scott ;
BR 246
Irish case before the court of public opinion.
P. W. Wilson ; BN 223
Irish commune: History of Ralahine. Adapted
from E. T. Craig; BR 274
Irish rebellion of 1641. E. Hamilton; BR 274
Irish wars. J. J. O'Connell ; BR 274
Is violence the way out? J. H. Holmes; BR.. 220
Italian twins. L. F. Perkins; BN 672
J
Jackson, A. V. Williams; R 508
Jastrow, Joseph ; R 15
Jeffery, Jeffery E. :
Side issues ; BR 596
Jehovah. C. Wood : BR 414
Jewish children. "Shalom Aleichpm" ; BR 352
Johnnie Kelly. W. S. Boyer ; BN 674
Johns, Orrick :
Black branches. Book of poems and plays ;
BR 414
Johnson, Clifton:
What to see in America; NN 163
Jones, Henry Arthur :
Patriotism and popular education; BN... 252
Jones. Rufus :
Service of love in war time; BN 277
Jordan. David Starf ; R 410
Judicial settlement of controversies between
states of the American union, ed. by
J. B. Scott; BR
Jurgen. See Cabell, James Branch.
329
K
Karajich, Vuk :
Kossovo: Reroic songs of the Serbs, tr.
by H. Rootham ; NN 278
Keith. Arthur:
Nationality and race from the anthropolo-
gist's point of view ; BN 135
Kellogg, Vernon :
Nuova ; BN 672
Kemp, Harry:
Chanteys and ballads ; BR 414
Kennard, Joseph Spencer:
Goldoni and the Venice of his time; BN.. 511
Keppel, Frederick Paul :
Some war-time lessons ; BN 305
Kerlin, Robert T. ed. :
Voice of the Negro ; BN 736
Kirchwey, Freda ; R 619
Kittredge, George Lyman :
Old farmer and his almanac. 2nd ed. ; NN 193
Kossovo: Heroic songs of the Serbs. V. Kara-
jich; NN 278
Krehbiel, H. E. :
More chapters of opera, 1908-1918; BR 75
Kreymborg, Alfred :
Plays for merry Andrews; BR 787
Krutch, Joseph ; R 248
Kurtz, Benjamin Putnam. See Gayley, Charles
Mills.
L. L. ; R 221; 428
Labor and the employer. S. Gompers ; BR 302
Labor's challenge to the social order. J. G.
Brooks ; BR 533
Ladies of Grecourt. R. Gaines; BN 277
Land of the great out-of-doors. R. Livingston ;
BN 672
Land of tomorrow. W. B. Stephenson, Jr. ; BR 537
Langf ord, George :
Pic, the weapon maker; BR 190
Lanier, Henry W. :
Book of bravery ; BN 674
Laski, Harold J. ; R 666
Last thirty days of Christ. S. Hartmann ; BN. 137
Lawrence, D. H. :
New poems ; BR 414
Touch and go; BR » 306
Lay, Wilfred:
Man's unconscious passion ; NN 694
Learned lady in England 1650-1760. M. Rey-
nolds ; BR 419
Lectures on modern idealism. J. Royce ; BR.. 409
Ledwidge, Francis :
Complete poems ; BR 414
Lee, Gerald Stanley :
Ghost in the White house; BN 276
Leese, C. L. See Buxton, Noel.
Letters from China and Japan. J. and A. C.
Dewey ; BR 103
Letters to X. H. J. Massingham ; BN 162
Lewis, Sinclair :
Main street ; BR 536
Lewisohn, Ludwig, ed. :
Modern book of criticism; BR 219
R..18; 74; 105; 134; 160; 190; 306; 509; 787
Liberal college. A. Meiklejohn ; BR 734
Life and labor in the nineteenth century. C. R.
Fay ; BR 533
Light heart. M. Hewlett ; BR 190
Lille. E. Schlesinger and others; BN 331
Liluli. R. Rolland ; BR 18
Limits of socialism. O. F. Boucke ; BN 304
Lincoln, Abraham, paternity of. W. E. Bar-
ton; BR 734
Linderman, Frank B. :
On a passing frontier : Sketches from the
Northwest ; NN 164
Link, Henry C. :
Employment psychology ; BR 15
Literary studies. C. Whibley ; BR 159
Little friend Lydia. E. C. Phillips; BN 672
Little lead soldier. A. Franchi ; BN 304
Little school. T. S. Moore; BR 414
Livingston, Robert:
Land of the great out-of-doors; BN 672
Lomax, John A., comp. :
Songs of the cattle trail; BR. (In Natalie
Curtis's Western reverie.) 591
Looney, J. Thomas :
Shakespeare identified; BR 248
Lord Grey of the reform bill. G. M. Trevelyan ;
BN 224
Louisbourg from its foundation to its fall, 1713-
1758. J. S. McLennan; BN 457
Lovett, William :
Life and struggles of William Lovett. 2
vols. ; NN 193
Low, Barbara :
Psychoanalysis ; NN 694
Lowell, Amy :
Pictures of the floating world; BR 247
Lowell, James Russell :
Function of the poet and other essays ; BN 191
Lowie, Robert H. :
Primitive society ; BR 47
R 418
Lucilius and Horace: Study in the classical
theory of imitation. G. C. Fiske ; BN 786
M
M., D. ; R 784
Macaulay, Rose :
Potterism ; BR 428
McBride, Isaac :
Barbarous Soviet Russia; BR 566
McClure, Abbot. See Eberlein, H. D.
McCormack, John :
His own life story, transcribed by P. V. R.
Key; BR 75
MacDonald, William; R 246; 427
Mackenzie, J. S. :
Arrows of desire ; BN 19
McLennan, J. S. :
Louisbourg from its foundation to its fall,
1713-1758 ; BN 457
McPherson, William L. :
Strategy of the great war; BR 106
McSpadden, J. Walker, ed. :
Famous detective stories ; BN 354
McVey, Frank L. :
Financial history of Great Britain (1914-
1918); BR 378
Main street. S. Lewis; BR 536
Making of modern Wales. W. L. Williams :
BN 304
Making of the reparation and economic sec-
tions of the treaty. B. M. Baruch ; BR.. 506
Malone, Cecil L'Estrange:
Russian republic ; BR 47
Maloney, William J. M. A.; R 653
Man's unconscious passion. W. Lay; NN.... 694
"Marse Henry." An autobiography. H. Wat-
terson ; BR 424
Martial, the epigrammatist and other essays.
K. F. Smith; BN 785
Martin, George Madden :
Children in the mist; BR 275
Marvin, F. S., ed. :
Recent developments in European thought ;
BR 379
Marx, Magdeleine :
Woman, tr. by Adele S. Seltzer; BR 134
Masefield, John :
Enslaved ; BR 670
Right Royal ; BR 670
Massenet, Jules :
My recollections, tr. by R. V. Barnett ; BR 75
Massinger, Philip. A. H. Cruickshank ; BR... 48
Massingham, H. J. :
Letters to X. ; BN 162
Masters, Edgar Lee :
Domesday book ; BR 566
Mitch Miller ; BR 566
Maughan, R. C. F. : - ' "
Republic of Liberia; BR 350.
Maynard, Theodore : »
Tankard of ale : An anthology of drinking
songs ; NN 278
Mead, George Whitefield :
Great menace ; BN 109
Mecklin, John M. :
Introduction to social ethics; BN 381
Meiklejohn, Alexander :
Liberal college ; BR 734
Meiklejohn, Nannine La Villa :
Cart of many colors ; B'N 304
Memoirs of the Harvard dead in the war against
Germany. M. A. DeW. Howe; BN 512
Memories of a musical career. C. K. Rogers ;
BR 75
Memories of Buffalo Bill. L. F. Cody and
C. R. Cooper; NN 164
Mencken, H. L. ; R 668
Mennonites. C. H. Smith; NN 164
Meriam, L. :
Principles governing the retirement of pub-
lic employees ; BN 622
Metcalf, Henry C. See Tead, Ordway.
Methods and materials of literary criticism.
C. M. Gayley and B. P. Kurtz ; BN 277
Mexico in revolution. V. Blasco Ibanez ; NN . . 164
Mid-Victorian memories. M. Betham-Edwards ;
BN 382
Miles, Susan :
Dunch; BR 247
Miliukov, Paul :
Bolshevism: An international danger; BR. 423
Milne, A. A. :
Firet plays ; BR 18
Miniatura, or the art of limning. E. Norgate ;
BR 222
Minnesota geographic names. W. Upham ; NN 164
Miscellany of American poetry, 1920; BR 481
Mitch Miller. E. L. Masters; BR 566
Modern book of criticism. Ed. by L. Lewisohn ;
BR 219
Modern British poetry. L. Untermeyer ; NN . . 278
Modern reader's bible for schools. Ed. by R. G.
Moulton ; BN 305
Modern salesmanagement. J. G. Frederick ; BN 224
Moods. Prose poems. M. de Acosta ; BR 247
Moon-calf. F. Dell; BR 670
Moore, T. Sturge :
Little school ; BR 414
Morale : Supreme standard of life and conduct.
G. S. Hall; BR 595
More chapters of opera, 1908-1918. H. E.
Krehbiel; BR 75
More, Paul Elmer :
With the wits; BR 159
Morel, E. D. :
Black man's burden: BR 350
Nos. 2870-2895]
Index
[Vol. cxi
Morgan, Angela :
Hail, man ! BR 247
Morgenstern, Julian :
Book of Genesis ; BN 482
Morman, James B. :
Place of agriculture in reconstruction ; A
study of national programs of land set-
tlement ; BR 104
Morris, Harrison :
Hannah Bye ; BR 621
Moses, Montrose J. ; R 660
Moton, Robert Russa :
Finding a way out; BN...- 736
Moulton, Lord :
Science and war ; BR 104
Moulton, R. G., ed. :
Modern reader's bible for schools ; BN .... 305
Mountain. C. Wood; BR 275
Mullin, Glen; R 107; 222; 654
Murray, Gilbert :
Our great war and the great war of the
ancient Greeks ; BN 252
Musical memories. C. Saint-Saens; BR 75
Musical portraits. P. Rosenfeld ; BR 411
Mussey, M. H. B. ; R 672
Muzzey, D. S. ; R 300
My commonplace book. J. T. Hackett ; NN.. 278
My diaries. W. S. Blunt; BR 249
My quarter century of American politics. C.
Clark; BR 424
My recollections. J. Massenet; BR 75
My second country. R. Dell ; BR 103
My three years in America. Count Bernstorff ;
BR 132
N
National child labor committee:
Child welfare in Kentucky; BN 50
National guilds and the state. S. G. Hobson ;
BR 73
Nationality and race from the anthropologist's
point of view. A. Keith; BN 135
Neilson, Francis :
Blue and purple ; BR 414
Nevinson, Henry W. ; R 657
New Decameron. Vol. 2; BR 506
New frontier. G. Emerson ; BR 478
New Germany. G. Young ; BN 77
New industrial unrest. R. S. Baker; BR 533
New Italy. H. Zimmern and A. Agresti ; BN. 161
New Robinson Crusoe. G. Gardner; BN 456
New science of analyzing character. H. H.
Balkin; BR 15
Nexo, Martin Anderson:
Ditte : Girl alive ! tr. from the Danish : BR 303
Norgate, Edward :
Miniatura, or The art of limning; BR.... 222
Not for fools. H. D. Bradley ; BN 511
Nuova. V. Kellogg ; BN 672
O
O'Brien, Frederick; R 250; 537
O'Brien, George:
Essay on medieval economic teaching; BR.. 480
O'Connell, J. J.:
Irish wars ; BR 274
Odell, George C. D. :
Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving ; BR 660
Ohanian, Armen :
Danseuse de Shamakha ; BN 20
O'Higgins, Harvey:
Secret springs ; NN 694
Old and new. C. H. Grandgent ; NN 695
Old coast road from Boston to Plymouth. A.
Edwards ; NN 164
Old farmer and his almanac. G. L. Kittredge ;
NN 193
Old French fairy tales. Countess de Segur.
Ulus. by V. Sterrett ; BN 786
Old humanities and the new science. W. Osier ;
BN 192
Old junk. H. M. Tomlinson ; BN 305
Olgin, Moissaye J. :
Guide to Russian literature (1820-1917) ;
BR 327
On the manner of negotiating with princes.
F. de Callieres ; BN 161
On the passing frontier. F. B. Linderman ; NN 164
On the trail of the pioneers. J. T. Faris ; NN 164
One after another. S. Aumonier ; BR 428
100%. Tie story of a patriot. U. Sinclair;
BR 480
Open the door. C. Carswll ; BR 131
Ordeal of Mark Twain. V. W. Brooks; BR.. 189
Organized labor in American history. F. T.
Carlton; BR 17
Osier, William :
Old humanities and the new science; BN.. 192
Our great war and the great war of the ancient
Greeks. G. Murray; BN 252
Outlaw, The. M. Hewlett ; BR 190
Outline of abnormal psychology. J. W. Bridges ;
RR 15
Outlook for research and invention. N. M.
Hopkins ; BR 101
Overstr-.-t, H. A.; R 250- 455
O Virginia. H. S. Griffith ; BN 672
Owen. Robert :
Life of Robert Owen ; NN 193
Paget. Harold. See Bradford, William.
Palen, Hasbrouck O. :
American voter's handbook; BN 458
Paris vistas. H. D. Gibbons; BN 135
Park, J. Edgar:
Bad results of good habits and other lapses ;
BN 224
Parker, Carleton H. :
Casual laborer and other essays; BR 455
Parry, C. Egerton :
Psychology of conscientious objection; BR. 220
Paternity of Abraham Lincoln. W. E. Barton ;
BR 734
Patriotism and popular education. H. A. Jones ;
BN 252
Peace conference day by day. C. T. Thomp-
son; BR 246
Peace in the making. H. W. Harris; BR 246
Pennell, Joseph and Elizabeth :
Life of James McNeill Whistler; NN 193
Penty, Arthur J. :
Guildsman's interpretation of history; BR. 783
Perkins, Lucy Fitch :
Italian twins ; BN 672
Personnel administration, its principles and
practice. O. Tead and H. C. Metcalf ;
BR 533
Phillips, Ethel Calvert:
Little friend Lydia ; BN 672
Pic, the weapon maker. G. Langford ; BR... 190
Pictures of the floating world. A. Lowell ; BR 247
Pilgrim republic. J. A. Goodwin; BN 786
Pioneers of land reform ; NN 193
Place of agriculture in reconstruction. J. B.
Morman; BR 104
Place of science in modern civilization, and
other essays. T. Veblen ; BR 250
Plays for merry Andrews. A. Kreymborg ; BR 787
Plehn, Carl C. ; R 378
Poetry of John Dryden. M. Van Doren ; KR... 619
Political future of India. Lajpat Rai ; BR... 16
Poor white. S. Anderson; BR 536
Porter, Bertha Currier :
Trudy and Timothy and-the-tree : BN 672
Position of workers in a system of nationalism.
E. S. Furniss; BR 533
T'o+terism. R. Macaulay ; BR 428
Powell, Thomas Reed ; R 329 : 413
Practical book of intprior decorat'on. IT. D.
Eberlein, A. McClure, and E. S. Hollo-
way ; BR 328
Pratt. James Biss°tt •
Religious consciousness. A psychological
study ; BR 506
Prime minister. H. Snr>nd«r : BR 415
Primitive society. R. H. Lowie ; BR 46
Principles governing the retirement of public
employees. L. Meriam : PN 622
Principles of sociology. E. A. Ross: BR 418
Problems of law. J. H. Wigmore : BN 5R8
Problems of today. M. Storey; BN 568
Prologue. P. Dugann" : BR 454
Proudfoot, Andrea Hofer:
Trolley lines ; BR 247
T^yrhical miscellanea. J. A. Hill; BN 49
Psychoanalysis. B. Low ; NN 691
^ivchoanalysis and behavior. A. Tridon : NN. 694
Psychology from the standpoint of a behavior-
ist. J. B. Watson; BR 15
Psychology of conscientious objection. C. E.
Parry ; BR 220
Public opinion in Philadelphia duHng the Fed-
eralist period, 1789-1801. M. Woodbury;
BN 136
R
R. R ; R 220; 417
Radin, Paul, ed. and tr. :
Autobiography of a Winnebago Indian: NN 154
Rai, Lajpat :
Political future of India: BR 16
Ransome. Arthur :
Aladdin: BN 78?
Rebels : Tnto anarchy and out again. M. Ganz ;
BN 456
Recent developments in European thought. Ed.
by F. S. Marvin; BR 371
R"construction in phi]o=nnhv. .T. Dewey: BR.. 658
Rpc'dy Brant. W. C. Tunle : BN 671
Release of the soul. G. Cannnn ; BR 301
Religion and the new psychology. W. S.
Swisher : NN 695
Religious consciousness J. B. Pratt: BR 506
Repington. Charles a Court :
First world war: 1S1 4-1918 ; BN 786
Repressed emotions. I H. Coriat : NN fill
Republic of Liberia. R. C. F. Maughan ; BR.. 350
P nutations. D. Go'dring ; BN 383
Revelation. Rook of. See Apocalypse of John.
Reynolds. Myra :
Learned lr^v in ^nr'and 1650-1760: BR.. 419
R'orht Royal. J. Ma-^fipld ; BR 670
Rihbanv, Abraham MKri«:
Hidden treasure of R-smola ; BN 672
Rising above th» ruins in France. C. H. Smith
and C. R. Hil' : BN 331
Rising tide of color against white world-
supremacy. L. Stoddard : BR 656
Roamer and other poems. G. E. Woodberry ;
BR 414
Bobbins, Tod :
Silent, White and Beautiful and other sto-
ries : PR 596
Roberts, Cecil :
Poems : BR 414
Roberts, Richard :
Unfinished program of democracy; BN.... 330
R 301
Robinson Crusoe. D. Defoe, illus. by N. C.
Wyeth ; BN 786
Robinson, Edwin Arlington :
Three taverns ; BR 453
Rogers, Clara Kathleen (Clara Doria) :
Memories of a musical career; BR 75
Rolland, Romain :
Liluli; BR 18
Romantic, The. M. Sinclair; BR 567
Rosenfeld, Paul :
Musical portraits; BR 411
Ross, Edward Alsworth :
Principles of sociology; BR 418
Rowe, L. S. :
Early effects of the European war upon the
finance, commerce, and industry of Chile ;
BR 378
Royce, Josiah :
Lectures on modern idealism; BR 409
Russell, Frances Theresa :
Satire in the Victorian novel; BN 50
Russell, Charles Edward :
Story of the Nonpartisan league; BN.... 162
Russian republic. C. L. Malone ; BR 47
Ryan, Agnes :
Whisper of fire ; BR 247
S
Safroni-Middleton, A. :
South sea foam ; BN 786
Saint-Saens, Camille :
Musical memories, tr. by E. G. Rich; BR. 75
Sandburg, Carl :
Smoke and steel ; BR 621
Sanger, Margaret:
Woman and the new race; BN -. . . 597
Sanity in sex. W. J. Fielding; BN 135
Santayana, George :
Little essays drawn from the writings of
George Santayana. ed. by L. P. Smith
and the author ; BR 221
Sapir, Edward ; R 46
Sarkar, Benoy Kumar ; R 16
Satire in the Victorian novel. F. T. Russell ;
BN 50
Schlesinger, Erik and others :
Lille; BN 331
Science and war. Lord Moulton ; BR 104
Scott, Arthur Pearson :
Introduction to the Peace treaties; BR.... 246
Scott, James Brown, ed. :
Judicial settlement of controversies between
states of the American union; BR 329
Secret springs. H. O'Higgins; NN 694
Secrets of animal life. J. A. Thomson: BN. . 77
Secrets of Crewe house. C. Stuart: BR 594
Segur, Countess de :
Old French fairy tales, illustrated by Vir-
ginia Sterrett ; BN 786
Seidenberg, Roderick ; R 220
Seiffert, Margorie Allen :
Woman of thirty; BR 247
Self-government in the Philippines. M. Kalaw ;
BN 382
Service of love in war time. R. Jones; BN... 277
Seven men. M. Beerbohm ; KR 785
Shakespeare identified. J. T. Looncy ; BR 248
Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving. G. C.
D. Odell; BR 660
Shay. Frank, comp. :
Bibliography of Walt Whitman: BN 736
Sherman, Stuart P. ; R 506 ; 619
Sherrill, Charles H. :
Have we a Far Eastern policy? BR 250
Shestov, Leo :
All things are possible, tr. by S. S. Kote-
liansky ; BR 693
Short his*ory of the American labor move-
ment. M. Beard; BR 17
Shorter, Dora Sigerson :
Sixteen dead men, and other poems of
Easter week ; BR 247
Shortt, Adam :
Early economic effects of the European
war upon Canada; BR 378
Side issues. J. E. Jeffery ; BR 596
Silent, White and Beautiful and other stories.
T. Robbins; BR 596
Sinclair, May:
Romantic, The; BR 567
Sinclair, Upton :
Brass check. Study of American journal-
ism; BR 72
100%. The story of a patriot: BR 480
Sixteen dead men, and other poems of Easter
week. D. S. Shorter ; BR 217
Skepticisms. C. Aiken ; BR 509
f.mith, C. Henry :
Mennonites ; NN 164
Smith, Corinna Haven and Caroline R. Hill:
Rising above the ruins in France: BN.... 331
fmith, David Eugene; R 326
Smith, George Otis. ed. :
Strategy of minerals: A study of the min-
eral fatcor in the world position of
America in war and peace; BR 104
Smith, J. Russell:
World's food resources; BR 104
Smith, Kirby Flower:
Martial, the epigrammatist, and other es-
says : BN 785
Vol. cxi]
Index
[July-Dec, 1920
Smith, Logan Pearsall, ed. :
Little essays drawn from the writings of
George Santayana ; BR 221
Smith, Logan Pearsall :
Treasury of English prose ; NN 278
Smith, Preserved; R 46; 133; 160; 274; 379;
595 * 734 :
Smoke and steel. C. Sandburg; BR 621
Social theory. G. D. H. Cole ; BR 413
Some problems of the Peace conference. C. H.
Haskins ; BR 246
Some war-time lessons. F. P. Keppel ; BN 305
Songs and portraits. M. S. Burt; BR 414
Songs in the common chord. A. E. Barr ; BR. 247
Songs of adoration. G. Davidson ; BR 414
Songs of the cattle trail. J. A. Lomax ; BR . . 591
Soul of John Brown. S. Graham; BN 736
Soule, George; R..17; 73; 133; 273; 478; 533; 670
South sea foam. A. Safroni-Middleton ; BN... 786
Sovietism. W. E. Walling; BR 423
Spanish prose and poetry old and new. I.
Farnell; NN 278
Spender, Harold :
Prime minister ; BR 415
Spendthrift town. H. Hudson, 2nd; BR 692
Spooner, Henry J. :
Wealth from waste: Elimination of waste
a world problem ; BR 104
Stanoyevich, Beatrice Stevenson, ed. :
Anthology of Jugoslav poetry: Serbian
lyrics; NN 278
Starch, Daniel :
Educational psychology ; BR 15
Stephenson, William B., Jr. :
Land of tomorrow ; BR 537
Stevenson's Germany : The case against Ger-
many in the Pacific. C. B. Fletcher; BN 331
Stewart, W. K. ; R 422
Stoddard, Lothrop :
Rising tide of color against white world-
supremacy ; BR 656
Storey, Moorfield :
Problems of today ; BN 568
Story of Jesus. Pictures, ed. by E. N. Dana ;
BR 654
Story of the Nonpartisan league. C. E. Rus-
sell; BN 162
Stowe, Lyman Beecher. See Goricar, Joseph.
Strange year. E. O. White; BN 672
Strategy of minerals. G. O. Smith, ed. ; BR.. 104
Strategy of the great war. W. L. McPherson ;
BR 106
Straus, Henrietta; R 75; 411
Streit, Clarence K. :
Where iron is, there is the fatherland ;
BN 276
Stuart, Campbell :
Secrets of Crewe house; BR 594
Stuck, Hudson :
Winter circuit of our Arctic coast; BR.... 537
Studensky, Paul :
Teachers' pension systems in the United
States; BN 622
Studies in history and politics. H. Fisher ;
BR 133
Surprises of life. G. Clemenceau ; BR 352
Swift, Jonathan :
Tale of a tub. Ed. by A. C. Guthkelch
and D. N. Smith ; NN 695
Swinburne, Algernon Charles :
Contemporaries of Shakespeare. Ed. by
Edmund Gosse and T. J. Wise; BN 224
Swisher, Walter Samuel :
Religion and the new psychology ; NN .... 695
Tale of a tub. J. Swift, ed. by A. C. Guth-
kelch and D. N. Smith; NN 695
Tankard of ale. T. Maynard ; NN 278
Teachers' pension systems in the United States ;
BN 622
Tead, Ordway and Henry C. Metcalf :
Personnel administration, its principles
and practice ; BR 533
Tempering, The. H. Buck ; NN 278
Tension. E. M. Delafield ; BR 567
Thirteenth orphan. C. Chaundler ; BN 672
This Simian world. C. Day, Jr.; BN 76
Thomas, Louis :
Etats-Unis inconnus ; BN 137
Thompson, Charles T. :
Peace conference day by day; BR 246
Thomson, J. Arthur:
Secrets of animal life; BN 77
Thornley, Isobel D. :
England under the Yorkists; BN 304
Three Lancashire plays. H. Brighouse ; BR... 18
Three Mulla-Mulgars. W. De la Mar; BN.... 304
Three poems of the war. P. Claudel ; BN.... 569
Three taverns. E. A. Robinson; BR 453
Todd, Millicent. See Blanchard, Raoul.
Tomlinson, H. M. :
Old junk ; BN 305
Touch and go. D. H. Lawrence; BR 306
Tour, The. L. Couperus ; BR 190
Tout, T. F. :
Chapters in the administrative history of
medieval England, Vols. 1 and 2; BR.. 666
Trails to wonderland. I. L. Wright; BN 672
Travel stories retold from St. Nicholas; BN... 674
Treasure mountain. E. Turpin ; BN 672
Treasury of English prose. P. L. Smith; NN. 278
Treasury of hero tales. A. C. Bryant, ed ; BN 674
Treacherous ground. J. Bojer ; BR 303
Treitschke, Heinrich von :
History of Germany in the nineteenth cen-
tury. Vols. 5, 6, 7, tr. by E. and C.
Paul; BR 422
Trevelyan, George Macaulay :
Lord Grey of the reform bill; BN 224
Tridon, Andre :
Psychoanalysis and behavior; NN 694
Trolley lines. A. H. Proudfoot ; BR 247
Trudy and Timothy and-the-trees. B. C. Por-
ter; BN 672
Turks in Europe. W. E. D. Allen; BR 73
Turner, Frederick Jackson :
Frontier in American history; BR 536
Turpin, Edna :
Treasure mountain ; BN 672
Tuttle, W. C. :
Reddy Brant ; BN 674
Twelve, The. A. Blok ; BN 786
Twentieth century French writers. M. Du-
claux; BR 105
U
Unfinished program of democracy. R. Roberts ;
BN 330
United States — War department:
Army mental tests; BN 192
United States : An experiment in democracy.
C. Becker; BR 416
United States in our own times, 1865-1920.
P. L. Haworth ; BR 416
Untermeyer, Louis :
Modern British poetry; NN 278
Upham, Warren :
Minnesota geographic names : Origin and
historic significance ; NN 164
Utter, R. P.; R 328
V
Vacation of the Kelwyns. W. D. Howells ; BR 510
Van Doren, Carl; R..189; 219; 453; 510; 566;
670; 734.
Van Doren, Irita ; R 103; 479
Van Doren, Mark :
Poetry of John Dryden ; BR 619
R 219; 247; 414; 670
Veblen, Thorstein :
Place of science in modern civilization, and
other essays ; BR 250
Verbrechen, Das. See Crime, The.
Vernon, A. W. ; R 507
Villiers, Frederick :
Days of glory ; BN 785
Voice of the negro. R. T. Kerlin, ed. ; BN 736
Vorse, Mary Heaton :
Growing up; BR 275
W
Wagner's dramas and Greek tragedy. P. C.
Wilson ; BN 456
Waldman, Louis :
Albany: The crisis in government; BN.... 277
Walling, William English :
Sovietism ; BR 423
Walpole, Hugh :
Captives, Novel in four parts; BR 735
Walsh, Thomas:
Don Folquet and other poems; BR 414
Walsh, Thomas, ed. and comp. :
Hispanic anthology. Poems translated
from the Spanish by English and North
American poets ; BR 784
War guilt and peace crime of the entente
allies. S. E. Bruce; BR 246
War thrift and government control of the
liquor business in Great Britain and the
United States. T. N. Carver; BR 378
Warne, Frank Julian :
Workers at war ; BR 533
Warren, Howard C. :
Human psychology ; BR 15
Wassermann, Jacob:
World's illusion, tr. by Ludwig Lewisohn.
2 vols.; BR 668
Watson, John B. :
Psychology from the standpoint of a be-
haviorist ; BR 15
V/atterson, Henry :
"Marse Henry": An autobiography; BR.. 424
Way, William :
History of the New England society of
Charleston, S. C. ; NN 164
Wealth from waste. H. J. Spooner; BR 104
Webb, Beatrice. See Webb, Sidney.
Webb, Clement C. J.:
Divine personality and human life; BR... 417
Webb, Sidney and Beatrice Webb :
Constitution for the socialist common-
wealth of Great Britain; BR 664
Webster, Nesta H. :
French revolution : A study in democracy ;
BR 300
Welles, Winifred :
Hesitant heart ; BR 247
Wharton, Edith :
Age of innocence ; BR 510
In Morocco ; BR 479
What's on the worker's mind? W. Williams;
BR 533
What the workers want. A. Gleason ; BR.... 133
What to see in America. C Johnson; NN.... 163
When the king loses his head and other sto-
ries. L. Andreev ; BR 48
Where iron is, there is the fatherland. C. K.
Streit ; BN 276
Whibley, Charles:
Literary studies ; BR 159
Whicher, George F. ; R 509
Whisper of fire. A. Ryan; BR 247
Whistler, J. McN., life of. J. and E. Pennell ;
NN 193
White, Eliza Orne:
Strange year ; BN 672
Whiteford, James F. :
Factory management wastes ; BN 50
Whitman, Walt, Bibliography of. F. Shay,
comp. ; BN 736
Why men strike. S. Crowther ; BR 533
Widdemer, Margaret :
Haunted hour ; NN 278
Wiener, Leo :
Africa and the discovery of America; BR. 350
Wigmore, John Henry :
Problems of law ; BN 568
Wilde, Oscar :
Happy prince and other tales ; BN 786
Wilderness songs. G. H. Conkling ; BR 247
Wilkinson, Marguerite :
Bluestone. Lyrics ; BR 247
Williams, Frederick Wells; R 421
Williams, W. Llewelyn :
Making of modern Wales : Studies in the
Tudor settlement of Wales; BN 304
Williams, Whiting :
What's on the worker's mind?; BR 533
Willoughby, Westel W. :
Foreign rights and interests in China : BR 421
Wilson, Pearl Cleveland :
Wagner's dramas and Greek tragedy; BN. 456
Wilson, P. Whitwell:
Irish case before the court of public opin-
ion ; BN 223
Wilson, Woodrow, and his work. W. E. Dodd ; * .
BR 189
Windmills. G. Cannan ; BR 160
Winter circuit of our Arctic coast. H. Stuck ;
BR 537
With the wits. P. E. More ; BR 159
Woman. M. Marx; BR 134
Woman and the new race. M. Sanger; BN.... 597
Woman of thirty. M. A. Seiffert ; BR 247
Woman's wild oats. C. G. Hartley; BN 135
Wood, Clement :
Jehovah ; BR 414
Mountain ; BR 275
Woodberry, George Edward :
Roamer and other poems ; BR 414
Woodbury, Margaret :
Public opinion in Philadelphia during the
Federalist period, 1789-1801; BN 136
Woolf , Leonard :
Empire and commerce in Africa; BR 350
Wordsworth : an anthology. T. J. Cobden-
Sanderson ; NN 278
Worker and his work. S. S. Centre ; BN 50
Workers at war. F. J. Warne; BR 533
Working life of women in the seventeenth cen-
tury. A. Clark ; BR 419
World history. J. Bryce ; BN 251
World's food resources. J. R. Smith; BR 104
World's illusion. J. Wassermann, tr. by L.
Lewisohn. 2 vols. ; BR 668
Wright, Isa L. :
Trails to wonderland ; BN 672
X
X. Y. Z. ; R 106
Y
Young, George :
New Germany ; BN 77
Young, Stark; R 693
Youth and egolatry. P. Baroja ; BR 693
Youth and the bright Medusa. W. Cather ; BR 352
Youth in Harley. G. H. Gerould ; BR 454
Youth riding. M. C. Davies ; BR 247
Z
Zeitlin, Jacob; R 327: 566
Zilboorg, Gregory ; R 423
Zimmern, Helen and Antonio Agresti :
New Italy; BN 161
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 3, 1920
No. 2870
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS
EDITORIALS :
A Third Party and Its Candidate 4
The Crime in Turkey 5
Ventilating a Profession 5
"Deep Stuff" C
A YANKEE VERDICT: JUDGE ANDERSONS DECISION. By Lewis
S. Gannett 7
THE TRANSPORT BREAKDOWN. By George Soule 9
THE LITTLE TEA ROOM AT GIMBEL'S. By Stella Crossley Daljord. . 11
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By The Drifter 13
REPORTED MISSING. By David Morton 13
CORRESPONDENCE 14
BOOKS:
Psychology of the Day. By Joseph Jastrow 15
The Politics of Young India. By Benoy Kumar Sarkar 16
American Labor History. By George Soule 17
Books in Brief 19
DRAMA:
The Changing Drama. By Ludwig Lewisohn 13
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION 21
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER ARTHUR GLEASON
LEWIS S. GANNETT
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising: Swarthmore Press, Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
BRYAN will and will not win his fight for Prohibition;
Mr. Wilson will dominate the Convention, he will not
dominate it; he will dictate the platform and not the nomi-
nation ; he will dictate the nomination and not the platform ;
he and Mr. McAdoo will and will not accept the nomination
— with these delightfully positive assurances from San
Francisco and dozens of others the American people are
being regaled as to the outcome of the Democratic Con-
vention as we go to press. The worst and the best may
be known ere this issue of The Nation reaches the hands of
its readers. But this much may safely be said now: It is
largely a convention of office-holders and in its platform
will point with pride to those things Mr. Wilson tells it to
recall, while it will leave unsaid those things the autocrat
of the White House wishes ignored. The nomination will
be as much of a compromise as was that at Chicago and the
best possible candidate will not be chosen. But the dry
men will have their way, even if at least 90 per cent of the
delegates favor beer, wine, and hard liquors, and plenty of
them. It will no more be an unbossed convention than was
that at Chicago, for a few men will pull the strings, Charles
F. Murphy, the indicted boss of Tammany Hall, being
among them with, it is alleged, no less than 300 votes in
his control. So some of the American people will have the
delightful experience of being humbugged once more — not
as many as heretofore, but still enough to make the farce
completely successful; and those who refuse to accept the
dicta of this motley throng will be told that they are "kick-
ers" and "bolters," quite impractical visionaries, and cer-
tainly disloyal to the country if they refuse to choose be-
tween the evil of Chicago and that of San Francisco.
SENATOR HARDING should be spared the pain of direct
rebuttal. His prepared statement answering the re-
quest submitted to him by the National Woman's Party was
a modest denial of his right to "attempt to force" any State
executive to hasten action on the suffrage amendment. Pre-
sumably this denial included other methods than force; he
will neither urge, advise, nor suggest. He will, in fact,
stand pat unless some State executive should come around
and ask his advice. In such case, said the Senator under
pressure of rapid-fire questioning on the part of the suf-
fragists, he would "commend" the thing they desired. He
hinted mysteriously at possible good news in the near future
along that line, and in deference to his oracular tone the
suffrage leaders have postponed their plan of picketing him.
We can hardly believe that his prophetic mind penetrated
the possibility of Mr. Wilson's action on the following day,
when the President requested Governor Roberts, of Ten-
nessee, to call the Legislature to act on the Federal Suffrage
Amendment. The Governor accepted .vi
announced that the Legislature would n
mit the women of the United States to v>
election, "provided ratification of the S
is completed through favorable action by Tennessee." By
doing exactly what Senator Harding refused to do, the
President may have won Tennessee for suffrage and suf-
frage for the Democratic Party. But on the whole it seems
unlikely that the President's action was the Senator's "good
news."
'« A MENACE to the world," Mr. A. G. Gardiner calls
aV the Supreme Council in an article contributed to the
London Daily News. It is nothing more and nothing less
than that. Composed as it is now only of Lloyd George
and Millerand, advised by two soldiers, Foch and Sir Henry
Wilson, it intends to rule the world and is for the present
doing it. Napoleon never had such power nor used what
he had more despotically. This council of two is, as Mr.
Gardiner points out, "the most dangerous absolutism on
record." It meets in secret, reports to nobody, is respon-
sible to no one, and is practically beyond the reach of pub-
lic sentiment. It is a profound danger to the League of
Nations, which "infant these two men are now stabbing in
the back while pretending to baptize. Yet it is into their
hands we are asked to place the destinies of America, for
they will dominate in the Council of the League if it ever
suits their purpose to abandon the Supreme Council for the
League's governing body. Mr. Gardiner declares that the
heel of this brutal Supreme Council despotism "must be
kicked away before Europe can rise." Quite true. But who
is to do the kicking? As Lloyd George is the greater dan-
ger it might seem as if the British should begin to bell their
cat. There is no sign of such a happening. Millerand and
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2870
Lloyd George are more firmly in the saddle than ever be-
fore; reaction reigns in Europe and the outlook for a
wholesome revolution, alas, recedes. Most amazing of all,
our American foreign policy seems to be dominated by the
Supreme Council of two and their great militarists. That
despotic body which Mr. Gardiner considers as "inept and
ignorant" as it is all-powerful plays its own hand for its
own purposes day by day.
EXCEPT for the authorization of a war with the Turkish
Nationalists, the conference of the Allied Premiers at
Boulogne appears to have accomplished little that is de-
finitive. The suggestion of 110,000,000,000 to 120,000,000,-
000 marks gold as the maximum amount of the indemnity to
be demanded of Germany turns out to be only a trial figure,
to be used as a basis of discussion if the postponed Spa
conference ever meets. Germany, it is said, will be asked to
state how much of an indemnity it can afford or is willing
to pay, and the Allies, with the Boulogne figures in mind,
will then decide how much they are willing to accept. Ger-
many, in the meantime, will be supposed not to know exactly
what the Allies are thinking about. The demand of France
for 55 per cent of the indemnity, whatever the ultimate
amount may be, has encountered difficulty, first from the in-
sistence of Italy upon having 20 per cent of the total instead
of the much smaller proportion originally allotted to it;
and, second, from Mr. Lloyd George's unexpected statement
that it was not originally understood between him and
Premier Clemenceau that France was to have 55 per cent.
The tangled problem now goes to the Reparation Commis-
sion for solution. The international bankers, upon whose
willingness to support an international loan based upon
the indemnity the success of the scheme depends, are yet
to be heard from. As for the war against the Turkish
Nationalists, that is likely to prove a serious matter. If the
Greeks, who are eager for the fray, prove -unequal to the
task, as Marshal Foch apparently thinks that they will, the
Allies must come to their aid. No wonder that the Paris
Temps, which consistently reflects official opinion, should ask
pointedly what France is likely to gain out of the war, and
whether the whole thing is not at bottom a struggle between
England — working with Greece — and Russia for supremacy
in the East. Thus does the happy family of the Allies go
on from quarrel to quarrel.
WITH the international labor boycott of Hungary some-
thing new has appeared in the world. Workers have
issued manifestos and appeals before this, but never before
have the organized forces of labor taken concerted action to
accomplish political changes in countries other than their
own. The call issued by the International Federation of
Trade Unions to the workers of the world to unite against
tyranny in Hungary, printed in this issue of our Interna-
tional Relations Section, is an amazing document. What
the League of Nations has failed to accomplish, what the
Allies have refused even to attempt, the workers themselves
have determined to do. Whether they can succeed in turning
out of office Hungary's Government of reaction and terror
is yet to be seen ; the people of Hungary may starve before
the Government collapses. What is already proved is the
power of organized labor to cut off a nation from intercourse
with the world. When the issue is simple and clear-cut and
appealing, labor's power to paralyze, if not to heal, would
seem to be infinite. The establishment of this fact may
change the course of history. If international labor can
isolate Hungary, international labor can prevent war.
THE rioting and street fighting which have been going
on in Londonderry are not necessarily indicative of
any change in the policy either of Sinn Fein or of its oppo-
nents. So far as the incidents of the affair are concerned,
they are only a peculiarly grave and startling illustration of
the sort of thing that has been taking place with increasing
frequency of late in all parts of Ireland. That one of the
largest cities in the country, and an Ulster city, too,
should have been given over for days to fierce and bloody
civil war affords convincing proof, however, if proof of any
kind were needed, that the Sinn Fein movement is not con-
fined principally to the so-called Catholic counties, and that
the Ulster Unionists have not been making mere empty
boasts and threats when they have talked about their willing-
ness to fight. No Government can be expected to do less
than to repress such outbreaks if it can, but the weakness
and tardiness with which the authorities at Dublin Castle
have acted in the case of Londonderry indicate both fear
and uncertainty, and in any case can hardly have any other
effect than that of bringing the Government still further
into contempt. How long, one cannot but ask, is this sort
of thing to be kept up? Is there no wisdom in Great
Britain that can bring Sinn Feiners and Unionists together
and have the situation talked over? Is there no friendly
mediation to tender its good offices? Is unreserved accept-^
ance of British rule, enforced if need be by armies and
navies, the only price which Great Britain has to offer for-
the continuance of Ireland within the Empire?
THE collapse of Herbert Hoover as the embodiment of
the hopes and aspirations of numberless Americans
disgusted with the political game as played by the major
parties is pathetic. To a great section of the more liberal
electorate, especially to the newly-enfranchised women,
Hoover appeared the man of the hour. Disliked and dis-
trusted by the party bosses, with enmities like those of
Hearst, Penrose, and Reed to conjure with, it is no over-
statement to say that Hoover had the nation's leadership
in his grasp. That he threw away his opportunity can only
in a slight degree be laid to political ineptitude. For the
opportunity, made clear to Mr. Hoover by at least some of
his friends, was plainly indicated in his first definite cam-
paign statement on March 10, when he said:
I am an independent progressive in the issues before us today.
I think at this time the issues before the country transcend
partisanship. . . . The issues confronting us are new and
the alignment upon them has not yet been made by the great
parties. I still object as much to the reactionary group in
the Republican Party as I do to the radical group in the
Democratic Party. ... I belong to a group which thinks
that the American people should select their own officials at
their own initiative and volition and that resents the manufac-
ture of officials by machine methods.
This was the oriflamme of the Hoover movement and the
peak of the campaign as far as Hoover himself was con-
cerned. On April 10 he struck his colors, discovered that
he was a Republican, and in another week foreswore a Dem-
ocratic nomination. Politically, this was folly. Intellec-
tually, it was worse. Yet as late as June 15, addressing the
Rutgers College alumni, he declared :
The war has caused a widespread distrust of the old methods
July 3, 1920]
The Nation
of political action and a consequent demand for non-partisan-
ship in politics. There has come a demand for a better justice
and a higher standard of political conduct, and it would be
well for the old-line politicians to pay heed to this.
HOW well the old-line politicians paid heed was shown
at Chicago, and three days later, June 18, after break-
fasting with Senator Harding, Hoover issued a statement
that:
The greater part of it (the Chicago platform) is constructive
and progressive. Nothing prevents the compromise planks on
labor, the League, etc., from being given a forward-looking
interpretation.
No, Mr. Hoover, nothing prevents Warren G. Harding from
becoming a second Lincoln nor the Old Guard from devoting
itself to the people's welfare. Mr. Hoover is still young,
with years of useful public service ahead. If he is en-
dowed with any part of his accredited liberalism, four years'
association with the "constructive and progressive" plat-
form-makers he has now espoused may furnish him some
measure of the enlightenment and disillusion which his
recent supporters already possess. For the present he has
forfeited his chance of liberal leadership, and his oppor-
tunity of regaining it will require something vastly differ-
ent from the ingrowing Mr. Hoover of the last three months
— something more akin to the figure honored by numerous
Americans of widely divergent social and political creeds.
THE dynamite is left strewed around in one section* of
West Virginia. Outsiders, such as Government offi-
cials and Congressmen, do not believe it is dynamite. The
responsible State officials know it is dynamite, and refuse
to touch it. In spite of the dozen men killed at Matewan
and the publicity given to conditions in the southwest coun-
ties of West Virginia, nothing has been done. The A. F.
of L. convention at Montreal had ample time to listen to
attacks on Russia for not possessing representative govern-
ment, but it was too busy for a statement on the dictator-
ship of the gun-men in West Virginia. All the convention
did was to pass a pious resolution calling for a Congres-
• sional investigation. The fault is by no means all on the
part of public officials at Charleston and Washington. The
local officers of the United Mine Workers were so little
interested that they did not go to the A. F. of L. conven-
tion and make a protest on the floor. These same labor
leaders had been proclaiming that they had been robbed of
Constitutional rights, but they prefer picturesque com-
plaint to such steps toward a sane solution as an effective
presentation of their case in the audience of labor. Our
American temperament tires rapidly in a crusade. Then
suddenly we boil over and act drastically. That is the dan-
ger in West Virginia. Injustice is met with indifference.
There is no sure, steady campaign of publicity and educa-
tion. Later there may be a murderous upheaval.
c
ONDITIONS in this district are worse than they
Socialist editor or a wild radical, but the opinion of a
United States judge in Pittsburgh, apropos of the case of
four Croatians who had been arrested, thrown into jail,
and held in defiance of law on suspicion that they were
connected with the Communist Party. According to a spe-
cial dispatch to the New York World, Judge Thomson said:
"This case makes my blood boil. The methods of the De-
partment of Justice have created more anarchy than all
the radical parties put together. I did not suppose this
kind of thing could happen in a country where we have a
Constitution." Another judge declared the simple truth
that the Department of Justice has "no right to arrest a
man simply because he happens to belong to a political
party." The four men were sent to prison for ten days as
suspicious persons on the recommendation of agents of the
Department of Justice, and were then kept in jail without
any pretense of any charge except that they were members
of the Communist Party. It appeared, moreover, that the
prisoners were not given any opportunity to refute the alle-
gations that they were members of that Party ! More than
that, Palmer's agents "never offered the slightest proof in
court that these latest victims were members of the Com-
munist Party." Could anything be more deliberately cal-
culated to bring the American Government into contempt
and to offset any amount of Americanization work? What
Judge Anderson has found out in Boston we set forth at
length elsewhere in this issue of The Nation. But what
shall be said of the occupant of the White House who de-
fies the Republicans to prove that any man has been wrong-
fully punished for opinions under his Administration?
IT almost seemed as if the old Charles E. Hughes had
turned up at Harvard on Commencement Day — not
Hughes the candidate and not Hughes the Supreme Court
Justice, but Hughes the Governor with the desire to right
grievous wrongs. He returned to an old mutton of his in
denouncing the passion for legislation, and particularly the
passion to bring about Utopia by laws which are too fre-
quently drawn without perspective and with so little intelli-
gence as to present "an abundance of elaborate and dreary
futilities." Calling attention next to the fact that forty-four
convictions were reversed in the past year by appellate
tribunals in the United States for flagrant misconduct of
the public prosecutor or of the trial judge whereby the ac-
cused was deprived of a fair trial, Mr. Hughes declared that
"in this hour we find imperative need for a new birth of
freedom and a sharp call to make the old guaranties once
more vital and real and to give the assurance of liberty
under fair laws and responsible administration." Mr.
Hughes declared that the result of our war for liberty and
democracy was to feed the autocratic appetite, and he asked
whether "constitutional government as heretofore main-
tained in this Republic could survive another great war,
even victoriously waged." Finally, he spoke of the recent
proof by responsible citizens "of violations of personal
rights which savor of the worst practice of tyranny." These
are welcome words, particularly in connection with the find-
ings of Judges Anderson and Thomson. But while Mr.
Hughes has tardily come to speaking out for American
liberties, the overwhelming bulk of his profession is silent
in the presence of official and judicial sin. The Ameri-
can Bar Association could bring about the retirement of
Mr. Palmer and the ending of the crimes committed by his
subordinates within less than a week if it wished to do so.
But the legal profession, too, as Mr. Wilson would say, is
"in the grip of a heartless economic system," and its most
distinguished members are either silent or think, as one
of them writes us, that "the extremes to which the radicals
go naturally compel the Government to extreme measures"
— as if that were an excuse for official wrongdoing.
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2870
A Third Party and Its Candidate
SENATOR BORAH is unquestionably right in declaring,
as he is reported to have done in his Salt Lake City
interview, that American public opinion is coming more and
more to favor the organization of a third party. He is also
right in pointing out that the most important things in con-
nection with a third party are the platform and the candi-
dates, and that mistakes at either of those points at the
beginning may "queer" a third party movement for good
and all. This much being premised, the public will probably
be a good deal interested to know where the Senator from
Idaho himself stands in relation to the movement in which
he perceives a growing popular interest. Senator Borah is
an outstanding figure among the Republicans. He has con-
tributed as much as any member of the Senate to the defeat
of the treaty, and has been unsparing in his criticism of
the Wilson Administration in general. He cannot, we fancy,
feel anything but irritation and chagrin at the outcome of
the Republican convention at Chicago. What, the public is
likely to ask, lies back of his brief interview?
We pointed out last week some of the difficulties which
a third party will have to overcome at this time if it is to
be an important factor in the November election. Aside
from the financial and administrative difficulties involved in
the organization of a new party and the conduct of a cam-
paign at this late date, there are a good many divergent
ideas to be harmonized both in the framing of a platform
and in the choice of candidates. So far as a platform is
concerned, however, the disagreements which would have to
be harmonized are, perhaps, greater in form than in sub-
stance. Notwithstanding the fact that the opposition groups
range all the way from moderate liberals to extreme radi-
cals, they nevertheless have a good deal in common.
For example, the voters who today are looking forward
with dread to the possible continuance of either a Demo-
cratic or a Republican regime are to a man opposed to the
control of parties and party policies by the great property
interests of banks and business which have long dominated
them. The much-discussed high cost of living has been
deeply pondered by the American public, and the majority of
men and women who are not hopelessly tied to a Republican
or Democratic allegiance are convinced that the evil from
which they suffer is due more to manipulation of and pro-
fiteering in the fundamental necessities of life and industry
than to unavoidable economic causes, that neither Congress
nor the Administration has shown either the intelligence or
the disposition to interfere, that nothing better is to be
expected from the Republicans than has been realized from
the Democrats, and that the only hope of relief lies in a
new party.
There are numerous other points, also, on which the at
present unorganized opposition is substantially united.
There is practical agreement in demanding either the out
and out nationalization of railways, telegraphs, and tele-
phones, and even of mines, forests, and water power, or else
such thoroughgoing Federal regulation as will reduce private
control for profit to a minimum. The demand for a Federal
budget system finds strong support even within the ranks of
the two great parties, and is stronger outside of them. The
opposition is admittedly a unit in its repudiation of mili-
tarism, whether of the army or of the navy, and in its
demand for the repeal of all that remains of restrictive war-
time legislation, for the immediate release of political prison-
ers and the stopping of political raids and prosecutions, and
for the complete restoration of the Constitutional guaranties
of free speech, a free press, and free assembly. As for the
peace treaty in general and the League of Nations as now
constituted, there is little support left for either of them
in the opposition ranks.
There remains the large and important group of questions
in which labor is particularly interested. We have more
than once expressed our belief that the formation of a
strong national labor party would be one of the best things
that could happen in American politics; and while such a
development seems at this moment to belong to the future,
it is clear that any third party that is formed now will have
to have the active support of labor. The most extreme
claims that have been put forward on behalf of labor would
probably not meet with approval in all opposition quarters,
but there can be little question that the increasingly radical
views on economic questions which are coming to obtain
have prepared the way for a third party which will embody
in its platform the larger part of the things for which labor
stands, and to which neither Republicans nor Democrats
can be expected to render more than lip service. If organ-
ized labor supports a third party, there is an equal possibility
that the organized farmers would support it also. Labor
and the farmers have been getting together rapidly of late,
and a third party might make clear their essential solidarity.
Where do men like Senator Borah or Senator La Follette
stand with reference to a third party movement of this
character? Among men now in political life who may be
thought of as third party candidates for the Presidency, none
are more distinctly national figures than are these two. One
must ask some pointed questions, however. As an opponent
of the treaty and the League of Nations, and as a relentless
critic of the Wilson regime, Senator Borah's position is well
known. Were he to be elected President, his foreign policy,
if he is honest and sincere, would be in harmony with
American traditions of independence and international jus-
tice. Where he stands on economic questions and on matters
of domestic policy generally, however, is not certain. If he
has an American economic program, the public does not know
what it is. It is true that he has said some severe things
about the "money power," but his remark at Salt Lake City
that "if those advocating another ticket lean too far toward
either the reactionary or the radical, their efforts will prove
futile" suggests that he may have progressed no further in
his thinking than the liberalism which has not made up its
mind. Senator La Follette is in a different position. Less
concerned, at least publicly, with international relations
than Senator Borah, he has for years been looked upon as
one of the most radical members of the Senate in his eco-
nomic opinions. Were he to be nominated upon any third
party ticket, he would be likely to carry at least four or five
Northwestern States, or at any rate to throw them to the
Democrats.
What is not clear is that any person who has been long
identified, even as an insurgent, with either the Republican
or the Democratic party can be accepted as a third party
candidate. He certainly cannot hope to be accepted unless
he makes plain his position on the issues which a third party
would be organized to uphold.
July 3, 1920]
The Nation
The Crime in Turkey
CYNICISM is perhaps the only possible attitude toward
the Allies' latest adventure in imperial politics. It is
difficult to maintain indignation in proportion to events.
And yet, when a new series of wars is deliberately un-
leashed, and more thousands of human beings are deliber-
ately condemned to death and starvation, laughter seems
somehow out of place. Greece is to be given a free hand in
Turkey. The Allies, fresh from their manifold failures in
Russia, are to attempt the same method in Turkey. Turkey
will not voluntarily do their bidding, and their own subjects
are too clear-sighted and sick of fighting to carry on another
hopeless war. So they send in their colonials — in so far as
the colonials will obey; and they cheer on, and sell muni-
tions to, every little party or nationality that can be induced
to fight to win the Allies' bacon. The policy of the cordon
sanitaire is again attempted, and the sycophants of the
Denikins and Kolchaks will now glorify Venizelos and the
Greek generals.
The Allies have carved up Turkey on the map, and much
of the disjointing is wisely done. If we had not Egypt and
India fresh-scarred in our minds, we might rejoice at the
"liberation" of Arabia and Mesopotamia and Palestine; and
Armenia and Syria are at least no worse off than under
Turkish rule. The French have yielded to Mustapha
Kemal's mountaineers, and have abandoned their claims to
Cilicia, and the islands of the Aegean return, as is fitting,
to Greece — except for the Dodecanese, which the dice of
diplomacy have awarded to Italy, but which, if Greece bar-
gains generously in south Albania, may eventually be ac-
corded "the right of self-determination" ! Smyrna on the
sea-coast is given to Greece, and that sea-coast is doubtless
Greek, but with it goes a slice of Turkish interior; and in
addition to the territorial amputations, the limping relic of
Turkey is — on paper — made a vassal of the Allies. The
army is to be under Inter-Allied control ; the Turkish budget
is to be subjected to preliminary examination by the Allies,
who also control Turkish import duties and in a general
way Turkish railways and ports.
These are the terms the mere prospect of which threw
Turkey into open revolt, which led to the national uprising
against the puppet government set up under Allied guns in
Constantinople. That puppet government must sign any
terms set before it, but the signing is a solemn farce. The
Allies have learned and admitted that those terms cannot
be enforced upon Turkey without the use of military force,
and Lloyd George and Millerand have also admitted that no
one of the major Allies can supply from its own people, or
even from its colonial subjects, sufficient troops to enforce the
will of the western map-makers. Only Greece, little Greece,
sick with a Byzantine dream of a millennial empire, volun-
teered for the task. Greece offered to supply men to crush
the Turks into submission. Marshal Foch called the Greek
project "visionary" when the Premiers first met at Bou-
logne, but Venizelos had his say and his way, and now Foch
is to direct the campaign, with Greeks and East Indians as
his pawns against the Turks. War is never pretty; war be-
tween peoples with an historic hatred is race war at its
worst.
The Allies will back the Greeks as they backed the
anti-Red Russians; and doubtless their agents will seek to
stir up neighbor peoples into similar strife. We may ex-
pect an Allied attempt to provoke the Armenians into armed
conflict with the Turks in the East, just as the French pro-
voked the Armenians of Cilicia into open combat, and then
deserted them. We may expect attempts to array Kurd
against Turk, just as we already see "loyalist" troops, armed
and equipped and paid with Allied money, sent out from
Constantinople to join in fratricidal war against the Na-
tionalist Turks on the other side of the straits. We may
expect all the wicked intriguing and lying which have made
Russia a land of devastation and starvation to be repeated in
Turkey.
Fortunately the United States is not a party to the treaty,
nor to the League of Nations in whose name these crimes
may be committed. Lloyd George has declared that the
"mandates" which camouflage the new colonial ventures of
Great Britain and France are not granted by the League
but by the Supreme Council, which, after all, is decently
honest of him; but phrases about reference to the League
of Nations are piously strewn throughout the treaty. We
may be happy that we are not a part of the League, and that
we shall not have to share responsibility for the further
failures which lie before it. Our record at Versailles is not
such as to warrant golden hopes of what American par-
ticipation in the decisions might have meant or might mean
in the future. So long as our State Department continues
its cruel and unintelligent Russian policy, proud hints of
what we might have done, or might do, to better Allied
policy in other parts of the world are out of place. We may
be sickened by the mistakes and crimes of others; but our
first task is to attend to our own.
Ventilating a Profession
OBSERVERS of the underpaid and comparatively un-
important individuals who have our children between
six and eighteen now in hand have for some time been
asking themselves two questions: Would higher salaries
suddenly make these individuals better teachers? Granted
that better material might eventually be attracted to the
profession, does there exist a system for adequately and
uniformly equipping it for its business? Six years ago
Governor Major of Missouri appealed to the Carnegie
Foundation for a thoroughgoing answer to these questions
with recommendations under the second head. The answer,
prepared by seven of the country's experts, is now published
as a report on "The Professional Preparation of Teachers
for American Public Schools," with special reference to
Missouri, but with distinctly important application to cir-
cumstances everywhere. The recommendations call for im-
provements both in teaching personnel and in teacher-train-
ing organization. The first, the report says, should profit
by increasing the dignity of the teaching profession through
making wholly new classes of persons available for it;
restrictions ought to be lifted, for instance, from married
women. The second will be improved by consolidating
grammar schools with high schools and standardizing the
requirements of teachers in all twelve grades, and also by
combining normal schools with university departments of
education.
Before the profession of public school teacher can develop
the proper amount of respect for itself, says the committee,
it must earn the respect of the public, upon which the pres-
tige of any profession depends. A beginning will be made
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2870
when salaries are raised; but no end will be approached
until standards are in the way of being defined, standards
as vigorous and definite as those in law or medicine — until
it ceases to be the common belief that practically anybody
can teach who is willing to try. The habit has yet to be
overcome of regarding certain positions as trivial, as narrow
landings on a social or a professional stairs. It should seem
no less absurd for a slip of a girl to take a country school
for "experience," marking time there until marriage, than
for her to think of taking a position in a city high school for
the same purpose. Each of the twelve grades before college
should offer a career that no one would suppose he could
enter upon lightly. If a girl entered upon it, she should
understand that marriage, far from disqualifying her,
would decidedly recommend her in so far as it equipped her
with valuable, maturing experience. The equipment for any
teacher would have to include a genius for the place pos-
sessed and a minimum of four years training for that place.
It is in connection with these four years of training that
the committee makes its most specific and at the same time
its most profound proposals. It proposes in effect that all
actual and potential resources for the training of teachers
be pooled within the State, that all existing institutions be
bound together under a Board of Education and the State
University. " 'Normal' schools should drop that name, and
,as professional colleges of education should become an
acknowledged part of the greater university whole simply
because they are a part of the State's system of higher
education, which is all the term 'university' now implies.
. . . The normal schools would thus become State col-
leges of education within the university and subject to the
same consideration as any other branches of that institu-
tion." Thus would the currents of fresh pedagogical air so
long and desperately desired be set in motion through even
the deadest chambers. Competition between normal schools
and the university would be dissolved into cooperation, and
education generally would gain through a simplification of
the system whereby the few most powerful personalities at
command now make themselves felt. -"Genuine education
. . . can proceed only through immediate contact with
keen minds fully informed and persuaded of what the rising
generation may hecome."
The committee deals considerately with the normal
schools, more considerately no doubt than many laymen
would who have had opportunity of observing their prod-
ucts. The contempt of the college men for the "normalite"
is fairly well founded, as contempt for prosiness and pro-
vincialism and methodical timidity always is well founded.
The college man, who wants to be somebody, can feel no
warmth for a person who first and last worries about how
he shall teach somebody. Perhaps there is little to choose
on this ground between a normal school and a university
department of education. Yet the university has its large
contacts to keep it thrilled, has its trade winds to keep it
deeply breathing. It is possible that under the suggested
arrangement the normal school ingredient would prove a
little deadly for a while; but it is probable that the univer-
sity would more than hold its own. Whatever happened, the
real truth about teachers, that they are born not made,
would in no way be affected. That truth will never be
altered, by theory or by experiment; though it will steadily
become less painful through investigations and analyses
like this by the Carnegie Foundation.
"Deep Stuff"
SOMETIMES one hears the plaint that there is no more
serious writing in our newspapers and magazines; the
informative articles are chatty, the critical essays flip-
pant, and the fiction cynical. The poets are minor; the
prose writers are even more so, but without the grace to
admit it. Hard words but false, all false, as they say in
the movies. Only recently we were cast away in a railway
waiting room for two hours. Having had intimation of the
mischance beforehand, we fortified ourselves with a couple
of popular magazines. We wanted the most popular, and
as avoirdupois is the only safe test of that, we had the
newsman weigh several and took the heziviest two.
No serious writing there? Almost the first article that
catches our eye is entitled "The Truth That Embodies All
Truth." Here is some of it :
Humanity may be a million years old in point of time, but it is
as young as this morning's sun in its pursuit of the ideal.
After two thousand years of disappointment and disillusion, the
eternal verities and the eternal values still prevail. . . . Even
though it be surrounded and seemingly obscured by sham and
pretense, nothing in this world is discovered so surely as solid
merit. . . . This is the truth that embodies all truth;
this is the truth that makes men free.
A whole page of it. What better "deep stuff" could one
ask than that? And signed by an author of undisputed
reputation: a well-known automobile company. Turning
the pages, we pass essays on "Dependability" by a cement-
company, and "Principles" by a firm of glass-makers. Good,
no doubt, but we prefer an iron company's story of - .
Men who think only of the product — who send out their forg-»
ings into the world of industry as a father sends out his sons —
giving them the best there is in themselves. Just men. And
that is the only difference between forgings, the only difference
between this tool and that, the only difference between ma-
chines. Men.
A fine rugged morality, that, and serious as Prohibition.
But we go on to the point where a best-selling insurance
company has an outstanding page on "The Employer Who
Upbuilds the Race; the Fourth of a Series on the Story of
Industrial Justice," while a little farther on a correspon-
dence school contributes "The Glory of the Upward Path."
Two paths begin at the bottom of the hill of life. One of
them winds about the base through years of routine and drudg-
ery. Now and then it rises over a knoll representing a little
higher plane of living made possible by hard-earned progress;
but its route is slow and difficult and bordered with monotony.
The other mounts slowly at first, but rapidly afterwards, into
positions where every problem is new and stirring, and where
the rewards are comfort and travel and freedom from all fear.
No serious writing in our popular periodicals? There's
nothing else in the only part of them that counts — the adver-
tising. The authors who supply so-called reading matter as
margins and tail-pieces may be flippant and cynical if they
like, but not the men who in the past twenty years have
converted America from a country that bought oatmeal,
nails, and collars into a nation that now purchases Aerated
Oat Flakes, Stick-fast Nails and Tight-ho Collars. The
morality of these authors of the advertising pages is as
unquestionable as that of our best copy books; their eco-
nomics as sound as the Rock of Gibraltar. The American
people, as Barnum said, love to be humbugged; but you
must keep a straight face in doing it.
July 3, 1920]
The Nation
A Yankee Verdict: Judge Anderson's Decision
By LEWIS S. GANNETT
GEORGE WESTON ANDERSON is a New Hampshire
Yankee. He grew up on a hilltop farm; he taught
country school to earn a college education ; and thirty years
in Boston have not cured him of a New Hampshire accent
that makes him rhyme court with lot and pronounce have
"hev." He has a Yankee capacity for using strong language
without the slightest change in his facial expression. He
has a trick of looking you square in the eye and talking
through his teeth, occasionally lifting the upper right hand
corner of his mouth to bite out an emphatic phrase. And
he has a Yankee capacity for launching out of passivity into
passionate indignation when he sees a raw deal.
His first public office was on the Boston School Commis-
sion. He was federal District Attorney for Massachusetts
from 1914 to 1917; then Inter-State Commerce Commis-
sioner for a year, and is now United States District Court
Judge. He was a Brandeis man in Boston, and a Wilson
man when he went to Washington. As District Attorney
it was his duty to investigate spy plots, but he found there
were more imaginative writers than spies in New England,
and made it hot for some newspapers that cut free from
facts. Experience led to his statement that 99 per cent
of the wartime spy4 plots were pure fakes. And the same
judicial mind which led him as public prosecutor to analyze
and penetrate wartime hysteria stood him in good stead
when as judge he faced the victims of the Red hysteria.
Judge Anderson has just rendered a 35,000-word opinion
in the case of twenty alleged Communists, held at Deer
Island for deportation, who petitioned for writs of habeas
corpus. It is said to be the longest opinion ever rendered
from that bench ; Judge Anderson considers it rather a feat
of condensation, and having read it, so do I. Although it is
avowedly a statement prepared for review by a higher court
(he orders release of the Communists pending such review),
it is so thorough and restrained a discussion of such funda-
mental issues that it is certain to become an historic docu-
ment. It is a reassertion of neglected American constitu-
tional principles, and a courageous objective analysis at a
time when it requires courage to be objective, especially in
Boston. And moderate in tone, it is in effect a scorching in-
dictment of lawlessness on the part of the Department of
Justice, and in less degree of the Department of Labor.
He concludes that in the case of the Russians held for
deportation, their so-called trials were illegal and are
vitiated by lack of due process of law — that they were sub-
jected to illegal search and seizure, and denied fair trial;
that there was no evidence before the Secretary of Labor
that the Communist Party is an organization advocating the
overthrow of the Government of the United States by force
or violence — and hence that all the petitioners, including the
English-speaking Communists who knew enough to insist
upon fair trials, are entitled to be discharged; and that even
should the higher courts disagree and hold the Communist
Party to be a party of force and violence, there is grave
doubt whether the Communist Party documents upon which
such a ruling might be based, were not given form and
color by agents of the Department of Justice posing as
members of those parties. He says:
"The Department of Justice has no more legal right or power
to deal with the exclusion or expulsion of aliens than has the
Department of the Interior. The Department of Justice prose-
cutes for crime. The deportation proceedings are not criminal
proceedings. ... If the Department of Justice is correct
in its interpretation and application of the Statute of October
18, 1918, to the Communists, it has no occasion to usurp the
legal duties of the Department of Labor concerning aliens; it
has the power and the duty ... to prosecute."
Then he reviews the history of the New England Red
raids of January 2, 1920. He cites the instructions of Frank
Burke, Assistant Director and Chief of the Bureau of In-
vestigation of the Department of Justice in Washington, to
George E. Kelleher, his representative in Boston. They are
amazing instructions. As one federal judge put it in con-
versation, there is no taint of lawfulness about them. They
instruct the agents to search person and premises without
search warrants in defiance of the federal Constitution,
merely remarking that "if, due to the local conditions in
your territory (sic) you find that it is absolutely necessary
for you to obtain a search warrant for such premises (the
residences of the members) you should communicate with
the local authorities a few hours before the time for the
arrests is set and request a warrant to search the premises."
They instruct the agents to make every effort to secure ad-
missions at once from the aliens arrested, although the rules
of the Department of Labor, which have the force of law,
then provided that the alien shall be allowed to inspect the
warrant of arrest and to be represented by counsel before
he is examined. They call for mass arrests, lining up those
arrested in meetings against the wall and searching them on
the spot, and they contemplate the arrest of American
citizens, leaving the burden of proof upon the citizen to
prove his citizenship. These instructions give January 2
as the tentative date for the raids, and cold-bloodedly state:
"If possible, you should arrange with your under-cover in-
formants to have meetings of the Communist Party and
Communist Labor Party held on the night set. I have been
informed by some of the bureau officers that such arrange-
ments will be made. This, of course, will facilitate the mak-
ing of the arrests."
He quotes the testimony about the raids: from 800 to a
thousand people arrested, no one knew how many, 440 taken
to Deer Island — for less than 100 of whom were warrants
outstanding — the rest released for lack of evidence, the
brutal methods, illegal searches, women forced to get out of
bed and dress while the officers waited in the room, five
women kept overnight in a single cell without a mattress,
the deliberate invitation by the Department of Justice to
newspaper photographers to photograph the aliens as they
arrived, chained and handcuffed although not yet charged
with any crime, at the Boston station, etc.
"I refrain from any extended comment, on the lawlessness
of these proceedings by our supposedly law-enforcing offi-
cials," he remarks with obvious restraint. "The documents
and acts speak for themselves. It may, however, fitly be
observed that a mob is a mob, whether made up of govern-
ment officials acting under instructions from the Department
of Justice, or of criminals, loafers and the vicious classes."
The victims were taken to Deer Island. To quote:
"The conditions were unfit and chaotic. No adequate prepa-
8
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2870
rations had been made to receive and care for so large a number
of people. Some of the steam pipes were burst or disconnected.
The place was cold, the weather severe. The cells were not
properly equipped with sanitary appliances. There was no ade-
quate number of guards or officials to take a census of and
properly care for so many. For several days the arrested aliens
were held practically incomunicado. ... In the early days
at Deer Island one alien committed suicide by throwing him-
self from the fifth floor, and dashing his brains out in the cor-
ridor below in the presence of other horrified aliens. One was
committed as insane; others were driven nearly, if not quite, to
the verge of insanity."
Judge Anderson draws the picture from the evidence:
"The picture of a non-English-speaking Russian peasant
arrested under circumstances such as described above, held for
days in jail, then for weeks in a city prison at Deer Island;
and then summoned for a so-called 'trial' before an inspector,
assisted by the Department of Justice agent under stringent
instructions emanating from Washington to make every pos-
sible effort to obtain evidence of the alien's membership in one
of the proscribed parties, is not a picture of a sober, dispas-
sionate, due-process-of-law attempt to ascertain and report the
true facts. . . . The Secretary of Labor has in these cases
of necessity grounded his decisions upon records misrepresent-
ing or omitting facts of controlling importance."
The instructions for the raid were issued December 29.
On December 31 Commissioner Caminetti sent out from
Washington by telegram a modification of the Department
of Labor rule that an alien had the right to be represented
by counsel during his entire examination so that it read "at
any rate as soon as such hearing has progressed sufficiently
in the development of the facts to protect the Government's
interests, the alien shall be allowed to inspect the warrant
. . . and shall be apprised that thereafter he may be repre-
sented by counsel." This modification was withdrawn by the
Secretary of Labor on January 28, after the aliens caught
in the raids had been examined without counsel. Judge
Anderson quotes with approval Felix Frankfurter's argu-
ment that "if there is one thing that is established in the
law of administration, I take it that it is that a rule cannot
be repealed specifically to affect a case under consideration
by the administrative authorities. That is, if there is an
existing rule which protects certain rights, it violates every
sense of decency, which is the very heart of due process, to
repeal that protection, just for the purpose of accomplish-
ing the ends of the case. . . . There was a sudden, cal-
culated, and surreptitious deprivation of that safeguard."
A long and learned section of the opinion, liberally but-
tressed with legal citations, deals with the obligation of
'the court to review the Secretary of Labor's decision that
the Communist Party is a force and violence party. The
judge, following in part a recent opinion of the Supreme
Court (Kwock Jan Fat vs. White, decided June 7, 1920),
finds himself "constrained by the decisions to hold it the
duty of the Court" to review that ruling.
He analyzes the Communist Party program, and declares
that "the conclusion is irresistible that the only force worth
discussion believed in or advocated by this party is the gen-
eral strike." There are "some stock phrases concerning 'the
necessity of revolution' " but "both religious and political
crusaders commonly use the nomenclature of warfare. Here
in the Occident, freedom, and a saving sense of humor and
proportion have until recently saved us from being fright-
ened by crusaders' rhetoric. In an Oriental missionary field
'Onward Christian Soldiers' is said to be regarded as an
alien, seditious war song, the use of which the missionaries
have had to abandon. Our hymn-books may shortly attract
the eye and excite the suspicions of the official censor."
By "force" Judge Anderson does not think that Congress
meant religious, moral or political force; and although "the
general strike is a tremendous, almost a terrorizing force,"
he does not think that Congress intended to outlaw the gen-
eral strike in such "inadequate and disguised fashion." "It
does not accord with the historic genesis of the statute."
He is "forced to the conclusion that in it (the evidence be-
fore the Secretary of Labor) there can be found no legal
basis for deporting Communists on the ground that they
believe in, advocate or teach the overthrow of the govern-
ment of the United States by force or violence."
Finally, in view of the Department of Justice's instruc-
tions to its spies to provoke meetings of the Communists
to facilitate arrests, and of its obvious ability to provoke
such meetings from within the Communist organization,
the judge casts doubt upon the nature of any inflammatory
proclamations upon which prosecutions might be based.
"The most that can be held," he comments, "is that it does
not appear that the Government did, through its agents,
give form and color to the documents upon which the Secre-
tary has based his ruling. It is equally clear that no finding
can be made that the Government did not, through its
agents, give such form and color, and thus lay a founda-
tion for the inference that the Secretary of Labor has drawn •
against these aliens because of their membership in the
Communist Party." ^
Then the judge indulges in one of his outbursts of old-
fashioned Yankee philosophy: "I cannot adopt the conten-
tion that Government spies are any more trustworthy,, of
less disposed to make trouble in order to profit therefrom,
than are spies in private industry. Except in time of war,
when a Nathan Hale may be a spy, spies are always neces-
sarily drawn from the unwholesome and untrustworthy
classes. A right-minded man refuses such a job. The evil
wrought by the spy system in industry has, for decades,
been incalculable. Until it is eliminated, decent human re-
lations cannot exist between employers and employees, or
even among employees. It destroys trust and confidence; it
kills human kindliness; it propagates hate."
So the judge released the Communists and castigated the
Communist-chasers. "Now that it appears that Govern-
ment spies constituted in December, 1919, an active and
efficient part of the Communist Party," he said, "it may
well be that the Secretary of Labor will find it desirable,
through his own forces, to institute some investigation of
the nature and extent of the possible activity and influence
of these spies in giving form and color to the documents
upon, which the Secretary of Labor based his ruling." So
far the Secretary of Labor has found it desirable only to
announce that he will appeal Judge Anderson's decision.
In this son of the New Hampshire hills law and order
has found a new kind of defender, a man ruggedly de-
termined that ours shall again be a government of laws
not of men, a man with a capacity for indignation even in
defense of the rights of men whom he does not like and
with whom he does not agree. His example must hearten
other judges who would like to return from domination by
newspapers and brow-beating federal agents to the staid
guidance of the law. When some future May writes the
Constitutional History of America, in the chapter on the
return to the Constitution, Judge Anderson will figure large.
July 3, 1920]
The Nation
9
The Transport Breakdown
By GEORGE SOULE
IN a half-dozen ports along the Atlantic coast there is a
nexus of transportation through which many of the
necessities of life for Europe and America must pass. Goods
coming from the West, the South, the North, are unloaded
from freight cars, stacked on piers, trucked through the
streets, loaded on lighters, towed by tugs, reloaded into
coastwise and Atlantic steamships. Goods coming from
Europe go back through the same channels. Any blockade
in one part of this system slows the circulation through all
the other parts. It is difficult enough to keep the channels
cleared and transport flowing under normal conditions. Ab-
normal stoppages cause a thousand unforeseen maladjust-
ments resulting in incalculable economic loss, with scarcities
and rising prices which reverberate through the whole pro-
ductive and distributive system.
A statement given out by the New York Merchants' Asso-
ciation deals with recent interruptions on the coastwise lines
alone. Since January 1, 1918, there have been sixteen strikes
in Atlantic ports. During 1918 the coastwise lines were
immobile 14 per cent of the time, during 1919, 15 per cent
of the time, so far in 1920, 64 per cent of the total working
days. The stoppages this year have tied up 47 seagoing
vessels, and 203 tugs, lighters, and barges, with cargoes
totaling about 150,000 tons, valued at approximately $300,-
000,000. This is merely a small index of the losses to de-
pendent businesses and the dependent consumer.
What causes the stoppages? The present strike of the
coastwise longshoremen is a fair example. Sixty-five cents
an hour is not enough to support a workman and his family,
even if he has no unemployment and buys nothing more
than the bare necessities of life. The bare subsistence
budget calculated in New York by Professor Chapin in 1907,
if brought down to date by applying the index numbers of
the National Industrial Conference Board, a great associa-
tion of employers, is $2,080. Eight times sixty-five makes
$5.20 for a normal working day. Multiply that by 306, the
full number of working days in the year, and you get
$1,591.20. It is true that longshoremen sometimes work
overtime, but it is also true that they do not work the full
normal time the year round. Acting on their practical ex-
perience of this economic fact, coastwise longshoremen have
now for some weeks been refusing to work for less than
eighty cents an hour, which is paid for the same kind of
work, in the same ports, on the deep-sea piers. They have
not received eighty cents largely because, in the judgment
of the Shipping Board's National Adjustment Commission,
the coastwise steamship lines at present cannot pay it and
make a profit. If the lines do not make a profit they will
go out of business. The longshoremen use similar logic.
Not earning a living, they have gone out of business.
Neither their international president, nor the Governor of
the State of New York, nor anyone else, can pry them loose
from this simple conclusion.
The teamsters, being loyal union men, refuse to haul
goods unloaded by strike-breaking longshoremen. Anyone
who takes the place of a striker either receives more than
the regular employees or else receives less than it costs a
responsible citizen to live. This bit of logic cannot be dis-
lodged from the minds of the teamsters. Besides, they may
ask more for themselves some day, and then they will want
the longshoremen to be true to them. The special situation
caused by the government control of rates on the coastwise
lines suggested, to some of the more reasonable employers,
a special solution for this case. If only the men would re-
sume their work, united pressure would be brought to
bear for an increase in rates. But the men are waiting to
be shown. And the majority of the merchants rightly con-
cluded that such action, even if successful, would be a mere
temporizing with the general issue. Something more drastic
is necessary.
They remember the succession of previous strikes, some
of them in violation of long-term agreements. The deep-sea
longshoremen defied both their own leaders and the adjust-
ment commission for months, justifying themselves by
reference to the disproportionate increase in the cost of
living. The Marine Workers' Affiliation, after a strike for
the eight-hour day and negotiations of baffling complexity,
refused to accept an award by the National War Labor
Board, whose jurisdiction had previously been denied by the
employers. The Marine Workers' Affiliation has recently
engaged in another strike in support of workers on the Erie
tugs, which were sold in order that the eight-hour law for
railroads might be evaded — at least so the strikers con-
tended. The clerks on the Fall River line struck for a con-
tinuation of collective bargaining, granted during the war.
Altogether, the loss and confusion has proved too much for
the patience of many of the merchants, and they have de-
cided to smash their way through.
The action which they are taking is a frontal attack upon
the unions, a fight disguised by the phrase "open shop."
What it amounts to is a war for the right to employ strike-
breakers. The merchants are raising a $5,000,000 fund, and
have organized an independent trucking company under the
command of an ex-army expert in transportation. He is
enlisting non-union teamsters and ex-soldiers, under a plea
of "patriotism," to haul the freight. It is threatened that
the same methods will be extended, if necessary, against all
the unions of transport workers. When workmen on the
deep-sea piers threatened to strike rather than to handle
goods brought by non-union teamsters, some of the steam-
ship companies refused to receive the freight. As common
carriers, however, they violated the law in doing so, and the
courts have enjoined the practice.
A general engagement is predicted by both sides. If it
comes, it will be more costly to the unions, the merchants,
the railroads and steamships, and the consumers, than any-
thing which has happened before. The employers may win
— for a time. Yet they will do well to remember that New
York employers have been fighting for the "open shop" ever
since the shoemakers took the issue into the courts in 1810.
It is hazardous indeed to assume, in June, 1920, that trade-
unions can be destroyed. If the merchants do win, neverthe-
less, they will have proved that modern society cannot think
of any way of transporting its goods without paying work-
men less than it costs to live. A rather dangerous demon-
stration, while Lenin is still alive.
If we believe that there must be a better way out, it is safe
to make two fundamental assumptions: first that the trans-
10
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2870
port workers must have decent wages and conditions, and
second that organizations of labor will persist and must be
dealt with. To these we may add a guess : that the tangle
is probably as much in need of organization as of blind
battle. Much of the confusion has been caused by the fact
that both-unions and employers have been acting individually
rather than in unison. I took these assumptions and this
guess to a labor official who knows the problem through ex-
perience. He agreed with them, and proceeded to fill in the
outline. His name is Jerome De Hunt, and he is president
of the New York Harbor District Council of the Brother-
hood of Railway and Steamship Clerks — which includes not
only the persons whom we ordinarily think of as clerks, but
railway foremen, freight handlers, and express and station
employees. Mr. De Hunt is also president of the local
organization of the Plumb Plan League, which proves that
he is not wholly a conservative in union matters, and that
he has ideas. From him much of what follows is derived.
Twenty-four separate unions, all told, have a hand in
transportation. For the most part, they act in small groups.
Many of them have been engaged in the recent strikes. One
by one, they have stopped the flow of goods ; one by one, they
have failed to procure anything like complete satisfaction.
They have inconvenienced the public almost as much as if
they had all been striking for the full period. Now the
teamsters are carrying on a sympathetic boycott for the
longshoremen, though they have no demands of their own.
Next month, the longshoremen may be back at work, and
the teamsters may be striking for an increase and asking
the longshoremen to reciprocate. This is a clear waste of
energy. It is like sending an army over the top one man
at a time to be shot down in a futile attempt to capture a
nest of machine guns. And it is extremely damaging to
the public.
Another cause of confusion is the separation of employers
for anything except fighting purposes. Different wages are
paid for the same kind of work at different places. The
present situation of the longshoremen is a case in point.
There is no uniform practice about hours, none about col-
lective bargaining. These inequalities stir up discontent
and foster the round of stoppages.
The 110,000 transport workers about the port of New
York might be organized for joint action. They might have
an Executive Council, composed of delegates from all the
crafts, with power to draw up all the demands at once, to
standardize the rates and hours for the different operations,
and to present the whole scale as a unit to the employers.
The locals would have to give up independent action, and
delegate control to the Council. Then there would be more
chance of any one group securing, through negotiation, what
it should have. The interests of all would be pooled. Either
nobody would stop, or all would stop at once. The public
would be saved immense inconvenience.
The corresponding employers' association would contain
the Railroad Executives, the Steamship Executives, the
American Railway Express, the Merchants' Association, and
would have to retain the support of the Board of Trade and
Transportation, the Chamber of Commerce of the State of
New York, and the Chambers of Commerce of Brooklyn,
Bronx, and Queens. It is a combination of the six latter
bodies which is now declaring war on the unions.
When these two bodies had been thus organized, it would
be possible to establish "impartial machinery" to negotiate
on the larger issues, and investigate and adjust the minor
ones. An industrial constitution could be created, so
that the basis of negotiations would be clear. No strike
could occur by accident. The issues would be defined, and
everybody could know what they were. Each side would
be in a position to exercise effective discipline within its
own group, to prevent violations of understandings arrived
at upon the basis of adequate study and thorough considera-
tion. Now any small group may begin a strike or lockout,
and then call for sympathetic action by the others. With
industrial action under a constitution, everyone would have
to be consulted before a strike was called or a lockout de-
clared. If an ill-advised and unauthorized strike or lockout
did occur, the other groups would isolate it rather than act
in sympathy. It might be possible to avoid any stoppage for
long periods.
What is the chance of bringing about such a grouping on
the side of the unions? At the moment, not very bright.
Each local votes on its own strikes. And in virtually all of
the twenty-four international unions, such votes must be
authorized by the international officials. The teamsters and
longshoremen have recently taken the reins in their own
hands, but the legal restriction still remains, so that the high
officers could attempt to block joint action at any moment if
they wished to do so. The chances are that they would do so,
since most of them are "conservatives" and wish to main-
tain "craft autonomy" — a symbol for their own power. If
the rank and file took the matter to the floors of their re-
spective national conventions, they might secure "local
autonomy," and then they might delegate their authority to
local executive councils. But the rank and file is not edu-"
cated to the proposal, and about half of the local officials
also would interpose vetoes. There is more in the present
chaos for them, they seem to think, than in real joint action.
If, however, a local council could be created in this way, it
would not work as well as it should. It would have dispensed
with the craft differences, but it would have retained sec-
tional differences. Transportation is really a national
matter. Ports compete with each other. A general transport
agreement in New York might be unsuccessful if Philadel-
phia and Boston were on a different basis. I asked Mr.
De Hunt what would obviate that difficulty. He smiled.
"One transport union. But, of course, that sounds like I. W.
W. propaganda. It would be hard to put across, because of
the 'conservative' officials and the hysteria of the employers.
Nevertheless, transportation will be disorganized until we
have it. There must be a national central body, with power
and effective organization, over all the transport workers.
There must be local bodies, with authority delegated from all
the local crafts. Then we can begin to get somewhere."
The mere existence of an industrially organized Transport
Workers' Union would not, of course, automatically brush
aside the fundamental economic maladjustments which result
from the present financing and management of the railroads,
nor would it do away with the waste that arises from lack
of proper system in terminals and routes. It would, how-
ever, gradually eliminate minor troubles and focus attention
on the main issues. The attitude of the Amalgamated Cloth-
ing Workers toward beneficial reconstruction of an industry
is merely an instance of the result which naturally arises
from a proper organization of the workers. The first neces-
sity is a union which is powerful enough to overcome petty
grievances and direct its efforts to the larger issues, issues
which are of as much importance to the whole people as to
any small body of workers.
July 3, 1920]
The Nation
11
The Little Tea Room at Gimbel's
By STELLA CROSSLEY DALJORD
"Just a little space to tell you the big news that the Little
Tea Room is again in its creton-ny summer dress. And still
specializes in delicious edibles with a true home flavor!"
THE charming little place so advertised is in the depart-
ment store owned by the brothers Gimbel, just indicted
for profiteering on some 207 different counts. They are
victims, of course, themselves — the victims of the silk-
stockinged, bejeweled, limousine-riding working girls.
Perhaps if Gimbel's employees had not been labor profiteers,
the gentlemen now out on bail would not have been forced
to retaliate on the public.
As a member of that long-suffering body I had often
shopped in Gimbel's, but when I applied for a job as waitress
and was being initiated as one of the "help" it was an
entirely different place. That other world of respectable
shoppers seemed leagues away from our world of work.
It was like being shown for the first time, in a house where
you had grown up, to a secret room that you had not known
existed.
"Yes, we do need waitresses," said Miss M , whom
I learned later to dub the "Ogre," head of the restaurant
department. "Have you had any experience in waiting?"
When I told her of a brief experience in a summer hotel
she said: "You may come right in and begin."
"What are the wages?" I asked.
"Six dollars per week and your lunch (This was in 1919)
and then you get some tips."
"Oh, I had hoped it would be more than that," said I,
disappointed.
"Well, you're a nice looking girl" — eying my clothes
sharply, "so I'll make you a captain at twelve dollars a week.
You just seat the people, give them the menu card, and so
on. Then the captains are considered better than the
waitresses — they get better food for their lunch and sit at
a different table." I learned later that it was considered
good policy to emphasize class distinctions at Gimbel's —
"kept 'em from getting too close and talking union."
After a day's work I found that the Ogre's "and so on"
meant standing on one's feet from eight in the morning
till six at night, nagging the other girls to do well nigh
impossible tasks, filling heavy water pitchers, and serving
many meals myself during the rush hour, all for the large
sum of twelve dollars per week. Captains do not get tips.
The Ogre sharply called another girl to' take me to the
employment office to be signed up.
"Look out;" whispered my guide, "don't let the old devil
(meaning the Ogre) see us ride in this elevator."
"Why not?" said I, in bewilderment. "How could we
get from the ninth to the third floor if we didn't?"
"Oh, these are just for the customers. The Helps' ele-
vators are 'way around the block."
I was soon initiated into an understanding of the vast
abyss that exists between the two sets of human beings that
come into close contact in the department store, the "help"
and the customers. Both are seemingly human with the
same sort of human reactions, but the psychology developed
in the managers is that customers are regal persons to be
bowed and scraped to; their every whim should be gratified
and the greatest deference shown them, while the clerks
who wait on them are of a very inferior order, to be barked
and snapped at. It would be horrifying to serve stale or
tainted food to a guest, and if any such accident happened
we must apologize profusely; but in our dirty dining-room
near the roof we were regularly served stale and tainted left-
over food; and if any of us had the courage to complain we
ran grave risk of being discharged. The secret of this
difference was demonstrated by the reply one of the man-
agers gave a group of clerks who went to him to ask for an
increase in wages. "If you can't live on ten dollars a week
it's no concern of mine," said Mr. . "We are in this
business solely to make money and if I should pay you more
than other department stores do, my crowd would say I was
scabbing on them."
Later, all those who had asked for this raise were dis-
charged as "unsatisfactory" — they might stir up discontent.
After three seemingly endless days as captain, I asked the
Ogre to change me to plain waitress. She immediately
began to bully me. Her chief idea of intelligent manage-
ment of the girls under her was to bully, curse, and con-
stantly frighten them.
"Oh, you think because you've got a little education (the
Ogre had none, always boasting that she had grown into
her present job from cash girl and that she had worked in
this store ever since it was opened ten years before) that
you're better than other folks, but we'll take that out of
you — you go on about your d business just as I told
you to do — I've got more important business than to be
bothered by a d little s like you!"
Experience had taught me that the best way to deal with
a bully is to bully in return. "Well, Miss M ," I said,
"you can do just as you please, either give me an apron and
let me be a waitress (I knew they were short of waitresses)
or I'll quit."
Her dignity would not allow her to give me any answer
except profanity, but in five minutes her stenographer
hurried over to me with an apron and told me to start in as
waitress. From that day my real life as "help" began.
Heretofore as captain I had been just an onlooker. The girls
had been suspicious of me and had talked little, as a captain
is supposed to be "in with the boss," a sort of go-between
and tattletale, and therefore not to be trusted. Now that I
had descended from my position of slight authority I was
immediately one of them. In two days I was on movie-
attendance intimacy with a number of them, and on visiting
terms with several. Our day began in the morning when
we entered at the "Helps Entrance" and had our time cards
punched, and then rode up in the "Helps Elevator." The
rules about this were very strict. Any employee caught
riding up in regular elevators was immediately discharged.
At night when our cards were punched again we were ex-
amined for any article that we might have stolen. I suppose
where the wages are close to starvation, as they were at
Gimbel's, there is always greater danger of theft. In the
locker-rooms we hustled into our uniforms and chatted
meanwhile. We were all ages and nationalities — a cosmo-
politan crowd. Then the rush of the day began.
There were three huge dining rooms, two of them the
length of the whole department store from the kitchen. This
12
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2870
meant that we lugged heavy trays loaded with food and
heavy silver service for miles and miles all day long. As a
result many of the girls suffered from weaknesses that
would prove serious if they became mothers later on. I
often wondered why the kitchen could not have been in the
center and the silver service near by. When I asked the
Ogre about this one day, after an astonishing look and a
volley of curses at my presumption, she answered: "This
place ain't run on no philanthropy basis for you'se that
works here! (Her better English always fell away from
her when she got excited.) This here place is run fer the
long green — a h of a lot we care if your backs do ache!"
During the rush hour the kitchen was a veritable little
Hades of noise, heat, and excitement.
"Firings" usually took place at the rush hour when every-
thing was at high tension. She fired rne one day for not
wearing an apron, though I had tried my best to get one
from her earlier in the day. But I was reinstated because
she had a wholesome awe of an "educated" person with
"lip."
"All right, Miss M ," said I, "but I'm going straight
to Mr. B (the manager), and tell him the whole thing,
and I'll also get up on a chair in this dining-room and tell
the guests all about it and your tactics."
The bully succumbed to her own weapons, as I had hoped.
There was an all-pervading atmosphere of furtiveness
about the girls that puzzled and irritated me at first. But
later I understood. They were furtive because the only
way to get your work done was to avoid the all-seeing eye
of the Ogre and disobey her senseless rules, and the only
way to get decent food was to steal it.
The food served the guests was very good and we be-
came hungry handling the dainty and tempting morsels,
but we were not allowed to touch any of them. The stale
leftovers slopped out to us in the dirty dining-room on the
top floor was the food reserved for us. The result was that
the girls were always stealing food and eating it surrepti-
tiously behind the Ogre's back to the detriment of their
digestion, nerves, and general frankness.
After I had been a waitress for several days I marveled
that so many strong young women chose to do such hard
work for so little pay. But in conversation in the lockers
and over our dirty lunch tables I found out. We ate our
lunches for a chance to talk and rest, rather than for the
food we nibbled at. There was an all-pervading air of
staleness and dirt in that stifling dining-room next the
roof — an air of "this is good enough for such as you." The
tables were dirty, the silver not clean, and the smell of
rancid butter and tainted meats took away whatever appe-
tite we might have left. I learned that most of the girls
worked there because, though we crowded the work of ten
hours into four or five so that we were too tired to eat or
rest when we got through, the short hours enabled them to
do other work outside. Wives worked there to eke out their
husband's insufficient pay and widows with children, whom
they usually had to lock in while they came to work. I
remember one poor widow sobbing her heart out at lunch
one day because her pay envelope held three dollars instead
of the usual six. Her hand, through no fault of her own,
had been scalded in the kitchen several days before, and
she had been forced to lay off for three days ; but the relent-
less bookkeeping at Gimbel's made no allowance for this.
Another day at lunch a beautiful young French girl with
the bloom of the country still on her red cheeks and blue
black hair, who sat next me at table, suddenly began heap-
ing a torrent of uncalled abuse on all of us. Afterwards she
came to us sobbing: "I know I'm ugly-tempered, but the
room where I sleep with another girl has no sunshine, and
God knows I can't stand it much longer ; but I've looked and
looked for a place where I can be alone. It's hell never to be
alone in all the twenty-four hours! but I can't find one I
can afford with the money I earn here. With the tips and
all it only amounts to ten dollars a week."
One girl was crying because her baby had died the week
before. "I know you feel bad now," said a widow, "but in
a couple of years you'll be glad of it — poor girls like us
can't afford to have children and bring 'em up decent."
Another girl cried in the stuffy locker-room one night and
refused to go home because all of her one week's pay en-
velope and half of the next had been withheld her because
some customer, in the hurry of the rush hour, had short
changed her. "I can't go home — I'm the only one that's
working because mother's sick, and God knows what we'll
live on this week!"
Most of the girls lead this hand-to-mouth existence where
the loss of one week's pay was a real tragedy. And over
the lunch table we learned to know the girls who eked out
their tiny wages by occasional prostitution. One such girl,
who was good to look at and as generous-hearted as could
be, said to the little French girl one day : "Take it from me,
it's better to be free and easy as I am than never to have
any joy in life, like you. I work in a cafe at night. The
tips are big, and then I pick up money on the side. I hate
drunks, but what can you do?" =. •
There was some talk of union in the store at lunch time,'
but such horrible examples had been made of the braver
spirits who had dared to agitate for it that most of the
girls were afraid. Some reactions to this talk of organiza-
tion were both humorous and romantic. Said a young Irish
girl with an engaging smile: "Sure and I believe in the
union, but if I join and we get better wages, my husband,
who's lazy, but workin' now, will sthop workin' entoirly."
There was a young Greek fellow who had worked in Gim-
bel's for six years at six dollars per week. His answer to
the union invitation was to whip the photo of a young girl
out of his pocket and say with a beautiful and pathetic
smile : "Me homesick for home and wife. Me no join union
or anything — me go back to my own country next week.
America not like they tell me — me only starve all the time
here."
The waitresses had to be young and strong, but the
women who worked in the kitchen were middle aged or old,
women who should have been at the leisure time of life.
The thought of one's own mother or grandmother in such a
position was unbearable, but here was somebody's mother
or grandmother picking chicken bones amid slops or wash-
ing dishes at breakneck speed on through a long day of in-
tolerable heat. And all for a sum so tiny that it meant
but a poor bed to sleep in and poor food after the day was
over.
"I can do my stent of dishes with the best of them,"
quavered an old lady of seventy, obviously in need of food,
begging the Ogre for a job one morning.
"Aw, run along! What can an old hag like you do?" was
the answer.
The policy at Gimbels' was "The guests are always right,"
July 3, 1920]
The Nation
13
so no matter what abuse they heaped upon us for being
slow or for poorly cooked food, troubles for which we were
not as a rule responsible, we were supposed to take it all
humbly. Also, we were expected to be especially servile to the
bosses of the store who ate in the restaurant. I threw the
kitchen into a panic one day by refusing to hustle any more
for Mr. Gimbel than anyone else, insisting that lamb chops
would cook no more quickly for him than for an ordinary
mortal, though he considered himself a semi-god. It was
the fear of losing their jobs, wretched and pitiful as they
were at the best, that made the workers at Gimbels' wear
the hunted, pinched and submissive look that was their
chief characteristic. For a poor job is better than none
when you have never been able to save enough to keep a
thin wall between yourself and starvation.
In the Driftway
HE who runs may read in the headlines that retail prices
are down to stay; or that there is to be an average
increase of 30 per cent in clothing next fall ; or that cucum-
bers sell for one cent in the wholesale markets and ten
cents in the retail stores — no mean profit one might note in
passing. And according to the faith that is in him, one may
thank his stars or curse fate and the ever-greedy profiteer;
but the result is about the same. The miserable fifty-cent
dollar continues to shrink; the country continues to go to
rack and ruin with never a friendly hand to stop it. The
case at first sight seems entirely hopeless. But the Drifter
with his usual perspicacity has found a remedy. After three
magnificent days among the Connecticut hills he faces a
tottering world without a quiver. He has found peace and
plenty; good brown dirt and an excellent variety of blue sky,
not to mention numerous desirable things in the way of
daisies, white birches, and milk. And in that seventy-two
hours not one subway train ; not a single crowd ; no buildings
higher than two-and-a-half stories; merely space — the most
precious commodity in the world, entirely unpurchasable in
cities. Let men cavil and carp, let prices rise, let Mr.
Harding be elected, let blight and pestilence overtake the
greatest city in the world. With a calm heart the Drifter
will take the next train north and never once look behind him.
*****
THE Drifter might think less frequently about the cost
of living if he were not a creature who roved so
constantly through times and spaces and noted so many
contrasts. But the adventures of one day have stung him
into thought about the matter and into speech. In the
morning the Drifter came across this passage in an old
letter written from the Berkshires seventy years ago: "We
give only three cents a quart for the best of milk. . . .
Butter is fourteen cents a pound, and eggs eleven and twelve
cents a dozen; potatoes, very good ones, two shillings a
bushel. The most superb buckwheat at half the price we
gave at the East — sixty-two cents for twenty-four pounds;
wood, three and four dollars a cord; charcoal, eight cents a
bushel; veal, six cents a pound; mutton, five cents; beef,
nine cents." And in the afternoon the Drifter dropped into
a village store. There was no one in attendance, but from
the little office at the rear of the store came the voices of
the proprietor and a traveling salesman. "If I buy these
shoes," said the proprietor, "I shall have to charge eight
dollars a pair." "And if that's all you charge," answered
the helpful bagman, "you'll be a fool. Those shoes are
bringing twelve dollars all over the country. This is the
time to make a profit while the making is good." Did the
proprietor protest? He did not. And three days later the
Drifter found that the shoes were on sale for twelve dollars.
Who has calculated what the bagman contributes to the
economic problem?
*****
AS the Drifter hurried down the muddy road he saw
fireflies ahead of him splashing the new darkness.
And then suddenly the scene widened. On his left a broad
meadow rolled away up the mountain; on his right lay a
broader region of marshy ground sacred to flags and frogs.
The Drifter knew that over all that green meadow butter-
cups were contending with daisies which should make it
white or yellow, but now it was black with the night though
somehow brightened by the gleaming mist. In the swamp,
too, the Drifter knew there would soon be irises blooming,
though now it had nothing but the paler irridescence of the
quiet drizzle. And yet the night was alive with an uncanny
and unaccustomed splendor. The fireflies were holding
some sort of carnival, it seemed, moving up and down the
meadow slope in glimmering processions and swarming
thickly over the marsh which they almost illuminated with
their fitful and inclusive flashes. There must have been
thousands of them, for the usual intervals of darkness never
came, and every instant was spangled. But the marvel of
the occasion was not the number of lights but the magnitude
of them. By some trick of the mist, some reflection from
the particles of water suspended in the air, every firefly
shone not as a vivid speck but as a slow, large, bland splotch
of mellow light. Over the swamp they were so crowded
and cast so many reflections upon the water and wet earth
and dripping flags that they had created the perfect sem-
blance of a lake on which numberless canoes rode softly
with dancing lanterns. Up the mountain meadow they
seemed, and doubtless were, less numerous, but the wonder
continued, for they glowed here and there on the rising hill-
side like searchers beating through the grass for something
lost. And, most exquisite of all, now and then on the high
ridge of the hill behind the meadow a lantern would flash
and move down into the carnival or up out of it. This hollow
of the hills was a cup of light, filled to the brim, which now
and then spilled over only to be replenished.
The Drifter
Reported Missing
By DAVID MORTON
Where are those slender ships, gone lightly by —
They that had seemed as sisters to the sun?
In what last ports of darkness would they lie,
Content to know their sailing days were done?
I cannot think those shining spars would be
Less lovely or less eager, now, at last,
Than on white mornings by the crowded quay,
I watched them one by one blown softly past.
Name me no Dark where sails hang split and torn,
No lightless cavern closed on ruined ships,
Forgetful of the splendor they had worn, —
Lest I should tell you where a specter slips
Through waters creaming at her ghostly prow,
Lifted and light and lovely, even now.
14
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2870
Correspondence
George Louis Beer
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: Some weeks ago the untimely death of Mr. George Louis
Beer took out of the intellectual life of the United States a type
of mind we could ill afford to lose at this time — a mind graced
by rare scholarship, prompted by the instinct of statesmanship,
and dedicated to the constructive interpretation of America's
international relations and responsibilities, particularly respect-
ing the rest of the English-speaking world.
Mr. Beer was neither the typical academic historian nor the
typical politician; but his grasp of history saved him from the
temptations of jingoism, opportunism, and narrow nationalism.
Mr. Beer served as Colonial expert for the American Commis-
sion to Negotiate Peace at Paris. Among the innumerable tech-
nical delegates at Paris Mr. Beer won an influence and standing
that was unique by virtue of his profound grasp of the history
and the economic problems involved in the Colonial adjustment.
He was so plainly master of the tangled facts of the colonial
problem that it was a foregone conclusion that Sir Eric Drum-
mond, Secretary-General of the League of Nations, would, as he
did, ask Mr. Beer to take charge of that most difficult section of
the League — the Mandate Section. America's abstention from
the League prevented Mr. Beer's acceptance of this post.
Mr. Beer was in no sense a radical, but he was endowed with
a sense of political and economic realities and animated by an
intuitive appreciation of the just and the workable that fitted
him, as few men are fitted, for the higher politics. His his-
torical writings won the highest approval of such critics as
Lecky. He was for a time prize lecturer in European history
at Columbia University, but he spent ten years in active busi-
ness, thereafter devoting himself to writing. Since 1903 he
spent much time in research and produced, in four volumes, the
history of the British colonial system from 1578 to 1765. These
four volumes were awarded in 1913 the first Loubat Prize as
the best work published in the English language during the
preceding five years on the history, geography, or archaeology
of America. Had he lived he would soon have carried these
studies down into the 19th century.
During the war he regularly contributed to the Round Table
a survey of American politics that was always marked by a
broad grasp of facts and a refreshing sanity of interpretation.
In 1917 he published his "The English-speaking Peoples: Their
Relations and Joint International Obligations." This volume
was a well-documented and closely reasoned examination of the
possibilities of cooperation between England and the United
States. In our young and business-obsessed Republic we produce
too few men like George Louis Beer, men of sound scholarship
with an abiding sense of public responsibility. I could not resist
offering this tribute to a friendship I value, to a man whose
death is a distinct loss to the higher political life of our country.
New York, June U Glenn Frank
More About Academic Freedom
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: In academic circles the conviction is almost universal
that a college professor should not affiliate with a radical party
such as the Socialist, because of the effect it would have on his
teaching. Even those who concede him the right to become a
member of the Socialist Party, for instance, are in the main
against the right of the professor or instructor to become an
aggressive force in his organization, even if he never breathed a
word of his conviction while in class. Among the arguments
advanced in furtherance of this view are two: first, that the
reaction of the student's mind would be that of distrusting the
instructor's teaching because of the belief that it is partisan
agitation, and second, that an institution is after all dependent
on the rich for its endowment, and the reputation for radicalism
in the teaching staff is likely to impoverish it through the
estrangement of its financial supporters. With respect to the
latter view, the point is made that in the general run of things,
thorough teaching will be advanced more effectively by adequate
salaries and equipment than by the freedom of a few to be
over-active in politics.
With reference to the first argument, Mr. Butler has offered
as extreme an exhibition of partisanship as we may ever
hope to see. To begin with, the president of Columbia Uni-
versity, the largest institution in America, has been a narrow
Republican reactionary for many years. At least as many stu-
dents have discounted his addresses because of this far-famed
bias as have ever resented the utterances of a professor of
opposite tendencies. Then, to cap the climax, President
Butler has recently seen fit to call the backers of the leading
popular candidate for nomination "a motley group of stock
gamblers, oil and mining promoters, munition makers and other
like persons." In violent language he made a blanket statement
concerning all those who backed General Wood's candidacy,
although any reasonable man must have known that many
sincere people were in the same camp with the vicious interests
which caused Mr. Butler to become so exasperated. The state-
ment may or may not have been justifiable (probably it was),
and there has been a retraction which retracted nothing but
merely shed further light on Mr. Butler. In any event, the
damage to Columbia is irreparable. It has won it no friends and
made many present or potential supporters indignant.
The question many a docile college victim is asking himself is
whether the President will receive the same rebuke that radical
professors suffer. If it is the duty of a university officer to
regulate his private life always with an eye to the possible reac-
tion of the students to his teaching and the possible disapproval*
of influential distributors of endowments, why should not the
rule apply to all? The answer that universities make by their
failure to chastise the actions of narrow partisans of the exist-
ing parties while suppressing those with radical leanings is the
key to their real attitude on academic freedom. The only thing
that matters is the existent order. It must be maintained.
New York, June 22 H. F.
Consolation
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir : Let us be prepared to console ourselves, in case Harding
should be elected, that his administration will yield one benefit.
In his hands the power of the Presidency will be broken down.
From Lincoln's day to Cleveland's the office was occupied mostly
by pleasant gentlemen. Cleveland undertook initiative, and
struggled with hostile Congresses. McKinley followed with more
initiative, and with friendly Congresses. Then Roosevelt, in
his seven vigorous years, arrogated to the Presidency a power
none before him had dreamed of. If Roosevelt was a Czar,
Wilson is a Sultan. Between them, they have made the office
the most powerful, the most dangerous, in Christendom. So,
even though it be not worth the price we pay, let us be prepared
to rejoice that some of the might of the Presidency will be
wrenched from Harding's hands. We might, as optimists, have
found some consolation even in Leonard Wood's election. It
would have proved what our school boys have been taught since
1785 — that any man can be President of the United States.
Newton, Massachusetts, June 22 Prescott Warren
The Conquest of Haiti
A striking expose
By Herbert J. Seligmann
in next week's issue of The Nation
July 3, 1920]
The Nation
15
Books
Psychology of the Day
Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist. By John B.
Watson. J. B. Lippincott Company.
Human Psychology. By Howard C. Warren. Houghton Mifflin
Company.
General Psychology. By Walter S. Hunter. University of
Chicago Press.
Educational Psychology. By Daniel Starch. The Macmillan
Company.
Employment Psychology. By Henry C. Link. The Macmillan
Company.
The New Science of Analyzing Character. By Harry H. Balkin.
Four Seas Company.
An Outline of Abnormal Psychology. By James Winfred Bridges.
R. G. Adams and Company.
THE "objective" psychologists have of late been variously and
profitably busy; they have pushed far beyond the original
territory of what was invidiously termed physiological psychology
in the days when people were seriously concerned about the fate
of a psychology without a soul. The most characteristic expan-
sion relates to the processes accompanying emotion, and par-
ticularly their dependence upon the intimate and intricate func-
tions of the glands and the autonomic (the sympathetic) nervous
system. The result is a far more adequate conception of nervous
function and its mechanisms than existed before. Inspired by
these examples, the behaviorist has come forward to claim that
all psychology is of the same texture and is to be conquered by
similar methods. The earlier comparative psychologists were
bent upon tracing the counterparts of human mental processes
in animal life, and unquestionably made a muddle of the problem.
The behaviorist rectified the older errors, and turned the tables
by studying man as a human kind of animal.
Hence the interest in observing the behavior of a behaviorist
when he attacks psychology as a whole, as he insists upon at-
tacking conduct as a whole. Professor Watson is the venture-
some pioneer; no more representative exponent could be selected
for the challenge. He wishes it understood that "behaviorism"
is "purely an American production"; though it utilizes the find-
ings of a group of Russian physiologists, it has had no further
indebtedness in developing its position that the psychologist
is an objective student of stimuli and responses. As such he
has no more use for "consciousness" or, for that matter, for
"sensation, perception, attention, will, image, and the like" than
a student of a white rat. They are as unnecessary in teaching
psychology as in research. Psychology is bent upon the "ascer-
taining of such data and laws that, given the stimulus, psy-
chology can predict what the result will be; or, on the other
hand, given the response, it can specify the nature of the effec-
tive stimulus." In the beginning was behavior, and there is
naught but behavior.
According to this program — here maintained with the tenacity
of a dogma — certain problems are treated with a fullness that
reflects at once the author's interest and (we may assume) their
due place in a true up-to-date psychology: the sense-organs, the
nervous system, the beginnings of instinctive and emotional re-
actions in infants, and a variety of matters of practical im-
portance in the kind of conduct expected of the twentieth-
century human animal, both in the laboratory and in the less
well regulated world outside. For a concise survey of these
provinces in the kingdom of psychology of the year 1920, the
book will serve. But how the student is to obtain from the total
text anything but a confused notion of psychology or its place in
the world of thought is by no means clear.
Mr. Watson's piece de risistance is the "conditioned reflex,"
in itself a valuable contribution. It has been shown both in
animals and in men that an artificial stimulus, such as the
ringing of a bell, having been associated with the proper stimulus
for a reflex muscular contraction or for the secretion of a gland,
will of itself after due process of training induce the response.
This by-product is elevated to the dignity of one of the great
methods of behaviorism; it is placed side by side with "verbal
report" — which is the behaviorist's paraphrase for introspection.
Consequently in the human repertory we have explicit and im-
plicit habit responses, both hereditary and acquired; thinking,
which is subvocal talking, is such an implicit habit. Mr. Watson
illustrates: "We can see the functioning of language habits only
slightly in certain activities, as, for example, in swimming, tap-
ping on the table with a pencil, while in certain other types
they form an integral part and seem to be as important as arm
and hand movement, for example, in typewriting, sending, and
receiving telegraphic messages. Finally in certain other func-
tions activity seems to drop out almost entirely as, for example,
in subvocal arithmetic. There the explicit factors show only as
excess movements such as wrinkling the brow, closing the eyes,
and rubbing the forehead, until the final link in the chain is
reached, and answer is written down with the hand. This type
of implicit (largely word) adjustment culminates in thinking,
where an individual may sit for hours with practically no overt
movement, finally announcing, 'I have decided to give up uni-
versity work and enter commercial life!' "
By consistently disregarding all the essential steps in "think-
ing" in which most psychologists (and the world at large) are
interested, and by cavalierly treating the problems in which the
behaviorist happens not to be interested, he produces a "psy-
chology" which is as true as the railway maps of any one com-
pany showing only the towns on its line, with its own route
straight and prominent, and rival systems indicated if at all by
lightly drawn and circuitous detours.
Of very different tenor and temper is the work of Professor
Warren. He is no less concerned than his colleague with the
basic importance of objective psychology and the necessity of a
solid groundwork in nervous structure and function — all as the
foundation for the study of behavior. Psychology is defined as
the study of the reaction of an organism to its environment;
and for more than the first third of the book the student is not
permitted to get even a sniff of consciousness. He is given a
straightforward dose of structure, sense-organ, nervous system,
reflexes, instincts, and total behavior. Mr. Warren's text re-
flects as well as Mr. Watson's the central emphasis assumed in
recent investigation by the study of the animal reaction, the
close intimacy with physiological research, the constant recourse
to the laboratory experiment as the guiding clue and final arbiter
of analysis and research. The two men belong to the same
typical movement of the psychology of the day; but Mr. Warren
understands his pedagogical obligations differently; and he
barely mentions the conditioned reflex.
Professor Hunter believes in a general survey of psychology
for his readers — like sixty days in Europe personally conducted
— with a few chapters upon some of the basal phenomena which
make the tour worth the taking. In point of view he is eclectic,
"a combination of behaviorism and structuralism." In his
itinerary he starts the student in the biological laboratory,
shows him some examples of animal behavior, takes him next to
the nursery or the primary school where children are tested by
the Binet-Simon scale, stopping en route at an employment agency
to inspect similar procedures applied to the adult, then to in-
stitutes for the feeble-minded and the insane with an excursion
into Freudianism, then into the larger world of social rela-
tions and racial differences, before considering the adult human
psychology which the student himself is supposed to incorporate.
Here in turn he begins higher up and works down to the sense-
organ and the nervous structure, closing on the initial theme
of thinking — all in tersest measure. If a teacher of chemistry or
physics adopted this method, he would be promptly outlawed by
his profession. However, one man's pedagogy is another man's
irritation.
16
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2870
While college texts serve to mark the pedagogical perspec-
tive of the profession (and have been used to correct the deplor-
able financial perspective), they represent, especially in a
rapidly shifting and sensitive domain like psychology, the ma-
ture emphasis of those interpreting a specialty for their col-
leagues as well as for students. In this aspect Mr. Watson's
book is distinctly stimulating and unquestionably notable. He
possesses firmness of grasp and capacity for analysis. Such
works mark stages in actual progress, instead of beating time
with improved tempo and more elaborate and timely settings.
But upon the question whether such purpose can be combined
with the instructional aim, and combined in the Watsonian
manner, serious doubt remains. By contrast the serious defect
of Mr. Warren's text is its too didactic tone, its over-emphasis
of verbal arrangement and distinction, its more than occasional
wandering away from the sense of psychological realities; all
of which make the text not only less teachable but a needless
temptation to bad mental habits already sufficiently prevalent.
The distribution of its points of innovation is not always
happy; and the structural sense of the whole suffers. Such
defects make a book unpopular; on the contrary, the defects of
Mr. Hunter's accommodating perspective offers too ready an
appeal to those willing to forego the discipline of serious mental
effort.
Just what should and what should not be included in an "Edu-
cational Psychology" is less a matter of deduction from prin-
ciple than a reflection of interest. Professor Starch is quite
within his rights in following the trend of current interest. That
the problems of the teacher are not the same in content or com-
plexion as the problems of the educational psychologist is
strangely overlooked. We have in this volume an orderly com-
pendium of materials for the study of a large range of psy-
chological processes. It is a treatise upon psychological build-
ing materials and the methods of testing them, when many a
student and many a reader will expect and desire and need a
guide to mental composition and the reasons why minds are and
should be so built.
While Mr. Starch's work bears the hall-mark of the laboratory
and the school-room, that of Mr. Link has the trade-mark of the
busy world outside. It is fortunate that a pioneer treatise on
"Employment Psychology" should be keenly aware of the limi-
tations of the project which he presents. Mr. Link realizes that
if too ambitious a program is set, disrepute will follow quickly
upon sudden favor. The tests devised in the laboratory to
measure relative abilities have made good in the application to
industry. The technique is simple; for what is needed is only a
ranking scale, not uii absolute yardstick. To determine where a
person stands in a group of one hundred as to quickness of
visual perception or span of memory-grasp or skill in handling
simple logical concepts, is readily possible if we can agree as to
the content and method of the tests which shall be accepted as
typical of the traits in question. And even if there is little to
assure us that the tests selected are the best possible, it is possible
to determine that they are good enough. For they may be made
to carry their corrective with them. To this end the candidates
are again rated according to the actual records made in their
pursuits or performance, and still again according to an estimate
of their proficiency or with what has proved to be a fair test
of their general intelligence. The final test lies in the correla-
tion of any one ability with the general intelligence or rating
or accomplishment. After due allowance is made, there can be
no question that the method pays. Psychological testing not
only saves waste in fitting jobs to men or selecting men for jobs;
it analyzes the factors upon which ordinary judgment (which in
a measure it replaces) operates, and assigns unexpected ratings
to points commonly overlooked. It is an efficient aid to analysis,
a corrective of impressionism, and a stimulus to a fairer esti-
mate of human differences. The essential desideratum is to
realize fully and daily the limitations of the method; it is not
a panacea nor is it to be made a cult. That is the great danger
of such "systems"; they produce devotees. This Dr. Link fully
recognizes, and recognizes in detail that the tests succeed best
in occupations which are simple. The Binet tests work because
children are simpler than adults. The more varied and complex
the occupation, the more limited will be the verdict of tests.
It is this obvious financial importance of such works that in-
vites the abuse of the charlatan. A shocking example is the book
of Mr. Balkin with the absurd title "The New Science of Ana-
lyzing Character," a preposterous and mischievous work which
is nothing but a cheap rehash of all the exploded notions of
ignorant pseudo-science, heralded as the rare discovery of a
"character analyst and employer's adviser." The crassest
notions of phrenology and physiognomy are put forth as gospel,
with the usual vaporous padding that gives the reader the
impression that the words contain ideas. There is no purpose in
calling attention to such a work except the social service of
using it as a warning.
The large interest in the abnormal phases of the mind's behav-
ior is represented in the present list by a slight but significant
contribution. Mr. Bridges's book represents the two sources of
the interest in the abnormal: the clinic, with its vexed problem
of classifying in intelligible fashion the varieties of the insani-
ties; and the rational curiosity regarding exaggerations and
distortions of partial mental processes. Defect and excess and
disproportion, impediment and entanglement, and the several
handicaps of inferiority and psychic inhibition, make up a large
and sorry tale of the imperfections of the human mind. It
requires both orders of consideration to complete the survey of
the mentally abnormal; and both are recognized in this well-
planned outline, with, however, too detailed an emphasis of the
clinical features to be adapted to students of psychology who are
not looking forward to medicine. Joseph Jastrow.
The Politics of Young India
The Political Future of India. By Lajpat Rai. B. W. Huebsch;
AMONG the many circumstances which obscure the problem
of India to students of international relations none is
more pernicious than the systematic blindness to the simple
truism that there is no such country as India. The weakest
link in the chain of arguments advanced by Indian politicians
is that bearing on the Native States which, numbering over
half a thousand, cover, in various degrees of subjection to
Great Britain, over a third of the South Asian sub-continent
and comprise about twenty-five per cent of its population. But
even more serious than this breach in the alleged unity of
India is the racial or linguistic disparity of the different pro-
vinces, a disparity which no honest application of Mazzini's
nationality-principle or of the Bolshevist theory of self-determi-
nation could ever ignore. As for the differences between Hindus
and Mohammedans, and the caste divisions in social life of
which even the tyro in Indian affairs glibly talks, they are
quite insignificant when legal, political, or economic organiza-
tion is considered. By no means are they more potent as hin-
drances to national self-realization than are the conditions of
Realpolitik obtaining in the West today. As in Europe, with
its score of kingdoms and republics and its dozen of new
irredentas, in India the real and only legitimate basis of po-
litical differentiation is territorial, allowing of course for the
complications that are inevitable everywhere because of the
borderland Alsace-Lorraines and the question of minorities.
Indeed, the house of cards called United India would not be
more a thing of the past had the fortunes of the last war been
ever so different from what they happened to be; for the terms
of a victorious Germany in regard to Asia and Africa would
hardly have been more ruthless, humanly speaking, than were
those of the Allies in regard to the national boundaries of
Central Europe. The present map of India, hodge-podge as it
is, is the greatest superstition of Indian patriots; the fallacy
of their political writers consists in trying to envisage future
state-making on the lines of the map that has been artificially
July 3, 1920]
The Nation
17
created by the haphazard annexations of the British since 1757.
These considerations will not trouble the reader of Lajpat
Rai's book. The strength and weakness of Mr. Rai are the
strength and weakness of his school, of the political party to
which he belongs. Constructive statesmanship is not to be ex-
pected from persons .who by the force of circumstances are
habituated chiefly to ventilate opinions that have no chance
of being done into life, opinions embodying cut and dried re-
sistance to cut and dried resolutions made by the Foreign
Office — persons who have neither the intellectual boldness to
think in terms of India's freedom nor the moral sincerity to be
champions of the British empire. The world has to recognize
once for all that there are two Indias so far as politics is con-
cerned— one the India that is in evidence and the other the India
that is underground. It is from the open or surface India
that speakers and writers, men of the Indian National Congress
or of the Moslem League (Mr. Rai, for instance), come. The
India of subterranean energies chooses to maintain a solemn
silence except only in armed upheavals whose history and
philosophy have laboriously to be unearthed by officers of the
criminal investigation department.
It is the militaristic activity of this silent and sullen India
with its network of sympathizers and agents in France, Amer-
ica, Germany, Japan, and Russia that taxes the brains of the
far-sighted statesmen of Great Britain, who can afford alto-
gether to ignore the India of speaking agitators as such. All
the sops which those statesmen have been offering since 1908
in order to "rally the moderates to the Crown," as the phrase
goes in Anglo-Indian vocabulary, are but prizes that non-radical
or Menshevik India enjoys on the unseen shoulders of bomb-
throwers and arms-smugglers whose idealism does not stop
short of anything but sovereign independence of the Japanese
type. Even superficial observers could not have failed to no-
tice during and since the war that the open demands of the
Indian National Congress and of the Moslem League rise in
geometrical progression according as the secret societies are felt
mysteriously to be growing in numbers and extending their
conquests from class to class. Only in view of this fact are
Mr. Rai's essay and the latest speeches by political orators on
fiscal autonomy, educational budget, army and navy expenses,
and tariff reform of importance to international diplomatists;
they issue from the only channels through which the surface-
ripples of contemporary India can be observed.
Hopelessly situated as patriotic India is from the standpoint
of military preparedness, the school of open politics can only
exhibit to the world an M. K. Gandhi, with his banner of "de-
votion to truth" (Satyagraha), or passive resistance (the only
form of resistance, by the way, conceivable under the circum-
stances). And while Mohammed Ali, a Moslem leader, preaches
the theocratic ideal of the kingdom of Allah (God), Rabindra-
nath Tagore, the Hindu, invites his compatriots to offer a prayer
to God to give "power to suffer." What else, then, can Mr. Rai
do but seek good company by exhorting his emasculated coun-
trymen to study virtue and morality? Verily, a subject race
can have patriotism but no politics, unless it be the politics
of echoing the sentiments of a half dozen personal friends in
the master race, or of serving as contented second fiddles to the
alien ruler in order to consolidate and fortify his empire against
the eventualities of the "next war." Without committing one-
self to the British or the Indian angle of vision the academic
student of social progress will derive a new orientation in
problems of the contact of cultures by coming in touch with the
politics of Young India. Benoy Kumar Sarkar
The Democratic Convention at
San Francisco
in The Nation of July 10
American Labor History
A Short History of the American Labor Movement. By Mary
Beard. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Organized Labor in American History. By Frank Tracy
Carlton. D. Appleton and Company.
HP HE news about labor in the daily press, the discussions of
*■ labor problems in the street cars and at the supper tables,
even some of the learned articles and speeches by those whom
we are pleased to respect as national leaders, are enough to
enforce, upon the mind of the informed, Graham Wallas's doubt
about the future of our civilization. An age of a thousand
important specialisms, reflected with such little accuracy and
expertness by the average man, cries out for synthesis — but who
is there to furnish it, and how is it to be supplied? In the case
of labor, however, we have a right to expect more widespread
and more detailed information than is ordinarily displayed.
Everyone now understands that a large, perhaps a determining
role in the creation of the immediate future must be assumed
by the labor movement, and there is at least a third of the
morning paper which cannot be read intelligently unless we
know something about it.
Yet even persons with a keen interest in the recent develop-
ments sometimes talk as if unions sprang into active being
yesterday, or as if labor first began to speak through the Rus-
sian Soviets or the British Labor Party. We are apt to forget
that the American labor movement cannot be understood unless
we know its origins and history, and that its history reaches
back almost to the foundation of the republic. This is in part
the fault of American scholars, who left us without an adequate
history until the publication, in 1918, of "A History of Labor
in the United States," by John R. Commons and his associates.
That scholarly two-volume work made an excellent beginning,
but it is perhaps a little forbidding to the general reader.
Certainly there was need for a smaller and more compact sum-
mary for schools. Education cannot be regarded as complete
while students are given Macaulay and left in ignorance of the
background of trade-unions in the United States. For union
classes and labor colleges also a short book is indispensable.
Mrs. Beard's book could hardly be better, as a readable and
brief summary. She has relied principally upon the Commons
history, yet her work is much more useful than an undigested
abstract, because she has regrouped the essential facts under
a scheme more suitable to a short book than the plan of the
two-volume history would be. Her dependence on Mr. Com-
mons is noticeable rather in the interpretation of the facts pre-
sented. This interpretation regards the main events of labor
history as being susceptible of statement in two alternating
curves — one of trade-union economic action proper, and the
other of political action; the trade-union curve rising to its
greatest heights in periods of prosperity, and falling in periods
of depression, and the political curve assuming the opposite
course. There is little fault to be found with this interpreta-
tion, except that Mr. Commons sometimes seems to imply that
increased political action is the cause rather than the result
of trade-union impotence. It also may prove to be somewhat
over-simplified, and forgetful of other profound influences, if,
as is now the case in Britain, there should arise a simultane-
ous leap to power both of trade unions and a labor political
movement. It does not interfere, however, with a candid presen-
tation of the essential facts up to the present. The growth of
the independent local craft unions in the early half of the
nineteenth century, their gradual struggle toward national
affiliation, the successive bodies such as the National Labor
Union, the Knights of Labor, and the American Federation of
Labor, the various cooperative, political, or revolutionary move-
ments, are well presented. In any future edition two minor
corrections should be made. On page 101 the Brotherhood of
Maintenance of Way Employees is listed as one of the four
18
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2870
great independent railway brotherhoods, whereas the Brother-
hood of Railway Trainmen is obviously meant, the former or-
ganization having arisen during the recent war and having
been for a time affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor. On page 124 the federal local is mentioned as an
example of industrial unionism, whereas many of the federal
unions are on a craft basis, and are merely local unions directly
affiliated with the national Federation because no national
bodies exist in their own trades. These errors, however, do not
bulk large in so excellent and useful a manual.
Mr. Carlton's book is by no means so well knit as Mrs.
Beard's. It is rather a collection of articles, the first one alone
being a highly condensed history. The others deal in a more
discursive fashion with labor's part in the adoption and inter-
pretation of the Constitution, in establishing the free school,
in land reform, and in more recent activities. In general they
are enlightened, and represent the newer and more generous
attitude of liberal economists toward the aspirations of labor.
George Soule
Drama
The Changing Drama
Liluli. By Romain Rolland. Boni and Liveright.
First Plays. By A. A. Milne. Alfred A. Knopf.
Three Lancashire Plays. By Harold Brighouse. Samuel French.
The Gloss of Youth. By Henry Howard Furness, Jr. J. B.
Lippincott Company.
The Birth of God. By Verner von Heidenstam. Translated by
K. M. Knudsen. The Four Seas Company.
The Death of Titian. By Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Translated
by J. Heard, Jr. The Four Seas Company.
INTO his lyrical farce M. Rolland has concentrated all as-
pects of the great illusion that fills the world with blood
and din. He is gay, but his gaiety has an edge of sadness; his
touch is both light and plastic, but it builds on a foundation of
severe and systematic thought. He, if no other, sustains in his
exile today the great tradition of France — the tradition of
serious laughter, of undimmed vision, of triumphant good sense.
The memories of men are pitifully like sieves. But in "Liluli"
France at least possesses a brief and lasting reminder of the
true character of the nations' greatest madness. M. Rolland
begins with the doctrine of "Armed Peace," of "fellows so
afraid of fire that they put it to their tails." He points out
the ignoble mockery of life within the states armed for peace,
of "preparedness" and "morale." "Fraternity" is "a cannibal."
"Liberty" is seen "with her horsewhip leading men in chains."
There were the Hurlurberloches and the Gallipoulets — simple,
kindly, at peace. But they were taught to make differences a
matter for hatred, and preparedness a challenge, until their
masters, the Fat Men, had confused and goaded them to the
point of blind rage. The Fat Men grew fatter and roared their
litany: "God created evil, pestilence, patriotism, wealth, and
war." And the young and ardent, Altair and Antares, are de-
luded through what is noblest in them. They sink into the arms
of illusion and die for the Fat Men and the Fat Men's Master —
God. The whole matter is glaringly and cruelly clear to the
few who are accessible to experience and thought. But the
masses of men have little natural aptitude for either, and there-
fore it is a pity that M. Rolland has chosen the now domi-
nant symbolical forms for the embodiment of his fable. Never
so much as today did art need to speak directly. Yet every-
where on the Continent the neo-romantic forms are absorbing
all others. They demand the effort of a highly-trained imagi-
nation and painfully limit the audience of the poet. "Liluli" is
beautiful and memorable. But its literary sophistication stands
in the way of its broader effectiveness.
England was the last country to be reached by the modern
renascence of the drama, so that English playwrights are still
apt to use the naturalistic method which has been largely dis-
carded elsewhere. The persistence of naturalism in England
has been further supported by the fact that the two chief living
British dramatists, Shaw and Galsworthy, are anything in the
world rather than poets and were both unable and unwilling, like
Hauptmann, to follow the lure of the new forms and moods.
The result is that a good, playable, naturalistic play, whether
comic or tragic, is more apt to reach us from England today
than from Germany or France. Mr. A. A. Milne's "First Plays"
are cases in point. No young Continental artist, discovering
himself to be a playwright during the very years of the war,
would have written with this sobriety, good humor, and straight-
forward realism. Such an artist would, no doubt, have written
more profoundly and imaginatively, but also more obscurely
and, in no low sense, less usefully. Mr. Milne, to be sure, is
capable of being both trivial and sentimental. But his dialogue
is deft and natural, and his observation of human nature cool
and sane. His best play, The Lucky One, a comedy-drama in
three acts, is an admirable piece of dramatic writing. Its struc-
ture has the grace of unobtrusive naturalness, its people have
an easy genuineness of speech and gesture, its spiritual point is
profound without mysteriousness and subtle without obscurity.
To the shame of both the London and the New York managers
this play has so far gone begging for a production and gone
in vain.
The "Manchester School" of drama which owes so much to the
excellent repertory playhouse of Miss Horniman has also been
prevalently naturalistic in method. Its danger has been a
sudden sagging into either the sentimental or the melodramatic.
The late Stanley Houghton escaped that danger in "The Younger
Generation," and Mr. Allan Monkhouse escaped it in his delight-
ful "Mary Broome." Mr. Brighouse's touch and temper are
equally uncertain. The most ambitious of his three Lancashire"
plays is "The Northerners." The time is 1820, the theme the
futile rebellion of the weavers whose hand-looms disappeared"
and who were driven by hunger into the terrible slavery of .the
early factories. Thus Mr. Brighouse directly challenges com-
parison with Hauptmann. And that is a bit of excessive rash-
ness. His own action is ingenious in the bad and artificial
sense, and flares into the noisiest melodrama in the last act.
His people speak in terrible pentameters that Mr. Brighouse
either did not hear or, what is worse, enjoyed.
Maybe if you had done that earlier
We should have seen by now some sign of what
I'm looking for from you.
"The Game" is a far sounder and less pretentious play than "The
Northerners"; "Zack" is negligible.
"The Gloss of Youth" is an eminent scholar's brief diversion
in which Shakespeare discusses with John Fletcher his relations
to the public and his art and is consoled by the appreciation of
two children who are no other than little "Jack" Milton and
"Noll" Cromwell. It is all a little over-intentional, and the
prose of the dialogue scans even more swellingly than that of
Mr. Brighouse. But the little play is, no doubt, well suited for
such academic occasions as the one which caused it to be written.
The last and first phases of Continental neo-romanticism are
represented by Heidenstam's "The Birth of God" and Hofmanns-
thal's "The Death of Titian." One need be no morose praiser
of time past to prefer the first phase to the last. When the boy
Hofmannstahl — he was only seventeen — wrote "Der Tod des
Tizian," what stirred him was the wonder of the world's beauty
and the miracle of art. He was neither rebelling nor reacting
against anything. He fashioned those incomparable verses
(which Mr. Heard has sensitively read but quite failed to ren-
der) because the very pang of beauty wrung them from him.
No wonder that such verses are not written today either in
Vienna or elsewhere. Yet what do the new mysteries of the
neo-romantics avail us? In spare and fragile prose the Swedish
poet echoes a cry that we find in many of the works of the
poets of post-war Europe, the cry after a new god. Has not
humanity suffered and bled enough — as Rolland makes clear —
July 3, 1920]
The Nation
19
for the gods of its own making? Will the new god be less
man-made than the old? Beauty, at least, exists. We know it
by our vision and our touch. To love and conserve and in-
crease it, is better than to cry into the void.
Ludwig Lewisohn
Books in Briel
THE orthodox economists are in such a helpless muddle in
regard to soaring prices that it is a relief to find a thinker
who does not scatter explanations with a shot gun all over the
barn door but goes straight to his mark. Major C. H. Douglas,
in "Economic Democracy" (Harcourt, Brace and Howe), finds
the explanation in the relation of banker-credit to sale-price. It
is the "unearned increment" idea applied to industrialism. The
book is immensely stimulating; it is fresh and sincere in the
finest British way. There is not a word of cant, not even the
conventional Marxian phraseology. The author accepts the facts
which the war laid bare, stripping away the humbuggery which
timid souls love to veil their eyes with. Democracy means to
him freedom of endeavor in a society where the social wealth no
longer lies open to exploitation for individual advantage. This
freedom he finds everywhere threatened by centralization — a
pyramidal structure of society with its Prussian regimentation
controlled by ambitious self-seekers. Bureaucratic socialism
offers no remedy, for it implies an even worse autocracy. The
key to the solution is found in the social control of credit, which
is the financial reflex of productive power. It rests partly upon
labor power, but far more upon the accumulated wealth of
inventions, processes, raw materials, and the like — wealth which
in no sense is individual. The banker-financier today, it is
claimed, exploits this social-power of production; he taxes the
public by adding his credit-profit to the sale' price, thereby
creating the ugly paradox that the producer cannot buy what he
produces because of an inadequate wage-fund. This is the dis-
ease from which the present system is here said to be dying; and
increased production only aggravates the disease. Socialize
credit, says Major Douglas, and the way is left open to individual
initiative, while at the same time the sale price will fall approx-
imately to the labor cost. This process is illustrated in a sug-
gestive way. Unfortunately the book is too brief. Excessive
concentration has left it obscure in vital portions — a weakness
that should be removed in a second edition. P.
A N analysis of British characteristics by a British professor
■**• is a difficult task for any fair-minded man, which is prob-
ably why Mr. J. S. Mackenzie, in "Arrows of Desire" (Mac-
millan), draws upon a consensus of other people's opinions with
which to support his own. This continual reference to authori-
ties is a little wearisome to the flesh, the more so since Mr.
Mackenzie shows himself a really competent judge of the matter,
avoiding self-glorification without the obverse fault of detrac-
tion in order to prove himself just. Taking Shakespeare's
Henry V as his text he agrees with most of what Bradley has
written on the subject, but discusses at some length its appli-
cation to the charge of hypocrisy that is continually laid at the
door of the British nation. Perhaps Voltaire's epigram that
hypocrisy is the homage which vice renders to virtue is the
best apology that was ever offered for the British attitude of
mind. Or, as some one explained a bigamist by saying that he
was so respectable that he simply couldn't live with some one to
whom he wasn't married, so the Briton is so anxious to be on
the side of the angels that sometimes he may take crooked paths
to get there. The question came up in all its force at the
beginning of the war when Lord Grey was considered a monster
of hypocrisy by the Central Empires for not having said earlier
that England would come into the war. Mr. Mackenzie's own
ALFRED ' A ' KNOPF
R'?l^*5,M^*JallB;*?JllB;»?I!lo;»?,llE!:*?aMB?*5al|K»'»x»l|Bp«2D"
iio W. 42 Street, NEW YORK
B5*5BllB^»51llB?*!!0llB5»3allB?*3SJllB^4?aMK?*33!lB?t5allES*2alt7''
Somerset Maugham
so widely known for his MOON AND SIX-
PENCE, has here in THE LAND OF THE
BLESSED VIRGIN plied his brush on new
canvases, those of sketches and impres-
sions of Andalusia — that province which is
the essence of Spain — with its opulent color,
luminous and soft, its white cities bathed in
light, and its silent cloudless nights. This
book gives, above all, an extreme sense of
vigorous life. $2.50.
Autobiography plus
Philosophy plus Politics
In YOUTH AND EGOLATRY Pfo Baroja,
foremost Spanish novelist, has written a vol-
ume of penetrating doctrine which confirms
his position as the shrewdest and keenest
continental author now writing. The book
is Number I of the very interesting "Free
Lance" Series, which H. L. Mencken is edit-
ing. Mr. Mencken furnishes an Introduc-
tion to this volume. $1.75.
Country Sentiment
is the latest collection of poems from the pen
of Robert Graves, one of the foremost of the
younger group of English poets to which
Bassoon and Robert Nichols belong. Louis
Untermoycr said of him when his FAIRIES
AND FUSILIERS appeared: "It is a fine-
tempered instrument ho uses, and the music
he strikes from it is as lovely as it is varied.*
$1.25.
The Golden Bird
is the first book (although anything but the
first written work) of a very young English
writer, Dorothy Easton. It is a collection
of stories of the southern countryside of
England. Miss Easton was "discovered" by
John Galsworthy, who is very enthusiastic
about her and has written an Introduction
to her book. $2.00.
Economic Reprints
I. THE LIFE OF ROBERT OWEN.
II-III. THE LIFE AND STRUGGLES
OF WILLIAM LOVETT.
IV. THE PIONEERS OF LAND RE-
FORM.
These four volumes inaugurate a series of
works by eminent leaden in economic fields.
They are the first issues in a new "Socio-
Economic" section of the famous Bohn Li-
1 T.i ries which were started in 1847 by Henry
George Bohn, and in 1864 were taken over
by G. Bell and Sons, Ltd. The American
edition is a small compact one, printed on
thin but strong paper and substantially
bound in cloth — of a size to fit the pocket.
Each $1.50.
1
Wordsworth Again
WORDSWORTH: AN ANTHOLOGY is
made up of poems selected and arranged
with a prefatory note by T. J. Cobden-San-
derson. "This beautiful book, of full pages,
generous margins, and the delightful type
we expect from Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, will
certainly become a treasured possession of
many Wordsworthians and, given by them
to others, will bring converts to the faith."
— London Times. The edition for America
is limited to only 250 copies. $3.00.
"A Genuine Singer"
says Reedy's Mirror of Witter Bynner, "A
poet with a complete mastery of the art
within his range, and that range broad, high,
and deep." Mr. Bynner once more bears out
this statement in this latest and most im-
portant collection of his recent verse, A
CANTICLE OF PAN. The title poem is
a chant of communion between the Christ-
Child and the pagan god, Pan, and was
given as the Phi Beta Kappa poem at the
University of California a year ago. $2.00.
Thoroughly Enjoyable
is BARENT CREIGHTON, by Don C. Shafer,
a tale of the highways and byways of the
New York of eighty years ago. Do you like
romance, excitement, mystery, humor?
There's a dashing hero, a plucky girl, and
the midnight inquisitions of the famous
Anti-Rent disturbances. A story that will
peal especially to all lovers of Jeffry
Farnol. $2.00".
Ii^lltfrlallt^iallr^igll^^
20
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2870
analysis is very enlightening in this direction; but perhaps his
best section is that dealing with the common charges of cruelty
and sentimentality against the English. "In general," he says,
"when the English are cruel, they try to connect their cruelty
with some form of moral sentiment. This cruelty is partly to be
ascribed to the doggedness of the national temperament. An
Englishman is not readily deterred from any course upon which
he has entered. Hence, in the attempt to devise deterrent pun-
ishments those who use them are driven from one severity to
another."
A PICTURE of the Near East, exotic yet diffused with
that tranquil candor which bespeaks authenticity, is un-
rolled to Occidental eyes in "La Danseuse de Shamakha," by
Armen Ohanian (Paris: Grasset). It is the life of an Armen-
ian girl who, after dancing her way to Paris by way of the
music halls of England and America, after tasting the pleasures
and learning the gray routine of civilization, turns back, re-
gretfully, to relate her childhood and the long Asian Odyssey
of her adventurous youth. A true artist, unspoiled by Western
conventions of vision and expression, Mile. Ohanian has suc-
ceeded in giving a panorama-like unity to these intimate,
romantic sketches. One follows, entranced as by some new
Arabian Nights, their various phases: the stately Oriental pic-
ture of her childhood in patriarchal Armenia, the disillusion of
her schooldays in Russian Baku, the tragic end of her father,
massacred by Cossacks; the hasty marriage that ended so piti-
fully, the long, contented stay with a Mohammedan family of
Persia, and at last the artist's restlessness and the artist's curi-
osity which led her to Constantinople, Greece, and Egypt, where
she signed away her liberty in a contract with a European
theatrical manager. A sequel, describing her career "dans les
griffes de la civilisation," is promised to this curious volume of
memories, which holds the reader by a vivid, nostalgic charm
somewhat recalling Pierre Loti. A brief letter of introduction,
by Anatole France, serves as preface.
Roman Essays and
Interpretations
By W. Warde Fowler
The ripe fruit of a long life of scholarship are these papers
dealing with a variety of subjects in Latin literature and
mythology which will interest the folklorist, the student of
comparative religion and the general reader as well as the
classical student.
Medals of the Renaissance
By G. F. Hill
Net $25.00
A splendid book covering the entire field of medallic art
both Continental and English during the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries, valuable alike as a reference work and
for its fine illustrations. It should be especially noted
that the medals figured here have for the most part
not been previously illustrated.
At all booksellers or
from the publishers
mn
Oxford University Press
^4merican "Branch.
35 West 32nd Street
NwYfork
WHAT THE WORKERS WANT
By
Arthur Gleason
A record of the aims and achievements of
British labor, telling what the workers want,
in their own words — not what an intellectual
thinks they ought to want.
518 pages; $4.00 net.
"A public document of the first importance."
Harold J. Laski, New Republic.
"Mr. Gleason's touch resembles the vividness of
William James."
N. Y. Evening Sun.
"An extremely interesting and comprehensive picture
of British Labor."
N. Y. Tribune.
"IV hat the Workers Want may serve as a text book
for the American Worker."
San Francisco Call.
HARCOURT, BRACE & HOWE, &&-*%&.
A Cooperative
Print Shop
offers the best assurance that work
will have prompt, intelligent han-
dling, and that costs will be lower
than in other shops giving an equal
service and equal quality.
The Nation Press is a complete co-
operative democracy where each
worker, from the skilled journeyman
to the messenger boy, is interested
in pleasing the customer.
THE NATION PRESS, Inc.
Telephone 9092 Barclay
20 VESEY STREET NEW YORK
International Relations Section
Contents
THE TURKISH TREATY 21
BOYCOTTING REACTION IN HUNGARY 27
The Turkish Treaty
THE official summary of the Turkish treaty handed to
the Turkish delegates on May 11 follows. In response
to a request for more time in which to consider the docu-
ment, July 11 has been fixed by the Allies as the final date
for acceptance or rejection.
Preamble
The preamble recites shortly the origin of the war and enu-
merates the High Contracting Parties, represented by the four
principal Allied Powers, the British Empire, France, Italy, and
Japan, and the other Allied Powers, Belgium, Greece, the Hejaz,
Armenia, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, the Serb-Croat-Slovene
State, and Czecho- Slovakia on the one hand, and Turkey on
the other.
Part I: League of Nations
Here follows the text of the Covenant as embodied in the
treaty of peace with Germany.
Part II: The Boundaries of Turkey
The boundaries of Turkey are described in two articles, one
dealing with Turkey in Europe and the other with Turkey in
Asia. The frontier of Turkey in Europe is approximately that
of the Chatalja lines, the northern half of these lines being, how-
ever, advanced in a northwesterly direction so as to include
within the boundaries of Turkey the whole area of Lake Derkos,
which is a reservoir for the supply of water to Constantinople.
The boundaries of Turkey in Asia remain the same except as
regards the southern frontier, which together with the new
frontier in Europe and the boundary of the Greek administrative
zone round Smyrna (see section dealing with Smyrna below), is
shown approximately on the attached map. The above bounda-
ries are described in detail in the treaty in so far as they are
not left to be settled by boundary commissions on the spot. Pro-
vision is also made in the treaty for a possible modification of
the present frontier between Turkey and the independent state
of Armenia — viz., the former Russo-Turkish frontier in this
region, by reference to the arbitration of the President of the
United States regarding a new boundary for Armenia in the
vilayets of Trebizond, Erzerum, Van, and Bitlis.
Part III: Political Clauses
Constantinople
Subject to the provisions of the treaty, the parties agree to
the maintenance of Turkish sovereignty over Constantinople,
but a reservation is made that if Turkey fails to observe the
provisions of the treaty or of supplementary treaties or conven-
tions, particularly as regards the protection of minorities, the
Allied Powers may modify the above provisions, and Turkey
agrees to accept any dispositions which may be made in this con-
nection.
The Straits
The navigation of the Straits, including the Dardanelles, the
Sea of Marmora, and the Bosphorus, is to be open in future both
in peace and war to every vessel of commerce or of war and to
military and commercial aircraft without distinction of flag.
These waters are not to be subject to blockade, and no belliger-
ent right is to be exercised nor any act of hostility committed
within them unless in pursuance of a decision of the Council of
the League of Nations.
A Commission of the Straits is established with control over
these waters, to which both the Turkish and Greek Governments
delegate the necessary powers. The Commission is composed of
representatives appointed respectively by the United States of
America (if and when that Government is willing to participate) ,
the British Empire, France, Italy, Japan, Russia (if and when
Russia becomes a member of the League of Nations), Greece,
Rumania, and Bulgaria (if and when Bulgaria becomes a mem-
ber of the League of Nations) . Each Power is to appoint one
representative, but the representatives of the United States, the
British Empire, France, Italy, Japan, and Russia have two votes
each, and the representatives of the other three Powers one vote
each.
The Commission exercises its authority in complete independ-
ence of the local authority, with its own flag, budget, and sepa-
rate organization. The Commission is charged with the execu-
tion of any works necessary for the improvement of the channels
or the approaches to harbors, lighting and buoying, the control
of pilotage and towage, the control of anchorages, the control
necessary to assure the execution in the ports of Constantinople
and Haidar Pasha of the regime laid down in that part of the
treaty relating to ports, waterways, and railways, and the con-
trol of all matters relating to wrecks and salvage and lighterage.
In the case of threats to the freedom of passage of the Straits,
special provision is made for appeal by the Commission to the
representatives at Constantinople of Great Britain, France, and
Italy, which Powers, under the military provisions of the treaty,
provide forces for the occupation of the zone of the Straits.
These representatives will concert with the naval and military
commanders of the Allied forces the necessary measures,
whether the threat comes from within or without the zone of the
Straits.
Provision is also made for the acquisition of property or per-
manent works by the Commission, the raising of loans, the levy-
ing of dues on shipping in the Straits, the transfer to the Com-
mission of the functions exercised within the waters of the
Straits by the Constantinople Superior Council of Health, the
Turkish Sanitary Administration, and the National Life Boat
Service of the Bosporus, and the relations of the Commission
with persons or companies now holding concessions relating to
lighthouses, docks, quays, or similar matters are laid down.
The Commission is empowered to raise a special police force,
and provision is made for dealing with infringements of the reg-
ulations and by-laws of the Commission by the appropriate local
courts, whether consular, Turkish, or Greek.
A special article lays down that all dues and charges imposed
22
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2870
by the Commission shall be levied without any discrimination
and on a footing of absolute equality between all vessels, what-
ever their port of origin or destination or departure, their flag
or ownership, or the nationality or the ownership of their
cargoes.
Articles analogous to the relevant provisions of the Suez
Canal Convention of 1888 deal with the transit of warships,
prizes, the passage of belligerent warships, and their stay within
the waters under the control of the Commission as well as their
repair or replenishment with supplies or the completion of their
crews, but the freedom of action of belligerents acting in pursu-
ance of a decision of the Council of the League of Nations is
specially reserved. Further regulations are to be laid down by
the League of Nations regarding the passage of war material
and contraband destined for the enemies of Turkey and other
kindred matters.
Kurdistan
Turkey accepts in advance a scheme of local autonomy for
the predominantly Kurdish areas, east of the Euphrates, south
of the southern frontier of Armenia, as eventually fixed, and
north of the southern frontier of Turkey, to be drafted by a
commission composed of British, French, and Italian representa-
tives sitting at Constantinople. This scheme is to protect the
rights of Assyro-Chaldeans and other racial or religious minori-
ties within the above area, and with this object provision is also
rSade for a possible rectification of the Turkish frontier, where
that frontier coincides with that of Persia.
Secondly, the treaty provides for an appeal for complete inde-
pendence, within a stated time to the Council of the League of
Nations by the Kurdish peoples within the above area, and for
the grant of such independence by Turkey, if recommended by
the Council. In that event the Kurds inhabiting that part of
Kurdistan which has hitherto been included in the Mosul vilayet
are to be allowed, if they so desire, to adhere to the independent
Kurdish state.
Smyrna
The Turkish Government agrees to transfer to the Greek Gov-
ernment the exercise of her rights of sovereignty over a special
area round the city of Smyrna. In witness of Turkish sover-
eignty the Turkish flag is to be flown on one of the forts outside
Smyrna. The Greek Government is to be responsible for the
administration of the area, may keep troops there to maintain
order, may include the area in the Greek customs system, and is
to establish a local parliament on the basis of a scheme of pro-
portional representation of minorities which is to be submitted
to the Council of the League of Nations and only to come into
force after approval by a majority of the Council. The elections
may be postponed for a limited period to allow the return of
inhabitants banished or deported by the Turkish authorities.
Special provisions are included regarding the protection of
"minorities, the nationality of the inhabitants in the area and
their protection abroad, the suspension of compulsory military
service, freedom of commerce and transit, the use of the port of
Smyrna by Turkey, the currency of the area, financial obliga-
tions, and the salt mines of Phocoea.
Finally, after five years the local parliament may ask the
Council of the League of Nations for the incorporation of the
area in the kingdom of Greece, and the Council may impose a
plebiscite, but if such incorporation is granted, Turkey agrees in
advance to renounce all her rights to the territory in favor of
Greece.
Greece
Turkey renounces in favor of Greece her rights and titles over
Turkish territory in Europe outside the frontier shown on the
attached map, as well as over Imbros, Tenedos, Lemnos, Samo-
thrace, Mytilene, Samos, Nikaria, and Chios, and certain other
islands in the Aegean. In the zone of the Straits the Greek
Government accepts practically the same obligations as are
imposed in Turkey. Provision is made for a separate treaty to
be signed by Greece, protecting racial, linguistic, and religious
minorities in her new territories, particularly at Adrianople,
and safeguarding freedom of transit and equitable treatment of
the commerce of other nations. Greece also assumes certain
financial obligations.
Armenia
Turkey recognizes Armenia as a free and independent state,
and agrees to accept the arbitration of the President of the
United States of America upon the question of the frontier
between Turkey and Armenia in the vilayets of Erzerum, Trebi-
zond, Van, and Bitlis, and upon Armenia's access to the sea.
Provision is made for the obligations and rights which may pass
to Armenia as the result of the award of the President giving
former Turkish territory to her, for the eventual delimitation
of the Armenian frontiers in Turkey as a result of the arbitra-
tion and of the Armenian frontiers with Georgia and Azerbaijan,
failing direct agreement on the subject by the three states, and
for a separate treaty to be signed by Armenia protecting racial,
linguistic, and religious minorities, and safeguarding freedom
of transit and equitable treatment for the commerce of other
nations.
Syria and Mesopotamia
Syria and Mesopotamia are provisionally recognized by the
High Contracting Parties as independent states in accordance
with Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, sub-
ject to the tendering of administrative advice and assistance by
a mandatory until they are able to stand alone. The boundaries
of the states and the selection of mandatories will be fixed by the
principal Allied Powers.
Palestine
By the application of the provisions of Article 22 of the Cove-
nant, the administration of Palestine is also intrusted to a man-
datory. The selection of the mandatory and the determination
of the frontiers of Palestine will be made by the principal Allied
Powers. The declaration originally made on November 2, 1917
by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Gov-'
ernments, in favor of a national home for the Jewish people in
Palestine is reaffirmed and its terms cited in the treaty. Provi-
sion is also made for a special commission with a chairman
appointed by the League of Nations, to study and regulate all
questions and claims relating to the different religious communi-
ties in Palestine.
The terms of the mandates will be drafted by the principal
Allied Powers and submitted to the Council of the League of
Nations for approval.
Hejaz
Turkey, in accordance with the action already taken by the
Allied Powers recognizes the Hejaz as a free and independent
state, and transfers to the Hejaz her sovereign rights over terri-
tory outside the boundaries of the former Turkish Empire and
within the boundaries of the Hejaz as shall ultimately be fixed.
In view of the sacred character of the cities and Holy Places
of Mecca and Medina in the eyes of all Moslems, the King of the
Hejaz undertakes to insure free and easy access thereto of Mos-
lems of every country desiring to go there on pilgrimages and
for other religious objects, and respect for pious foundations.
Provision is also made for complete commercial equality in the
territory of the Hejaz as regards the new states in Turkey and
all states members of the League of Nations.
Egypt, Sudan, and Cyprus
Turkey renounces all rights and titles over Egypt as from
November 5, 1914, and recognizes the Protectorate proclaimed
by Great Britain over Egypt on December 18, 1914. Special
clauses provide for the acquisition of Egyptian nationality by
Turkish subjects, and their right to opt for Turkish nationality,
for the treatment of Egypt and Egyptian nationals, their goods
and vessels, on the same footing as the Allied Powers and their
nationals, for the protection of Egyptian nationals abroad by
Great Britain, for the renunciation in favor of Great Britain of
the powers conferred upon the Sultan of Turkey by the Conven-
tion signed at Constantinople on October 29, 1888, regarding the
Suez Canal, for the treatment of property belonging to the
Turkish Government and Turkish nationals in Egypt, for the
July 3, 1920]
The Nation
23
renunciation by Turkey of all claim to the tribute formerly paid
by Egypt, and for the acceptance by Great Britain of Turkey's
liability for Turkish loans secured on the Egyptian tribute.
The High Contracting Parties take note of the convention
between the British and Egyptian Governments of January 19,
1899, and the supplementary convention of July 10, 1899, regard-
ing the status and administration of the Sudan.
The High Contracting Parties also recognize the annexation
of Cyprus proclaimed by the British Government on November
5, 1914. Turkey renounces all rights over the island including
the right to tribute formerly paid by that island to the Sultan,
and provision is made for the acquisition of British nationality
by Turkish nationals born or habitually resident in Cyprus.
Morocco, Tunis
Turkey recognizes the French Protectorate in Morocco as from
March 30, 1912, and the French Protectorate over Tunis as from
May 12, 1881. Moroccan and Tunisian goods entering Turkey
shall be subject to the same treatment as French goods.
Libya, Aegean Islands
Turkey renounces all rights and privileges left to the Sultan
in Libya under the Treaty of Lausanne of October 12, 1912.
Turkey also renounces in favor of Italy all rights and titles over
the Dodecanese, now in the occupation of Italy, and also over the
island of Castellorizzo.
Nationality
Detailed provisions are inserted in the treaty for regulating
the status of Turkish subjects habitually resident in territory
detached by the treaty from Turkey. These follow generally the
lines of analogous provisions inserted in the treaty with Austria.
General Provisions
Under this heading Turkey recognizes and accepts all other
treaties and supplementary conventions with other enemy states,
and with states now existing or coming into existence in future
in the whole or part of the former Russian Empire, as well as
the abrogation of the Brest-Litovsk treaties, and of all treaties,
conventions, and agreements made by Turkey with the Bolshe-
vist Government in Russia. Special provision is made for Tur-
key's acceptance of a scheme of judicial reform (on the lines
either of a mixed or unified system) to be drafted by the princi-
pal Allied Powers with the assistance of technical experts of the
other capitulatory Powers, Allied or neutral. This scheme shall
replace the present capitulatory system in judicial matters in
Turkey. Clauses also provide for an amnesty by Turkey to
Turkish subjects assisting the Allies during the war, and for
the renunciation by Turkey of all rights of suzerainty or juris-
diction over Moslems who are subject to the sovereignty or pro-
tectorate of any other state.
Part IV: Protection of Minorities
Turkey is to assure full and complete protection of life and
liberty to all inhabitants of Turkey without distinction of birth,
nationality, language, race, or religion. Special provision is
made for the annulment of forcible conversions to Islam during
the war and for the search and delivery, under the aegis of mixed
commissions appointed by the League of Nations, of all persons
in Turkey of whatever race or religion carried off, interned, or
placed in captivity during the war, and for future agreements
with Turkey and other states regarding reciprocal or voluntary
emigration of persons belonging to racial minorities.
The law of abandoned properties, 1915, is to be repealed, and
Turkey agrees to certain measures of restitution and reparation,
controlled by mixed arbitral commissions appointed by the
League of Nations, in favor of subjects of non-Turkish race who
have suffered during the war. These commissions will have
power generally to arrange for carrying out works of recon-
struction, the removal of undesirable persons from different
localities, the disposal of property belonging to members of a
community who have died or disappeared during the war with-
out leaving heirs, and for the cancellation of forced sales of
property during the war.
This chapter further safeguards by special provisions the civil
and political rights of minorities, the free use of their language,
their right to establish, without interference by the Turkish
authorities, educational, religious, and charitable institutions,
and their ecclesiastical and scholastic autonomy. The measures
necessary to guarantee the execution of this chapter of the
treaty are to be decided upon by the principal Allied Powers in
consultation with the Council of the League of Nations, and
Turkey accepts in advance any decisions that may be taken on
the subject.
Part V: Military Clauses
In order to render possible the initiation of a general limita-
tion of the armaments of all nations, Turkey undertakes strictly
to observe the military, naval, and air clauses which follow.
The military terms provide for the demobilization of the Turk-
ish armies and the imposition of other military restrictions
within three months of the signing of the treaty.
Recruiting on a voluntary and non-racial, non-religious basis
is to be established, providing for the enlistment of non-com-
missioned officers and men for a period of not less than twelve
consecutive years, and stipulating that officers shall serve for
twenty-five years, and shall not be retired until the age of forty-
five. No reserve of officers with war service is permitted, and
the annual replacement of either officers or men who leave
before the expiration of their term is not to exceed 5 per cent
of the total effectives of commissioned and other ranks respec-
tively.
Turkey will be allowed to maintain an armed land force to
serve the following purposes: the maintenance of internal order
and security; the protection of minorities; the control of Turk-
ish frontiers.
This force will comprise (1) gendarmerie, 35,000 men; (2)
special elements intended for the reinforcement of the gen-
darmerie in case of serious trouble, 15,000 men; (3) the Sultan's
bodyguard, 700 men.
The gendarmerie is to be distributed over Turkish territory,
which will be divided for this purpose into a number of terri-
torial areas to be delimited by the inter-Allied commission
which will be responsible for the control and organization of the
Turkish armed force. In each territorial area there will be one
gendarmerie legion, the maximum strength of which is not to
exceed one-quarter of the total strength of the gendarmerie.
Neither artillery nor technical troops will be included in the
gendarmerie legions. Provision is made for the collaboration
of officers from Allied and neutral Powers in the command and
training of the gendarmerie.
The special elements referred to above may include mountain
artillery and technical services, in addition to infantry, cavalry,
and general administrative services. Not more than one-third
of the total strength of the special elements may be allotted to
any one territorial area.
It will be seen from the above that the total number of Turk-
ish effectives — excluding the Sultan's bodyguard — is fixed at
50,000, which figure includes not more than 2,500 officers. Any
increase in the number of customs and forestry officials or urban
police, or the military training of these, or of railway employees
is prohibited, and no formations are to include supplementary
cadres.
Military schools are to be reduced to one for officers, and one
per territorial area for non-commissioned officers.
The armament, munitions, and material of war at the disposal
of Turkey are limited to a schedule based on the amount con-
sidered necessary for the new armed force. No reserves may be
formed, and all existing armaments, munitions, and stores in
excess of the limit fixed must be handed to the Allies for dis-
posal. No flame throwers, poison gases, tanks, nor armored
cars are to be manufactured or imported. The manufacture of
arms and war material of any sort shall take place only in
factories authorized by the Inter-Allied Commission of Control.
Turkey is prohibited from manufacturing armaments and muni-
tions for foreign countries, and from importing them from
abroad.
24
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2870
For the purpose of guaranteeing the freedom of the Straits
all works, fortifications, and batteries are to be demolished
within a zone extending 20 kilometers inland from the coasts of
the Sea of Marmora and of the Straits and comprising the
islands of the Sea of Marmora, also the islands of Lemnos,
Imbros, Samothrace, Tenedos, and Mytilene.
The construction of similar works or of roads or railways suit-
able for the rapid transport of mobile batteries is forbidden;
France, Great Britain, and Italy have the right to prepare for
demolition any existing roads and railways which might be
utilized to this end, and to maintain such military forces within
the zone as they may consider necessary; otherwise the zone is
not to be used for military purposes. This provision does not
exclude the employment of forces of Greek and Turkish gen-
darmerie which will be under the inter- Allied command of the
forces of occupation, nor the presence of the Sultan's bodyguard.
Naval
The naval clauses provide for the surrender of all Turkish
warships with the exception of a few small, lightly-armed vessels
which may be retained for police and fishery duties.
Turkey is forbidden to construct or acquire any surface war-
ships other than those required to replace the units allowed for
police and fishery duties, and is also forbidden to construct or
acquire any submarine, even for commercial purposes. Vessels
which have been in use as transports and fleet auxiliaries and
which can be converted to commercial use are to be disarmed
and treated as other merchant vessels.
Warships under construction, including submarines, are to be
broken up, except such surface warships as can be completed
for commercial purposes, and the material arising from the
breaking up is only to be used for purely industrial purposes.
All naval war material and munitions, except such as are
allowed for the use of the police and fishery vessels, are to be
surrendered and their manufacture in Turkish territory is for-
bidden.
A certain number of the officers and men from the late Turk-
ish navy may be retained for providing the personnel of the
police, fishery, and signal services; the remainder is to be demo-
bilized and no other naval forces are to be organized in Turkey.
The personnel for the police and fishery services is to be
recruited on a voluntary and long service basis.
The W/T stations in the zone of the Straits are to be sur-
rendered, and neither Turkey nor Greece will be permitted to
build W/T stations in the zone.
A naval commission, composed of representatives of the prin-
cipal Allied Powers, will be appointed to exercise supervision as
long as may be necessary to insure the above conditions being
complied with.
Air
The air clauses provide that no military or naval air forces
are to be maintained by Turkey; that the entire Turkish air
force personnel is to be demobilized within two months; and
that the aircraft of the Allied Powers are to have freedom of
passage over and transit and landing throughout Turkish terri-
tory until the complete evacuation of Turkey by the Allies.
The manufacture, importation, and exportation of aircraft or
their component parts in Turkish territory during six months
following the coming into force of the treaty is forbidden. All
military and naval aircraft (including dirigibles) either com-
plete or in process of manufacture, assembling, or repair, all
aeronautical material, armament, munitions, and instruments
are to be delivered to the principal Allied Powers within three
months from the signing of the treaty. The air navigation
clauses follow the lines of those in the other peace treaties.
Inter- A Hied Commissions
These clauses provide that the military, naval, and air clauses
of the treaty are to be executed under the control of military,
naval, and aeronautical inter-Allied commissions of which the
upkeep and expenditure are to be borne by Turkey.
With the exception of the special section of the Military Inter-
Allied Commission of Control and Organization, which is to
supervise the control, organization, and distribution of the new
Turkish armed force, these commissions will cease to operate
when their work is completed. This section is to operate for a
period of five years from the signing of the treaty. At the end
of this period the principal Allied Powers are to decide whether
the activities of the commission shall continue.
Representatives from each of the three commissions will be
appointed to control jointly the measures to be taken with regard
to safeguarding the zone of the Straits.
General
General articles provide for certain portions of the armistice
of October 30, 1918, to remain in force.
No part is to be taken by Turkey, nor by any individual Turk,
in the military, naval, and aeronautical concerns of any foreign
nation, and the Allied Powers undertake that they will not
employ any Turkish national in this connection. A special pro-
vision is made allowing France the right to recruit for the For-
eign Legion in accordance with French military law.
Part VI: Prisoners of War
Turkish prisoners of war and interned civilians are to be
repatriated without delay at the cost of the Turkish Govern-
ment. Those under sentence for offenses against discipline com-
mitted before January 1, 1920, are to be repatriated, without
regard to their sentence, but this provision does not apply in
the case of offenses other than those against discipline.
The Allies have the right to deal at their own discretion with
Turkish nationals who do not desire to be repatriated and all
repatriation is conditional upon the immediate release of any
Allied subjects still in Turkey. The Turkish Government is to
afford facilities to commissions of inquiry in collecting informa-
tion in regard to missing prisoners of war, in imposing penalties
on Turkish officials who have concealed Allied nationals, and in
establishing criminal acts committed by Turks against Allied
nationals. The Turkish Government is to restore all property-
belonging to Allied prisoners. * ■
Graves
These clauses provide that the Turkish Government is to
transfer to the British, French, and Italian Governments respec-
tively rights of ownership over the ground in Turkey in which
are situated the graves of their soldiers and sailors and over
the land required for cemeteries, or for providing access to ceme-
teries. The Greek Government undertakes to fulfil the same
obligation so far as concerns the portion of the zone of the
Straits placed under its sovereignty.
Within six months from the coming into force of the treaty
the British, French, and Italian Governments will respectively
notify to the Turkish and Greek Governments the land which is
to be transferred to them. The said land will include, in par-
ticular, certain areas in the Gallipoli Peninsula. The Govern-
ment in whose favor the transfer is made will not allow the land
to be employed for any purpose other than that to which it is
dedicated, and the shore is not to be employed for any military,
marine, or commercial purpose.
If compulsory acquisition of the land is necessary it is to be
effected by and at the cost of the Turkish or Greek Government,
who will not subject the land to any form of taxation. They
will undertake to maintain all roads leading to the land, give
free access to all persons desirous of visiting the graves, and
afford facilities for the requirements of the staff engaged in
duties in connection with the cemeteries. The provisions do not
affect the Turkish or Greek sovereignty over the transferred
land, and these Governments are to take the necessary measures
to punish any act of desecration of cemeteries or graves.
The Allies and the Turkish Government are to respect and
maintain the graves of soldiers and sailors buried in their terri-
tory, and to recognize and assist any commissions appointed by
the Allies in connection with them. There is to be a reciprocal
exchange of information as to dead prisoners and their graves.
Part VII: Penalties
Military tribunals are to be set up by the Allies to try persons
July 3, 1920]
The Nation
25
accused of acts of violation of the laws and customs of war and
the Turkish Government is to hand over all persons so accused.
The Governments of states to which former Turkish territory is
assigned by the treaty are to act similarly in the case of persons
accused of acts against the laws and customs of war who are in
the territory or at the disposal of such states. The accused are
to be entitled to name their own counsel, and the Turkish Gov-
ernment is to undertake to furnish all documents and informa-
tion the production of which may be necessary.
The Turkish Government undertakes to surrender to the Allies
persons responsible for the massacres committed during the war
on the territory of the former Turkish Empire, the Allies reserv-
ing the right to designate the tribunal to try such persons or to
bring the accused before a tribunal of the League of Nations
competent to deal with the said massacres if such a tribunal has
been created by the League in sufficient time.
Part VIII: Financial Clauses
This part of the treaty begins by a declaration reproduced
from the treaties already signed by Germany, Austria, and Bul-
garia. Turkey thereby recognizes that in associating in the war
of aggression waged against the Allied Powers she has caused
them losses for which she ought to make complete reparation;
nevertheless in view of her loss of territory the Powers will be
satisfied with obtaining payment of the claims enumerated later
in the chapter.
All the resources of Turkey, except revenues ceded or hypothe-
cated to the service of the Ottoman public debt, are to be em-
ployed as need arises for effecting the following payments set
forth in order of priority. . .
(1) Ordinary expenses of the Allied forces of occupation after
the entry into force of the treaty.
(2) Expenses of the Allied forces of occupation since October
30 in the territories remaining Turkish and expenses of occupa-
tion in the territories detached from Turkey to the advantage of
a Power other than that which has supported such expenses of
occupation.
The expenses covered by the preceding paragraph will be dis-
charged by annuities calculated in a manner to enable Turkey
to meet any deficiency that may arise in the sums required to
pay that part of the interest on the Ottoman public debt for
which Turkey remains responsible.
(3) Indemnities due on account of claims of the Allied Pow-
ers for reparation for damages suffered by their nationals.
The Turkish Government agrees to the financial indemnifica-
tion of all the losses or damages suffered by the civilian
nationals of the Allied Powers during the war and up to the
entry into force of the treaty.
The Powers, in favor of whom territories are detached from
Turkey, acquire without payment all properties and possessions
situated therein and registered in the name of the Turkish Em-
pire or the Sultan's civil list.
The Powers in favor of whom territories are detached from
the Turkish Empire shall participate in the annual charge for
the service of the Ottoman public debt.
The Governments of the states of the Balkan Peninsula and
the newly created states in Asia shall give adequate guaranties
for the payment of the share which falls to them. The distribu-
tion of these annual charges is to be made in proportion to the
average revenue of the transferred territory in relation to the
total revenues of Turkey during the three years preceding the
Balkan war.
The same methods are to be applied for the calculation of the
charges affected to the service of the Ottoman public debt,
allotted to the Powers who have acquired Turkish territory as a
result of the Balkan wars.
Financial Control
A financial commission composed of a representative of each
of the interested Allied Powers, France, Great Britain, and Italy,
to whom is added a Turkish representative in a consultative
capacity, is created in Turkey with a view to take such measures
as the commission may judge most suitable for restoring Turk-
ish finances. Its principal functions are the following:
Preliminary examination of Turkish budgets, which may not
be applied without its approval;
Supervision over the execution of the budgets and financial
laws and regulations of Turkey;
The termination of the measures to be taken with a view to
improving the Turkish currency.
Further, the Turkish Government may not establish any new
form of taxation, modify its customs system, or contract any
internal or external loan without the consent of the financial
commission.
The consent of the commission is equally required for the
grant of new concessions in Turkey by the Turkish Government.
A clause provides that ultimately the financial commission may
be substituted for the Council of the Debt as regards the ad-
ministration of the conceded revenues. This substitution shall
be decided by the Governments of France, Great Britain, and
Italy, by a majority and after consulting the bondholders, and
this decision shall be taken at least six months before the expira-
tion of the powers of the Council of the Ottoman Public Debt.
In particular, as regards the execution of the present treaty,
it shall be the duty of the financial commission to fix the
annuities to be paid by the Turkish Government for the reim-
bursement of the expenses of occupation and the settlement of
the claims for reparation due to the nationals of the Allied
Powers, to determine the amount of the annuities for the service
of the Ottoman public debt to be placed to the charge of those
Powers in whose favor territories are detached from Turkey,
and to arrange for the disposal of the sums in gold transferred
by Germany and Austria in execution of Article 259 (1), (2),
(4), (7) of the treaty of peace with Germany and of Article
210 (1) of the treaty of Peace with Austria.
Part IX: Economic Clauses
Commercial relations between the Allies and Turkey will be
regulated, generally speaking, by the capitulatory regime, which
is reestablished in favor of the Allies who enjoyed it before
the war and extended to the other Allies. The rate of customs
duty is to be that fixed in 1907, i.e., 11 per cent ad valorem.
Wide powers are, however, given to the financial commission
set up under the treaty to authorize modifications of import
duties, the imposition of consumption duties, the application to
Allied subjects and their property of taxes imposed on Turkish
subjects and their property, and the imposition of prohibitions
on importation and exportation. Such action can only be taken
after six months' notice in each case to all the Allies.
The provisions with regard to the recognition of shipping
documents and of the flags of new states, with regard to unfair
trade competition, and with regard to prewar multilateral and
bilateral treaties, and with regard to the protection of industrial,
literary, and artistic property follow the general lines of the
corresponding articles in former treaties of peace.
As in the case of previous treaties of peace the Allies reserve
the right to liquidate Turkish property in their territories and
to hold the proceeds as a pledge for the payment by Turkey of
compensation for damage to Allied property in Turkey during
the war and the settlement of prewar private debts. So far
as the claims against the Turkish Government are not satisfied
from this source they are to be met in accordance with the
financial clauses from any surplus available of Turkish revenues
from time to time. It should be mentioned that in the case of
territory detached from Turkey by the treaty the right to
liquidate is limited to the property of Turkish companies and
does not extend to the property of Turkish individuals.
The treaty contains provisions for enabling the Allies, if they
think fit, to eliminate German, Austrian, Hungarian, or Bul-
garian economic penetration in Turkey, by requiring the Turkish
Government to liquidate the property of the nationals of those
countries in Turkish territory and by themselves liquidating it
in territory detached from Turkey. In both cases the general
26
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2870
principle is that the proceeds of the liquidation shall be paid to
the owners, except where the property was Government prop-
erty, in which case they will be paid to the reparation commis-
sions set up under former treaties of peace.
Special provisions are included in order to enable the acquisi-
tion of the property of railway companies under German
control. In detached territories the disposal of such property
will rest with the Government controlling such territories. In
Turkey itself the financial commission will have the disposal of
it, the price being fixed by arbitration. In both cases the pro-
ceeds of sale will be distributed by the financial commission to
such neutrals as are entitled to a share thereof, the share of
Germans, Austrians, etc., being paid over to the respective
reparation commissions.
The complicated provisions of former treaties for the settle-
ment of prewar debts through clearing houses have not been
repeated, the only provision with regard to the settlement of
such debts being one which fixes the prewar rate of exchange
for the purpose of the settlement of all debts between Turkish
subjects in Turkey and Allies not resident or carrying on busi-
ness in Turkey.
As regards prewar contracts between Allies and Turks the
general principle is to maintain or dissolve them and to decide
any question relative thereto according to the law of the particu-
lar Allied country concerned in each case. The detailed pro-
visions relative to particular descriptions of contracts follow
those in the preceding treaties.
Provisions are included in the treaty for safeguarding the
interests in Turkey of Allies who hold prewar concessions from
the Turkish Government. Concessions granted by the Turkish
Government during the war need not be recognized by the Allies
in detached territories, whilst other provisions enable new states
placed under a mandate to put an end to prewar concessions
if thought desirable in the public interest on payment of equi-
table compensation to be fixed by arbitration. For this purpose,
and for the purpose of all other economic clauses, Turkish com-
panies which were actually under Allied control before the war
are treated as Allied nationals.
Part X: Aerial Navigation
Turkey agrees to accord the aircraft of the Allied Powers
full liberty of passage and landing over and in the territory and
territorial waters of Turkey, freedom of transit, the use of all
aerodromes in Turkey open to national public traffic, and equal
treatment generally in these matters with Turkish aircraft and
most favored nation treatment as regards internal commercial
air traffic. Turkey also undertakes to establish aerodromes in
localities designated by the Allied Powers, and the Allies reserve
the right in certain eventualities to take measures to insure
international aerial navigation over the territory and territorial
waters of Turkey.
States who fought on Turkey's side in the late war are de-
barred from these privileges and from the grant, without Allied
consent, of concessions for civil aerial navigation, unless and
until they become members of the League of Nations or are
permitted to adhere to the Convention of October 13, 1919,
regarding aerial navigation. Turkey agrees to enforce the com-
pliance by Turkish aircraft with the rules and regulations re-
sulting from the latter convention. The obligations imposed
by this chapter remain in force until Turkey is admitted to the
League of Nations or permitted to adhere to the above-men-
tioned convention.
Part XI: Ports, Waterways, and Railways
Turkey is required to grant freedom of transit and national
treatment to persons, goods, vessels, rolling stock, etc., coming
from or going to any Allied state and passing in transit through
Turkish territories. Goods in transit are to be free of all
customs or other similar duties. Rates of transport are to be
reasonable, and no charges or facilities are to depend directly
or indirectly on the ownership or nationality of the vessel or
other means of transport. Provision is made against discrimina-
tion by control of transmigrant traffic and indirect discrimina-
tion of any kind is prohibited.
International transport is to be expedited, particularly for
perishable traffic. Discrimination in transport charges or facili-
ties against Allied ports is prohibited.
The following Eastern ports are declared to be of international
interest, but, subject to any provisions to the contrary, the
regime laid down does not prejudice the territorial sovereignty:
Constantinople, from St. Stefano to Dolma Bagtchi, Haidar
Pasha, Smyrna, Alexandretta, Haifa, Basra, Trebizond, and
Batum.
The nationals, goods, and flags of all states members of the
League of Nations are to enjoy complete freedom in the use of
these ports, and they are to be accorded absolute equality of
treatment, particularly as regards all charges and facilities.
Provision is made for free zones in the above-mentioned ports,
and adequate facilities are to be provided for trade require-
ments without distinction of nationality. With the exception of
a small statistical duty, no customs duties or analogous charges
are to be levied in the free zones.
In order to insure to Turkey free access to the Mediterranean
and Aegean Seas, she is accorded freedom of transit over the
territories and in the ports severed from the former Ottoman
Empire. Turkey is also granted a lease in perpetuity subject
to determination by the League of Nations of an area in the
port of Smyrna, which is to be placed under the general regime
of free zones.
Free access to the Black Sea by the port of Batum is accorded
to Georgia, Azerbaijan, Persia, and Armenia; and Armenia is
granted similar facilities in respect of the port of Trebizond, in
which port she obtains a lease of an area on similar conditions
to those which apply to Turkey in the case of Smyrna.
Railways
The railway clauses provide that, subject to the rights "of
concessionnaire companies, goods consigned from or to Allied
states to or from Turkey, or in transit through Turkey, are
entitled generally to the most favorable conditions available.
Certain railway tariff questions are dealt with.
When a new railway convention has replaced the Berne Con-
vention, it will be binding on Turkey; in the meantime she is
to follow the Berne Convention.
Turkey is to cooperate in the establishment of passenger and
luggage services, with direct booking between Allied states over
her territory, under favorable conditions, as well as emigrant
train services.
Turkey is required to fit her rolling stock with apparatus
allowing of its being incorporated in Allied goods trains, and
vice versa, without interfering with the brake system. Pro-
vision is made for the handing over of the installations of lines
in transferred territory, and of an equitable proportion of
rolling stock for use therein.
As regards lines, the administration of which will in virtue
of the present treaty be divided, allocation of the rolling stock
is to be made by agreement between the administrations taking
over the several parts thereof. Failing agreement, the points
in dispute are to be settled by an arbitrator designed by the
League of Nations.
A standing conference of technical representatives nominated
by the governments concerned is to be constituted to agree upon
the necessary joint arrangements for through traffic working,
wagon exchange, through rates and tariffs, and other similar
matters affecting railways situated on territory forming part
of the Turkish Empire on August 1, 1914.
As a temporary arrangement, Turkey is to execute instruc-
tions given in the name of the Allies as to transport of troops,
material, munitions, etc., transport for revictualing of certain
regions, and reestablishment of normal transport.
Turkey is required to subscribe to any general convention
regarding the international regime of transit, waterways, ports,
or railways, which may be concluded with the approval of the
League of Nations, within five years.
July 3, 1920]
The Nation
27
Telegraph and Telephone Lines
Turkey is to grant facilities for the erection and maintenance
of trunk telegraph and telephone lines across her territories,
and is to accord freedom of transit for telegraphic correspond-
ence and telephonic communications coming from or going to
any one of the Allied Powers. This correspondence and these
communications are to enjoy national treatment in every respect.
Turkey is to transfer the landing rights at Constantinople
for the Constantinople-Constanza cable to any administration
or company designed by the Allies, and renounces in favor of
the principal Allied Powers all her rights over the Jeddah-
Suakin and Cyprus-Latakia cables.
General
Differences are to be settled by the League of Nations. Cer-
tain specified articles — e.g., those providing for equal treat-
ment in matters of transit and transport — are subject to re-
vision by the League of Nations after three years. Failing re-
vision, they will only continue in force in relation to any Allied
state which grants reciprocal treatment.
It is provided that, unless otherwise expressly laid down in
the treaty, nothing shall prejudice more extensive rights con-
ferred on the nationals of the Allied states by the Capitulations,
or by any arrangements which may be substituted therefor.
Part XII: Labor Convention
Here follows the text of the convention as embodied in the
treaty with Germany.
Part XIII: Miscellaneous Provisions
Turkey recognizes conventions made or to be made by the
Allies as to the traffic in arms and in spirituous liquors and as
to other subjects dealt with in the General Acts of Berlin of
February 26, 1885, and of Brussels of July 2, 1890, and the
conventions completing or modifying these.
The High Contracting Parties take note of the treaty of
July, 1918, between France and the Principality of Monaco.
In a barrier clause Turkey undertakes not to put forward any
pecuniary claim against any Allied Power signing the present
treaty, based on events previous to the coming into force of
the treaty.
Turkey accepts all decrees, etc., as to Turkish ships by any
Allied prize court, and the Allies reserve the right to examine
all decisions of Turkish prize courts. Turkey agrees to supply
the Allies with all necessary information regarding vessels sunk
or damaged by Turkish forces during the war and to restore
trophies, archives, historical souvenirs, and works of art taken
from the Allied Governments and their nationals, including com-
panies.
Special provisions are also inserted regarding a reform of
the Turkish law of antiquities and the future treatment of
archaeological research in Turkey, the restoration of all objects
of religious, archaeological, historical, or artistic interest removed
by Turkey during the war from territories detached from her,
the surrender by Turkey of all archives, plans, land registers,
etc., belonging to the civil, military, financial, judicial, or other
forms of administration in transferred territories, the grant
of access by Turkey, subject to reciprocity, to documents, etc.,
relating to the administration of Wakfs in which the Govern-
ments of transferred territories are interested, the recognition
by Turkey of Allied judicial decisions since the date of the
armistice, the acceptance by Turkey of special measures to be
formulated later by the Allied Powers, acting, if necessary,
with third Powers, regarding the sanitary regime in Turkey and
in the territories detached from Turkey and the sanitary control
of the Hejaz Pilgrimage, the enactment of the necessary legisla-
tion by Turkey to execute the treaty, the obligation of Turkey
to facilitate any investigation which the Council of the League
of Nations may consider necessary in any matters relating di-
rectly or indirectly to the application of the treaty, and the
accession of Russia to the treaty on certain conditions after she
has become a member of the League of Nations.
The treaty, of which the French text is authentic except as
regards Parts I and XII, when the English and French texts
are of equal force, shall be ratified and the deposit of ratifica-
tions made at Paris as soon as possible. Various diplomatic
provisions as to ratification follow. The treaty is to enter into
force as soon as it has been ratified by Turkey on the one hand
and by three of the principal Allied Powers on the other, so far
as concerns those Powers who have then ratified it.
Boycotting Reaction in Hungary
ON June 20 an international labor boycott of the re-
actionary Hungarian Government was put into effect
in response to the following appeal issued by the Inter-
national Federation of Trade Unions.
To the workers of all countries:
The International Federation of Trade Unions has decided to
boycott Hungary and to stop all communication with that
country beginning June 20, 1920.
Nearly a year ago the so-called friends of order seized power
in Hungary. From that day the labor movement has been the
target for oppression and persecution unexampled in the annals
of the labor movement, far surpassing the atrocities of Czarism
in Russia.
One need only be a member of a non-religious trade union to
be thrown into prison, and an anonymous denunciation is suf-
ficient to have one seized and imprisoned in prison camps.
At the beginning of this year there were in the concentra-
tion camps: at Hajmasker, 9,000 men and women; at Csepel,
4,000; at Zalavgorszog, 2,400; at Eger, 2,000; at Coglod, 3,000;
and at Homaron Sandborg, 2,000 men and women.
In all, 50,000 men and women were imprisoned. The city jails
are overflowing. The prisoners are victims of the most atrocious
and subtle tortures.
Five thousand workers had been "executed" by the beginning
of the year. Thousands had been assassinated by bands of
officers without formal trial. Thousands more are dying slowly
of hunger, of under-nourishment, and of sickness. Detachments
of reactionary officers hold supreme power; whoever falls into
their hands is lost; their victims are tortured and beaten. There
are cases, affirmed under oath by witnesses, where people have
been scalped alive, where their arms and legs have been crushed,
where men have been crushed or had their genital organs
crushed between stones, where they have been forced to eat
their own excrement, or human flesh. Fathers have been killed
before the eyes of their wives and children, and young girls
violated in sight of their husbands or fathers. Every day men
and women belonging to the militant working-class disappear,
later to be discovered as corpses, clubbed to death, drowned, and
often horribly mutilated.
The International Federation of Trade Unions have protested
to the Hungarian Government and to the Supreme Council of the
League of Nations against these atrocities, and has demanded
that steps be taken to end them. All in vain. The White
Terror reigns absolute in Hungary. It is plain that the Supreme
Council of the League of Nations either will not or cannot
exercise the necessary pressure upon the Hungarian Govern-
ment. That Government either cannot or will not stop the
atrocities in its domain; it closes its eyes or encourages them.
Official documents of the Hungarian Government which are in
the possession of the International Federation of Trade Unions
prove that it instructed its judges to condemn prisoners even in
cases where the proof of what it calls "culpability" is not clear,
and that it pays rewards varying from 20,000 to 250,000 crowns
for making labor leaders who have sought refuge abroad in-
capable of injury — which means assassinating them. These
facts are known and proved. The governments which know
them have refused to intervene, and probably rejoice that the
labor movement is reduced to impotence and overwhelmed in
Hungary.
The International Federation of Trade Unions will assume the
28
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2870
task of the governments, and it appeals to the workers of all
countries to refuse, beginning June 20, 1920, to do any work
which might directly or indirectly benefit the Hungary of the
White Terror.
Beginning June 20, 1920, no train shall cross the Hungarian
frontier, no ship shall enter Hungary, and no letter or telegram
shall enter or leave Hungary.
All traffic should be stopped. No coal, no raw material, no
foodstuffs, nothing shall enter the country. The ruling class
fought its adversaries during the war by means of the economic
boycott. After the war it used the same method and is still
attempting to use it to crush the Russian labor movement.
The International Federation of Trade Unions appeals to the
working class of all countries to have recourse to the same in-
strument when it is a question of ending the bloody regime of
the Hungarian Government and of saving the life and liberty of
thousands of comrades.
Comrades, transport workers, sailors, railwaymen, postmen,
telegraphers, and telephonists, workers of all trades without ex-
ception, reply as one man to the appeal of the International
Federation of Trade Unions.
No more work for Hungary, beginning Sunday, June 20, 1920.
Against the White Terror, the boycott of the working class!
Long live international solidarity!
The International Federation of Trade Unions :
W. A. Appleton, President,
L. Jouhaux, C. Mertens, Vice-Presidents,
Edo Fimmen, J. Oudegeest, Secretaries.
The Truth About the Lusk Committee
A Report of the Legislative Committee of the
People's Freedom Union
In Pamphlet Form 25c
Order copies through the Circulation Department
20 Vesey Street The Nation New York, N. Y.
Take the Summer Agricultural Course under the auspices of
THE INTERCOLLEGIATE ZIONIST ASSOCIATION
at the NATIONAL FARM SCHOOL, Bucks County, Pa.
Pleasant Surroundings, Recreation, Health-Building
Three Urnts : Tuition free
JULY 11— JULY 24 JULY 25— AUG. 7 AUG. 8— AUG. 22
For further information write
Intercollegiate Zionist Association, 55 Fifth Ave., New York
The Book of the Hour About the Question of the Day!
"THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT." by Karl Kautsky.
The first American edition of this epoch-making work has just been issued
by the Appeal to Reason. Learn what a great Socialist thinker has to say
against the idea of proletarian dictatorship in a book that will shake the
world. "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat*' contains 10 big chapters. Price,
50 cents, postage prepaid. APPEAL TO REASON, GIRARD, K \XS AS.
ALICE KAUSER
1402 BROADWAY
NEW YORK
DRAMATISTS' AGENT— PLAYS
ESTABLISHED 1896
Motion Picture Department
R. L. GIFFEN, Associate Manager
Shop Committees and Industrial Councils
The Basis of Industrial Planks in Political Platforms
Report of Bureau of State Research, Newark, N. J.
Prepared by Paul Studensky, price 50c prepaid. Analysis of typical
systems and their relation to labor unions. Professor Seager says that
it is "as comprehensive and more up to date than anything else that
has appeared on the subject." Also report on Industrial Pensions
(gratis) and Industrial Housing, 25c.
NEWS FROM NOWHERE g ™L™ JSXS
Utopia ever written, picturing a society in which everybody does
pleasant work, and profiteers and politicians are extinct. New edition,
cloth, $1.25 by mail or at bookstores. Catalog free. Charles H. Kerr
& Company, 347 East Ohio Street, Chicago.
GRAY WOLF CAMPS FOR BOYS, Alstead, N. H. Mountain scenery is
primitive New England. Old mills, abandoned farms, quaint villages.
Climbing, canoeing, exploring, swimming, gardening, carpentry. Whole-'
some food. BERNARD SEXTON, 27 Union Square, New York — Spring 9193.
FRANK HARRIS
will speak Sunday, July 4th, at 8.30 P. M.
on KIPLING, BRET HARTE and FRANCIS ADAMS
and on Wednesday, July 7th, at 8.30 P. M.
FABRE, W. H. HUDSON and MAETERLINCK
at FRANK HARRIS Studio, 57 Fifth Avenue Admission $1.00
GERMAN
CITY BONDS
°fter to-day unusual investment pos-
sibilities. ^ They can now be bought
for a fraction of their nominal value.
Germany has the power to pay and the in-
terest on these bonds is bein& paid steadily.
Inere is no doubt in the minds of the world
that Germany's exchange will return to nor-
mal with consequent profit to bondholders.
Correspondence Solicited
yonPolenz&CoInc
60 Broadway, KewYorK
Boston Philadelphia Milwaukee Denver Berlin. Germany.
City Hall at Leipzig
INDEX for
VOLUME 110
(January— June 1920)
has been delayed, but it will
be ready for distribution in a
few weeks.
One copy will be sent to each
library on our subscription
list, but to other subscribers
only upon request
If you want this index let us
know at once.
SUBSCRIPTION DEPARTMENT
The Nation
20 Vesey St.
New York, N. Y.
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 10, 1920
No. 2871
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 29
EDITORIALS:
An Impossible Choice 32
May Government Employees Strike ? 33
Meddling With the Schools 33
The Collapse of the Christian Soviet 34
THE CONQUEST OF HAITI. By Herbert J. Seligmann 35
THE SYRIAN IMBROGLIO AND THE TURKISH SETTLEMENT. By
Frederic C. Howe 37
GOD'S COUNTRY. By Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant 39
RIFTS. By Evelyn Scott 41
THE POET AND HIS MOMENT. By Ludwig Lewisohn 42
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By The Drifter 43
LOYALTY. By David Greenhood 43
CORRESPONDENCE 44
BOOKS:
A Photograph of the Great War. By Preserved Smith 46
Primitive Society. By Edward Sapir 46
An M. P. in Russia. By Evans Clark 47
Grave and Great-hearted Massinger. By Samuel C. Chew 48
Chekhov and Andreev 48
BOOKS IN BRIEF 49
DRAMA:
Rolland's "Danton." By Helena van Brugh de Kay 51
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION 53
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER ARTHUR GLEASON
LEWIS S. GANNETT
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, JG.OO.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation.
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising: Swarthmore Press, Ltd., 72 Oxford. St., London.
THE best that can be said about Governor Cox is that
he has made a more than fair Executive of Ohio. He
has distinctly bettered the organization of the State, and
in a progressive direction, during his three terms as Gov-
ernor. As to his present program, he is opposed to the
Eighteenth Amendment, and has therefore been denounced
by Bryan as having "disgraced his State" and as having
"fairly won the dishonor that he seeks" of being the leader
of the Wets. His nomination, said Mr. Bryan, "would
make the Democratic Party the leader of the lawless ele-
ment of the country and his election, if such a thing were
possible, would turn the White House over to those who
defy the Government and hold law in contempt." But Mr.
Bryan added: "There is no likelihood of his nomination"!
Governor Cox is otherwise for the establishment of a Fed-
eral budget, the dropping of the excess profits tax, Federal
Americanization, development of rural schools, and the ex-
tension of foreign trade through Federal Reserve branch
banks abroad. On the League of Nations he has taken the
compromise position adopted by the San Francisco Conven-
tion in favor of the treaty's ratification with such amend-
ments as will not emasculate the League. International dis-
armament he believes to be possible only through the
League's efforts. There are many independent students
of politics in Ohio who declare that between Harding and
Cox they will choose Harding.
THE death of Major General Gorgas will serve to make
notable an Independence Day which would otherwise
be remembered only for the dreary wrangling of petty poli-
ticians. His death will help to make all Americans turn
with relief to the record of his achievements in order to gain
fresh faith in the possibility of American greatness. As
we turn our eyes from the tedious futility of the Democratic
Convention, we may claim the power of sacrifice, of honest
work, of vision, of scholarship as a part of the American
genius. Politicians may be — politicians; but America can
produce a man whom all the world claims as its own. His
work in Cuba and South Africa, at Panama and Guayaquil,
resulted in removing the most menacing tropical diseases
and left for later administrators a permanent standard of
sanitation and preventive medicine. His success in tracing
the cause of yellow fever will make his name live with those
of Dr. Walter Reed and Dr. Lazear, who gave their lives in
the pursuit of that deadliest of germs. General Gorgas
was a scientist whom all scientists respected and followed.
He was a soldier whom all soldiers would do well humbly to
imitate. His was the type of American that all Americans
should cling to in a day when generous, uncalculating de-
votion to the service of mankind is like the shadow of a lost
faith.
POLAND is to have a receivership. Parliamentary gov-
ernment disappears, and power is vested in a "Na-
tional Council of Defense" headed by three generals —
Pilsudski, Leszniewski, and Haller — and Poland's aptly-
named Premier, Grabski. This is the outstanding news
from the eastern front, despite all the misleading military
bulletins sent out from Warsaw, which report local victories
against the Bolsheviki as "crushing defeats" and retreats
as "consolidation of the lines." England and France have
led one more border state to destruction. While thousands
starved, the fields have been left untilled and a great army
has been taken from production and driven far across
the Polish line into Russia to fight Bolsheviks at the behest
of French capital and British imperialism; and our own
American War Department has abetted the crime by "sell-
ing" surplus army supplies to the Polish legions, on credit
terms which made the sales a virtual gift. The Polish Re-
public has not had a fair chance. Just as she was emerging
from the wave of pogroms into which a nationalism inten-
sified by decades of oppression had led her, she was forced
by foreign interference to become the "vanguard of civiliza-
tion" and the puppet of western financial interests in the
war on Russia. Had it been an honest fight to defend
Poland, her armies might have been inspired with a victo-
rious fervor. Instead they started from an imperialistic
frontier to drive further into hostile territory. No wonder
30
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2871
if the troops lose heart; no wonder if impatient, hungry
workers at home revolt when the factories close for lack
of raw materials because the military monopolize the rail-
ways. Defeat may mean chaos for Poland; victory could
have meant nothing better. The first condition of Polish
reconstruction is peace.
POOR, proud England! "I am myself carrying out Ad-
miral Kolchak's orders," said Winston Churchill,
British War Minister, to the Czarist General Golovin; and
for the delectation of history the record was preserved. A
copy of Golovin's report to the Czar's Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Sazonov, was left at Omsk when Kolchak fled; and
the British Labor delegation has brought a copy back from
Moscow to London. It reveals Churchill for what he is: a
deceitful conspirator, negotiating with foreign agents and
taking orders from them; deliberately misleading his chief,
Lloyd George; announcing to his own people that fresh
forces were being sent to Archangel to safeguard the evac-
uation while promising his imperial Russian friends that the
evacuation would be postponed indefinitely ; organizing units
of Russian prisoners in Germany to fight the Bolsheviki
under cover of the Red Cross; securing British money for
anti-Bolshevist enterprises under false pretenses; criticiz-
ing the "disorganized Americans" at Archangel. The docu-
ment is printed in the London Daily News, a Liberal news-
paper. In any other day a cabinet minister would have to
disprove such damning charges or resign. History records
no dirtier mess than the anti-Russian conspiracy.
WHO would have thought that the fourteen Wilsonian
points were ordered from Petrograd for the delecta-
tion of the Bolsheviki — and by that same Edgar Sisson who,
then sympathetic toward the Reds, later distinguished him-
self as sponsor for the famous Sisson document purporting
to prove that Lenin and Trotzky were German agents? Yet
such is the ineluctable deduction from the official documents
assembled by the League of Free Nations Association in the
volume "Russian-American Relations." On January 3, 1918,
Sisson cabled to George Creel from Petrograd: "If Presi-
dent will restate anti-imperialistic war aims and democratic
peace requisites of America thousand words or less short
almost placard paragraphs short sentences I can get it fed
into Germany in great quantities and can utilize Russian
version potently in army and everywhere. Excerpts from
previous statements will not serve." Five days later the
President made his Fourteen Points speech. Five days
later still Sisson cabled back to Creel: "President's speech
placarded on walls Petrograd this morning. One hundred
thousand copies will have this display within three days.
Three hundred thousand handbills will be distributed here
within five days. Proportionate display Moscow by end of
week. Y. M. C. A. agreed distribute million Russian and
million German copies along line. Other channels into Ger-
many being opened. Izvestia official government newspaper
nearly million circulation throughout Russia printed speech
in full Saturday morning with comment welcoming it as
sincere and hopeful. Much of other newspaper comment
still cynical but shifting rapidly as speech makes its own
mighty appeal. German version in hands printer now.
Call's editorial useful also [William Boyce] Thompson's
interview. What was comment Novy Mir New York Bol-
shevik paper?" As the French say, "sans commentaires."
But ponder it well.
TWO thousand two hundred and sixty-four Federal war-
rants for draft evaders have been issued in the eastern
district of New York, which comprises Long Island and
Staten Island. In the Manhattan and Hudson River district
the authorities are seeking eight thousand men who failed
during the war to file their questionnaires, to appear for
their physical examinations, or to report at their canton-
ments. The statute of limitations has been waived and
these men may be arrested henceforth at any time. This
is only another evidence of the Government's failure to
appreciate that the war ended twenty months ago. In all
other belligerent countries there has been a general release
of war offenders and restoration of peace-time amenities.
Little can be said for the men whom physical fear im-
pelled to run away or moral cowardice prevented from
bravely facing the issue as did the conscientious objectors.
The stigma which our public opinion imposes on them will
be merciless and punitive enough, but it is the community
itself which will suffer chiefly by the needless prolongation
of the spying, informing, and man-hunting regime that
we have — to our moral detriment — been living in.
WE publish this week Mr. Herbert J. Seligmann's first-
hand report of conditions in Haiti. We believe that,
while it does not differ materially from previous reports
published by The Nation, Mr. Seligmann's facts are so
emphatically stated and the issue is so clearly joined that
the Government must answer to this indictment. Certainly,
the facts that he recounts must make every American hang-
his head; as we have repeatedly pointed out, our im-
perialism in Haiti nullifies our claim that we were fight- :
ing for self-determination and the rights of small nations.
Why, then, does not America — the conscience of the old pre-
war America — rouse itself about this situation ? Primarily,
it is because of silence of the press, a silence in part due to
the governmental suppression of news. For instance, since
Mr. Seligmann wrote his article there has come by way of
Kingston, Jamaica, an Associated Press report that there
has been another attack on Port-au-Prince by so-called
bandits whose leaders the Marines killed ; of course, no offi-
cial report has been made public and no dispatch was per-
mitted to come through direct from Haiti. Next, it is due to
the fact that Haiti is only a backward Negro state, although
Santo Domingo, which is in the same boat, has a white popu-
lation, and finally, it affects only a small country. But it is
no defense to wrong-doing to say that it is less than that of
the Germans in Belgium when it is exactly of the same kind
and marked by the inevitable incidents due to the subjugation
by force of a population deemed inferior by the conquerors.
Morality and decency always suffer under these circum-
stances; otherwise, how could the morality of the Marines,
always considered our best American troops, have come to
this estate?
THE War Department has answered with a flat denial
Professor Stanley J. Rypins's assertion that while in
the Military Intelligence Department of the Army he opened
the mail of Breckinridge Long of the State Department
because he was in correspondence with a conscientious
objector. Professor Rypins's reply has not yet come to
hand; failing it, we may still welcome the fact that men
who were compelled to do things which they considered dis-
honorable during the war are beginning to speak out.
Indeed, we believe that the sins committed by the Wilson
July 10, 1920]
The Nation
31
Administration against American liberty of thought and
expression will steadily react upon its head — we mean Mr.
Wilson himself, for at his own door these crimes will be laid
so that it will be impossible for him to plead the excuse of
ignorance or absorption in other public business. One of
the latest to say this emphatically is President Schurman
of Cornell before the Northern Baptist Convention at
Buffalo. No species of freedom, he said, had been so seri-
ously impaired in this country as freedom of speech. "Dur-
ing our war the Government carried suppression too far and
certainly went much farther than did the Government of
England in its intolerance of honest though hostile critics.
For this narrow and bigoted intolerance, impartial history
will hold President Wilson himself largely responsible."
Meanwhile, Mr. Wilson is getting one reply after another to
his monstrous assertion that the Republicans could not find
a single case in which men have been unjustly sentenced to
prison under the Espionage Act., A mass meeting in San
Francisco on June 21 sent him a telegram calling his atten-
tion to the case of Mrs. Emma Martin and Messrs. Ham,
Sonnenberg, and Stevens, imprisoned for years for alleged
violation of the Espionage Act, which convictions the mass
meeting denounced as indefensibly unjust. But, of course,
Mr. Wilson will take no note of the facts.
WHETHER or not Judge Gary pulls the strings of the
nation-wide drive on union labor which wraps itself
in the American flag and campaigns for the open shop —
which it calls the 'American Plan" — is not clear, but it is
plain that a nation-wide anti-union campaign is under way
and that it is in accord with Judge Gary's famous "We must
all stand together" (against union labor) speech. It crops up
in New York in the five million dollar fight of the Merchants'
Association against the longshore unions; in Seattle in the
fight of the "Associated Industries" which crowded David
Rodgers, the big shipbuilder, out of business ; in the building
trades in El Paso, where it failed because the bricklayers
owned the only brickyard in the city and controlled the situ-
ation; and in Butte, where the "Associated Industries" paid
the rent of certain restaurants forced to close in the open
shop fight, and, according to testimony of a former member,
directed its members not to sell to union contractors. In
Butte the State took a hand against the anti-unionists, who
admitted that they had discriminated but said that they
had done it as individuals, without agreement. The State
prosecuted three Butte firms for restraint of trade, but the
jury, in that copper-ruled town, disagreed. From coast to
coast the fight is on — and it will be worth watching. Thus
far the unions have waged their battles locally, but the
manufacturers show better solidarity. When David Rodgers,
with $46,000,000 of contracts for shipbuilding signed, was
trying to open union shipyards, a friend of the "Associated
Industries" wrote to Judge Gary: "I presume that he
(Rodgers) will come to you or your association for steel
contracts, and your influence might change his attitude."
THE New York port strike limps on, without coming to
an issue. The coastwise longshoremen are still out,
the steamship lines have not yet raised wages to the living
level, and the Interstate Commerce Commission has not
granted increased rates to the lines so that they may do so.
Probably the Commission does not wish to act without
reaching a decision on the rates of railroads which compete
with the ships, and must wait for action on those rates until
the Railroad Wage Board finishes its ponderous task. Thus
the circle comes back to the railroad vacationists, having
encountered all along the line the veto on transportation of
the present private management under government super-
vision which gives neither service nor living wages. Mean-
while New York hangs on the verge of a general port strike,
which could be precipitated at any moment by a lockout or
a widespread open-shop campaign on the part of the em-
ployers. At the moment, the tendency on both sides seems
to be to limit the area of conflict to the coastwise longshore-
men and the teamsters, though rumors of more drastic hap-
penings persist. If a general strike or lockout should come,
it would be a blessing in disguise if it led to well-directed
common action on the part of the unions and an industrial
constitution for the port, a clear understanding between
both sides, and thus to the ending of the conditions which
bode no good to anybody.
NEWSPAPER reading is what you make it. You can
read the Elwell murder mystery and reflect that Conan
Doyle was after all an amateur. Or you can turn the page and
reflect upon the news from China — that some millions of
Russian gold deposited by Kolchak in banks of the Celestial
Empire is being brought across the Pacific to pay Kolchak's
British creditors, without protest, while France protests
when the Bolsheviks use their share of the Czar's gold to
pay for mowing machines and locomotives rather than to
pay off French investors in imperial Russian bonds. Or
turn the page again, and you read of the good ship Belluno,
from Genoa to Buenos Aires, arriving with a red flag at
her masthead — and all hands paid equally — carrying goods
from a Genoa cooperative, greeted, if you please, by harbor
tugs flying red flags too, and officially welcomed by the
transport workers of Buenos Aires. Food for reflection
there. Or you can pore over political conventions for five
entire pages, and read on the seventh page that the band
killed a demonstration for Cox by playing waltz music in-
stead of a two-step march. It's all in the papers — you can
take your choice.
THE course of true love (and for that matter mere 2.75
per cent affection with much froth but little bite)
never did run smooth. It seems to be getting rougher, how-
ever, in these days of inadequate housing, restrictive legis-
lation, and a lessening of that sense of humor that used to
be the saving grace of Americans. Since that ancient insti-
tution known as the parlor has become almost extinct in
New York City, and as there are not enough benches in the
public parks to accommodate all the love-making, there must
needs be overflow meetings elsewhere. Among such the
Fifth Avenue buses and the river steamboats are de-
servedly popular. But now come sundry surly individuals
to complain that they can no longer board the hurricane
deck of a Fifth Avenue bus without feeling that they have
strayed into a performance of "Romeo and Juliet," while
a well-known Hudson River line has recently attempted to
lessen manifestations of affection among its passengers, and
is recommending its sacred concerts as a substitute. The
intention, evidently, is that the noble Hudson shall not be-
come Spoon River. Yet we doubt if a plebiscite among the
passengers would reveal unqualified enthusiasm for the
idea, and we are moved to ask : where, then, shall our young
people go? The need of the hour is not for another Spoon
River anthology, but for a Spoon River directory.
32
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2871
An Impossible Choice
PRECISELY as the Republican Convention turned at
the end to the weakest candidate, so has the Demo-
cratic. Their followers must, therefore, choose between two
mediocrities, between two second-rate Ohio newspaper edi-
tors, neither of whom can truthfully be said to have the
caliber requisite for the Presidency even in ordinary times,
much less the extraordinary ones in which we live. The
country beholds the normal result of the convention system
as now conducted; when the delegates are sufficiently ex-
hausted they naturally gravitate to the candidate whose
lack of color and virility and intellectuality has made him
the fewest enemies. It is to be a campaign of dullness,
which will be all the more noticeable after the oratorical
flights of Mr. Wilson and his admirable voicing of the ideals
which he professed. Any hope of a stimulating campaign
pregnant with great issues vigorously presented, or with a
program of a genuine social and economic reform, vanishes
into thin air. Those who have held such a hope must
now be thoroughly disillusioned.
Between the twin evils of the fruits of the Republican
and Democratic conventions, The Nation declines to choose.
There is no choice between them. Not a single fundamental
principle separates them. They vary only in degree — even
on the League of Nations. There is no issue between them
to cause any heart to quicken its beat. The one is a little
more outspoken than the other as to the rights of labor,
a tiny bit more friendly to women and children, a touch
more sympathetic with struggling Ireland, but both are
silent on the great economic issues which above all others
affect the American people today. The Democrats not
merely hedged on the League, they dodged wholly the issue
of Prohibition — a monumental bit of cowardice. They have
approved in their platform the amazing falsehood sent out
over Mr. Wilson's name that the Government has not abused
its war powers to interfere with liberty of the press, free-
dom of speech, and the personal rights guaranteed under
the Constitution. They have indorsed and approved Burle-
son and Palmer, the most menacing and dangerous figures
to appear upon our political stage since the days of the pro-
slavery betrayers of the government. Support such a plat-
form and party The Nation cannot.
Even had the head of the Democratic Party not been
guilty of betraying at Paris the very ideals on behalf of
which our armies went forth to their brilliant victory, of
seeking to entangle us in the League of Nations which
would fasten upon the globe the intolerable despotism and
hatreds now in ascendancy, we should still oppose the can-
didate of the Democracy. The character of the man nomi-
nated at San Francisco counts for something, but after all
had he been the best available choice, the candidate must
of necessity bear the impossible burden of the blunders
and the sins of Woodrow Wilson, on account of which the
party deserves to be defeated in every State in the Union.
Mr. Wilson himself has slain all of the ideals whicn distin-
guished his first campaign and brought hope and inspira-
tion to multitudes seeking deliverance from the domination
of a government owned and controlled by the forces of
big business and massed wealth. Any electorate true to
itself would have to rebuke such a betrayal of its ideals and
its idealism.
But the Republican alternative? That is equally impos-
sible. Mr. Harding has already clearly demonstrated his
intellectual inadequacy for the task. His every utterance
shows that he is wholly unaware of the kind of world we
live in and is without comprehension of the tasks ahead.
He represents a party still actuated by greed and dominated
by the power of wealth. Is there any real reason why the
electorate should select him as a personage rather than his
Democratic rival? Others, we repeat, may choose between
the two men if they must and so play into the hands of the
politicians, who forever utilize the cry of the lesser evil in
order to play their game more freely ; The Nation will do as
it did in 1900, when it supported neither McKinley nor
Bryan, and as it has done in many gubernatorial contests.
It will tell the truth about the major parties and their can-
didates but adhere to neither. It is not afraid of being
charged with being unpractical by so doing. On the con-
trary, there are times when it is the highest duty to refuse
to choose between evils. That was the case in 1896, for
instance, when the Gold Democrats deliberately refused to
accept either McKinley or Bryan and voted for one of the
most praiseworthy third party movements in our history.
The truth is, of course, that if there has been greater
independence, more open debate, and more democratic wrang-
ling between opposing beliefs at San Francisco than at
Chicago, both gatherings have revealed only too clearly the
barrenness and sterility of both leaderships and the almost,
entire dearth of candidates worthy of consideration. It is
possibly a just retribution for some of its wrongdoing that
the Democratic Party should have spent days striving, to
choose among McAdoo, Cox, and Palmer. Perhaps it is the
will of Providence that relief and reform shall come by the
decay and the collapse of the existing party processes; to
those who look beneath the surface, disintegration seems
well on the way. The leaders of the South never felt them-
selves so securely in the saddle as in the last decade before
the Rebellion; yet underneath, the economic foundations of
their social, labor, and agricultural systems were well under-
mined and the slave system must have collapsed of its own
rottenness had the Civil War never come. So the rulers of
our parties today are equally contemptuous of all who chal-
lenge them, and are equally intolerant of those who doubt
the existing order and the power of an outworn leadership
to cure its ills. As the antebellum Southern politicians jailed
every Abolitionist they could get their hands upon who
assailed the sacred institution of slavery, so the leaders of
today seek to crush or to imprison many of those who declare
that we are at the end of another era and that new men
and new methods must come to the fore. Underneath, the
economic foundations are again tottering and there is no
more vision as to the true and peaceful way out in 1920
than there was in the South in 1861. The hour John Brown
was hanged, Longfellow wrote in his diary: "This will be
a great day in our history; the date of a new Revolution—
quite as much needed as the old one. Even now they are
leading old John Brown to execution in Virginia for attempt-
ing to rescue slaves ! This is sowing the wind to reap the
whirlwind, which will come soon." Who knows? From the
conventions of 1920 may be dated the coming of a new politi-
cal order because of the inefficiency and the inability of our
politicians, and the incapacity to grapple with the new world
I economic problems which they are hourly demonstrating.
,
July 10, 1920]
The Nation
33
May Government Employees
Strike?
"¥ Tf 7E deny the right to strike against the government;
VV but the rights and interests of all government em-
ployees must be safeguarded by impartial laws and tri-
bunals." So runs the Republican platform. Organized
labor, we feel sure, will dismiss the second part of the state-
ment as a generalization of no practical importance; but
against the doctrine laid down in the first part it will, we
hope, enter a vigorous protest. What is there that is
peculiar about government service that denies to one who
enters it a right which admittedly is possessed by labor
generally? The principle announced by the Republicans obvi-
ously can have no exclusive application to Federal employees ;
if it is true of them, it is equally true of employees of
States and cities. According to the platform, then, not only
letter-carriers, department clerks, and mechanics in navy
yards or arsenals, but also policemen, firemen, and street
cleaners, no matter how low their wages or unsatisfactory
their working conditions, must nevertheless, simply because
they are in government employ, confine themselves to pro-
tests, or resolutions, or other "peaceful" methods of agita-
tion for the redress of their grievances, unless, of course,
they prefer to quit their jobs altogether and seek employ-
ment elsewhere. What is the logic of such a position?
Two arguments in particular are commonly advanced
whenever this question is raised. A strike of government
employees, it is urged, unlike a strike in some particular
industry, affects the whole community, and brings inconve-
nience or loss to numerous persons or businesses which are
in no way responsible for the grievances and will have no
voice in remedying them. Whatever happens as between em-
ployers and their workingmen, it is insisted that taxes ought
still to be collected, mail delivered, fire protection continued,
and life and property guarded against thugs and thieves.
But every strike makes trouble for persons who are only re-
motely connected with either its occasion or its remedy. To
condemn or justify a strike by consideration of the extent
of the disturbance which it involves is to judge it by its
incidents rather than by its cause. The real question with
government employees is precisely the same as with those
who work for private persons: are they properly treated
and suitably paid? If they are not, we are clear that the
community, which is the employer in the case, has no right
to draw a charmed circle of immunity about itself, wave
the magic word "government" in solemn incantation, and
insist that its public business shall still go on.
The other argument is that a strike of government em-
ployees, being an interruption of government service, is in
fact an interference with government itself, and as such is
near akin to treason. Servants of the government, we are
told, must, like soldiers, stand by and obey orders whether
they like it or not; to refuse is of the nature of mutiny. It
will be time enough to deal with the soldier analogy when
civil servants are removed from the jurisdiction of the civil
courts, ruled under martial law, and placed under the orders
of the President as commander-in-chief; but until that time
comes, the analogy may be dismissed as without foundation
either in law or in fact. Since when, however, has the
organized refusal to work, when other arguments have
failed to bring a Government to its senses, ceased to be the
citizen's right? Are government employees whose petitions
have gone unheeded by those whose business it was to attend
to them to be denied, under pain of being charged with dis-
loyalty, the right of organized, forcible protest which brick-
layers, carpenters, and chambermaids claim and exercise as a
prerogative of citizenship? And if government employees
strike, and the normal life of a community suffers in con-
sequence, are the workers to be accused of treason when it is
the government which is really at fault?
We hope that organized labor will accept with spirit the
challenge of "take it or leave it" which the Republicans
have thrown down, not only because we believe that the
Republican doctrine ought to be repudiated as mischievous,
but also because the question is likely to become in the
near future one of serious importance. With the strong
trend toward either the nationalization or the thorough-
going government control of railways, mines, and other
great industries or natural resources, the time is not distant
when the number of government employees in this country
may be very greatly increased. We must leave for later
discussion some of the problems which this prospective
enlargement of the civil list involves — we shall deal with
The Nation's economic program in later issues. What is
quite clear now is that neither railway men nor miners — to
take two illustrations only — are likely to give up a weapon
which has stood them in good stead in the past merely be-
cause the government becomes their employer. They will
assuredly strike if they want to, whatever the government
may think about it ; and that which is going to happen any-
way may as well be accepted in advance. It will be the part
of wisdom for the government, which is notoriously lax when
questions of ordinary, everyday justice are concerned, to
insure, in the management of its public services, an honest
method of democratic control, to set its house in order and
provide some suitable machinery for the voluntary settlement
of disputes before labor puts government to the test.
Meddling With the Schools
MEAN to the point of squalor are the intellectual
premises of New York's public schools as raked over
last month by Arthur M. Wolfson, who has just resigned as
principal of the High School of Commerce. On June 12 Mr.
Wolfson wrote the reasons for his resignation to the As-
sociate Superintendent, John L. Tildsley, and on June 25 he
elaborated these reasons in a statement read to the Board of
Superintendents, convened by Superintendent Ettinger to
hear him. "Frankly," his gist was, "during the past two or
three years I have not felt free to follow the intellectual
habits of a life-time." Twenty-five years ago he had chosen
the profession of teacher because it seemed the freest; he
was leaving it now because independence had ceased to be
counted a virtue by the authorities. He was not a revolu-
tionist in politics or a rebel in education, but he believed in
thought, and his self-respect no longer permitted him to
repress and dedoctrinate and spy upon bright pupils. He
had been asked to suppress the fact that 354 out of 2,000
straw votes among his boys had been for Debs. He had been
ordered to teach one view regarding Russia and one view
only. Against his conscience he had enforced the rule for-
bidding a newspaper — the New York Call — to be carried in
classroom or study-hall. And he had shut a pair of sympa-
thetic ears to the objections of a certain youth against the
34
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2871
military training prescribed by law. But now he has tired
of heresy-hunting and hundred-percenting.
The distressing thing about this petty overhead tyranny
in the schools is not so much that it is tyranny as that
it is petty. Full-blooded, forthright bullying would have
deserved and probably received a drastic cure. This in-
sidious, anaemic meddling persists ; this entirely unimagina-
tive muddling is difficult to get at and cut away. There
will be no satisfactory change while men remain in au-
thority who are afraid of ideas because they cannot compre-
hend them or enjoy their free play. Recovery from the war
proceeds here and there, but not among superintendents and
principals as a class. "Remarkable as the fact is," said
Henry R. Linville of the Teachers' Union last week in con-
nection with the Wolfson case, "teachers of independence are
increasing in relative number, while the quality of high
school principals remains normal in colorlessness and con-
formity." The principals are afraid of the superintendents,
and the superintendents are afraid of freedom. Candidates
for headships "have in general been extremely wary. So far
has the habit of carefulness been developed that a candidate
must not do anything out of the ordinary" — which is to
say not much of anything that counts.
The Collapse of the Christian
Soviet
THE Interchurch World Movement, if it had succeeded,
would have been either a great religious trust or the
spiritual union which Christendom has talked of since
Luther. If a trust, it would have been the last stand of the
institutional Protestant Church. If a union, it might have
represented a new religious technique for the changing social
order. It set itself to raise over a billion dollars. Its
initial drive was to bring just over $336,000,000. Of this,
$40,000,000 was to be raised from "friends of the move-
ment" for Interchurch purposes, as distinct from the pur-
poses of the various denominations affiliated. Actually, only
$176,000,000 was raised by and for the denominations. The
"friendly citizens," who were to finance the Interchurch
itself with the ^40,000,000, gave only a tenth of the sum.
So the vast promotion collapses. The concern dissolves back
into the denominations. The obsequies are being held.
The Interchurch World Movement was a brave attempt
to establish a soviet of religion. It was an attempt to gather
the economic power of the churches into an instrument of
policy. Instead of bothering itself with representative gov-
ernment in the shape of the denominational conventions, it
welded the executives of the boards — those bodies at the top
which control the budgets and the central administration.
When at last its scheme came upon the floor of the Presby-
terians and the Baptists North, the representatives over-
turned it by various forms of withdrawal. But if the Inter-
church had entered those conventions with success instead
of failure in the money-raising campaign, it is possible no
objection to the movement would have been raised.
There is no one reason for the failure. The belief that
the report of the Industrial Relations Department on the
Steel Strike was the outstanding cause is over-simplification.
The Interchurch came as the last of many "drives" to a
tired and indifferent nation. Folks had grown excited and
generous because of Liberty loans, "Y," Red Cross, Salva-
tion Army, till they had neither enthusiasm nor cash. The
givers gave out. Next, there was an important miscalcula-
tion concerning friendly citizens, with no particular church
connections. These were relied on to give at least one-ninth
of the year's budget, and this was to be a vital item, because
it was to help defray "general expenses." Without that
oil the machine could not achieve movement.
As the result of an earlier success of the Methodists in
raising their centenary fund, the banks had come to believe
that there was an enormous credit power back of the church
community. Accordingly the New York financial group
extended credit to the Interchurch. This credit could not
be expanded in the face of the failure in money-raising. In
any case, a continuance of credit would lead to control, how-
ever gentle, legitimate, and wise. There was an aroma of
bankers about the deliberations of the Interchurch, and
whiffs of it interpenetrated the advertising and other pro-
motion material of this crusade. The literary style was
closer to the pattern of the press agent than to that of the
Fourth Gospel. No complete unity of aim had been estab-
lished. The unity was one of cooperative activity in admin-
istration by the powerful executive boards. And even here
two elements were discernible. There were earnest men of
the younger order in the Interchurch who desired a pro-
gressive movement in theology and the realm of social
change. There were convinced individualists who were
startled by the report on the Steel Strike.
More important, there was little contact between the big
business men and the religious executives, engineering the
Interchurch, and the rank and file. It was a movement of
imposing front, but with a needed constituency that had. not
been consulted. So the hiatus widened between the "big"
ideas of the "big" men and the humbler denominational
leaders and church people. All that the mass could sense
was some new and vague object, toward which they were
to be speeded up. The people never backed the Interchurch,
for they never attended its councils, and never knew its
purpose.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., once made a classic speech on
Christian unity. Some such logical idea as his coalesced
with the tangible Methodist triumph in money-raising, added
to itself the ecclesiastical machinery of the higher execu-
tives, converted big business men, and annexed famous
fund-raisers. The amalgam resulted in publicity as amaz-
ing as those early British advertisements with which Mr.
Barnum plastered the countryside and drove away the
English from attendance. There is a fundamental decency
in our people, too, which has silently resented selling Jesus in
the language of the circus. On the day when John R. Mott
goes to prison for defending Debs because of their common
humanity — on that day a Christian unity will be begun.
The lesson of the Interchurch is that a soviet cannot be
imposed by a tiny minority at the top. Neither Lenin nor
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., can as yet create a new economic
instrument of government in these United States ; not even
a Christian soviet in ecclesiastical government. The Anglo-
Saxon world still clings to parliamentary, representative,
political government. Out of the collapse of the topheavy
economic structure of the Interchurch we shall see a return
to political expression among the churches. We shall see
renewed activity on the part of the Federal Council of the
Churches of Christ in America. This body derives its power
from the national religious assemblies. It is a parliament
of religion.
July 10, 1920]
The Nation
35
The Conquest of Haiti
By HERBERT J. SELIGMANN
TO Belgium's Congo, to Germany's Belgium, to England's
India and Egypt, the United States has added a perfect
miniature in Haiti. Five years of violence in that Negro
republic of the Caribbean, without sanction of international
law or any law other than force, is now succeeded by an
era in which the military authorities are attempting to
hush up what has been done. The history of the American
invasion of Haiti is only additional evidence that the United
States is among those Powers in whose international deal-
ings democracy and freedom are mere words, and human
lives negligible in face of racial snobbery, political chicane,
and money. The live years of American occupation, from
1915 to 1920, have served as a commentary upon the white
civilization which still burns black men and women at the
stake. For Haitian men, women, and children, to a number
estimated at 3,000, innocent for the most part of any offense,
have been shot down by American machine gun and rifle
bullets; black men and women have been put to torture to
make them give information; theft, arson, and murder
have been committed almost with impunity upon the persons
and property of Haitians by white men wearing the uniform
of the United States. Black men have been driven to retreat
to the hills from actual slavery imposed upon them by white
Americans, and to resist the armed invader with fantastic
arsenals of ancient horse pistols, Spanish cutlasses, Napo-
leonic sabres, French carbines, and even flintlocks. In this
five years' massacre of Haitians less than twenty Americans
have been killed or wounded in action.
Of all this Americans at home have been kept in the pro-
foundest ignorance. The correspondent of the Associated
Press in Cape Haitien informed me in April, 1920, that he
had found it impossible in the preceding three years, owing
to military censorship, to send a single cable dispatch con-
cerning military operations in Haiti, to the United States.
Newspapers have been suppressed in Port au Prince and
their editors placed in jail on purely political grounds. Even
United States citizens in Haiti told me of their fear that if
they too frankly criticised "the Occupation," existence in
Haiti would be made unpleasant for them. During my stay
of something over a month in Haiti several engagements oc-
curred between Haitian revolutionists and United States
Marines. Early in April, Lieutenant Muth, of the Haitian
gendarmery, was killed, his body mutilated, and a marine
wounded. In that engagement, as in others which occurred
within a few weeks of it, Haitian revolutionists or cacos
suffered casualties of from five to twenty killed and wounded.
No report of these clashes and casualties, so far as I know,
has been published in any newspaper of the United States.
The United States Government and the American military
occupation which has placed Haiti under martial law do not
want the people of the United States to know what has
happened in Haiti.
For this desire for secrecy there are the best of reasons.
Americans have conceived the application of the Monroe
Doctrine to be protection extended by the United States to
weaker States in the western hemisphere, against foreign
aggression. Under cover of that doctrine the United States
has practiced the very aggressions and tyrannies it was pre-
tending to fight to safeguard weaker states against. In
1915, during a riot in the capital of Haiti, in which Presi-
dent Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was killed, the mob removed a
man from the sanctuary he had claimed in the French lega-
tion. It is said the French threatened to intervene, also that
the German Government had, before the European war, de-
manded control of Haitian affairs. In justifying its invasion
of Haiti in 1915, the United States makes use of the pretext
with which the Imperial German Government justified its
invasion of Belgium in 1914. The invasion was one of de-
fense against any Power which, taking control of Haiti, a
weaker state, might use its territory as a base for naval
action against the Panama Canal or the United States.
Instead of maintaining a force of marines at Port au
Prince sufficient to safeguard foreign legations and consu-
lates against violence, the United States proceeded to assume
control of the island. The American hold was fortified by
a convention empowering the United States to administer
Haitian customs and finance for twenty years, or as much
longer as the United States sees fit; and by a revised con-
stitution of Haiti removing the prohibition against alien
ownership of land, thus enabling Americans to purchase the
most fertile areas in the country. Thenceforward Faiti has
been regarded and has been treated as conquered territory.
Military camps have been built throughout the island. The
property of natives has been taken for military use. Haitians
carrying a gun were for a time shot at sight. Many Haitians
not carrying guns were also shot at sight. Machine guns
have been turned into crowds of unarmed natives, and
United States marines have, by accounts which several of
them gave me in casual conversation, not troubled to investi-
gate how many were killed or wounded. In some cases
Haitians peaceably inclined have been afraid to come to
American camps to give up their weapons for fear they
would be shot for carrying them.
The Haitians in whose service United States marines are
presumably restoring peace and order in Haiti are nick-
named "Gooks" and have been treated with every variety of
contempt, insult, and brutality. I have heard officers wear-
ing the United States uniform in the interior of Haiti talk
of "bumping off" (i. e., killing) "Gooks" as if it were a
variety of sport like duck hunting. I heard one marine boast
of having stolen money from a peaceable Haitian family in
the hills whom he was presumably on patrol to protect
against "bandits." I have heard officers and men in the
United States Marine Corps say they thought the island
should be "cleaned out"; that all the natives should be shot;
that shooting was too good for them; that they intended
taking no prisoners ; that many of those who had been taken
prisoners had been "allowed to escape," that is, shot on the
pretext that they had attempted flight. I have seen prison-
ers' faces and heads disfigured by beatings administered to
them and have heard officers discussing those beatings; also
a form of torture — "sept" — in which the victim's leg is com-
pressed between two rifles and the pressure against the shin
increased until agony forced him to speak. I know that men
and women have been hung by the neck until strangulation
impelled them to give information. I have in my possession
a copy of a "bon habitant" (good citizen) pass which all
Haitians in the interior have been required to carry and
36
The Nation
[Vol. ill, No. 2871
present to any marine who might ask to inspect it. Failure
to carry the pass formerly involved being shot or arrested.
Arrest for trivial offenses has involved detention in Cape
Haitien and Port au Prince for as long as six months. In
justice to the officers and men of the Marine Corps, it should
he said that many of them detest what they have had to do
in Haiti. One officer remarked to me that if he had to draw
a cartoon of the occupation of Haiti he would represent a
black man held down by a white soldier, while another white
man went through the black man's pockets. Other officers
and men have criticised the entire Haitian adventure as a
travesty upon humanity and civilization and as a lasting dis-
grace to the United States Marine Corps. But the prevailing
attitude of mind among the men sent to assist Haiti has
been such determined contempt for men of dark skins that
decency has been almost out of the question. The American
disease of color prejudice has raged virulently.
The occupation points with pride to military roads. These
roads were in large part built by Haitian slaves — I intend
the word literally — under American taskmasters. An old
Haitian law of corvee, or enforced road labor, rarely if ever
invoked, authorizing three days' work in each year on roads
about the citizen's domicile, was made the excuse for kid-
napping thousands of Haitians from their homes — when they
had homes — forcing them to live for months in camps, in-
sufficiently fed, guarded by United States marines, rifle in
hand. When Haitians attempted to escape this dastardly
compulsion, they were shot. I heard ugly whispers in Haiti
of the sudden accumulation of funds by American officers
of the Haitian gendarmery who had the responsibility of
providing food for these slave camps. Charlemagne Peralte,
an important political leader under the Zamor Government,
arrested for political activity, was forced to labor in prison
garb on the streets of Cape Haitien, where he was well
known. He escaped in September, 1918, flaming with hatred
and became known throughout Haiti as Charlemagne,
one of the most resourceful of revolutionary leaders in the
Hinche district until he was killed in the autumn of 1919.
It is no coincidence that his power was greatest and the
revolt severest in the regions where the corvee slavery had
been most in use.
Colonel John Russell, at present brigade commander in
Haiti, who is struggling with an impossibly difficult situa-
tion, largely created by his predecessors, formally abolished
the corvee late in 1919. That was not undoing the damage
which had been done. Colonel Russell could not, even by is-
suing the most stringent orders against indiscriminate mur-
der of Haitians by marines, wipe out what had occurrred
under a former commanding officer who had been sent to
Haiti although it was in his record that he had been court-
martialled for brutality to natives in the Philippines.
Another creation of the Americans in Haiti, although it is
now improved in personnel and leadership, fanned the flames
of hatred and violence which swept the island. I refer to
the Gendarmerie d'Haiti. This is a military force of black
men, officered with one or two exceptions by corporals and
sergeants of the Marine Corps promoted to lieutenancies and
captaincies over Haitians. Many of the white men were
ignorant and brutal. Some of the Haitians enlisted in the
gendarmerie were notorious bad men. Several of them have
been shot for murder and extortion among their own people.
The armed peace which has resulted from the conquest of
Haiti by the United States has opened a new field for Ameri-
can investors. Already the Banque Nationale d'Haiti, the
bank of issue of all Haitian paper currency, is owned by an
American bank. The National Railways of Haiti are owned
by Americans. Sugar mills and lighting plants are in Amer-
ican control. Groups of Americans are purchasing or are
endeavoring to purchase the most fertile land in the country.
The representative of one company told me they owned
58,000 acres. In this scheme of American "protection" of
Haitian welfare, the Haitian's place is illuminated by a re-
mark which I heard one American entrepreneur make. He
advocated that Chinese coolies be imported to supplant un-
instructed Haitian labor.
After an indefensible invasion of a helpless country, after
the professions of solicitude and good-will which accom-
panied the crime, what has the United States to offer in
extenuation? Military roads, which the Haitian people do
not particularly want, a civil hospital in Port au Prince, and
the Haitian Gendarmerie. The present Government of Haiti
which dangles from wires pulled by American fingers, would
not endure for twenty-four hours if United States armed
forces were withdrawn ; and the president, Sudre d'Artigue-
nave, would face death or exile. No beginning has been
made in combatting with teachers the appalling illiteracy of
the Haitian people. No attempt has been made to send
civilian doctors or even military doctors to minister to the
needs of diseased Haitians in the interior. These sins of
commission and of omission are attributable less to the men
confronted with the overwork and the difficulties, and often
with the inferior food which their Government sends them,
in Haiti, than to an Administration, and especially a State
Department ready to countenance armed invasions without
plan and to undertake, by a nation which has signally failed
in administering its own color problem, the government of
a black republic.
The jumble of jurisdictions imposed upon Americans in
Haiti by the irresponsible gentlemen in Washington would
paralyze even a genuine attempt at regeneration of Haitian
government. The customs receipts and the disbursements of
Haiti are administered by two Americans independent of the
military command. Of the customs administration, suffice it
to say that not one business man to whom I talked, and there
were prominent Americans as well as Haitians among my
informants, had a word to say in its favor. There is no
appeal from the scrupulously inept customs rulings except
to Washington. The fiction of a Haitian republic is main-
tained, although the American military command can sup-
press newspapers and virtually controls Haitian politics and
elections. The Haitian Government, such as it is, either
yields perforce to American pressure or finds itself in feeble
and ineffectual opposition. The gendarmerie, theoretically
under the Haitian Government's command, is officered by
American marines, paid by both Haiti and the United States.
This militarist, imperialist burlesque on the professions
with which the United States entered the war in behalf of
weaker states leaves the Haitians little to do but to wonder
what the United States intends. If they had power, they
would drive the armed invader into the sea. They have not
the power. They are disarmed and cynical, those who can
think. If Haitian government was not conspicuously suc-
cessful, lives of Americans and other foreigners were safe
before the invasion. For the rest, in the absence of any
plans for Haiti's regeneration except through "development"
of the country by exploiters, the Haitian may derive what
spiritual nourishment he can from the Wilsonian phrases
with which United States thuggery disguises its deeds.
July 10, 1920]
The Nation
37
The Syrian Imbroglio and the Turkish Settlement
By FREDERIC C. HOWE
THE most picturesque figure at the Paris Peace Confer-
ence was Prince Emir Feisal, one of the sons of the
King of the Hejaz. In turban and Arabian robes, orientally
impressive and extraordinarily alert, he sat among the frock-
coated, conventional representatives of the other Powers. Oc-
casionally he said something that was flashed among the
newspaper men at the Crillon and the press clubs. "When
President Wilson spoke of self-determination of peoples, a
smile went through all Arabia," he said. On another oc-
casion, "If Syria is given to France, the Arabs will drive
them into the sea."
The eastern Mediterranean has been the strategic center
of the European- Asiatic world for a century. The control of
Constantinople, Mesopotamia, and the Bagdad Railway was
probably the ultimate cause of the Great War. German ad-
vances in Turkey and the threatened control of the trade
routes from Constantinople to the Persian Gulf was a drive
at the heart of the British Empire. It threatened to Teu-
tonize the commercial and financial organization of the Near
East and the Far East as well. It would have split Great
Britain, Russia, and France apart, and placed the Far East
under the menace of German control. The British Empire,
British finance, British shipping, and British industry were
threatened by the short railroad land route to the Far East.
So were French investments in Russia, French investments
in Turkey, and French aspirations on the Syrian Coast.
The future of a great part of the world hangs on the Near
Eastern question, as it did in the ancient Roman world ; as it
did when the Turks in the fourteenth century sundered the
trade routes through the Mesopotamian valleys from Persia
to Europe, and sent Columbus in search of a new route to
India. For one hundred years, Great Britain and Russia,
then Great Britain and France, and finally Great Britain and
Germany have struggled for the control of the Bosphorus, of
the eastern Mediterranean, and finally of the Bagdad rail-
way. England has never lost sight of the strategic necessity
for controlling this part of the world. It is the key to her
Empire. It is the Gibraltar of her industrial and financial
supremacy. The fate of Constantinople, the disposition of
the Grande Porte, the American mandate over Armenia, con-
troversies with France over Syria, the double dealings of the
Allied Powers for a century, and especially during the war,
all revolve about control of this, the great trade route to the
East. As it has been from the beginning of history, the
wealth of Europe and the life of empires center about control
of the Levant.
During the war Great Britain entered into at least three
treaties or understandings, all more or less in conflict, for
the disposal of this territory — extending from the moun-
tains of Asia Minor to the Persian Gulf. They were
roughly :
1. The Sykes-Picot Treaty, May, 1916, divided this part
of the world between France and Great Britain. France was
given Syria and parts of Palestine. Great Britain was given
certain ports on the Syrian coast as well as the hinterland,
including Mesopotamia, the Tigris-Euphrates valleys, the
control of the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Mesopotamia
was the key. It controlled the Bagdad Railway, the approach
to Persia, and the trade routes to the Persian Gulf.
2. Great Britain, with the approval of France, entered
an agreement with the King of the Hejaz, representing the
whole of Arabia, to induce the Arabs to enter the war on the
side of the Allies. Under the terms of this treaty, the
Ottoman Empire to the south of the Taurus Mountains was
to be divided roughly into three Arabian principalities.
Prince Feisal was to receive Syria, including Palestine, an-
other son Zeid was to receive Mesopotamia, controlling the
trade routes to the Persian Gulf and to the Far East; while
the third son of the King of the Hejaz was to receive
Hedjaz and the control of the eastern shore of the Red Sea.
The British and French, however, retained some claim to
participation in Arabian affairs. They both recognized
Arabian claims under the treaties made with the Hejaz.
As a result of this arrangement the Arabs placed them-
selves under British leadership; they fought valiantly and
contributed substantially to the defeat of the Turks and the
holding of the Near East by the Allies.
3. Finally, the Zionists received assurances from Mr. Bal-
four in November, 1917, that Palestine was to be inter-
nationalized as the "home of the Jews." This was accepted
as an assurance that Palestine was to be an independent
state under international and especially British protection.
Palestine forms part of Syria given to the French and is
claimed by the Arabs under the British agreement with the
King of the Hejaz.
4. In addition to the above treaties (each of which dis-
posed of part or all of Palestine to three different claim-
ants, two of which disposed of Syria to different claimants,
and two of which left the relationship of Great Britain and
the Arabs unsettled as to Mesopotamia) the British them-
selves hoped to hold on to Syria and the eastern Mediter-
ranean. The Syrian ports command Cyprus on the north and
Egypt and the Suez Canal on the south. Even more im-
portant, they control access to Mesopotamia and the Mediter-
ranean connections with the Bagdad Railway.
Great Britain has fought for a century to prevent the en-
trance of any other Power into this part of the world. The
protectorate over Egypt, the purchase of the Suez Canal,
control of the trade routes to India and the Far East have
been the controlling motives of her Near Eastern diplomacy.
In addition, British commercial interests are opposed to the
Bagdad Railway as a land transportation system from Europe
and Constantinople to the Mesopotamian plains. European,
and especially German competition, would endanger her con-
trol of industry and trade in Asia and the Near East, while
quite as important, the Bagdad Railway would endanger her
shipping monopoly. It is to the interest of Great Britain to
suppress the Bagdad Railway from Constantinople to Aleppo,
but to develop the line from the Mediterranean coast to
the Persian Gulf. This would give her a long water shipping
route from England, and a shorter rail route to the Far East.
It would also kill rail competition from Europe. For these
reasons Great Britain was opposed to a French mandate
over Syria. For Syria controls access from the northeast
corner of the Mediterranean to Bagdad and the Bagdad Rail-
way. Syria also menaces Egypt and the Suez Canal on the
south.
Within six months after the armistice Great Britain,
38
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2871
France, Arabia, and the Jews were in conflict over the Sykes-
Picot Treaty^ and the other conflicting agreements. Great
Britain was unwilling to abide by its provisions and permit
a permanent French occupation or protectorate over Syria.
British interests are too vital to permit any other Power to
control this strategic point. There was a very serious con-
flict in the summer of 1919, but Great Britain finally recog-
ized the French mandate over Syria. Whatever the arrange-
ments may have been which guaranteed French predomi-
nance on the eastern Mediterranean, it is safe to assume that
British interests will never willingly acquiesce in French
ascendancy in that part of the world. France in turn is
seeking to control the watershed of the Jordan so as to
place the Jewish colonies in Palestine under dependence to
her will. Palestine is dependent upon this water supply for
irrigation, for hydro-electric power, and for the settlement
of a territory adequate to maintain millions of colonists.
The Franco-British controversy over Syria and Palestine
must inevitably remain a source of discord.
The Arabs are now insisting that Great Britain and
France should fulfil the compact made with them. They are
demanding a partition of Arabia between the three sons of
the King of the Hejaz. The Arabs are dangerous people.
They frave learned the arts of war. They received substantial
money subventions from the Allies. They are in a position to
harass not only France, but Great Britain and the Zionists
as well. And they demand the lowlands of Syria and Pal-
estine as an integral part of Arabia, and support their claims
by the preponderance of Arabian peoples in these Mediter-
ranean provinces.
We are now advised that the Turk is to be left in Con-
stantinople. Why is the Sublime Porte to be left undis-
turbed ? Why are the Allied assurances that the Turk was to
be driven out of Europe to be ignored? The Turk has not re-
formed. He can give no assurances that will satisfy the public
opinion of Occidental Powers. The Bosphorus is as strategic
today as it has been for a hundred years. It is not con-
sideration for the Turk that is leaving him where he is.
Nor are the claims of the Armenians for protection being
given any serious consideration. The Turk is to be left in
Europe for three very simple reasons. First, Turkey owes
colossal sums to France and England. Three-fifths of the
Turkish loan was underwritten by the Paris banks. It is
held by the French peasants. A great part of the balance
is held by British interests. If the Turk is expelled from
Europe, the Turk cannot be held responsible for these debts.
They cannot be assessed upon Constantinople alone and the
small surrounding territory. The French are insisting that
the Turk remain in Europe, at the instance of the French
investor. Any Ministry that failed to safeguard those in-
terests would have difficulty in remaining in power. Similar
interests dictate British policy. England and France want
to continue their grip on Russia. Russia can only reach the
outside world all the year round by the Dardanelles. By the
control of Constantinople Great Britain and France are in
a position to control the economic life of Russia and of
Rumania and Bulgaria as well.
Great Britain is further influenced by fear of the effect of
the expulsion of the Turk upon her Mussulman subjects in
India and the Far East, while France is apprehensive over
the effect of such expulsion upon her Mussulman subjects in
Morocco, Tunis, and Algeria. The Turk is to be left in
Europe; his worthless guarantees are to be accepted, for
financial and imperialistic considerations. Greed is the
main explanation of the reversal of promises made to the
world. The security of Europe, the freedom of the Dar-
danelles, the access of Russia and Rumania to the open seas,
all these as well as the future peace of the world are to be
sacrificed to the same kind of interests that have influenced
France and England in their attitude toward Russia.
Finally, the Allies are once more seeking to lure the United
States into the age-long imbroglio over the control of this
part of the world, by imposing upon us a mandate over
Armenia, if not over Constantinople, Anatolia, and the high-
lands of Asia Minor. One reason and probably the main
reason for this is obvious, even though it was not disclosed.
Asia Minor lies at the strategic center of three continents.
Asia Minor is the buffer between Central Europe and the
British Empire. As the Harbord report disclosed, it would
require a large military force of from 50,000 to 200,000 men
to protect this territory, and involve an initial expense of
$750,000,000 for the first five years. Such protection by a
friendly Power would relieve Great Britain from policing
Persia, Mesopotamia, and her eastern Empire. It would
shield her from Russia, Austria, Hungary, Germany, or any
other continental European states. It would protect France
in Syria as well. It would commit the United States beyond
recall to the League of Nations, and would permanently
identify us with financial imperialism, with the exploitation
of the copper, oil, and other resources which abound in
northern Asia Minor. The United States was to hold the
bag for the Allied Powers. We were to step into what for
centuries has been one of the most dangerous spots in the
civilized world. Empires have struggled, and war after war,
from the days of Darius and Alexander the Great down to
the war just closed, has been fought for the control of*the
Cilician Gates, through which pass the land routes from
Europe to Asia. No greater burden could be assumed by
America than this. It would draw us inevitably into Euro-
pean, Asiatic, and African politics.
As a result of these dishonesties and deceptions, the Near
East is again in political chaos. The Levant is again the
center of the intrigue of Europe. One of the major ques-
tions which this war should have forever settled is as con-
fused and menacing as ever. The British-French entente is
endangered. Disarmament in both countries is made impos-
sible. Great Britain and France are menaced by the Arabs
and the Egyptians. The trade routes of the world are inter-
rupted by nationalistic conflict and commercial greed. The
Bagdad Railway, which would have rendered an incalculable
service to the civilization of the world, may not become the
great land highway that was promised, and Europe and Asia
may be left again, as they are now left, to the control by a
single nation of the carrying trade through the Mediterra-
nean, the Suez Canal, and the Persian Gulf. The Arabs
have been deceived; the Jews have been deceived; France
thinks it has been deceived, and the Turk remains on the
banks of the Bosphorus.
Contributors to This Issue
Herbert J. Seligmann is a New York journalist.
Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant was an American corre-
spondent in France during the war and is the author of
"French Perspectives."
Frederic C. Howe is the writer and public official of note.
July 10, 1920]
The Nation
39
God's Country
By ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
IT is a country so vast, so vacant, so austere, so impersonal,
that at first sight its whole power and beauty seem to be
a denial of the power and significance of man. Stark shapes
and crude colors of naked rock, lifted, strata on strata into
the stark sky; rolling height of mesas, nobly leveled above
the deep valleys and below the snow peaks; yellow nearness
and roundness of foothills and lomas, spotted and tufted
with velvet-green pinyon and cedar — this is what matters.
This, and the blue flight of a jay across golden desert spaces,
the fierce bite of the wind on the divide, the splash of the
stream in the arroya as your horse plunges through. The
air is so clear and dry and brilliant that it seems like light ;
the light so fresh, so vivid, so everchanging that it seems
like air: they blend into a common element in which you
are purged of all human concerns.
The road you follow is no more than a curving shadow,
brown, gray, or red, that vanishes in the gray of sage brush
and chamiso; or a narrow trail cut in the solid stone which
the muddy Rio Grande, far below, coiling and turning
through the ages, has hollowed into a canyon. Soon you
learn to leave even the trails, heading your horse straight
through cactus and pinyon, straight up and down broken,
barren ridges which no man, you imagine, has ever explored
before. And when, from the foothills of the Sangre de
Cristos you look down on Santa Fe, "the oldest city in the
United States," with its legislative chambers, its archaeo-
logical museum, its literary and artistic circles, you see only
a tiny cluster of roofs and chimneys; a wreath of smoke
which your eye discards to follow the mesa, wide and purple
as the southern sea. The mesa with strange, solitary moun-
tains like dark volcanic islands swimming on its surface, and
snowy ridges melting into the interminable sky.
But man will not let you alone, even here. There are
only 400,000 humans in all the 122,000 square miles of New
Mexico. Yet they soon project themselves into the picture.
Straight through the valleys, along the lower spurs of the
mountains, the "American" has built his railroads. His
schools, prisons, churches, stores, ranch houses, garages,
though somewhat in the local adobe tradition, are, like his
"state roads," conspicuous for a certain hardness and
modernity. And he, too, is conspicuous as he lopes along,
tall and lanky and very confident under his sombrero, or
whizzes by in his Buick or his Ford. In the sheltered can-
yons that stretch down like so many fingers from the snow
peaks the "Mexican" — so called, though he has inhabited the
land for several hundred years and knows as little of old
Mexico as you or I — has hidden his little ranches: neat
rows of fruit trees, surrounding flat-roofed adobe houses,
colored red or gray like the soil, scarcely distinguishable
from it but for an indigo-blue window frame, or a bunch of
red peppers strung on the wall. The dress and manners of
the Mexican, unobtrusive like his house, have the same dash
of Latin color. He greets you with a smiling buenos dias
as he jogs along on his burro, and draws his broad-beamed,
white-topped wagon — where his wife sits beside him under a
black shawl elegantly draped — upon an angle of the hill to let
you pass. On the roads, too, you may meet a wagon-load of
Indians: men with brown, bitten Mongolian faces, square-
built, remote in their blankets, greeting you with silent
dignity. The Indian's adobe pueblo, thronged and humming
with busy life — whether it be spread out, pastoral-fashion,
or piled square on square like a child's block house — always
occupies an admirable site. Close against the mountains or
in some specially protected and fertile stretch of valley he
built it, long before Spaniard or American passed this way.
His ancestors he says, were obliged for lack of water to come
down from the cliffs. But he has never forgotten his lineal
descent from the ancient people whose deserted homes, hol-
lowed in the soft yellow stone on the southern face of the
mountains, still, from on high, command this incomparable
land.
Sitting against the hot wall of such a lonely cliffhouse the
other day — a house still plastered and colored within, smoked
by a fire extinguished thousands of years ago, and littered
with fragments of pottery more delicately patterned than
any that the Pueblos now produce — we were stirred by the
persistence of that queer, traditional, changing thing called
human civilization. On the face of the giant country spread
below us, which bares its geologic bones so dramatically, we
could distinguish the scars made by the patient hand of
man as clearly as those blazoned by dead seas and extinct
volcanoes: three "civilizations" as sharply differentiated as
the strata of the rocky canyon walls. For the newest state
in the Union is, by a strange paradox, built on the two oldest
cultures of the American continent; and, by another para-
dox, these cultures are still almost intact, though they have
existed side by side for three centuries and have been in-
corporated in our republic for seventy-five years. Neither
the Spanish-Catholic veneer that he acquired in the sixteenth
century nor the fumbling "education" supplied by our gov-
ernment since 1846 has fundamentally touched the ancient
tribal rites and the communal government of the Pueblo
Indian; and he has guarded like so much treasure the
great tracts of land granted him by the Spaniards and con-
firmed by the Treaty of Guadalupe. The Spanish-speaking
population, with the exception of a limited number of fam-
ilies of pure blood and dominating instincts, who claim
descent from the Conquistadors, has retained not only the
Spanish tongue but many of the habits, customs, and re-
ligious ceremonies of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies and also, to a certain degree, the psychology of a
peasant class. As for the pale-skinned New Mexican he is
still, in a sense, the pioneer of the Santa Fe Trail; still,
in the presence of these far more ancient inhabitants of
the land, the conqueror, the "white man," the "American."
Beside us, basking in the sun against the cliff, sat one
of the wisest of the ancients, an Indian with a Spanish
name (baptized by the priest in infancy, like his fellows),
who wore his hair tied in beaver skins on either side of a
sad, benignant old face. The excavations were on his tribal
land. He had assisted in them and had guided us here from
his "governor's" office in the pueblo in the valley. Before
we left there he had showed us, hanging on the wall, two
ebony silver-handled canes which marked his due succes-
sion ; one presented by an early Spanish potentate, the other
— which gave us pause — bearing the inscription : "Abraham
Lincoln to , 1863." The old man seemed to be thinking
anxious thoughts as he gazed down into the canyon, where
40
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2871
the northern shadow of every black pine was a sparkling
patch of snow. His eyes were drawn up into two points
like a worried setter dog's.
"Senor," we said, "tell us a legend of your people."
"Bueno," he answered doubtfully. Finally he began to
speak, tracing lines in the dry earth with one crooked old
finger. But the "legend" resolved itself into a sort of dirge,
and the burden of the dirge was that the day of proud
isolation for the Pueblo Indians was coming to an end. The
young men were refusing to obey the governor, evading
their appointed duties, carrying disputes into the American
courts instead of to the Council of Elders. Many, many
deaths from influenza. Land passing somehow into Mexican
hands. "If this go on, pretty soon the Indian, he have
nothing left — I not know what the Indian, he going to do."
There is an old Mexican with a skin like seared parch-
ment in a certain brown village who feels in his bones the
same chill of approaching change. Don Pancho's great-
grandchildren are obliged by the new law to go to school.
Don Pancho's son-in-law may be ousted from his ancestral
acres if a suit brought by the Indians establishes their more
antique claim. Don Pancho prefers "Americanos" to In-
dians though it was an Americano who seized his own ranch
years ago. He borrowed fifty dollars on it for funeral
expenses when his wife died, and the American claimed it
at the end of thirty days. Pancho is nevertheless a patriot,
eager to display, in his daughter's best room, a crayon por-
trait and two colored photographs of his grandson who
fought in France. (His daughter abuses her Mexican
neighbors, who have allowed a burro to break into her
corral, in these terms: "Es una familia de Alemanes.")
The grandson's is a rather mystical, unintelligent face, like
those of the young fellows whom we saw on the edge of the
desert, in the cold dawn of Good Friday, flagellating them-
selves and dragging heavy crosses on their bared and bloody
backs. Probably Juan is a Penitente, too. But Nita, the
granddaughter, is a school-teacher, getting a salary an
Eastern district-school teacher might envy, and taking a
normal course every summer. We found a pretty Spanish-
American girl just like her in a lost mountain village, in-
structing twelve children ("in English, but we translate")
for $85.00 a month, and expecting a raise, though she spent
only $15.00 on board and lodging. She does not "teach the
Catholic religion till after four o'clock."
The American New Mexicans, who in spite of their cow-
boy airs mostly came from the "East" — i.e., from Illinois or
Kansas — once upon a time, also intend to vote for Wood.
At least we saw them expressing their will to that effect at
a Republican convention where their will was apparently
supreme, though their speeches were translated by an in-
terpreter to an assemblage in which the Spanish element
outnumbered them three to one. This type of American
will sell you wonderful oil shares for ten cents apiece, nowa-
days, and frankly covets the Indian's alluvial lands — "the
government ought to allot 'em four acres each and sell the
rest" — which he claims the Pueblos are too "unprogressive"
to exploit; adding, in the next breath, that it is a pity we
couldn't have seen the war-dance last year, when they were
all naked and painted. "Now some darned modern teacher
has put 'em into store-shirts."
Thus, during six weeks, the Easterner wanders from cliff
dwelling to state capital, listening to voices American,
Spanish-American, and Indian-American — pausing at the
door of the lawyer who considers the Pueblo a child and a
government ward to eternity ; at the ranch of the ex-Indian
teacher who would educate him in the public schools, and
grant him citizenship at once; at the studio of the artist
from Chicago who for aesthetic and cultural reasons would
keep the Indian and the Mexican as they are; at the offices
of the new women's political organizations which stand for
"Americanization," even at the expense of black shawls and
red blankets — from all this deriving a strong impression
that, for better or worse, the era of "stratified" civilizations
is coming to an end, and the era of the "melting-pot" be-
ginning. Though there are, even today, less than four in-
habitants to a square mile the three races are beginning to
tread on one another's toes, and, with the growth of pros-
perity and state consciousness, with suffrage and compul-
sory education, and the breakdown of language barriers,
have got to learn to live together instead of apart.
The Easterner, who has seen the ugly conglomerate pro-
duced by the "melting-pot" in other parts of the country,
has the temerity to suggest that New Mexico has a unique
opportunity to assimilate without destroying the stored
wisdom and individuality and artistic technique of the two
ancient cultures. Here, if anywhere on American soil, it
should be possible to conserve the heritage of the past with-
out limiting the promise of the future. There is a charm in
the Southwestern air which liberates men from oppressive
traditions as it liberates them from the fears and inhibitions
and sicknesses and jealousies that burden them in narrower
places. The dolce far niente territorial regime had this of
good, that it leaves the new state government free to form
its own traditions — free even of the theory that teachers
must be badly paid. Vast undeveloped resources, both min-
eral and agricultural, land enough for everyone to have -a
comfortable slice, high wage standards, simple standards
of living which minimize social distinctions — almost every
New Mexican has a horse as well as a ranch and the woman
who has lived eleven years in Paris works as hard at her
plowing as her humblest neighbor — here are some of the
conditions of an ideal community.
When a bird or an animal dies in the desert it does not
decay. It slowly desiccates. Perhaps the hoary civilizations
of this infant state, especially the Indian, are doomed to some
such gradual desiccation in the hot sun of progress. If they
ever reach the point of being only dried bones to amuse the
tourist or even inspire the artist they will, rightly enough,
be picked up and classified in the Santa Fe Museum. But
at present they are full of a coursing vitality, as anyone
who has seen a Mexican wedding-dance or a corn-dance at
San Felipe on May 1 can testify. The New Mexican of all
three inheritances should be the richer for them. He is a
very lucky fellow. Where else in the world, within easy
reach of farm, city, and university can the average citizen
watch, on dusty plazas whose beauty is a sort of composite
of Greece and Egypt and Palestine, against mountains which
Gauguin should have painted, dances whose rhythms and
colors and symbols are as old as the cliffs and the spring,
yet as modern as the Russian Ballet? Where else in the
world is it possible to distinguish so clearly the relative im-
portance of folk-lore, alfalfa, and oil wells? If the New
Mexican ever loses his sense of proportion he has only to
gallop half a mile into the hills to measure his petty affairs
against the giant indifference of nature; to learn, in the
silence of the scarred earth he is ranging, the primitive and
savage meaning of Sun, Wind, Rock, Bird, Tree, River,
Mountain, Plain.
July 10, 1920]
The Nation
41
Rifts
By EVELYN SCOTT
Rain in the Mountains
Like inexorable peace,
The mists march through the mountains.
One by one the grim peaks sink into the cold arms of the
unspoken.
The little town with the pink and white houses
Looses its hold on the ridge of hills
And floats among cloud tops.
A shaggy donkey, cropping grass in the sequestered church
yard,
Walks, with a leisurely air,
Into a wind driven abyss.
Hectic
Ruby winged pains
Flash through me,
Jewel winged agonies :
They vanish,
Carrying me with them
Without my knowing it.
Lagniappe
You in the placid garden,
You with the death sweet smile,
Before you speak of love to me
Go out and hate a while.
The kind devil
Has a tolerant grin.
He flings the golden gates out wide
And lets poor people in.
He warms them in his bosom
And guards their pain.
He shows them hell fields that are bright
And skies gentle with rain.
But up in paradise
The stern Lord is wise
And Michael with his flaming sword
Puts out the angel's eyes.
Don Quixote Sojourns in Rio de Janeiro
White roses climb the wall of night.
A pale face looks from a window in the sky.
0, Moon, is it because you have seen her that you are beau-
tiful?
Is she happy among the saints?
I placed white flowers in the coffin.
Are they the blossoms that lie scattered along the horizon,
Tangled in your light?
Dim stars drop into the sea.
So you give my flowers back to me, do you, Bella Dona?
I might gather the petals and carry them to Antonietta to
trim her hats.
So much for life with a little negro milliner
In the Rua Chile!
Quarrel
Abruptly, from a wall of clear cold silence,
Like an icy glass,
Myself looked out at me
And would not let me pass.
I wanted to reach you
Before it was too late,
But my frozen image barred the way
With vacant hate.
Gundry
There are little blood flecks on the snow.
There is blood in the heart of the white hyacinth.
I saw her pale body harsh as a flash of lightning
Between the grey torsos of the trees.
She had a little child.
She held a little child in her breast.
She went quickly through the dim forest.
I have seen her feet.
They are as white as ivory.
Where she ran there are little red tracks.
And it is not yet springtime !
Suicide
A dirty little beetle peers into motionless eyes,
Transfixed to their depths as by shining needles.
The limbs are taut in ultimate resentment.
A bare sky confronts a bare upturned face.
Like a wheel vanishing in speed,
The corpse,
Containing everything,
Has swallowed itself.
Cross
Pierrette is dead.
Between her narrow little breasts
They have laid a cross of lead.
Her tight pale lips are sunken.
Her fleshless fingers clutch the pall.
Why did she have to die like that,
And she so small?
For Wives and Mistresses
Death,
Being a woman,
Being passive like all final things,
Being a mother,
Waits. *
Shining faces grey
And melt into her flesh.
Death envies those asleep in her,
Little children who have come back,
Fiery faces,
Bright for a moment in the darkness,
Extinguished softly in her womb.
42
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2871
The Poet and His Moment
By LUDWIG LEWISOHN
THE poets have broken the old forms that muffled their
living voices as with layers of felt. But the force of
the original impulse is beginning to be spent; a slight
weariness steals over them and they are trying to rational-
ize the process of which they are a part. Mr. D. H. Law-
rence, one of the most gifted of the British insurgents, is
the latest to announce that he has discovered the burning
secret. He speaks with assurance and fervor and ends upon
an inimitably youthful "Now we know!" His contribution
to our knowledge may be summed up in three statements.
The poetry of other periods sought to render permanent the
past or the future, memory or aspiration. The new poetry
expresses the "windlike transit" of the immediate and im-
perfect moment. This poetry, written in free verse, is "the
direct utterance from the instant, whole man." We have,
in brief, discovered the poetry of the present.
Even on its own ground and without any analysis this
theory breaks down. When Catullus cried out "Da mi basia
mille, deinde centum!", or a nameless medieval singer
"Timor mortis conturbat me!", or Shelley "I fall upon the
thorns of life, I bleed!", Mr. Lawrence's instant moment
had spoken and life had surged "into utterance at its very
well-head." But what is the instant, the immediate pres-
ent, in this sense? It is, evidently, the poet's field of con-
sciousness at the creative moment. But if, at that moment,
his consciousness throbs with a memory or a hope, is not
that memory or hope the immediate present of his con-
scious mind? It is not possible, of course, to isolate any
immediate present of the consciousness. But if we could
tear such a moment from the accretions of the soul's past,
that moment would be blank and sterile. No, into every
creative impulse under its temporal aspect pours the whole
past, and the poet expresses himself with all he has become
throughout the intricate and impassioned years. Every-
thing in him converges toward that creative occasion, and
it is for this reason that he can lend a fleeting impulse or a
passionate enchantment the energy of expression and the
eternal echo that differentiate poetry from ordinary speech.
But we can get closer to theories of the new poetry by
saying that they all, and Mr. Lawrence's most notably, con-
fuse the two elements of experience and expression. In the
poet's creative consciousness these two elements are blended.
But they differ widely in origin and character. The lyrist's
experience — the passion of Catullus, the despair of Shelley
— is immediate. But his mode of expression is not. In-
stinctive as its practice may have become, its origin is dis-
tant and its growth was slow. The experience is unique, as
his own personality is, and hence, in its essence, incom-
municable. To communicate it at all, the poet must use
symbols — words, images, rhythms-#— which are freighted as
heavily as possible with what he would convey and yet in-
telligible to his fellow-men. From these necessities and
from this central contradiction he cannot escape in free
verse or in fixed. He must convert his innermost self into
forms which, through the very necessity of being widely
intelligible and therefore conventional, all but obliterate the
flaming image that was in his soul. Between that image and
his fellows he must interpose a symbol, a convention, an art.
At the core of every revolt in poetry there is one aim and
only one: to simplify that art, to shift the qualities of that
inevitable convention so as to shorten the distance between
experience and expression and heighten the force of the
poetic impact on the hearer. It follows that all revolts in
poetry carry within themselves their sufficient justification,
since they spring from the instinctive perception in both
poets and their hearers that the dominant convention no
longer mediates between them and has ceased to express
anything except itself. A new convention must be estab-
lished, a new agreement upon symbols of communication
between the poet and his audience. And these symbols
must indeed be more flexible and fluid on the one hand and
more naked and incisive on the other. But symbols they
remain, materials of an art of expression. They will
forever fall short of the immediacy of experience and fol-
low it haltingly and blindly at their best. Words will not
become things, nor music passion, nor images the soul.
Thus we find that every poet lives, even while he creates,
that "quick of all time" which, according to Mr. Lawrence,
has but just been discovered, and that, in the matter of
expression, the best we can do is to substitute one conven-
tion for another with very little certainty that the new one
will be, ultimately and permanently, more serviceable than^
the old. We do right to deprecate the stubborn flatness of
work that clings to an unmeaning and outlived mode; it is*
useless to deny that a great deal of free verse misses the
passionate concentration of speech that makes poetry memo-
rable and strings its visual images upon a paper thread.
The substance of Mr. Oppenheim's The Slave was per-
manently expressed by Coleridge in seventeen syllables of
his Ode to France; the streaming cranes in Sohrab and
Rustum enthrall an imagination through which the careful
brilliancies of Miss Amy Lowell glide like beads of glass.
The achievement and the hope of the new poetry lies
neither in a confusion between experience and expression,
nor in mistaking a fresh convention for an unattainable
freedom. It lies in the new kinds and the new sources of
experience that are ours, in the modern capacity to strip
both the objective world and the soul of myth and ritual,
to feel the edge of things and approach the nakedness of
thought. A second-rate modern lyrist has perceptions and
insights that the great poets of old either did not possess or
were inhibited from uttering. Compare an Elizabethan an-
thology with one of contemporary verse. The advantage of
mere beauty is with the old poets, that of delicacy and
variety and range of substance is overwhelmingly with the
new. It is the freedom of the mind and not the fancied
freedom of form that will add greatness to the new poetry
some day. If it has not done so yet, it is simply because no
personality powerful and gifted enough has addressed itself
to the task. The stage is set. A thousand heralds are
blowing their horns of tin or silver. The king delays.
Reconstruction in France
by William MacDonald
in next week's issue of The Nation
July 10, 1920]
The Nation
43
In the Driftway
THAT Australian archbishop whom certain super-patriots
wanted to have deported, because they said he had
failed to rise when "America" was played on shipboard en
route to this country, was not as happy in the means he
employed to amuse the savages among whom he was cast as
was the famous prelate of the balmy isle of Rum-ti-foo.
The Australian archbishop, it appears, intended to rise for
''America" — which would have been correct — and sit through
"God Save the King" — which would have been popular —
but, as the music is the same, he not unnaturally got his
uprisings and his downsittings mixed. He would have done
well to observe the moderation of Gilbert's Bishop of Rum-
ti-Foo.
His people — twenty-three in sum —
They played the eloquent tum-tum,
And lived on scalps served up in rum —
The only sauce they knew.
When on a visit to England he was so struck with the
antics of a street dancer that he resolved to learn the art
to please his flock. He worked hard and all went well until
the dancer suggested:
"If, when revisiting your see,
You learnt to hop on shore — like me —
The novelty would striking be,
And must attract remark."
But the Bishop of Rum-ti-Foo knew his savages better, and
drew the line.
"No," said the worthy Bishop, "no;
That is a length to which, I trow,
Colonial Bishops cannot go.
You may express surprise
At finding Bishops deal in pride —
But if that trick I ever tried,
I should appear undignified
In Rum-ti-Foozle's eyes."
*****
A FRIEND drops in to say that since Prohibition he has
noted the existence of a periodical called the Soft Drink
Journal. A weakly, no doubt. But some unregenerate per-
sons would still prefer a hard drink daily.
*****
" A SIA Minor Lacks Toilers," says a newspaper headline.
x\. As that is the situation in every progressive country
today, Asia Minor must be more civilized than some of us
had supposed.
*****
OTHER cities may boast of their free theaters for the
amusement and edification of their populace; New
York has its Board of Estimate meetings to which greatest
show on earth a fortunate public is bidden gratis. In one
of the latest skits Comptroller Craig opens the piece by act-
ing in what Major La Guardia, the high-spirited President
of the Board of Aldermen, considers a very sniffy manner.
The Major jumps up from his chair. "The stamp of truth
is not conspicuous upon your remarks, sir!" he cries, or
words to that effect. "Say that again and you will get what
you deserve," retorts the Comptroller in a firm but dignified
voice. Nothing daunted by this horrible threat, the Major
continues to act in an unseemly fashion. The Comptroller's
patience becomes exhausted ; in true heroic style he pushes
a button. Enter Mr. Kerrigan, Secretary of the Finance
Department. "What would you, my lord?" he asks respect-
fully. The Comptroller motions toward the Major, but he,
alas, refuses to know his place. "You're not a member of
this Board," the Major cries impolitely. "Get out of here."
Mr. Kerrigan not only refuses to go but commits a sad in-
discretion. "I'm no wop," he murmurs. It is to be inferred
that he has reference to the Major. At least the Major so
infers, for he jumps to his feet once more and — oh, heavens
— begins to remove his coat, the while begging Mr. Kerrigan
to repeat his unhappy remark just once more. The audience
holds its breath. Will there be a fight? It prays there
will be. But no! Not for nothing (though some people may
have supposed so) is New York's Mayor also allowed to
attend Board of Estimate meetings. He waves his hand.
"Be quiet, boys," he whispers gently. And all is well.
*****
FOR every schoolboy's curse flung at Caesar, the immortal
Julius must have indulged in at least three laughs for
the way he has been translated. And yet he probably wrote
his "Commentaries" with no more malice aforethought than
do the writers of our sporting news today. Gradually our
great dailies will be printing a glossary after their sporting
pages; gradually the glossaries will become more and more
cumbersome; and the end will plainly be that instead of
the schoolboy of day after tomorrow sweating over Orge-
torix and Ariovistus, he will sigh not too softly over thirty-
five lines of Babe Ruth's Campaign Against the Mackmen,
and by that time Babe, requiring translation, will have
ceased utterly to be a hero. For example, how will the fol-
lowing passages be rendered 2,000 years from now: "The
second imbroglio was rather more easy, the Manhattanites
pounding Scott Perry, Connie Mack's twirling ace, and
several other home twirlers," or "The Athletics uncoiled a
little spurt, became familiar with Quinn and scored two
runs before the deluge was stopped," or "Quinn whiffed
and Peck drew a walk"? The last one will undoubtedly be
a frightful sticker and its rendering may even rival the
famous "translation" of Arma virumque cano, Troiae . . .
venit — "a man came to Troy with a dog and a gun."
The Drifter
Loyalty
By DAVID GREENHOOD
I shall meet you in hell tonight
On the corner of Judas and Cain;
Wear your cloak of green and white
To cover the scarlet stain.
Should you remember the old tune
We held when the dance was done
Hum it sweet to the first poltroon
You see from Templeton.
I shall hear the familiar humming
When I reach the smoldering shore,
And you will know I am coming
By the pink glint on my oar.
Oh, I should piously never care
If Christ should see your breast,
And look upon the roses there
That I myself have blest —
But keep your cloak around you tight
Lest Satan see your Brand,
Your stainless cloak of green and white
Till I guard you with my hand.
44
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2871
Correspondence
Frenchmen Admit It
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: I note on page 854-a of The Nation of the issue of June
26, 1920, the publication of my letter of May 25 with a note by
the Editor. In view of your failure to name any French guns
which were within easy range of any of the steel furnaces
in the Briey Basin, I conclude that you admit what I was con-
fident was the fact, namely: that there were none, and that
therefore the statement in your issue of April 3, 1920, that
"The great steel furnaces of the Briey Basin, operated by the
Germans during their occupancy, lay within easy range of
French guns for four years," was an error.
New York, June 26 Herbert Parsons
[We regret that we are not sufficiently familiar with the
positions of French batteries during the war to "name the
guns." We gave authorities for the general statement and
referred to the Journal Officiel for details. We think it hardly
likely that MM. Engeraud, Ernest Flaudin, Barthe, Gustave
Tery, and Senator Henry Berenger are all in error. — Editor.]
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: In your issue of June 26 Herbert Parsons writes ques-
tioning your editorial statement, "The great steel furnaces of
the Briey Basin operated by the Germans during their occu-
pancy, lay within easy range of the French guns for four
years," and implying the impossibility of the recapture of the
French basin containing seventy per cent of all France's iron
ore and yielding to the Germans 14,000,000 tons during twenty-
seven quiet months.
The only guns, Mr. Parsons says, "if there were any guns,"
that could reach any of these furnaces were railroad guns and
they were useless, he says, because of the dispersion of fire.
Aero bombing, he adds, was impractical because of the element
of danger involved!
However well these reasons for leaving the enemy unmolested
while he makes shells for your destruction may satisfy students
of military tactics and the aces in the American air squadrons,
it does not refute the charge of collusion between the mineral
and munitions interests of the two continents made by Clarence
Streit in his pamphlet "Where Iron is, There is the Father-
land," just published. In fact Mr. Parsons' authoritative state-
ment simply adds to the facts already collected by Deputies
Barthe and Engerand and M. Gaudine de Villaine.
How can we explain the phenomena that guns were either
unsuited (according to Mr. Parsons) or unused (according to
the editor of The Nation and Clarence Streit) when a locality
admitted by French, German, and American tacticians to be
the Achilles heel of the front lay within twenty miles of Verdun?
New York, June 25 Genevieve Taggard
Who Won't Buy Can't Work
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: I used to read in my beloved Transcript that production
was the great need of the day, and that the workers were very
naughty because they sometimes stopped work to ask for more
wages. I now read in my beloved Transcript that most of the
New England woolen mills have been closed because the slump
in the wool market makes production "unprofitable" — whatever
that may mean. And I haven't noticed any Hymn to Production
in my beloved Transcript for weeks. I suppose the workers are
very naughty now because they won't buy. Buying is the great
need of the day. But it is complicated, isn't it?
Boston, Mass., June 26 Ellis Ogle
American Property in Germany
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: I have read with amazement and shame the article in
The Nation of June 19 on "Mr. Palmer as Alien Property Cus-
todian." I had known that the private property of Germans in
America had been confiscated, in violation of all principles of
international law, but I had not known of the barefaced lies
that were told to justify these confiscations. I had lived in
Germany several years when the war broke out; I lived there
during the first two and a half years of the war, and was again
in Germany from the latter part of November, 1918, until spring.
I knew personally the head of every American business con-
cern in Berlin, and many in other parts of the empire. My ac-
quaintance with the members of the American colony in Berlin
was extensive.
When America came into the war, these businesses were
placed in so-called Zwangsverwaltung. Not one was confiscated,
so far as I have been able to learn, nor was any one weakened
or crippled in any way as a result of the deliberate acts of
German administrators. On the contrary, every effort was
made to continue the businesses and refrain from any unneces-
sary interference with the plans of the American owners. A
typical instance is that of a large concern in Berlin. Its
owner was Canadian born, but had for years been regarded as
an American. When America entered the war he was arrested
and interned at Ruhleben, but was soon released and permitted
to leave Germany. He returned to America and secured his
naturalization papers, while his wife, a woman of great ability,
remained in Berlin to conduct the business. She told me in
January, 1919 :
"We have had a Zwangsverwalter (government administra- "
tor) in the office since America came into the war, but he hasn't ,
interfered with the conduct of the business in any way. He has '
kept watch of the books, but every decision in regard to the
carrying on of the business has been left in my hands, and he
has even permitted me to fix the amount which I wanted to take
out for my personal use each month. He has never even ven-
tured to suggest a reduction of the figure named by me." This
is a typical example of the way in which the Zwangsverwaltung
was conducted in all American businesses in Germany.
Mr. Palmer's assertion that Germany "has sold the property
of American and neutral residents in Germany, down to house-
hold goods and wearing apparel," is without foundation. I
assert confidently that no one single instance of the kind oc-
curred. The only confiscation of Americans' property as a
result of the war was by act of their own government, which
destroyed or seriously interrupted the businesses or careers of
scores of its citizens by sequestering their property in America
and. threatening to confiscate it if they remained in Germany.
I can name eight men and women who were thus condemned to
serious deprivation and, in one case at least, to actual poverty
by the action of their own government, and there are many
more. Two elderly women, in the sixties, delicate, refined, and
unused to physical labor, enjoyed from American investments a
small income, but one sufficient to support them in their home
in Berlin. By sequestering their property, their own govern-
ment forced them to return to America. Both are today work-
ing as saleswomen in New York stores. Their letters to me
indicate that their patriotism has not been appreciably strength-
ened or deepened as a result of the treatment to which they were
subjected. They are but two of scores of victims of this sort
of thing.
I had hoped that that love of justice which we are taught
to consider a special American trait would some day right all
these wrongs. But as I see preparations being made to loot
Mexico and to perpetuate the rule of the country's great indus-
trial and financial masters, I begin to despair.
New York, June 22 K.
July 10, 1920]
The Nation
45
Satisfactory Punishment
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: You will remember that a short time ago I sent you a
small pamphlet, written by a political prisoner, who is out on
bond, a Mr. Kane. In that article he tells of the sufferings
of a certain McCoshen at Leavenworth. Now I have received
a letter from McCoshen, who is out on bail. It is typical of
other letters I have had and I am anxious to inform liberal-
minded people of these conditions.
Reading, Pennsylvania, June 10 Marie Rhein
Dear Friend:
I received your letter of the twenty-first and also several
cards. I assure you that receiving letters by one who is penned
up as is the convict is a pleasure such as only those who have
been so unfortunate can understand fully. Being a political
prisoner in this or any other country is not all fun — it's hell.
I am now out on bonds, pending the appeal; the organiza-
tion raised the bond money and I assure you that I am ever
so grateful. I feel, however, that there are others in that
damnable pest-hole, Leavenworth Penitentiary, who should be
gotten out instanter — Bert Lorton and Ed. Hamilton are and
have been held in isolation under conditions that are inhuman.
The latter has been set upon by thugs at the behest of Deputy
Warden Fletcher and beaten most unmercifully. Neither Lor-
ton nor Hamilton are allowed to express, through the only
means of communication with the outside permitted them — their
letters — that which they have been forced to bear. It seems
to me a crying disgrace to the workers that other workers
should be languishing in jails, for lack of get-up-idness on the
part of many groups of men.
I would have answered your letters sooner but for a condi-
tion which began on November 25 and came to an end on May
28, when I was liberated on bail.
On November 25 I was notified that the deputy warden had
changed me to the "rock gang," i. e., I was to break rock. I
refused, demanding of the official why I was transferred. He
stated that in view of the fact that I had been sent to the
penitentiary as a political prisoner, I was to be placed where
a closer watch could be kept on my activities. Did I break rock?
I should say not. As a result of this refusal — though I ap-
pealed to the warden for an audience, which appeal he saw fit
to ignore — / was placed in solitary confinement on bread and
water and told that I would have to bow in submission to the
official's whim before I would be released from the dungeon
into which I had been thrown. As time wore on and I showed
no signs of giving in, the deputy placed me on regular prison
fare, but had me strung up by the wrists to the inner door of
the dungeon of which I was the sole occupant. I was on the
bread-and-water diet forty-one-days during the time of my soli-
tary confinement from November 25 to May 28. The balance
of the six months and five days, I was strung up by the wrists,
denied reading, writing, smoking. In fact I was not permitted to
communicate with the outside at all, I was held strictly incomun-
icado. Remember that all of the time I was in isolation, six
months and a few days, the electric light in the dungeon into
which I had been cast continued day and night to flood the
otherwise dark and damp inclosure, with no rest for the eyes;
the object was, of course, to bring about mental collapse.
Besides all that I was exposed to the daily insults of the
thugs whom the officials place over those in isolation. These
are convicts, chiefly life-termers, who are fed on an extra
quality of "grub."
Kansas City, Kansas, June U E. J. McCoshen
[The American Civil Liberties Union has received the follow-
ing interesting letter from the Department of Justice with re-
gard to their policy of prison administration: —
"In reply to your letter of the 4th inst., you are informed that
one of the punishments prescribed in Federal penitentiaries for
refusal to work is solitary confinement with the hands manicled
to the bars of the cell during regular working hours.
The Department is entirely satisfied with this form of pun-
ishment and contemplates no change.
R. P. Stewart, Assistant Attorney General"
Washington, June 8 Editor.]
Piety at Yale and Cornell
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: You may have noticed that last month Yale University
removed all restrictions on undergraduate Sunday athletics, a
notable step in advance for which the New Haven authorities
are to be warmly congratulated. This reminds me of the con-
duct of Andrew D. White when he was shaping the policy of
Cornell University in its natal days, and when he used to say in
connection with these "Sunday observances," that he took as the
example not to follow "my two alma maters, Hobart and Yale."
But the last time I was at Cornell, the library, gymnasium,
swimming-pool, tennis-courts, golf links, baseball field, etc., were
not only closed on Sunday, but at the entrance to the library
was posted a copy of a formal resolution of the board of trustees
enforcing these regulations. This was during the lifetime of
Andrew D. White and even while he was living on the campus.
If departed beings live again and watch our doings here, I
venture to say that Andrew D. White is not a little nettled to
see Yale leading in liberality and Cornell returning to the blue
laws of this same Connecticut!
Let us hope that the new president, whoever he may be, will
go back to the earlier and better traditions of Ithaca.
New York, June 5 Theodore Stanton
" Where'd You Get That Stuff
» >
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: To such readers of The Nation as may be especially
interested in American speech I submit what is to me the
newest cycle of slang. Not that I feel that the new contribution
is to be at all permanent. The contrary is more likely than
usual to be true, because the expression is capable of taking so
many forms that it will doubtless soon .die from overwork. But
it is rather more than usually interesting through the strange
mixture of pun and figure which defines it, requiring exceptional
ingenuity in its invention. Again, unlike the almost obsolete
"I should worry," the moribund "I'll say so," the new slang is
effective through its content and not so much through the man-
ner in which the phrase is spoken. The appearance of the
first of the following in a theme in freshman composition led
me to an investigation which produced the variations given.
You say it, goldfish; you've been around the globe.
You tell 'em, Sahara; you've got the sand.
You tell 'em, pieface; you've got the crust.
You tell 'em, cordovan; my tongue's in my shoe.
You tell 'em, rouge; my lips-stick.
You tell 'em, Victrola; you've got the record.
You tell 'em, coffee; you've got the grounds.
You tell 'em, little stream; you've been through the mill.
You tell 'em, toothache; you've got the nerve.
You tell 'em, cabbage; you've got the head.
You tell 'em, onion; you're strong.
You tell it, Chinaman; you've got the cue.
You tell it, Wells-Fargo; I can't express it.
You tell it, sugar; you're refined.
You tell it, fishpole; you've got a good line.
You tell it, banana; you're one of the bunch.
You tell it, fence; you've been around a lot.
Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 15 B. G. Grim
46
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2871
Books
A Photograph of the Great War
A Brief History of the Great War. By Carlton J. H. Hayes.
The Macmillan Company.
IF, as Professor Hayes admits, it is far too early to attempt
a "definitive" history of the Great War, he himself has sup-
plied so magistral a narrative as to approach the ideal and
almost to overtake it. In mastery of detail, in perspective, in
proportion, in perspicuity, in philosophic grasp of his subject as
a whole, he outclasses all rivals, whether they have written in
English, in French, or in German. Even his faults, such little
ones as may be picked out here and there, are but the excesses
of his virtues. Thus, in his desire to make everything perfectly
clear, he verges on the pedagogical. Like Meissonier, he paints
in not only the features of the men in his picture but the very
buttons on their coats. But doubtless the public which rejoices in
advertisements of "fool-proof" automobiles and "absurdly simple"
razors will welcome any explanations, however elementary.
Possibly some readers may find his perfect objectivity colorless;
for neither the abomination of desolation nor the heroism of the
peoples, neither the Punic faith of the Germans nor the Cartha-
ginian peace by which they were crushed, arouses in him the
faintest ripple of passion. Certainly, by his lucidity and his
impartiality he has attained a result unsurpassed by the poets
and thinkers who have written on the war, by Sassoon or Bar-
busse, by Keynes or Bertrand Russell. Apparently innocent of
literary artifice, he has drawn a picture impressive by its sheer
clarity, a picture that has not the color and poetry of a painting
but that has the fidelity of a photograph.
One hardly knows whether to admire most the richness of
Professor Hayes's knowledge or the sobriety with which it is
held in restraint. Things old and new are brought from the
treasure never for display and only when needed. Vast re-
serves, never called into the firing line, hover in the distance
so unobtrusively that only the attentive reader feels their exist-
ence at all. What the author offers is not only a history of the
war, ample as that is, but a history of the world during five
momentous years. The Sinn Fein rebellion, the Russian revolu-
tion, the play of American and European politics, are all set
forth in masterly outline and in their proper relation to the
main theme. The war itself is treated with the last lucidity.
Though the writer scorns to add a single thrill or throb to an
unembroidered narrative, he has registered a reality causing the
reader to feel, more here than anywhere else, that the struggle
was, to repeat Wellington's characterization of the battle of
Waterloo, "a damned near thing." How Germany unfolded her
unimagined might, how she held France and England with her
left hand while she pounded Russia to a pulp with her right,
how she almost stunned Italy and all but hamstrung England,
is told no less faithfully than is told the gradual development
of a force even greater than hers, called into being by fear and
hatred and conscience, and mobilizing the manhood and woman-
hood of six great empires and of a dozen lesser allies.
After a statistical estimate of the havoc of the war, with its
sixty million combatants, its seventeen million dead and twenty
million maimed, with its destruction of wealth measured only
in smaller part by the increase in the public debt of the Great
Powers by one hundred and twenty-nine billion dollars, Professor
Hayes points out the landmarks of a new era. No such cata-
clysm, he rightly maintains, has ever so greatly changed the
face of the planet in so short a time; the world neither is nor
can be the same world that it was but six years ago. The
most obvious result, the defeat of Germany's attempt to win
complete supremacy of world-power, and her crashing downfall,
is not the most important of the major changes. The flowering
of nationalism, together with the drift towards an Inter-Nation,
and the mighty reinforcement of imperialism in four out of five
of the conquering Great Powers, the growth of republicanism
and of democracy, are found to be the most powerful and perma-
nent political developments. Social shifts not less momentous
are the accessions of power to the very rich class and to the
wage-workers at the expense of the middle classes, and the
acceleration of socialist reform in all its varieties, state, Marx-
ian, and gild. A very illuminating page on the effect of the
war on science and education is followed by an estimate of its
influence on religion, where for once the author lets his wishes
color, though ever so slightly, the otherwise clear glass of his
learned spectacles. That the conflict dealt a body blow to
materialism, and thus really helped piety, is, notwithstanding
the synthetic God of Mr. Wells and the Ersatz religion of the
"spiritualists," difficult to believe.
A number of excellent maps, appendices containing the
Covenant of the League of Nations, the American Reservations,
and the Agreement between the United States and France, and
a classified bibliography add to the value of the work. It can
be read with instruction, and should be kept for reference, by
all students of the subject. Preserved Smith
Primitive Society
Primitive Society. By Robert H. Lowie. Boni and Liveright.
I F anyone is looking for a psychological formula or an evolu-
* lutionary shibboleth, let him steer clear of this book. He will
see the "primitive" here not as ammunition for a formidable
theory of early man, not as a luckily preserved specimen of
what we ourselves once looked like, but as an individual entitled
to live a perfectly intelligible life of his own, with a perfectly
real and tangled set of historical antecedents, with an actual
place in a geographical world. Mr. Lowie's robust sense of
history and quite tyrannical insistence on geographical fact will"
rudely shock the speculative sociologist, the social psychologist,
the evolutionary anthropologist, and their like. He believes that
it is vain to seek in uniform psychological causation the explana-
tion of the course of cultural history; that superficially compa-
rable institutions have often arisen in totally distinct ways ; that
there are no valid evolutionary schemes that may guide us in
the history of human society; that, in short, the "laws" of an-
thropology are a snare and a delusion. If these contentions are
correct — the present reviewer believes they are unanswerable —
it means that the old classical anthropology, still current, is not
a science but a pseudo-science like medieval alchemy. The
brand-new Freudian interpretations of cultural history, inci-
dentally, are horses of the old color. Possibly they will be
antiquated before they become classical.
What Mr. Lowie demands of the student of a primitive so-
ciety is that he study it not as a particular instance of a
shadowy rule, but as having grown out of individual and more
or less unique circumstances of a historical and geographical
order. It is not permissible to lift a social feature bodily out of
its living cultural matrix and compare it with a feature simi-
larly lifted from the antipodes. Such comparative exercises may
be good fun for doctors' theses, but they do not materially
advance our understanding of the history of primitive institu-
tions. If Mr. Lowie thus takes his stand solidly with the his-
torians, he is not guilty of the provincial rationalism which has
been as common with historians as with the folk, the tendency
to explain every complex institution as a purely local develop-
ment evolved out of the special genius and cultural character-
istics of its carriers. The careful study of thousands of cultural
features in primitive levels has taught us that they are gen-
erally distributed over wide areas. These cultural areas do not
necessarily coincide for different features. Thus, we may find
that a myth is spread among the North American aborigines
from Atlantic to Pacific and that cognate forms of it occur even
in eastern Siberia and Japan, while a technological feature like
maize-culture may be distributed over an area that coincides
with a portion of the former range, yet takes in, in addition,
large territories lying to the south. Such facts of distribution
July 10, 1920]
The Nation
47
can mean only one thing. Institutions, beliefs, implements— in
short, cultural elements of whatever sort— arise in circum-
scribed territorial limits but tend by cultural contact to spread
over vaster and vaster areas. Now if w© feel in the light of
geographical analysis that there is not one chance in a hundred
that the origin of a given cultural feature is to be sought in the
particular milieu in which it is being studied, what becomes of
the mode of interpretation which assumes it as a fixed datum in
statu quo?
The now fashionable doctrine of economic determinism is not
as definitely assailed by Mr. Lowie as is psychological causation
or evolutionism. Yet he takes some telling shots at it. As a
universal interpretative principle it is no more valid than the
others. In the most primitive levels of society there are ideals
of conduct, aesthetic impulses, social usages that, so far from
being traceable to an economic root, actually fly in the face of
economic reason. In dealing with the question of rank among
primitive communities, Mr. Lowie shows how social compulsion
may even operate in the direction of economic suicide.
Armed with an unusually keen critical attitude toward preva-
lent philosophies, Mr. Lowie applies his geographic-historical
method of analysis to the main aspects of primitive life. He
begins with the family, taking up in order the various types of
marriage, the nature of polygamous institutions, the family as
a social unit, and the relation between social usage and kinship-
terminology. There follows an extended discussion of the en-
larged kinship group, the clan or "sib," as Mr. Lowie prefers to
call it. An interesting interlude on the position of women is
followed by what is perhaps the most valuable chapter of the
book, a discussion of primitive notions of property, material and
immaterial. The next two chapters are a descriptive and theo-
retical treatment of "associations," social units based not on
kinship, but on privileged initiation. Associations include all
those clubs, age classes, secret societies, and other organizations
which play a leading part in the ceremonial or honorific life of
primitive peoples. The last chapters constitute a kind of primi-
tive theory of the body politic. They treat of the closely inter-
woven themes of rank, government, and justice.
It is strange how many intrinsically unplausible theories
have been put forward by the classical anthropologists, how
eagerly they have been accepted by social scientists generally,
and how tenaciously they are still being held. It would not be
surprising to learn that the great vogue of some theories is due
simply to a sublimated desire for sex gossip seeking shelter and
justification in the high temple of science. There is, for instance,
the theory of ancient sexual communism, so blithely accepted by
the Spencers and the Morgans. Mr. Lowie disposes of this in
short order. The nearest apparent approach to a state of
promiscuity is the "group marriage" of the Todas in India.
Analysis shows that this institution is not sexual communism
at all, but a carefully regulated special form of polygamy. More-
over, it is clearly a secondary social development, not the sur-
vival of a supposedly primitive sex status. The much deplored
inferiority of woman in primitive levels is also shown by Mr.
Lowie to be either a myth outright or to rest on sentimental
expectations that even our own society does not fulfil. The
matriarchate, or rule by women, is a myth which probably owes
its popularity in no small measure to memories of the antique
Amazons. By a quaint confusion of thought the matrilineal
mode of reckoning descent has been frequently identified with
the notion of a matriarchate. There is, of course, no necessary
connection between the reckoning of descent through the mother
and the status of woman as such. The hoary antiquity of the
extended kinship group, the sib, and the necessary priority of
the matrilineal to the patrilineal sib, are two especially favored
dogmas. The English anthropologists are still quite loath to
part with them. But the facts, as adduced by Mr. Lowie, are
clearly opposed. In aboriginal North America, for instance, the
most primitive tribes, such as the Central Eskimo and the Sho-
shonean tribes of the desert plateaus, are not organized into sibs
at all, while those tribes which are culturally furthest advanced,
like the Iroquois, the Pueblos, and the West Coast Indians of
southern Alaska and the northern coast of British Columbia,
have matrilineal sibs. Still another currently assumed hypothe-
sis is the recent origin of the family, which is supposed to have
emerged from the wider sib. This notion is shown to be quite
unfounded. The family is recognized universally among the
lowliest savages as among ourselves. The clan excludes it no-
where, but coexists with it.
Mr. Lowie indicates clearly how complex is the actual texture
of primitive society. Gradations of rank are all but universal,
and among some "primitive" peoples, such as the Polynesians
and the West Coast Indians, there is great elaboration of the
concepts of caste and social status. The notion of immaterial
property, comparable to our patents, copyrights, and privileges
of title, is quite exuberantly developed in many primitive so-
cieties. Indeed, the property notion is frequently extended to
features that we should hardly suspect to be capable of defini-
tion as property, such as the use of certain names or the right
of singing such and such songs. As regards governance and
political organization, it is made perfectly clear by Mr. Lowie
that the kin group, whether in its narrower sense or in its en-
larged form as a sib, is not the be-all and end-all of primitive
organization, but that this type of social unit is usually supple-
mented or transcended by the village or territorial group as a
political entity. All in all, Mr. Lowie's book will do much to
render more life-like and substantial our current conceptions of
a primitive community. Edward Sapir
An M. P. in Russia
The Russian Republic. By Colonel Cecil L'Estrange Malone.
Harcourt, Brace, and Howe.
T_J ERE is no story of Trotzky stealing spoons in an obscure
-*■ * Russian village while he was a fugitive from Czarist justice;
Lenin does not stalk through these pages a German wolf in pro-
letarian sheep's clothing; women are not nationalized; the
Soviet regime does not totter for a moment. The atrocities
here were committed not by the Bolsheviki but by forces of "law
and order," financed by British taxpayers. Trotzky appears as
the up-to-date minister of war "conducting wars on immense
fronts" with an equipment of two special trains, including staff
accommodations, a complete printing plant, and a wireless sta-
tion. Lenin is spoken of with well-meant but uncritical respect
as "Prince Vladimir Oulianov," and the Soviet administration is
actually assumed throughout the book to be the government of
Russia.
It is the position of Colonel Malone that makes this book a
really valuable document. Others have said what he has said
and with far more insight, understanding, and wealth of detail;
but they have not been distinguished aviators and Coalition
M.P.'s. Colonel Malone was, and is, no Socialist. He did not go
to Russia to see what was already behind his eyes. He is a
military man who wanted to see for himself, and to report
what he saw in blunt military fashion. That his chief argu-
ment in favor of British recognition of the Soviet Government
and the immediate resumption of normal relations with Russia
should be based upon the fantastic theory of the possible rise
of a Russian Napoleon — "a military dictatorship living by
foreign wars" — is of small consequence. It is of the greatest
importance that he has reported certain concrete facts from a
first-hand, wholly detached, and even skeptical observation.
He found the cities "a little depressing" from a "bourgeois
point of view," on account of the lack of "aristocratic scintilla-
tions" and the state control of the shops; but order and cleanli-
ness and industry were everywhere. "Telephones, electric bells,
lifts, etc., were working" in the hotels. The food was scanty
and distinctly proletarian. The opera cast at Moscow, "if a com-
parison with Covent Garden is a meet standard," was "to the
48
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2871
amateur lover of opera beyond question in the very highest
class of artists." The Health Museum, St. Catherine's
School, and the Maternity and Child Welfare Exhibitions
served to convince him that Soviet Russia "is struggling
to carry through schemes of compulsory education." A
trip with Trotzky to the front made a deep impression.
He saw the troops at close quarters. "They appeared cheerful
and well-fed, and I felt disposed to infer from the expression
on the faces of a great number of them that they were inspired
with something like hero-worship for Trotzky." Of a review
and parade he says: "I could not honestly repress the feeling
that this was a really representative assemblage with a definite
national spirit offering its representative chiefs spontaneous
demonstrations of enthusiasm and support." His visit to a large
munitions plant did not uncover "any substantial difference in
the running of this factory and those in England." The great
power station at Bogorotsk, which converts peat into electric
current and is controlled by a Workman's Committee, stimu-
lated the conclusion that Russian industry is now "getting back
to a position approximating closely in spirit to that aimed at in
this country in the setting up of Whitley Councils." As to the
status of women in general, he says: "My own observation is
that prostitution is conspicuous by the absence of such scenes as
are afforded by any Western capital."
Colonel Malone's book will be popular among sympathizers
with Soviet Russia, especially those of a more or less conserva-
tive stripe. It explodes the grosser fabrications about Russia
without implying too much violence against what cautious folk
conceive to be a properly centered world. Its superficiality from
this point of view may prove an asset ; for no one can deny that
it is essentially a superficial study. Apparently it has not
dawned on Colonel Malone that sovereignty in Russia resides in
the great industrial labor organizations. His picture of Russia
is rather of an orderly, all too orderly, humane, and enlightened
political bureaucracy, with leanings toward a military dictator-
ship— not an unattractive outlook to a considerable number of
essentially conservative Americans who are classified in popular
parlance as Liberals. Evans Clark
Grave and Great-Hearted Massinger
Philip Massinger. By A. H. Cruickshank. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.
rPHE Elizabethan dramatist who held the stage longer than any
*■ of his fellows save Shakespeare was in danger of passing
into oblivion until a succession of scholars brought renewed
attention to him by confirming the old tradition of his large
share of credit for many of the so-called "Beaumont and
Fletcher" plays. But even today there is no modern scientifi-
cally edited collection of his works such as we have of Lyly's or
Middleton's. A valuable result of Mr. Cruickshank's mono-
graph may be, it is to be hoped, the stimulus that it will afford
to a reissue of Massinger's dramas. While to the study of Ben
Jonson half a dozen books have been devoted, to Beaumont and
Fletcher three, and to Webster two, the man who ranks with
them has been strangely neglected; this is the first book dedi-
cated exclusively to the study and appreciation of his dramas.
The author's desire has been "to treat his works . . . with
the attention to detail which modern scholarship requires." He
has thoroughly mastered the large amount of material collected
in dissertations and technical journals during the last half-
century, and within certain definite limits has made an ade-
quate study of which the chief merit is the warm and well-
reasoned admiration of Massinger which glows through every
page. Especially noteworthy is his justification of his admira-
tion by a succinct and abundantly illustrated statement of
Massinger's great qualities: his technical excellence, his elo-
quence, his courtliness, his graceful and lucid style. His love of
the "grave and great-hearted" poet (as Swinburne called him),
does not, however, blind him to his defects of exaggeration and
of inability to portray character with any degree of subtlety.
To the specialist the most interesting portion of the study is
perhaps the examination of the problem of Massinger's possible
share in "Henry VIII," "The Two Noble Kinsmen," and the
various plays in the Beaumont and Fletcher corpus. This is
not, however, the place to discuss the matter; it is sufficient to
say that Mr. Cruickshank's assignments of credit differ con-
siderably from the divisions made by Boyle, Macaulay, Bullen,
and other scholars, and that the solution of the problem now
offered tends greatly to reduce the amount of suspected Mas-
singer material in the plays under consideration. The scope of
the book is unfortunately strangely limited. The difficult prob-
lem of the chronology of the plays is hardly touched. Very
little is made of the interesting question of the range of Mas-
singer's ideas, his strongly defined political opinions being not
summarized, and the question of his very evident sympathy with
the Roman Catholic Church being brushed aside. The most
remarkable omission, however, is that of any discussion of
Massinger's sources. Quellenstudien are the happy hunting-
ground of dry-as-dust pedants, but if properly handled they
can be made fruitful of instruction. In the case of several of
Massinger's plays an account of the sources whence he derived
his material and of the way in which he transmuted the original
stuff from which his play is made is positively romantic. "The
Duke of Milan," for example, reaches far back to the world-
famous story of Herod and Mariamne; "The Great Duke of
Florence" to a quaint old English folk-legend; "Believe as You
List" to the unhappy history of a pretender to the throne of
Portugal, whose fortunes were followed sympathetically by
Englishmen. Finally, the entire inadequacy of the appended
bibliography must be noted; particularly unfortunate is the
silence with which, as so often happens in the work of English
scholars, recent American contributions to this field of research
are passed over. Samuel C. Chew ' ■
Chekhov and Andreev
The Chorus Girl and Other Stories. By Anton Chekhov. From
the Russian by Constance Garnett. The Macmillan Company.
When the King Loses His Head and Other Stories. By Leonid
Andreev. Translated by Archibald J. Wolfe. International
Book Publishing Company.
1X7HEN you hear a Russian discuss with quaint English
* » eloquence and explosive consonants the writers of his
native country, you become aware of the futility of anything
you have said or thought about Russian authors. And your
shame is deeper if by chance you know some other foreign
literature at first hand and have had to listen to the insufferable
judgments of those to whom it came only in translated form.
For a translation is, necessarily, a thin and brittle thing. Every
language is soaked in the temperament and peculiar experience
of the folk who uses it. Whole ranges of unique perceptions
have given to words an incommunicable savor, and strange moods
have stolen into the very syntax. And speech becomes creative
literature in the measure in which it preserves within the artis-
tic pattern the sting and pang of life. But this is precisely
where the translator is doomed to a greater or less failure. He
cannot preserve the experience that created the words of his
original, and he must strive to strip from the words of his own
speech the experience underlying them in order not to make
his betrayal complete. Works of a literary convention common
to Western civilization escape this difficulty. Render Corneille
into the speech and rhythm of Dryden and your result should
be authentic. But what is to be done with a German lyric or a
Russian tale? So it is no wonder that Miss Garnett's accom-
plished translations still leave the sense of drained and faded
things and that Mr. Wolfe's more various modulation is prob-
ably due to an emotional world in his original that is less spe-
July 10, 1920]
The Nation
49
cifically Russian than it is Christian and European and Western.
The Chekhov of these stories is the typical naturalist. He
is a naturalist, that is to say, not merely on some artistic the-
ory, but by instinct and need. He is the man whose vision of
life has caused him suffering, whose contacts have brought him
pain. He has little of the Russian's compassion; he has the
artist's cruelty toward those who have pierced and jangled his
delicate nerves. His observation has in it both self-torment
and voracity. In some country house he has had to listen to the
babbling of a "thin, gleeful voice," a voice that "reeked of malice
and affectation," and has recorded his suffering and avenged
it by turning inside out the wretched Rashevitch. He has
grasped the impenetrable snobbishness of some portly fellow
with a sensual jaw and a heavy golden watch chain and has held
him up to scorn in The Chorus Girl. The streets brought him
the old drunkard whom he has revealed in A Father, and a
gay roysterer's vulgarity stung him into writing Bad Weather.
These stories bite. Their protagonists are stripped of every
psychical rag. The keen wind cuts into their naked souls. It
is magnificent. But it is also terrible, because the author pur-
sues his victims and yet maintains an aloofness not even broken
by his scorn. The novelette My Life has a note of relenting.
Yet the kindly nature of Misail serves to accentuate the quali-
ties of the people in that grey and sodden and dishonest town.
The two stories that have a touch of gentleness and of the
sadder poetry of life — Verotchka and Zinotchka — read like
memories of moments that were painful enough to be recalled
but not bitter enough to be resented in after years. Such is
the naturalist, not — as a popular fallacy judges, yesterday of
Zola, today of Dreiser — a brute and a lover of ugliness, but one
who, like Shelley, has bled upon the thorns of life and whose
apparently cold delineations of the things that have hurt and
thwarted and disappointed him are in their motive and origin
as aspiring as a sonnet and as subjective as a song. Balzac
knew it. "We describe best," he told Madame Hanska, "the
things that have hurt us most." The somber naturalistic play
and story come from the stricken hearts of poets. It is your
thick-hided bull in every china shop of life who writes cheerful
tales and is considered soulful by the prosperous.
There are other ways of healing the hurts that life inflicts.
Chekhov's way — the way of the individualist and aristocrat —
is to make objective and permanent through art the phenomena
that have pained and rasped him. Andreev belongs to a later
literary generation that arose just prior to the war and de-
veloped with amazing rapidity during it. Representatives 'of
that generation are prominent today in every country of Conti-
nental Europe. They are neo-romantics and mystics and, in
their special sense, democrats. They never deliberately observe,
for observation seems to them defiled by either condescension or
hatred. They seek to identify themselves with others and to
write out of a consciousness that is no longer, in any aloof or
personal sense, their own. They attempt to become submerged
utterly in the life of individuals or of the race, blending them-
selves with man, as poets and philosophers in other ages sought
a union -with nature or with God. And from this striving to
lose the self there arises inevitably a new mysticism and a new
valuation of myth. These writers, whatever their race or
country, deal constantly with the Christian tradition, not pri-
marily on its moral but on its mystic and mythical side. Thus
in the long and sultry narrative Judas Iscariot, and in the
glowing and quivering Life of Father Vassily, Andreev seeks
within the framework of a hectic and mystic Christian experi-
ence to plunge to the final nature of the wrongs and sufferings
that fill the world. This art has passion and humanity and a
strange fervor. But to many its glow will seem the glow of
phosphorescence and decay. Take the case of Father Vassily.
The priest's fate is pitiful enough, and so is that of his morbid
wife. And the upshot of the story is that the poor man's
troubles drove him mad. One's objection to Andreev's treatment
is that he ascribes a mystical significance to Vassily's struggles
with evil and with himself and with his God. The plain fact
is that Father Vassily was brought to destruction not by the
misfortunes, tragic as they were, that nature heaped upon him,
but by the brutalities and superstitions of the social order
within which those misfortunes took place. He should have
sent his wife to a sanitorium for a year and his unfortunate
son to an institution for the feeble-minded. To the neo-romantic
mystics with their apotheosis of fruitless self-torment, such a
remark will seem quite shallow and almost blasphemous. It
may serve, however, to indicate the protest of a rational mind
against the new mysticism in art of which Andreev is, among
us, the best-known representative.
Books in Brief
fJ^HE human heart may or may not be as "desperately wicked"
*■ as the old catechism says, but it is surely "deceitful above
all things." Every man is the incipient or at least the potential
victim of folie circulaire. A man cannot spend his life studying
one subject without becoming abnormally suggestible by it, and
correspondingly blind to other aspects of mentality. How many
men have become convinced, after long study, that Shakespeare's
plays were written by Bacon, or Raleigh, or the Earl of Derby,
or a Freudian hysteric, or an erotomaniac! How many have
invented perpetual-motion machines, and have squared the cir-
cle! And as for the science of religion, that is the "great
Serbonian bog, where armies whole" of scholars have been
lost, chasing the will-o'-the-wisp of sun-myths and vegetation-
myths, of hyper-criticism and delusive parallels. Spiritualism
bids fair to take the front rank in contemporary mental aber-
rations. The latest victim is Mr. J. Arthur Hill, whose "Psy-
chical Miscellanea" (Harcourt, Brace and Howe) prove that the
dead talk to us, that miracles happen, that Joan of Arc's visions
were objective, that Christian Science has some truth in it, and
that the earth is probably alive — a being, in fact, of much
higher order than any animal. How did the author find this
all out? Why, he went to a seance once, and heard the spirit
of a lady give a recipe for pomatum which, he afterwards ascer-
tained, was actually used by her in this life. There is no
reason why stuff of this sort should not be written indefinitely.
If, says Professor Bury, you asserted that a planet of Sirius
was inhabited by donkeys who talked eugenics in English, no
one could disprove you and, after a sufficient number of suffi-
ciently emphatic assertions, a good many people would be-
lieve you.
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY has published Volumes
III and IV of "The Crime," a translation of "Das Ver-
brechen" by the author of the famous book "J 'Accuse," who is
now known to be Dr. Richard Grelling, and whose name ap-
pears on the title page of the fourth volume of the present
translation. In the first two volumes Dr. Grelling dealt with
the question of Germany's responsibility for the war. In the
third volume he deals with Germany's war aims as formulated
by Bethmann-Hollweg in his speeches of December 9, 1915, and
April 5, 1916, and in the peace proposals of 1916 and 1917. The
conclusion is that the Chancellor was an annexationist at home
and a pacifist abroad — in other words, that the peace proposals
of Germany were no more than a clever mask to hide her im-
perialist war aims. The fourth volume deals with the famous
"Belgian Documents" which the Germans discovered in the
Belgian archives, and which they made much of to prove the
sinister pre-war purposes of the Entente. Dr. Grelling thinks
the refusal or neglect of the Entente to make any adequate
reply to the German case was a "grave political mistake," and
it is the purpose of this volume to remedy this mistake. The
author brings a wealth of knowledge to prove his thesis; but
the argument is too diffuse and too violently polemical in tone
to be of special value for historical purposes, whatever may
50
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2871
have been its value during the war as political tactics. For
the future the chief merit of these volumes will consist in the
numerous documents which they contain.
IN August, 1914, geography suddenly became a matter of
momentous interest. Floundering in a sea of unfamiliar
names, we searched our atlases, striving to make the unknown
parts of the world a reality. "Bounding" states and repeating
arid lists of names and facts had not prepared us for an in-
telligent and sympathetic understanding of world problems.
The average American had not been taught the slightest thing
about the geographic distribution of the races and the political
domination of peoples in Europe. The new geography, as de-
scribed in a recent article in the Educational Review, is "hu-
man geography dealing with the earth's surface as the home of
the human race. Its fundamental aim is to demonstrate the
effect of physical environment on the development of the human
species." Perhaps the advocates of the "new geography" stress
too heavily the influence of environment on races, but the co-
relating of the facts of history, geography; and ethnography
must result in enlightenment and the preparation of the student
for the understanding of international questions and world-
citizenship. As an example of the methods of regional geogra-
phy, using by way of illustration the country where not only
detailed studies of many regions have been made but the subject
itself has been most extensively developed, the "Geography of
France" by Raoul Blan chard and Millicent Todd (Rand Mc-
Nally) is admirable. It was written after the armistice for the
American Expeditionary Forces, and contains many excellent
maps.
THE reconstruction fever in England is producing a large
number of suggestions for meeting the present situation.
Among them is "Factory Management Wastes" (London: Nisbet
& Co.), by James F. Whiteford, an attempt to familiarize Brit-
ish readers with the principles of American efficiency engineer-
ing, written in clear, commonplace language rather than the
picturesque tongue which many journalists fancy necessary to
convey business facts to commercial minds. Mr. Whiteford takes
pains to avoid the burning social phases of his subject. He
writes: "No suggestion is made concerning such proposals as the
redistribution of wealth or similar plans of social reconstruc-
tion. It is the intention of the writer to discuss the problem as
it appears in its present form, under the impression that if there
is less waste in industry there will be more money to distribute,
which must contribute to the general improvement in the pros-
perity of the employee, the employer, and the community at
large." Nevertheless, after discussing such topics as produc-
tion control, performance records, and cost finding, he concludes
with some observations which are sound from points of view
other than that of engineering, when he says: "The cry for
cheap labor must cease, for no labor is cheap. As with material
and equipment, a low first cost may prove more expensive in the
end. Labor must be developed, must be educated and instructed,
and must work under proper environment. Also, machinery
must be introduced wherever possible. The cost of production
must be reduced in order that the cost of living shall not rise in
direct proportion to the wage earnings. Cost cutting rather
than price cutting must receive the attention of factory man-
agers, for otherwise the industrial problems of today will be suc-
ceeded by even greater problems tomorrow. The reduction of
costs can be accomplished by the elimination of waste."
\X THEN Miss Frances Theresa Russell writes on "Satire in
** the Victorian Novel" (Macmillan), one envies her her
subject — satire as an enfant terrible in an age when the word
was "Hush, hush!" It calls for ripe literary judgment and the
high seriousness of the Comic Spirit. Miss Russell approaches
both, but does not quite attain either. She has a better talent
for the abstract than for the concrete; her analyses are better
than her discussions of actual examples. The reader learns
much from her pages by gleaning over wide territory, but he
drives behind an inexorable chauffeur who whirls him past allur-
ing byways and leafy vistas. Names and ideas spin by like
telephone poles. The author has a nice ear for the turn of a
sentence, but she cannot train sentences to speak together. The
method is that of the doctor's thesis. On a sheet of coordinate
paper, lay out along one dimension a score of divisions and
subdivisions of satire, and on the other twenty authors; then
kick your pebble into every square in exact order without a
miss, and the game is yours. To the civilian the result seems
always to bristle with barbed wire entanglements, and he is
constantly getting lost in the mazes of communication trenches.
Here are fields too pleasant for the uses of war; one would be
glad to forget the enemy and take an aimless ramble. The
reader tires of good literary material drilled in squads and
platoons, and longs for the sound of "At ease!"— or, better yet,
"Dismiss!"
IN "Child Welfare in Kentucky" (National Child Labor Com-
mittee) the object of the authors has been to show conditions
as they are, to offer criticism on the basis of these facts, and to
make suggestions for constructive reform. This has been ad-
mirably carried out. The investigators who, at the request of
Kentucky agencies, made the surveys of health, schools, rural
life, child labor, recreation, juvenile courts, and law and ad-
ministration, have concluded that "Kentucky neglects her chil-
dren." This will surprise no one who is familiar with conditions
in that State or elsewhere. Kentucky is supported in this neglect
by precedent and example. In general, "If numbers count, child
welfare in Kentucky is primarily the problem of the country
child. Yet the city child has thus far been the chief interest^
of both public and private effort. . . . One-fifth of the chil-
dren are getting nine-tenths of the State's attention. . . ....
The State's treatment of children is out of joint with the times.-"
In particular, the State child labor and compulsory education.
laws, unsustained by local public sentiment, are commonly and
openly violated. In certain of the courts, "young children are
being deprived of all the protection which the juvenile court
law was designed to give them, simply to save the county treas-
ury a little money." School taxes are so low that only the most
meagre educational opportunities are open to children in the
rural districts. More than 6,500 children over ten years of age
are illiterate. Many diseases spread uncontrolled; the death-
rate for tuberculosis is much higher than the average for the
United States registration area, and second highest of the States
in that area. Organized recreation has in few places been re-
garded as anything but a luxury, and the commercial amuse-
ments, sought as outlet for the play instinct of children, are
frequently of the most vicious and perverting sort — as, for in-
stance, the travelling street carnivals. The report, however, does
not confine itself to censure. The spirit, notably in the intro-
duction and in the report on recreation, is forward-looking, tend-
ing to stimulate the awakened and rapidly growing constructive
spirit in the people of the State.
"''pHE Worker and his Work," by Stella S. Centre (Lippin-
* cott), is a text for high schools designed "to meet the
needs of boys and girls who feel the urgent necessity of select-
ing the right vocation." It is a book of prose selections from
present-day writers, ranging from H. G. Wells to Harold Bell
Wright, interspersed with a few bits of very mediocre verse.
This latter fault is the more remarkable, considering what a
wealth of contemporary poetry is at hand to draw from —
Giovannitti, Sandburg, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, to name a few
poets at random. The ethics of the book, presumably, is given
in the motto set on the title-page: "In the handiwork of their
craft is their prayer" ; but this Carlyle-Ruskin-Morris philosophy
does not get much further than the introduction. The selections
themselves leave a confusing and contradictory impression.
July 10, 1920]
The Nation
51
For example, Cigar-Making, by Henry Sydnor Harrison, is a
tale of exploitation of the workers, whereas Unexpected Develop-
ments, by Peter Bernard Kayne, is a story of a swaggering
buccaneer who wins in a game of cut-throat competition. The
book is evidently an attempt to make use of an excellent idea
now being developed in certain lower division colleges: the idea
that English courses should serve to awaken interest in present-
day life through the medium of contemporary literature. But
it has been found that such attempts end in confusion unless
there is interwoven with the pure literature some discussion of
elementary economics, sociology, and ethics in attractive literary
form. Before such books as the present one can be successful,
there must be more intelligent organization; the illustrative
selections must be set in a framework of exposition.
ANYONE who expects Sir Douglas Brownrigg's "Indiscre-
tions of the Naval Censor" (Doran) to be indiscreet will
be disappointed. Nor does the Admiral give away any secrets
at all. Most of us knew that Mr. Churchill was rather a slave-
driver and that Admiral Sims was rather communicative con-
cerning the mysterious Q-boats during the war. We knew the
way in which news of the Jutland Battle filtered through, and
the controversy caused by the manner of its announcement at
the time. Where the Admiral does become interesting is in his
intimate account of life at that ramshackle building known as
the British Admiralty. From that maze of passages, so con-
fused that a key-map has to be placed at every turning, from
the funny little plaster statue of Nelson in the hall, from the
darkly guarded map-room, routing room, and the room still
known as Mr. Churchill's, there emanated the instructions
which meant the weal or woe of a great part of the Allied
Cause. Thence also emanated such news as could be given out,
and Sir Douglas describes well the eternal struggle between
the "silent Navy" and the public desire for information. Had
the Navy foreseen at the beginning of the war the publicity
that was to ensue concerning its doings, it would have resigned
in a body. As it was, the picture and the story and the moving
photograph gradually worked their way into the naval com-
prehension and came to be regarded by it as necessary evils.
Sir Douglas, as behooved his office, saw both sides and in conse-
quence had difficulties with both.
Drama
Rolland's "Danton"
THE recent success in Berlin of Romain Rolland's "Danton,"
produced by Max Reinhardt with a cast of one thousand, in
an amphitheater holding five thousand spectators, is a significant
indication that Berlin is saturated with revolutionary atmo-
sphere and in a mood to vibrate to the tempests of the French
Revolution. The public finds in "Danton" the men and pas-
sions of today.
Wilhelm Herzog, Rolland's German translator, telegraphs
him: "Ausserordentlicher sturmischer Erfolg. . . . Es war
der starkste, gewaltigste Theaterabend seit Jahren." (Extraordi-
nary tempestuous success. It was the strongest, mightiest the-
atrical night for many years past.) And a Berlin journalist
writes a post card full of admiring exclamations: "What a
play! . . . What a third act! . . . We all played it.
Reinhardt was unique. Everything was so superb that France
was victorious." Still another gives this remarkable descrip-
tion: "You cannot imagine, nor can any human being, the un-
believable success of 'Danton.' I was dramatic critic in Paris
for seven years. I was in London; nowhere have I seen any-
thing to equal it. Imagine a theater with a stage 23 meters wide,
5,000 spectators, 1,000 actors. We didn't know where the audi-
ence commenced. We were thrilled, horrified, troubled, laughing,
crying, excited. Oh ! how much excited ! The public was so much
BRENTANCTS
Retail Book Department
Fifth Avenue and 27th Street, New York City
Reference Books for the Banker,
Lawyer, Editor, Writer, etc.
Who's Who, 1920, in England
(Now ready) Cloth, $15.00
An Annual Biographical Dictionary with which is
incorporated "Men and Women of the Time."
Who's Who in America, 1920-21
(Ready early in July) Probable price, $7.50
A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Living Men
and Women of the United States.
Who's Who and Why in Canada, 1917-18
(Latest edition available) Cloth, $6.00
A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Canadians.
The American Year Book
Cloth. $5.00
A Record of Events and Progress for 1919. Here, in
one volume, is a complete digest of the events of
interest to Americans that have taken place in busi-
ness, politics, science, art, education, literature and
every other field of human endeavor during the past
year.
The China Year Book, 1919
Cloth, $9.00
A mine of information on all that appertains to that
country.
The Japan Year Book, 1919-20
$5.00
Complete Cyclopaedia of Information and Statistics
on Japan.
Exporters' Gazetteer of Foreign Markets,
1920-21
Edited by Lloyd R. Morris Cloth, $10.00
The sort of analysis of the world's trade which every
manufacturer, exporter, shipping man, economist, and
banker should have.
Postage Additional
BRENTANOS
Retail Book Department
Fifth Avenue and 27tb. Street
New York City
52
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2871
moved that it was no longer the theater but Life! . . . And
the crowd in the third act! It was not acted, it was a real
revolt. I was there on January 13 at the battle before the
Reichstag — that was it! Cries, noises; they rush out pell mell.
hurting, wounding one another; then back, five hundred, a thou-
sand, twelve hundred . . . break everything . . . They
are told a convoy of meat and grain has come . . . Hola!
. . . all is forgotten! Fighting as to who gets out first — a
thousand hand-clappings, wild cries, 'Rolland, Rolland' . . .
until after the last cars are gone . . . Still outside in the
streets the crowd cried and wept for joy."
Evidently the effect was first of all physical, owing to the
titanic violence of Reinhardt and his company in the act which
showed the revolutionary tribunal. But of the striking analogy
in "Danton" to revolutionary Germany there could have been
no doubt. "Your play is even less about 1793 than about the new
German Republic," writes Rolland's correspondent; "for you
tell the truth there to the new republicans. We said to our-
selves: 'Well, Rolland has corrected his whole drama this morn-
ing, and after the manner of our republic' " The delightfully
convenient interpretation of Christian ethics by the Juggernauts
of the French Revolution, the suppression of opinion and other
forms of vice, is summed up in a speech by Saint Just in Rol-
land's second act: "The philosopher Jesus said to his disciples:
'And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from
thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members
should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into
hell.' And I say to you, if your friend is corrupt and corrupts
the republic, cast him from the republic; if your brother is cor-
rupt and corrupts the republic, cast him from the republic. And
if the blood of the republic, if your own blood flows from a
gaping wound, let it flow. The republic must be purified or die!
The republic is virtue. If that virtue be stained, the republic
ceases to exist." Could anything be more modern?
Romain Rolland has had to await the year 1920 and the Ger-
man Revolution for a dramatic succes fou. Barrett Clark says
in the preface to his translations of "The Fourteenth of July"
and "Danton" that Rolland "did not appeal to the great public,
for his plays have as yet not proved acceptable to them. . . .
No attempt at dramatic reform, no theory, no ideal — whatever
its eventual worth — ought to obscure the fact that all of M. Rol-
land's plays are unsuccessful from the viewpoint of production."
This is not quite an accurate statement, for as a matter of fact
when produced in Paris for the first time these plays caused a
considerable sensation with the public. "The Fourteenth of
July" was a real triumph as far as the people were concerned.
At "The Wolves" (now being given in Leipzig and Frankfurt)
the audience nearly came to blows; for the play followed closely
"l'Affaire Dreyfus," which was then going on, and several of
the heroes of which, including Colonel Picard, attended the per-
formance. "Danton" was given at the People's Theater for the
benefit of strikers in the north of France, and the public was
composed entirely of socialists. Jaures made the introductory
speech. The real cause of the apparent failure in Paris was a
hostile press ; Rolland was and is in bad odor among the literary
cliques for his unflinching attitude as an independent. His plays
have been and are being produced in a number of foreign coun-
tries, including Scandinavia, Austria, Hungary, Holland, Russia,
and Germany, which ought to be enough to convince Mr. Clark
that they do not belong to "that class of hybrids, the closet-
drama."
But that there has never been such a success as the recent
one in Berlin is evident; and it might be pertinent here to pon-
der just what does constitute the "great public." Is not the
mind of the public, like that of the individual, subject to moods?
Today there is chaos in Germany. Unable like Russia to make
a clean breast of her revolution, she flounders and will flounder
perhaps for a long while. Yet while she is plunged in bloodshed,
while crowds of men, women, and children are being shot down,
while the people rush hither and yon, uncertain which voice to
follow and following each in turn, an audience is capable of
reacting in the fashion related above to the portrayal of its own
drama by a foreigner. Turgenev said that we do not go from
bad to better except through worse. We may wonder whether
Germany's worse is not better just now than our bad, whether
a public which can act as this one did is not nearer a readjust-
ment to a finer organization and appreciation of life than is
our own. Helena van Brugh de Kay
INDEX for VOLUME 110
(January — June, 1920)
has been delayed, but it will be ready for distribu-
tion in a few weeks.
One copy will be sent to each library on our sub-
scription list, but to other subscribers only upon re-
quest.
If you want this index let us know at once.
SUBSCRIPTION DEPARTMENT
20 Vesey Street The Nation New York, N. Y.
CAPITAL TODAY
A Study of Recent Economic Development
By HERMAN CAHN
proves why REVOLUTION is INEVITABLE, not because
of the desires or aims of any class, but because, owing to
the failure of the credit system, Capitalism is becoming
unable to produce the necessities of life.
If you need to be convinced, read this book and compare Mr. Cahn's
analysis with the events in the financial and industrial world today.
Cloth, $2.00 net, by insured mail $2.15.
CHARLES H. KERR & CO., 347 E. Ohio St., Chicago
■
AN INTRODUCTION
TO SOCIAL ETHICS
By JOHN M. MECKLIN, Professor of Philosophy
in the University of Pittsburgh. A study of the
social conscience in a democracy.
$3.75 ; by mail $3.90
Professor Mecklin is a student rather than a judge;
he gives free scope to all ethical, political, and economic
theories, regardless of his own individual viewpoint. The
work should constitute an admirable textbook; but it
should also command a wide audience outside of aca-
demic circles.
New York Tribune.
THE JUNIOR
HIGH SCHOOL
By LEONARD V. KOOS, Professor of Secondary
Education in the University of Minnesota. A book
that deals with the whole problem of education
during the critical years from ten to fifteen.
$1.36; by mail, $1.45
It seems to me to put in compact and readable form
the most complete and rational view which has yet been
expressed on the junior high school.
Charles H. Judd, Director of the School of Educa-
tion, the University of Chicago.
HARCOURT, BRACE & HOWE, &&4%S
International Relations Section
Contents
BRITISH LABOR REPORTS ON RUSSIA 53
BRITISH LABOR AND THE HUNGARIAN TERROR 53
UNDER CZECH RULE 54
HUNGARIAN METHODS IN SLOVAKIA 55
"A SCENE AT THE UNIVERSITY" 56
THE REAL WAR TO END WAR 56
British Labor Reports on Russia
THE following interim report of the mission sent by
the British Labor Party to investigate conditions in
Soviet Russia was made public on June 12.
We have been profoundly impressed by the effects of the
policy of intervention and blockade upon the Russian people.
This policy has been pursued by various foreign governments
since 1918, and under various forms, direct and indirect, it
is still being pursued today. It is at the root of the worst evils
which are afflicting Russia at the present time.
While the stoppage of exports from Russia is injurious to
the world outside, the stoppage of imports is disastrous to the
interior economy of Russia herself.
The problem of food exceeds all others in immediate impor-
tance. We are appalled by the conditions of virtual famine
under which the whole urban population — the manual and the
intellectual workers alike — are living.
A particularly serious effect of the blockade policy has been
the cutting off of soap and. of medical supplies. Epidemics of
typhus fever and of recurrent fever have swept over the whole
country. It is true that a great and efficient sanitary organiza-
tion has been created by the Commissariat of Public Health.
The movement on railway lines is controlled by regulation, and
the provision of numerous observation, diagnosis, and disinfec-
tion stations. Every train in Siberia and European Russia has
to be provided with a special coach for the use of suspicious or
actual cases of illness. Large numbers of hospitals have been
created both in Siberia and Russia. A great sanitary propa-
ganda has been carried out, through Soviets and trade unions,
in both towns and villages, and these epidemics are now con-
trolled. In addition, compulsory vaccination has been carried
out over the whole area of Siberia and European Russia for
the first time.
But, despite this organization, the fact that the blockade has
cut off soap and disinfectants has been responsible for the loss
of thousands of lives by infectious diseases.
Russia is a rich country agriculturally, but the peasant can-
not supply food to the town except in exchange for manu-
factured articles. The stoppage of imports makes it impos-
sible for these articles to be manufactured in the towns, or
obtained as finished goods from abroad. The situation is ren-
dered still more disastrous by the partial breakdown of trans-
port, the direct result of the attacks from without, and the
fomenting of civil war on Russian territory.
A partial respite was allowed to Russia after the defeat of
the armies of Kolchak, Denikin, and Judenich. Advantage
was immediately taken of this respite to inaugurate a great
effort towards economic reconstruction, backed by a far-reach-
ing and well-conceived educational campaign. The national
energy was largely diverted from military operations to the
improvement of the means of transport, the manufacture of
articles for peaceful purposes, and the restoration of sanitary
conditions. Perhaps the worst disservice rendered to Russia
by the recent renewal of hostilities on the Polish front has
been the forcing back of the Russian people, against their will,
from the paths of peace into the paths of war. We ourselves
have witnessed scores of examples of this baneful process.
The appeal for creative work is being once more set aside
in favor of the appeal to military enthusiasm, while war con-
ditions provide new pretexts for restricting individual liberty
and preventing freedom of discussion. These conditions can-
not be changed while war continues.
One effect of the present crisis has been to rally practically
all parties to the support of the Government for the purposes
of national defense — whatever their differences on questions
of internal politics. This demonstrates the futility of suppos-
ing that communist principles, whether they be good or bad,
can be destroyed by hostile pressure from abroad. Such pres-
sure only increases the stability of the Government so far as
internal politics are concerned.
In view of the above facts, we wish to register our unanimous
and whole-hearted protest against the policy whose effects we
have described — a policy as foolish as it is inhuman. Russia's
supreme needs are immediate peace and free intercourse with
the outside world. We recommend that the entire British labor
movement should demand the removal of the last vestige of
blockade and intervention, and the complete destruction of the
barrier which imperialist statesmen have erected between our
own people and our brothers and sisters of Russia.
As a first step to attaining these objects, the present Russian
Government should be unconditionally recognized. It has shown
its stability by resisting for two and a half years the many
efforts made to destroy it. It has repeatedly shown its will to
peace. We can ourselves bear witness to the fact that it has
made vigorous efforts to carry on the work of economic recon-
struction.
We do not think it necessary to deal in detail with the argu-
ment that the Russian Government cannot be recognized and
peace can never be made with it because some of its actions are
disapproved of by other governments. In our opinion this is a
question for Russia herself, and not for any foreign govern-
ment.
British Labor and the Hungarian Terror
THE summary printed below of the findings of the
British Labor Delegation appointed to investigate the
White Terror in Hungary is taken from the Daily Telegraph
(London) for June 7.
The British Joint Labor Delegation to Hungary, consisting of
Colonel Wedgwood, M. P., Mr. F. W. Jowett, Mr. W. Harris,
Mr. Stuart Bunning, and Mr. J. B. Williams, controvert the
statements of British officers and officials in that country, con-
tained in the recently published White Paper, that, while cer-
tain elements of the population had been guilty of excesses, no
"White Terror" followed the suppression of Bela Kun's Com-
munist regime. In their report, now issued, the delegates bring
numerous charges against the Hungarian Government and mili-
tary, supported by evidence collected on their tour.
Confining their attention to the more recent events, they
allege executions for political offenses have been carried out by
the military, that men and women have been tortured and ill-
treated in prison, that large numbers of persons have been
imprisoned and detained for long periods without trial, and
that trade unions have been suppressed and their members
denied the right to strike. They cite specific instances of tor-
ture— for which military officers are alleged to have been
responsible — of a peculiarly revolting character. The following
is a summary of the evidence on which, in addition to the
specific cases given, the delegates have formed the opinion that
a state of terror exists:
"The Hungarian Government admits that there is a rigorous
censorship of newspapers.
"It is admitted that the trade unions formed under the
54
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2871
Karolyi Government have been suppressed, and that for the
present the right of workmen to strike has been taken away.
"It is admitted that over 27,000 informations have been laid
against alleged Communists, and that over 6,000 persons are
imprisoned. This latter total does not include those interned
or in military prisons. Our own estimate of the total is that,
taking the three classes together, there are at least 12,000
persons detained or imprisoned. It is admitted that many of
them have been in prison for months awaiting trial, and the
overcrowding of the prisons may be judged from the instance
of Szolnok. We were informed by the Governor, in response to
our comments on the overcrowding, that he was helpless, as he
had 350 prisoners in a prison intended for only 50. We were
later informed at the Ministry of Justice that the actual
number of prisoners at Szolnok was 535. Detailed allegations
were made to us that the total number of persons arrested and
detained of all three classes was over 25,000.
"It is admitted that there are, and indeed we met, a large
number of exiles in Vienna, some of whom are not Communists,
and that thirty-nine Communists have been executed under the
authority of the civil power since December last.
"It is a fact that Lieutenant Solomon Kiss is now in prison
in Vienna, awaiting trial on the charge of kidnapping four
Hungarians in Austria and conveying them secretly to Hungary,
where they were killed. Two well-substantiated cases of the
kidnapping of subjects of countries other than Hungary exist,
in which no trace can be found of the victims.
"It is admitted that on April 28 nineteen men were taken by
the military from the prison at Szolnok and killed at Abonyi.
It is significant that, despite>the official admission, two persons
to whom we were directed as having knowledge of the affair
simply declined to speak. It was suggested that we should visit
Hajmasker, the internment camp, but we were informed that
after the Italians visited the camp prisoners who ventured to
complain to them were most brutally beaten. As a consequence
we did not feel justified in visiting Hajmasker."
In view of the evidence supplied to them the delegates believe
that there is a "Terror" in Hungary, that the Hungarian Gov-
ernment is unable to control it, and that many of its own acts
are of so rigorous a character as to merit the name of "Terror."
They are at a loss to understand the statement of the British
High Commissioner on February 21 last "that while .
there are, no doubt, ill deeds done, there is nothing in the nature
of a Terror."
It is against a force called the gendarme reserve, which is
very generally known as the Brachial-Gewalt, that the most
specific and detailed charges of atrocity are now made. This
force was first formed of officers mainly, with a certain number
of non-commissioned officers. It was admitted that although it
made raids and arrested and examined persons charged with
Communist offenses, which should be dealt with under civil law,
it was in no sense subservient to the Ministry of Justice, but to
the Minister for War. Regular officers are said to work with
the Brachial-Gewalt, and the names of the chief perpetrators
of alleged outrages are Hejjas, Pronay, Ostenburg, Salm, and
Bibo. When certain of these officers were referred to by name
at the delegates' interview with the Governor, his reply was
that they were his best officers.
Nothing related above can in the delegates' opinion justify
or excuse what is going on in Hungary. They were assured by
ministers that outrages were becoming fewer, and that the
Government was getting control of the situation. They are not
satisfied that this is actually the case. They record their
opinion that the Terror is not anti-Semite in its origin, but
anti-Communistic. That the majority of victims are Jews is
perfectly true. This arises partly from the prominent part the
Jews took in the Commune and partly from the fact that they
are accused of profiteering. The delegates do not think that
either the Governor or the Government by themselves are strong
enough to put matters right. They do not accuse them of com-
plicity in the outrages. Referring to the statement of Admiral
Troubridge — published in the White Paper — that "life is as
secure here as in England," the delegates remark that they are
at a loss to know why the Admiral penned this sentence.
"The statements made to us by Government officials are that
things are much better now than in February, when the letter
was written, and so much that is bad is occurring now that the
statement of Admiral Troubridge appears wholly unjustified.
It is a matter for regret that the issuing of the White Paper
containing the views and opinions of British representatives
should have created an impression that the British Government
is supporting a policy of oppression of political, industrial, and
religious freedom.
"When discussing with the British High Commissioner the
outrages committed by Hejjas, Pronay, Bibo, and other officers
he said that the Hungarian Government could not be held
responsible, as he understood the officers and those under them
had been demobilized, and committed the outrages as irregular
bands under no control. Later in the day we were informed
by the Prime Minister and the Governor that the officers named
were still in the army paid by the Government, and were the
best soldiers. As the status of persons accused of outrages is
an important point we think that the lack of knowledge dis-
played by the High Commissioner two months after the issue of
the White Paper seriously discredits the information and con-
clusions contained therein."
It is contended that the Supreme Council has a special duty
to the Hungarian people as well as a sufficient justification for
intervening in the internal affairs of Hungary, and that the
British Government are more particularly responsible for the
condition of the people, because it was Sir Thomas Cunningham
who drew up, with Herr Boehm, the terms of surrender of the
Commune. The Communists, the delegates add, carried out
their part of the bargain, and they think that the British Gov-.
ernment are bound to honor the bargain of their representative*
and to take immediate steps to stop persecution.
Under Czech Rule
THE effect of the partition of Hungary and of the gov-
ernmental methods employed by the Bohemians, or
Czechs, in Northern Hungary which has been allotted to
them by the Peace Conference is described in the statement
of Mr. Michael Gyalay taken from the Budapesti Hirlap.
Mr. Gyalay was the editor of a Hungarian paper in Mun-
kacs which, together with the other Hungarian city men-
tioned in the statement, Ungvar, is now under Czech rule.
Thousands of Hungarians [in Czecho-Slovakia] are suffer-
ing under the weight of the most cruel brutality. Emaciated
to the bones from hunger and cold, covered with vermin, com-
pletely shut off from light and fresh air, I had spent four and
a half months in Czech prisons on a trumped-up political charge,
simply because I was born a Hungarian and could not renounce
my race and country even after inhuman tortures.
It was in November last that the military police of Munkacs
arrested me on the charge of espionage and Hungarian agita-
tion. In the potato cellar which was to be my prison the bitter
cold penetrated to my bones. . . .
In the middle of December I was chained with a heavy wheel
chain to one Bela Charles Kiss, also accused of espionage and
Hungarian agitation, and was transported from Munkacs to
the military court at Ungvar, where I was imprisoned until the
end of February.
The prison was filled with people of all kinds and conditions.
Most of them were Slovak and Ruthenian military deserters
(or their relatives taken as hostages for them) and Hungarian
political prisoners. Mixed with them indiscriminately were
thieves, robbers, and murderers. The Communists were set
July 10, 1920]
The Nation
55
free in great numbers just about that time, but by accident I
met there Arpad Horovitz, the former Communist leader of
Munkacs, who wanted to hang me when the counter-revolution
broke out in that city.
How did the court work? The newly arrived prisoner, if very
lucky, got his first hearing after a week or so. After that, no
matter on what ground he asked to be heard, his request was
refused for weeks by the warden or the turnkeys. Thus it was
impossible for him to get into touch with the investigating
judge and to see him about his case. However, he could quickly
get relief in this regard if he had plenty of money, for the
whole court — from the turnkeys to the chief of the prosecuting
attorneys — was a gang of bribe-takers. The agents of the
judges and attorneys in this business were the turnkeys who
told the wealthy prisoners for how much they could purchase
their freedom. The willingness of the court to be bribed was
a matter of common knowledge.
Thus it was that Berczi, the sergeant of gendarmes of Nagy
Lucska, and sixteen of his comrades, arrested for crossing the
line of demarcation without a permit, were freed for 1,000
crowns apiece. Lieutenant Zoltan Hazay, son of the Presby-
terian minister at Perbenyik, was arrested when he was about
to reenter Hungarian territory. They found a revolver, maps,
military certificates, and notes on him, viz., there was some
ground for the suspicion of espionage; yet the Czech major let
him go free at once — without his money. . . .
How little they care for law and justice may be seen from
the following cases:
One Arnold Klein of Miskolc tried to go to his native village,
Remete Vasgyar, in Ung County, which is now Czecho-Slovak
occupied territory, to arrange some family affairs. Although
he had all the permits and papers necessary for such a jour-
ney, he was arrested on the customary charges. But the court
dismissed the case and even allowed him his expenses for the
seven weeks he had been held in jail. Still he was not re-
leased. After eight days, having bribed the turnkey, he was
taken before Major Rousek, president of the court, who, on
seeing him, exclaimed with surprise: "You are still here?" The
major looked up the record and found that, in the absence of
an appeal by the prosecuting attorney, the judgment of the
court was effective and the man should have been set free.
Klein was then taken to Major Poppler, the prosecutor, who
had him thrown out of his office and gave orders not to bring
him before him again. A few days later Major Poppler ordered
him taken to the police to be transported to Illava [a peniten-
tiary for murderers]. And all this happened to Arnold Klein
for no other reason than that, being a native of Ung County,
he called himself a Hungarian and said he could not speak
Slovak. . . .
Ladislaus Gazdag, a former ensign in the Austro-Hungarian
army, returned from Rumanian captivity to his home in Ladmoc.
He was arrested, and has been in prison two months without
a hearing. . . .
Theodore Szatala, township clerk of Horlyo, has been in jail
since November under suspicion of being a Hungarian agitator.
He became insane in prison.
A high school pupil named Vozary (son of the postmistress
of Kis Almas) has also been in since November for the alleged
childish remark that "with a hundred Hungarians he could
drive the Czechs out of the country." This was reported by
another boy, and Vozary was arrested on the strength of this
report.
Sentence is generally pronounced without the accused being
present, who learns only from the turnkey that he will be sent
to Illava or Spielberg [an old Moravian fortress of dread re-
pute], and for how long a term. The "Council of Three"
sentenced me also in my absence.
The jail in which political prisoners were put together with
common criminals was not heated. In sheer desperation during
the severe winter we burned up three boards of a wooden bench.
In punishment the remainder of the bench was taken away, and
we had to fast every other day for ten days. The prisoners held
on suspicion got the same prison fare as the convicts, with only
eighteen decagrams of bread a day. The prisons are never
scrubbed and are full of vermin. The prisoners are never taken
for a walk or airing; for months they cannot see the sun.
Hygiene is something unknown. You may report for medical
examination any day, but the physician does not put in an ap-
pearance every day. When he does, he keeps at a safe distance
from the vermin-covered prisoner, and if he cannot fail to see
that the prisoner is very ill, he prescribes aspirin and a heated
room. Of course the prisoner gets neither. . . .
In February my condition became so bad that even the
turnkeys took pity on me and spoke to the physician in my
behalf. Making an exception this time the latter examined me
and found that I was suffering from catarrh of both apices of
the lungs; remaining in prison endangered my life. He ordered
this reported to the court, and prescribed aspirin and a heated
room, which I did not get. However, by bribing the turnkeys
we managed to obtain some wood and could keep a fire going
for a time, whereupon they quartered with us two murderers
afflicted with a loathsome blood disease, whom the major did
not permit to be sent back to the hospital because they had run
away from there. We had to share our drinking cup and wash
basin with them.
This is how the Czechs, who call themselves a civilized nation,
treat innocent people. I offer thanks to the Almighty for having
helped me in escaping the fate that was intended for me — the
casemates of Spielberg.
Hungarian Methods in Slovakia
THE following document, shedding light on the irre-
dentist activities carried on by the dominant militarist
groups of Hungary, was published in Az Ember, organ of
the Hungarian refugees in Vienna, in the issue of June 13.
Dr. Ilosvay, president of the Irridenta Association, is a
Hungarian scientist and former Secretary of State.
Affidavit taken at Losonc (Slovakia), on May 30, 1920, in
the office of the secretary of the Social Democratic Party, in the
presence of the undersigned.
Alexander Filler, student, at present residing at 4 Kisber
Street, Losonc, appears and makes the following deposition, ex-
plaining that in doing so he is free from any compulsion or
persuasion :
Dr. Louis Ilosvay, of Budapest, managing president of the
Hungarian Irredenta Association, enrolled me in the member-
ship of the organization on May 14, 1920, on the strength of an
introduction from Mr. Ferdinand Urmanczy, late member of
Parliament. My oath was taken, and subsequently, on May 20,
the managing president, in his office at 4 Esterhazy Street, gave
me the commission to kill, by poison, Mr. Srobar, the Czecho-
slovak Minister [and governor of Slovakia] at Bratislava, and in
case of success to do away in a similar manner with Dr. Bazov-
szky, former zupan (county governor) at Losonc. In case of
failure it was made my duty to commit suicide, in order to frus-
trate investigation. I was to commit suicide, also, in case of
arrest following upon successful execution of my errand. For
the purpose of suicide I was equipped with a hypodermic needle
to be filled with curarine poison.
I was also given a phial containing one grain of curarine, a
flavorless, odorless, colorless, and hygroscopic poison which,
according to the statement of the president, cannot be detected
in the human organism; also with three hypodermic needles
(one of them was charged, which I did not know) and with
three bottles containing a colorless liquid which, if exposed to
air, develops a whiteish fume. It has a sulphuric odor and
ignites when poured on inflammable material (paper, wood,
56
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2871
etc.)- I also received a free pass, second class, good on all
Hungarian railroads, made out for the Hungarian Defense
League, and 4,500 kronen in Magyar currency.
I wish to add that the Irredenta Association maintains its
office on the premises of the Defense League and conducts busi-
ness under the label of the latter organization.
In regard to the inflammable liquid received I was instructed
to set on fire military buildings, depots, barracks, powder
towers, etc., in Slovakia.
I am attaching hereto the poisonous and inflammable ma-
terials received, together with the railroad pass.
I have indirect knowledge of similar commissions being given
to a number of other men, who were instructed to carry out
their orders after the peace treaty had been signed. Of this,
and also of other plots directed against the integrity, safety,
and peace of the Czecho-Slovak state, I shall before long submit
an extensive memorandum.
I wish to mention that I was promised a sum of 30,000
kronen each for the murder of Srobar and Bazovszky, and
10,000 kronen for each military building set on fire.
I have nothing else to state concerning my own person.
Date as above.
Signed: Alexander Filler, (student)
Before us as witnesses:
Dr. Aladar Lacker
Dr. Alexander Herz
Bela Benko, Secretary of the Social Democratic
Party.
"A Scene at the University'1
THE following sketch which graphically indicates the
present situation in Hungary appeared in the Pester
Lloyd (Budapest), with the annotation at the end that the
incident described is not fiction but an actual occurrence.
Place: a corridor in the main building of the University of
Budapest.
Time: last week.
Persons: a Student, a Professor.
The Student is thin and pale, in civilian clothes but with the
large golden Medal for Gallantry on his coat. He limps and
drags himself painfully along.
The Professor is a celebrity and an ornament of Hungarian
scholarship, descendant of an old Hungarian noble family,
highly respected throughout the country. He casts a sympa-
thetic glance upon the student but suddenly a gentle smile
lights up his face as he recognizes the young man.
The Professor: Oh, it is you, my dear X. I haven't seen you
for an eternity. You seem to be lame, are you suffering?
The Student (embarrassed) : It is nothing, sir. I am still
a little weak but it will be all right. (Lifts his hat and is about
to go on.)
The Professor (looking at the student's right leg) : What
is the trouble with your right leg?
The Student (with increasing embarrassment) : Nothing,
nothing, really; an artificial leg.
The Professor: The war?
The Student: Yes, the war — amputated.
The Professor (noticing that the student also drags his left
leg painfully) : And your left?
The Student (reddening) : Nothing, really nothing, sir. A
wound — machine gun fire.
The Professor: In the war, too?
The Student: No, not that one.
The Professor: How, then?
The Student (much embarrassed) : Nothing worth talking of.
At home, in our town — you know, sir, in the Bolshevist time —
there was a counter revolution. And I was there, of course,
with my White friends. But the wounds are already healed.
And the doctors say that the leg will soon be as good as ever.
The Professor (pressing his hand with warmth and sym-
pathy) : Poor lad! Brave fellow, brave fellow. And what are
you doing at the University now?
The Student: I lost seven semesters through the war. I
wanted to return. I wanted to
The Professor: And?
The Student: And I couldn't. The Brachial-Gewalt [guards]
— quite young fellows — hale and hearty — they don't allow it. I
am a Jew.
The Professor's eyes are wet, he turns pale, he reaches again
for the student's hand, presses it long and warmly, opens his
lips to speak. At last without speaking he embraces the student.
Then he breaks away and hurries off.
The Student quietly limps off.
The Professor hurries down the stairs, beckons to a passing
cab and has himself driven home. At home he flings himself
into his study much upset. His children hurry after him,
anxious to know what is the matter. The Professor motions to
them to go out, and they leave the room. He sits down to his
writing table, seizes his pen, then throws it down. He lays his
head down on his hands and thinks for a while. Then he cries
out desperately:
"I cannot bear it any longer! I cannot bear it any longer!
Such a shame, such a frightful shame!" (He seizes his pen
again and writes to the Minister presenting his resignation.)
The Real War to End War
THE International Congress of Ex-Soldiers, held at
Geneva, Switzerland, in May, and attended by repre-
sentatives of ex-soldiers' organizations of France, Ger-
many, Alsace, Italy, England, and Switzerland, adopted- the
following "pact" as its charter. Henri Barbusse was chair-
man of the congress and delivered the chief address at the
opening session.
The International Congress of Ex-Soldiers considers:
(1) That war is an inevitable consequence of the capitalist
regime ;
(2) That real and effective combat against war must reach
its cause, the capitalist regime;
Consequently, it considers it the duty of the former soldiers
to undertake a general war against war in accord with the
Socialist and labor organizations which are fighting the same
battle. Nevertheless, in this general struggle against capital-
ism, in which they must unremittingly play their part, the ex-
soldiers have a special role and function.
The ex-soldiers agree:
(a) To conduct an intensive pacifist and anti-militarist propa-
ganda to create an anti-war spirit in the masses in every coun-
try, particularly among the women, the youth, and the children ;
(b) Not to help the "League of Nations" which cannot attain
their ends and which they condemn as they condemn similar
bourgeois institutions established to guarantee the conquests of
the imperialists as opposed to the working classes;
(c) That inasmuch as war is a collective action which indi-
vidual action cannot meet, they render homage to a refusal to
bear arms as an active and worthy form of propaganda, but
the International Congress of Ex-Soldiers considers that the
individual attitude to be taken at the moment of mobilization
must be left to the consciences of its members;
(d) That they regard any mobilization, nevertheless, as ulti-
mately an attack upon the working class of the world, always
defeated in every armed conflict;
(e) That they do not intend to substitute themselves at such
a moment for the working class organizations to provoke the
general strike, forerunner of the revolution and of the con-
quest of political power by the working class.
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 17, 1920
No. 2872
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 57
EDITORIALS:
Europe's Old Doctors and New 60
Labor and the Party Platforms 61
A New Spanish Hero 61
Politics on the Cobb 62
The Happy Ending 63
THE CONQUEST OF SANTO DOMINGO. By Lewis S. Gannett 64
THE TRAGEDY THAT IS POLAND. By Benjamin Ginzburg 65
MANITOBA'S STARTLING ELECTION. By A. Vernon Thomas 66
COX— A PROVINCIAL FOR PRESIDENT. By Ludwig Lewisohn 68
ANOTHER CONVENTION— THE DEMOCRATIC. By Robert Hale 69
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By The Drifter 70
CORRESPONDENCE 71
COCOONS. By Karle Wilson Baker '. 72
BOOKS:
What Every Newspaper Man Knows. By Ernest H. Gruening 72
National Guilds and the State. By George Soule 73
The Turks in Europe. By Helen Byrne Armstrong 73
Creation and Analysis. By Ludwig Lewisohn 74
Musical Miscellanies. By Henrietta Straus 75
BOOKS IN BRIEF 76
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION 78
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER ARTHUR GLEASON
LEWIS S. GANNETT
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Adress : Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising: Swathmore Press, Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
NO clearer proof of the utter meaninglessness of major
party distinctions in this country is needed than that
supplied in a single day's news by the announcement of the
wholehearted support in the coming campaign by Senators
Johnson and Reed of the Republican and Democratic parties,
respectively. The League is universally accepted by both
Democratic and Republican partisans as the one issue which
differentiates the two platforms. In the primary campaign
Mr. Hoover allowed himself to be drawn from his policy
of political non-participation in but one instance — Cali-
fornia— where he felt it imperative to challenge Senator
Johnson's attitude on the League. After the convention
Mr. Hoover promptly discovered that the platform was to
his liking, and now Senator Johnson finds that it is "the
only choice left those who believe in safeguarding, protect-
ing, and preserving Americanism." Meanwhile Senator
Reed's warm indorsement of the Democratic ticket recalls
the fact that in Congress his stand against the League and
on "Americanism" more nearly paralleled Johnson's than
that of any other Senator. It would be difficult to find a
better illustration of the political buncombe which is offered
American voters in their "choice" of parties and issues in
the coming campaign.
"r |l HE crime of all the ages has accomplished nothing
X save the wreckage of a smiling world" — in these
prophetic words wrote George F. Burba, editor of the Day-
ton News, on December 13, 1916. These and other senti-
ments written before we went into the war are now quoted
by the Republican press in the first of the attacks upon
Governor Cox in what Senator Harding declared was to be
a campaign of principles and not of personalities. Nat-
urally, Governor Cox "points with pride" to his war record
as his defense, and makes it clear that he did not write in
1915 the sentiment that "victory by Germany was not the
worst thing that could happen." It is really to laugh, for
plainly the silly season is upon us. For ourselves, we think
it is time to let the dead past bury its dead, so far as the
beliefs of Governor Cox's journalistic employees are con-
cerned, and to set up a statute of limitations on this sort
of thing. The war is over, and some day we must realize
it and act on the fact. But it is delightfully amusing to
find the New York Times minimizing what in a liberal or
Socialist newspaper it would call high treason, and to find
Governor Cox "visibly perturbed" and the preachers of war
hatreds in full cry. This early discord in the very temple
of the preservers of our liberties and changeless institutions
is a sight for gods and men.
THE Democratic Convention did well to nominate Frank-
lin D. Roosevelt, former Assistant Secretary of the
Navy, for the Vice-Presidency, for a finer type is not to be
found in our public life. Only thirty-eight years of age,
Mr. Roosevelt has already had a dozen years of experience
of public affairs and has served well wherever placed. We
strongly suspect that when the truth about Mr. Daniels's
conduct of the Navy Department, particularly during the
war, comes to be set forth, it will be found that most of the
good things done are to be attributed to Mr. Roosevelt. Mr.
Daniels is, among other things, a weak and procrastinating
executive, and he has been fortunate indeed in having so
vigorous and tactful a subordinate to drive things through.
In New York State politics Mr. Roosevelt has stood for the
best. As State Senator he made an enviable record, and
deserves to be remembered particularly for his stubborn
fight in 1911 against the nomination of the notorious "Blue-
eyed Billy" Sheehan whom Tammany and the "up-State"
Democratic machine sought to send to the Senate to do the
will of the big corporations. For the resulting compromise,
the election of James A. O'Gorman, Mr. Roosevelt deserved
the chief credit. A man of attractive personality, he is of a
distinctly finer quality and truer independence than his dis-
tinguished cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, whose career he is
so curiously paralleling as to give Governor Cox's friends
ground for alarm if the Governor should be elected. From
The Nation's point of view there is but one criticism to be
made of Mr. Roosevelt; he is an ardent big-navy man and
therefore an imperialist, and he has never opened his mouth
to protest against the wrongs which are being committed
by navy men in Haiti and San Domingo in the American
name. But he is at least the kind of man who cannot sym-
pathize with the persecution of people for their opinions
which has been going on in this country since we stooped to
enter the "market-place of war." He is at bottom inclined
to the old American liberalism.
58
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2872
THE decision of the Spa conference regarding repara-
tions and indemnities had not been made at the time
when this issue of The Nation went to press. The Allied
representatives, however, were reported to be willing to
consider a more reasonable figure than the one which they
had talked about at Boulogne as the amount of the indem-
nity. They were led to this conclusion, apparently, by an
examination of the statistics submitted by the German
representatives, showing the economic state and prospects
of Germany ; by the sensible argument that Germany could
not determine how much it could pay until it knew whether
or not it was to have Upper Silesia with its coal fields ; and
by the pretty clear intimation that no such sum as had been
named at Boulogne would even be considered. In other
words, it seems to have been made clear to the Allies that
they had somewhat overreached themselves, that the Ger-
man statistics were better than theirs, and that if the ques-
tion of indemnity was to be settled at all the Allies must
modify their demands. On the other hand, the German
proposal that a fixed sum, to be paid in thirty annual instal-
ments without interest, credit to be given for payments in
commodities as well as for those in money, afforded a new
basis for discussion. The settlement of the coal ques-
tion had progressed no further than a protestation by
Germany that it could not possibly deliver all the coal which
the Treaty of Versailles called for without impairing its
ability to pay indemnities, and a declaration by M. Millerand
that the requirements of the treaty in the matter of coal
could not be waived.
FOR the rest, the honors of the Spa conference — if one
may speak of honors when Mr. Lloyd George acted the
part of a bully and two or three swaggering German repre-
sentatives talked as though Germany, and not the Allies,
had won the war — were about equally divided. The German
spokesmen were forced to admit that Germany had made no
really serious effort to disarm, and were properly compelled
to sign an agreement under which the Sich&rheitswehr and
Einwohnerwehr are to be dissolved, concealed arms to be
given up, the Reichswehr transformed into a regular army
in accordance with the treaty, and the other military pro-
visions of the treaty, including those relating to aviation,
complied with. They obtained, however, a six months' ex-
tension of time for the reduction of effectives, although the
number of such effectives is not to exceed 150,000 on Oc-
tober 1. If the fulfilment of these terms is evaded, the
Allies "will proceed to further occupation of German terri-
tory, whether in the Ruhr or elsewhere, and will continue
to occupy it until the terms are wholly complied with." The
Allies, in other words, back down from the position in which
Mr. Lloyd George truculently placed them at the opening
of the conference, Germany gets six months' leeway, and
France may not be able to take the law into its own hands
again as it did at Frankfort. As to the war criminals, the
Allies will present further testimony and the Leipzig court
will consider it. Dr. Simons, the German Foreign Minister,
proved himself rather more than a match for Mr. Lloyd
George in debate, keeping his temper and his manners in
the face of the bullying tactics of the British Premier. Even
M. Millerand felt compelled to declare that "we are not
here to chastise Germany," that "the Allies are all agreed
that Germany is a necessary and useful member of the
European family," and that "our desire is to help her re-
cover if she is prepared to execute her obligations."
THE Department of State is entitled to extremely little
credit, and is likely to receive no more than it is en-
titled to, for its eleventh-hour action in permitting trade
with Russia. After a whole cyclopaedia of facts demon-
strating the gross partisanship, the evasions, the untruth-
fulness, and the ignorance of the Department about Russia
has been made public, and after British merchants and
manufacturers have had months of opportunity to capture
whatever was most lucrative in Russian trade present or
prospective, the Department has at last condescended to
allow American traders to compete for what may be left.
Even so, what is now granted is so hedged about with re-
strictions and explanations as to be practically worthless.
There is still to be no recognition whatever of the Soviet
Government; which means, of course, that no one may buy
or sell goods or make any contract with the least assurance
of legal protection in case the transaction comes into con-
troversy. This would be bad enough in any case, but to the
injury is added insult when the Department further an-
nounces that postal service between the United States and
Russia will not be reopened, and that passports will not
be issued or visaed. The American who shall build up a
remunerative trade with Russia under such conditions
should receive a medal for his ingenuity. The only thing
needed to complete the farce is the statement, sent out from
Washington in an obviously inspired dispatch, that the
action taken "is expected to have more influence in breaking
down Bolshevist propaganda in the United States than in
actually restoring a heavy exchange of goods." The De-'
partment learns that "one of the most effective arguments",
which the Bolsheviki have been using "in some countries"
is that the Allies have been "starving innocent women and
children." As Russia is a rather large country and the
food shortage is admittedly severe, it is extremely likely
that the Bolshevist argument will be confounded by the
tiny amount of food that may presently seep in as a result
of the Department's gracious concession.
AS we go to press, the Russians are driving the Polish
forces before them and the Allies are reported as re-
questing an armistice from the Bolsheviki; otherwise the
Allies may throw themselves into the war against them.
When the Poles invaded Russia the Allies had no word of
protest to utter, not even when the invaders penetrated
hundreds of miles beyond the Polish frontier laid down by
the peace-makers. Now that the Poles are being properly
punished for their imperialistic folly, the Allies rush to
their aid again against the Bolsheviki who are so wicked
as to defend their hearths and homes and to expel the wan-
ton invader. It will be interesting to see just where the
Russian troops will stop, whether at their own boundaries
or at those of Germany, or whether they will do the world
the service of chasing the Grabskis, Pilsudskis, and Hallers
out of Warsaw. Will Lenin be bluffed by this new bluster-
ing manifesto of Mr. Lloyd George? He must know that
the British miners are for calling a general strike if their
Government persists in lending aid to the enemies of Rus-
sia, and that the British dockers will load no more ships
with ammunition to be used against their Russian brethren.
Lenin must also be aware of the very delicate situation in
the ranks of the Allies themselves. On the other hand,
every instinct for the success of his own experiment ought
to move Lenin to set an example of self-restraint even when
victory is apparently in his hands.
July 17, 1920]
The Nation
59
WE do not blame the representatives of the anthracite
operators for entering "vigorous objection" to the
presentation before the Anthracite Coal Commission of Mr.
W. Jett Lauck's material on profiteering. Seven railways,
said Mr. Lauck, under the general control of the Morgan
interests, dominate the anthracite industry, and the profits
resulting from the production and sale of coal by their sub-
sidiary companies "have appeared almost altogether in the
dividends, reserves, and bond interest of the seven anthra-
cite railways" ; thus enabling the subsidiary coal companies
to present a balance sheet innocent of profits. Railway men
who demand a $6 minimum daily wage are not, therefore,
according to Mr. Lauck, fastening a suffocating burden upon
the coal industry, as has frequently been claimed. They are
asking only a small margin of a vast and increasing profit
which only by a feat of book-keeping fails to appear on the
ledger of the coal operators. Mr. Lauck said :
A survey of the anthracite industry shows an increase in net
profits of the principal operators for the period 1916-1918 over
1912-1914 of nearly 90 per cent as compared with an increase
in production of less than 12 per cent. . . . The immense
profits reported by three of the principal mining companies for
1916-1918 are exclusive of the earnings of their separately
incorporated selling departments and represent only a fraction
of their actual profits. Since its organization in 1910 the
I Lehigh Valley Coal Sales Company, for example, has paid
annual dividends at an average rate of nearly 20 per cent. The
! Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Coal Company, since its
organization in 1909, has paid 300 per cent in dividends and has
accumulated a surplus of $5,973,595, or more than 90 per cent
on its capital stock outstanding. . . . The actual increase
i in profits during the war years of the coal companies which
market their own product is indicated by the income account of
the Philadelphia and Reading Company. This company, which
had no selling device for concealing its profits, increased its
production only 11 per cent during the war years, but increased
its profits nearly 500 per cent and its profits per ton of output
435 per cent.
These examples would seem to indicate moderation on the
part of the miners, but they indicate, also, good sense on the
part of the operators in attempting to prevent the public
j from learning the exact figures of their fat years.
"I * TEST VIRGINIA drifts a little closer to catastrophe
V V each month. Miners and armed guards are potting
i at one another, and occasionally some one is hit. The air is
i filled with talk of killing, but murder from ambush is not
the wisest way of settling intricate, detailed questions of
. wages and labor. The matter in dispute is whether a few
* counties in the southwestern part of the State shall be
; unionized. The coal operators state their case as follows:
I "Outside paid agitators are at the bottom of every strike
I — in it for the money they can get out of it. A mine is shut
down by these paid agitators from outside, because the
owner will not agree to the principle of the closed shop.
The owner offers the men more money. They tell him they
do not want it, they want the closed shop. Living and work-
ing conditions in Logan County, for instance, are better
| than anywhere else in the State. The managers are young
men who deal with the workers personally. We do not
think that the United Mine Workers foster American ideals
in their constant demand for shorter hours and higher
wages which are stifling production and putting up the cost
■ of living. We do not believe these unions will be able to
stand. They are run for the benefit of their unscrupulous
paid heads, who are not producers." To this the United
Mine Workers reply: "We have a right as citizens to enter
those counties. We insist on entering." The next few
months will see the dispute rage more hotly. The casualty
list will be extended. England, long before the situation
had reached its present crisis, would have set up a com-
mission, half of operators, half of miners, with an accep-
table neutral chairman. Each side would talk instead of
shooting.
THE announcement that $150,000,000 of alien property
is to be returned to its rightful owners is but the first
step in righting a grievous wrong and in wiping out a dis-
honorable stain on America's record. The arbitrary con-
fiscation of alien property by Mr. Palmer in direct con-
travention of all international law was the more con-
spicuous because of our entry into war in order to check
German lawlessness. Even now only partial restoration is
proposed. Certain well-defined groups will be entitled to a
return of their property "on formal application." When
will restoration to all take place? And how will the an-
nounced partial settlement be effected? Will the owners
receive their property at the value which it had at the time
of seizure? Or will they be entitled only to its auction
block worth or to the much-reduced present market value?
These questions are important because they definitely in-
volve American good-faith. Incidentally, another interest-
ing issue raised by the war is again revived, namely, the
status of American born and bred women who, because of
marriage to aliens, forfeited their citizenship and property
rights regardless of their American loyalty and sympathies.
The women of this country, following their pending com-
plete enfranchisement, cannot do better than to make the
elimination from our statute books of this degrading dis-
tinction the first act of their citizenship.
NO words were considered too harsh to characterize the
men who attempted to evade conscription during the
war. No sentence was too heavy, no law too stringent
which was aimed at the punishment of "dodgers" or the
enforcement of the draft act. A slacker was held to be
the lowest sort of criminal — a man who for the sake of
his personal convenience or safety let other men die in his
place, and failed in his obligations to his country. On July
7, sixteen men were had up in court in New York City for
failure to respond to a summons to jury duty. They were
not sentenced to hard labor nor called the names they might
have been called, but they were, it is satisfactory to note,
fined $100 each. Different in degree, their offense is in
principle closely analogous to that of the draft dodgers.
These jury slackers forced several men to serve who had
put forward claims legally exempting them from duty; they
wilfully evaded the one form of personal service demanded
by the country in time of peace. It appeared evident from
the list of their occupations that most of them would have
suffered no hardship by serving. Three of the sixteen were
listed as "retired" — a word with comfortable, leisure-class
connotations; three were listed as "president," presumably
of some company; six were business men or merchants;
there were two managers, a chemist, and an architect. If
these most respectable persons are unwilling — even for a
consideration — to lend their time to the country, military
draft dodgers are at least an accountable phenomenon.
60
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2872
Europe's Old Doctors and New
IT is a year since the peace treaty was signed, and Europe
has no peace. Some statisticians count up thirty wars in
progress, but the figure is doubtful, for it has become diffi-
cult in many parts of Europe to distinguish war from peace.
Almost every continental country lives in a state of more
or less chronic civil war, and few frontiers are unguarded
and disarmed. Indeed, many of the frontiers have not yet
been determined. People are dancing in the cafes of the
capitals and starving in the slums, and great stretches of
once fertile country now lie untilled and unproductive.
This is more than the normal and inevitable aftermath of
such a war. Nor is it a consequence of America's with-
drawal from European affairs. It is more even than a
product of the Treaty of Versailles. It is the product of the
spirit which dominated the Peace Conference, which con-
tinued dominant in the Supreme Council and in the Con-
ference of Ambassadors, which has blighted the successive
conferences of San Remo, Hythe, and Spa — the spirit of
pre-war diplomacy, grasping, hating all things new, striving
to restore the old order. Until new men with a new spirit
come into power in the two or three countries which deter-
mine European policy today, there is small hope for Europe.
The men who supported Kolchak, Denikin, and Judenich in
Russia, who tricked the Hungarians into ousting Bela Kun
and then permitted Horthy's White Terror to rule, who have
unleashed the Greek troops in Turkey, who have whipped
Germany back into the hands of the men of the old regime,
cannot be expected to lead the way toward a new era.
The collapse of Poland is the most recent revelation of
their ineptitude. The young republic of Poland emerged
from the war with a national faith and a vision of the
future. Instead of being permitted to devote itself to the
homely tasks of reconstruction, Poland was dressed up as
the "bulwark against bolshevism," and forced into a cam-
paign which may mean the end of the republic. Poles from
Chicago were induced to cross the ocean, were trained by
British officers, clad in French uniforms, and shipped east-
ward to add to the burden of the overloaded Polish budget.
The whole crooked story of Allied diplomacy in Poland is not
yet bare. France assisted the Polish army with money and
officers — France, which sorely needed her own money at
home; England gave Poland quantities of army supplies;
our own War and Navy Departments surreptitiously granted
unrevealed amounts of military and naval overstocks. It
took weeks of questioning for the Labor members of the
House of Commons to get Mr. Bonar Law to admit that
Britain was aiding Poland. On May 6 he specifically denied
that the Allies, or any one of them, were giving moral or
material support to Poland in its attack on Russia. On
May 20 he admitted that in the previous October
a request was addressed by the Polish Government for assist-
ance in their military equipment. In consequence of our com-
mitments elsewhere the British Government were unable to give
any financial assistance, but they offered to supply a certain
quantity of surplus stores on condition that the cost of moving
them as well as the arrangements for transport should be under-
taken by the Polish Government. This offer was accepted, and
in consequence of this gift the material in question became the
property of the Polish Government, and part of it is now being
shipped by that Government.
Part of that part was the cargo of the Jolly George which
British sailors refused to move, and which was accordingly
discharged and left upon the London docks.
The Poles tell us that the Entente encouraged their offen-
sive. Mr. Lloyd George tells us that he discouraged it; Mr.
Bonar Law says the Poles were told that Great Britain
could give them no advice; Mr. Churchill is discreetly silent.
No faith can be put in the statements of these men. It has
now been shown that Mr. Churchill, Britain's War Minister,
took orders from Admiral Kolchak, and begged his Russian
friends to keep it dark because Mr. Lloyd George might not
approve. It was this same Mr. Churchill who solemnly
assured the House of Commons that the British Government
had had no advance knowledge of the Polish offensive which
drove hundreds of miles beyond the Polish racial frontier in
April and May, when as a matter of fact the British all the
time had a naval mission of twelve men in Poland, and a
military mission of fifteen, headed by a general, with the
Polish army. Such men cannot be trusted ; they may change
their minds and modify the terms of their treaty, but
Europe can expect no respite from its sufferings as a result
of their forced hesitations. They seem utterly to lack any
sense of the human cost of war, any interest in the lives of
the men whom they use as pawns and throw away on lost
and undeserving causes ; yes, they lack elementary morality.
Participation by America in their decisions would mean
only complicity in crime.
Is the situation of Europe, then, hopeless? Is Europe con-
demned to a slow decay toward anarchy and chaos ? - Far
from it. For, in the face of the failures of the diplomats
a new force is rising. There is the crew of the Jolly George.
There are the British railwaymen who urge a general strike
if British troops are not recalled from Ireland. And there
are the workingmen of Austria and Czecho-Slovakia and
Jugoslavia who, faced with the plight of their fellows in
terror-stricken Hungary, and with the absolute refusal of
their rulers to take notice of crimes where they so obviously
had control, voted and carried out an economic blockade of
Hungary so effective that the proud Government of Hun-
gary was forced to send mediators to treat with the repre-
sentatives of, if you please, the International Federation of
Trade Unions. In these groups, gropingly conscious of their
new power, lies the hope of Europe. The lettering on the
machinery of government matters little in comparison with
the spirit of the men who pull the levers. It is not the fact
that these men are labor men, but the fact that the idealism
of Europe today finds its expression through labor, that
matters. The plight of Europe may well seem hopeless to
one who regards only Millerand and Lloyd George and the
political contingencies which make their power, or the power
of men like them, so firm ; but strong as is the grip of these
men upon their official positions, other forces are under-
mining their power and compelling them, if merely as oppor-
tunists, to curb their desires and change their policies. The
conference at Spa has its importance; but the historian of
the future will be more interested in the railwaymen who
refused to carry British soldiers in Ireland, the sailors who
refused to transport munitions for Poland's imperialistic
campaign, and the central European workmen who refused
to transport supplies for a Government that ruled by a white
terror.
July 17, 1920]
The Nation
61
Labor in the Party Platforms
IF labor can still content itself with generalities and
platitudes, it should find a good deal that is soothing
and comforting in the labor declarations of the Democratic
and Republican platforms. The Democratic Party, "now
as ever the firm friend of honest labor and the promoter of
progressive industry," "points with pride" to the various
acts relating to workingmen's compensation, child labor,
the eight-hour day, vocational training, and other subjects
with which the present Administration is to be credited,
and to the "many bitter disputes" between labor and capital
which have been "peaceably determined." As to the future,
the platform concedes to labor as well as to capital the right
to "adequate compensation," organization, collective bar-
gaining, and the choice of representatives to speak for it.
Neither, however, "should at any time nor in any circum-
stances take action that will put in jeopardy the public wel-
fare." Strikes and lockouts, accordingly, "which endanger
the health or lives of the people," are properly character-
ized as "an unsatisfactory device for determining disputes,"
and the Democratic party pledges itself "to contrive, if
possible, and put into effective operation a fair and com-
prehensive method of composing differences of this nature."
What the "fair and comprehensive method" is is not inti-
mated, but compulsory arbitration in private industrial dis-
putes is summarily rejected. By implication the right of
government employees to strike is denied, the platform lay-
ing down the principle that, "with respect to government
service . . . the rights of the people are paramount to
the right to strike." The grievances of government em-
ployees, however, are to be redressed.
What is there in all this for labor? Frankly, not much.
It is gratifying, of course, to know that the salaries of
government employees, if the Democrats win the election,
will speedily be brought "to a just and proper level," that
collective bargaining will be approved in principle, and that
there will be no more futile experiments with compulsory
arbitration. But the most careful reading of the platform
shows nothing tangible and solid of which labor can
take hold. The general phrases with which the few specific
proposals are surrounded recite the old familiar platitudes
about the "rights" of labor, "justice" for those who work,
and the duty of recognizing the "reciprocal obligation be-
tween the workers and the state." The visionary notion of
a "public" which somehow is neither capital nor labor, but
which is nevertheless likely to be grievously disturbed when
labor and capital fall out, underlies the whole document.
Save as collective bargaining, which the platform merely
mentions without discussion, may work some mitigation of
the evil, the Democratic Party apparently expects that
industrial society in this country will go on as before, cap-
ital and labor organizing their hostile camps, haggling and
fighting over wages and hours, filling the newspapers with
charges and countercharges of bad faith and violence, and
eventually compromising their differences under some "fair
and comprehensive method" yet to be "contrived."
The Republican platform, although at one or two points
more specific, is as a whole no better. It recognizes the
justice of collective bargaining "as a means of promoting
good will, establishing closer and more harmonious rela-
tions between employer and employees, and realizing the
true end of industrial justice." It denies "the right to
strike against the Government," and approves of "govern-
ment initiative" to reduce the frequency and limit the con-
sequences of strikes and lockouts. For the adjustment of
disputes in public utilities it proposes the establishment of
an "impartial tribunal" which shall investigate facts and
render a decision, such decision, however, to be morally but
not legally binding. In the case of private industries, on
the other hand, "impartial commissions" and "better facili-
ties for voluntary mediation, conciliation, and arbitration,"
supplemented, as in the case of public utilities, by full pub-
licity and the influence of "an informed public sentiment,"
are the methods to be relied upon.
Perhaps it is true that the majority of wage-earners in
this country are as yet more concerned with the problems of
daily existence than they are with economic or political
theories; more bent upon securing the highest wages and
the shortest hours possible, even if they have to get them
by strikes, than they are upon working out new relation-
ships with employers or with the community. To such the
declarations of the Republican and Democratic platforms
will appear equally vague and indifferent. But the pro-
gressive workers may certainly be relied upon to con-
demn both platforms as unsatisfactory. They will not wax
enthusiastic over a formal recognition of the "justice" of
collective bargaining so long as the two leading parties, in
their official declarations of faith, show no comprehension
of labor demands as a whole. The crux of the labor situa-
tion today is the demand of labor, not for higher wages or
shorter hours, but for a voice in the control of industry.
Until that problem is squarely faced, enlightened labor will
look upon the proposals of the platforms as little more than
devices for keeping up appearances.
A New Spanish Hero
SINCE the war it has become rather unfashionable as
well as unbecoming to accuse the Spanish genius of
medieval barbarism on account of its attachment to the bull-
ring. Barbarism, we have learned, clings to the most
sophisticated and modern of human accomplishments — to
science and art, to learning and statesmanship — because it
inheres still in the human heart. Customs vary but impulses
remain, waiting to be released when the right stimulus is
applied. The savage eats the flesh of his defeated rival;
the white man sears the lungs of his enemy with liquid
fire. The Spaniard supports the bull-ring; the American or
Britisher, if he isn't engaged in "bumping off" natives in
Haiti or India, gets his fun in the prize-ring. The only
difference seems to be that the Spanish sport has developed
a redeeming literature, inevitably romantic; while its hold
on the imagination of the Spanish people has developed
some traits which are charming and picturesque.
We recall, for instance, an adroit piece of German propa-
ganda circulated among the common folk of Spain during
the war. A daughter of the American President, Senor
Wilson — so the story ran — had married a poor but heroic
Spanish matador. Before long the young man, at the very
start of his career, died a glorious death in the bull-ring;
and shortly afterward a child was born to his wife, the
daughter of the American President. The father and
mother of the brave young bull-fighter were old and poor,
but honest and hard-working. They did their best to care
for their son's wife and the little baby. Finally, however,
62
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2872
despairing of giving the child the chance in life which it
deserved, the old man wrote a letter to the baby's other
grandfather, the American President. He asked for help
in the support of the President's daughter and his grand-
child. But President Wilson never even replied !
We have the word of an American who met this story all
through the country districts of Spain that it was generally
believed and that it created more anti-American sentiment
than any other combination of elements could have evoked.
To ignore an appeal in behalf of your own daughter's child
— that is base enough, especially if you are rich and power-
ful. But when that child is the issue of a hero, the son of
a matador — that is worse than stony-hearted. So argued
the sentimental Spanish peasant, and thanked God he need
not fight for such a man.
And now Joselito, greatest of matadors, lies dead, and
Spain has already insured his immortality. On every street
corner minstrels sing his deeds, children learn his story from
their nurses, peasants chant it in the fields; a new, endless
song of Roland is being born.
The London Times tells an incident that adds the last
touch of romance to the life and death of this latest Spanish
hero. While dressing for the fatal fight at Talavera, Jose-
lito sang a song originally composed in honor of an earlier
hero of the ring. He modified it to make it appropriate to
his own case — much to the distress of his servant — and on
that day he was killed. A few of the interminable series
of verses run as follows:
Go not to the meadow,
The flowers have faded,
For the king of matadors
Lies dead at Talavera.
On May 15,
In Madrid plaza,
Jose had bad luck
And the fight was a sorry one.
While he was being hissed
A spectator shouted madly:
"May a bull kill thee
Tomorrow at Talavera."
A calamity, indeed,
That cry portended,
For Jose was tossed
And at Talavera died.
When Joselito fell
Under that terrible stroke,
He pressed his hands to his stomach,
Where the wound was.
And on the ground he lay,
That unequalled torero,
His lifeblood flowing out
From the great rent.
"These and other coplas," says the correspondent of the
Times, "will be sung by the cobbler in his grimy little den,
by the lonely arriero following his mule along the dusty
track, by the laborer as he wends his way home from the
fields. They will cross the Straits to the army in the Riff,
and the Moors, hearing them sung at the Spanish camp fires,
will recognize in the tune, if not in the words, the melan-
choly note of the East that still survives in Spain."
Politics on the Cobb
IF the truth must be told, writes one correspondent at the
San Francisco Convention, "the really dominating figure
at this gathering has been Irvin W. Cobb." When he strode
through a lobby conversation ceased, men gaped with amaze ;
when he laughed, the rafters rang with the echoing roar;
where'er he walked his Falstaffian way, the throng pursued
him. Is he not one of the heroes of the Saturday Evening
Post, therefore of the great American people? Is it not
said of him among the multitude that he is the highest
priced of American literary fellers? We think the corre-
spondent right. We venture to say that if there had been
a secret ballot among the delegates as to whom they would
rather see in the White House, without regard to politics
or to party allegiance, Irvin Cobb would have polled a
whopping vote. Instead, he received but one vote and a
half to Ring W. Lardner's half a vote. Even this was a
great tribute, for no one stopped to inquire whether Irvin
was a Democrat or a Republican. One American and half
of another dared obloquy and ridicule in plumping for
Irvin, and the other stray half of a delegate raised Ring to
the dizzy height of an immortal place in all future editions
of Stanwood's "History of the Presidency."
The only thing that surprises us is that the mention of
these names did not start the long-expected stampede. Surely
only the exhaustion of the delegates prevented. The mere
appearance in the balloting of these two men must have
brought refreshment and stimulating memories of a laugh-
ing past. And what a prospect the possibility of stfch a
nomination must have brought up! Visions of a joyous,
rollicking, happy campaign, all good nature and fun, with-
out a word about anything grave or serious like the cost of
living or the League of Nations or labor or capital — surely,
if America is entitled to anything after these strenuous war
years, it is to laugh its way over the difficulties of the hour.
Is there anything our war-torn nerves need more than the
salve of humor to calm them and to aid us back to our
mental equilibrium, to let us see facts as they are, to let us
plot and plan, and each go his own little way, as unheedful
of the world as in the good old days before the war? Why,
if Irvin Cobb had but been nominated, and pledged to a
daily statement on the state of the nation and the feelings
of a first-rate Presidential candidate, Warren Harding would
not even have been in the "also ran" class. It would have
availed him nothing, this dear, prosy old Senator from Ohio,
with all the familiar sentimentality and platitudinous pom-
posity of the provincial, ear-to-the-ground politician, to enlist
Ring Lardner and F. P. Adams, or even such a fearful
humorist as Christopher Morley, on his side. We venture
to say that Irvin Cobb would have laughed himself into the
White House with irresistible, elephantine jocosity and car-
ried every State save Ohio.
One touch of humor surely makes the whole world kin,
and however diluted Mr. Cobb's humor may be it would, we
are sure, get three-quarters of the vote of every American.
We hurry this suggestion into type because the third, fourth,
fifth, and sixth parties are holding their conventions as we
write. Let but one of them nominate a humorist — no, we
dread to put down in black and white what we think the
consequences would be. Gideon as a destroyer of grouped
edifices would have to take second place in history. Talk
about packs of cards! Anybody with half the lance power
July 17, 1920]
The Nation
63
of Artemus Ward would set all our American thrones to
rocking; a James Russell Lowell come to life as a new Hosea
Biglow would bring on the revolution. Palmer or no Palmer,
our ticket is Irvin Cobb for President, and Ty Cobb for
Vice-President — the American people's own.
The Happy Ending
THERE is an old and proverbial quarrel between the
public and the artist over the question : How should a
story end? The matter is as stale as last week's loaf. Then
why reopen it? Because no one seems consciously to under-
stand it or to get beyond the words and the superficial
emotions to the actual things involved. Even the readers of
Harold Bell Wright would be a little shocked could one con-
vey to them a full sense of precisely how their hunger for
a happy ending is being fed. The serious novelist, on the
other hand, is often merely morose and contemptuous.
Driven in upon himself by a universal worship of sweetish-
ness and slush — which accounts for the small sale of his
works — he comes to attribute an absolute value to grime and
gloom, and misses the infinite humanity and pathos of the
cry for a happy ending.
The controversy is not nearly so simple as either side
assumes. For, omitting the story of mere adventure or
mystery, every novel does, somehow, through the larger sym-
bolism of its concrete fable, answer the question : How shall
a man be saved and be content? The author's conscious
intention does not touch the fact. Every ordinary reader,
whether he formulates it to himself or not, sees in every
story an implied answer to that central and supreme de-
mand. And who shall blame this common reader — an ab-
sorption in the abstract processes of art can scarcely be
his — for wanting to be told how the soul can be saved and
life made livable? He has neither the leisure nor the mental
power to enter into the vast and complex considerations
from which the scientist and the philosopher will at times
derive a bleakly negative conclusion. Nor can he risk the
paralyzing of his vital energy which such a conclusion would
entail for him. The very great novelists have never shirked
the valid humanity of the demand for a happy ending in this
necessary and fundamental sense. How shall a man be
saved and happy? "Be good!" is the answer of Richardson;
"don't be a sneak!" is the answer of Fielding; "be a gentle-
man!" is the answer of Thackeray. All these answers seem
quaint and pallid today. "Clarissa Harlowe" and "Tom
Jones" and "Vanity Fair" survive through their creative
energy. But to their contemporaries the authors of these
books spoke from no cool height of vision ; they spoke amid
the heat of the conflict of life. Nor did the naturalists dis-
regard the living requirements of their art. Beneath every
somber and polished sentence of "Madame Bovary" pulses
the almost frantic monition : "Don't be a vulgar and roman-
tic fool!" In every novelist there lurks a savior of mankind,
and it is no paradox to assert that Flaubert himself sought,
by his very scorn and detachment, to increase the number
of happy endings in life if not in art.
Within the past thirty-five years the problem has grown
far acuter, because a happy ending has become far more
difficult to achieve. No honest thinker can any longer tell
his readers to be good or to be gentlemen; that is, to find
happiness or salvation in conforming to external and fixed
standards of conduct. For it is clear that involuntary obe-
dience corrupts the soul and that the old codes have lost all
power of bringing the will into harmony with their dictates.
It follows that the protagonist of the modern novel must
first find or create the values by which to save his soul and
live his life; that he must, in other words, achieve a personal
and unique reconciliation with the universe. The result is
to make the great modern novels, from "Wilhelm Meister,"
prophetic of the whole matter so long ago, to "The Way of
All Flesh" and "Jean-Christophe," stories of seekers and
wanderers and to impose on them a more or less biographi-
cal form. Nor can the modern novelist forget that a per-
sonal reconciliation with fate involves even the most aloof
spirit in some contact with the turbulent social and economic
conflicts that fill his world. Hence life bursts into art at a
thousand points, destroys the rounded form of serene sur-
faces and delicate exclusions, and strains the novelist's
energy to the very utmost. Yet ever, as this process con-
tinues, the artist's own demand for a happy ending grows
in urgency. He must, quite for his own sake, desire some
synthesis, some certain values, some rational interpretation
of the sum of things. Thus he is at once creator and pro-
tagonist, savior and lost soul; he is the food and also the
hunger that craves it. It is he himself who, in the last
analysis, must want a happy ending. There are exceptions.
With gaunt hollowness of tone and gloomy satisfaction
Dreiser proclaims chaos. Far more characteristic of our
period is Wells, who hastens feverishly from one search
after reconciliation and peace to another and gives himself
no time or quietude to reach a happy ending in his own
mind. And supremely characteristic is Henri Barbusse
who, in "Clarte," proclaims a happy ending for all mankind
through the destruction of the regnant moral and economic
order.
No, we have no quarrel with the happy ending. Man
must have happy endings to live at all. Our quarrel is with
the falsely happy ending, the "faked" happy ending, the
happy ending upon unreal and impossible and childish terms.
It is that sort of happy ending which, to our misfortune,
the contemporary American editor has in mind. For his
public is not realistic in temper; it insists on a moral illu-
sionism whose very militancy speaks of inner decay, and
desires still to be told in art that the short cut to salvation
and contentment, interpreted by it as conventional behavior
and money in the bank, has been found and need but be
taken. Hence it comes that our poetry and our criticism
are extraordinarily superior to our fiction in quality and
temper. The novelists, alas, are almost helpless to effect a
change. The resistance is too massive and the confusion of
thought too profound. Other means must bring some doubt,
some flexibility of mind, some desire to be born again and
acquire a clearer vision, to the vast levels of our national
life. Mr. Coningsby Dawson is sorry that he was not born
in America. He made a tour of the country, and writes:
"Until I undertook that tour I had the foggiest conception
of the country in which I was living — a conception based on
hearsay and novels which were out of date. After I had
completed my tour, I found that I had made this amazing
discovery — that America, as she is today, is in the main
unrepresented in the fiction of her contemporary novelists."
Here, then, if anywhere, is the novelist's rich and virgin
soil. Yes, if he could plow it up and in toil and sweat wring
a happy ending from the stubborn earth. At present he
whirs across it in a motor-car, peddling ointments and
plasters for mutilations which he must half feign not to see.
64
The Nation
[Vol. ill, No. 2872
The Conquest of Santo Domingo
By LEWIS S. GANNETT
SANTO DOMINGO is conquered territory. The Domini-
can has less independence and fewer rights than had a
Belgian under German occupation. He has not even the
consciousness that there are crusading nations to defend
his rights. "The rights of small nations" do not include
his country. American boys died to free Poles, Czecho-
slovaks, Jugo-Slavs, and Belgians; but in this hemisphere
they suppress Dominicans.
Some Americans may salve their colored consciences by
the thought that Haitians are black, and that what we do
to Haitians must therefore be discounted. Dominicans are
white: we have not even the invalid excuse of color. We,
the United States of America, who prate of democracy and
republicanism and small nations and rights, have driven
out the lawful officials of the Dominican republic, dissolved
the congress, forbidden elections, ruled by martial law and
sanctioned atrocities — and with an ironic honesty unequaled
even in Prussian annals we solemnly declare that we will
continue to rule "in accordance with the Constitution and
laws of the Republic of Santo Domingo in so far as these
are not modified by the military government."
There is no President in Santo Domingo, no cabinet, no
congress, and there has not been for four years; there is
only the arbitrary rule of the United States Marine Corps.
There is a censorship so dictatorial and so humorless that
the word "Liberty" is stricken out from the program of the
Teatro Libertad in the capitol city. By official order of the
United States authorities it is now plain "Teatro." And
this in the name of America, while we were fighting to make
the world safe for democracy!
American intervention in Santo Domingo began in 1905
and culminated in 1916. It was precipitated by financial
adventuring and chronic revolution. Bond issues had been
issued freely at usurious rates of interest. An American
financial expert in 1905 found the national debt to be $40,-
000,000. Much of this had been taken over by a New Jersey
corporation entitled the San Domingo Improvement Com-
pany, which secured control of the Dominican customs, but
effected only one improvement — the completion of a railroad,
and this with Dominican funds. The origin of the debts was
unsavory, the interest payments irregular or in default, and
dissatisfaction was general. In 1904 the Improvement Com-
pany, which some years before had been ousted from the
customs houses, re-secured control of the customs of the
port of Puerto Plata, and this led to uneasiness and threats
of similar control by French and Italian creditors. The
Dominican government appealed to the American, and Pres-
ident Roosevelt, in the spring of 1905, named a General
Receiver of Dominican customs, who succeeded in scaling
down the foreign debt to $20,000,000 and getting a loan for
that amount from an American bank. A treaty ratified in
1907 confirmed this procedure. It was part of this agree-
ment that the Dominican government should not, until this
debt was paid, increase its public debt unless with the con-
sent of the American Government.
But a new series of revolutions beginning in 1911 led to
an increase of the internal debt, which was in 1912 trans-
ferred to another New York bank. The American navy had
repeatedly given moral support to one side or the other in
various disturbances; in April, 1916, when a new revolution
threatened further harm to American interests, the navy,
with the consent of one faction, landed marines near Santo
Domingo, took the capital on May 15, landed at the prin-
cipal other ports in June, and finally "pacified" the entire
country, with a loss of seven Americans killed and fifteen
wounded, as against several hundred Dominicans. For a
few months a nominal Dominican Government persisted.
The American military authorities insisted that the Domini-
cans agree to a treaty similar to that which had been forced
upon Haiti, providing for collection of customs under Amer-
ican auspices, the appointment of an American financial
adviser, and the establishment of a native constabulary force
officered by Americans. This they refused to do, and the
American authorities thereupon cut off their income. The
Dominican Government was left penniless and impotent.
A proclamation of November 29, 1916, frankly put su-
preme power into the hands of the American military gov-
ernment. That proclamation recited that because of failure
to carry out the treaty of 1907, and in a desire to obtain
domestic tranquillity —
"the republic of Santo Domingo is hereby placed in a state
of Military Occupation by the forces under my command, and
is made subject to military government and to the exercise, pf
military law applicable to such occupation . . . with no imme-
diate or ulterior object of destroying the sovereignty of the
Republic of Santo Domingo but on the contrary to give aid to
that country in returning to a condition of internal order. . . ."
The original of this proclamation, signed by Captain H. S.
Knapp of the U. S. S. Olympia, contains marginal annota-
tions in the hand of Woodrow Wilson. A censorship decree
followed, and, on December 4, Executive Order No. 1 :
It being necessary to the purpose of the occupation that the
offices of Secretary of State of the Departments of War and
Marine, and of Interior and Police, be no longer administered
by Dominican citizens but be administered by officers of the
United States forces in occupation,
It is ordered that until further notice Dominican citizens are
ineligible to hold, and cease to hold, such offices, which are
hereby vested in Colonel J. H. Pendleton, U.S.M.C., Command-
ing the forces of the United States on shore in Santo Domingo.
H. S. Knapp,
U. S. S. Olympia, December 4, 1918. Captain, U. S. Navy,
Other orders followed in rapid succession, removing the
ministers of Foreign Relations, Finance, Justice, Agricul-
ture, etc., and naming officers of the American navy to fill
these offices and administer them, in the choicest of phrases,
"according to the Constitution and laws of the Republic of
Santo Domingo, in so far as these are not modified by the
military government." Executive Order No. 12 was brief:
it declared that "for the present and until further notice
no elections will be held in the Republic of Santo Domingo."
No. 18 is longer. It should be noted that some Dominicans
who still clung to independence, had held local elections and
attempted to reassemble a congress:
As no quorum of the Dominican Congress exists, due to the
expiration of the terms of office of certain members of the
Senate and House of Deputies, and to the fact that such elec-
July 17, 1920]
The Nation
65
tions as may have been held to fill the vacancies so caused will
not be recognized as valid by the military government, having
been held under the direction of an administration not recog-
nized by the United States, and to the further fact that all
elections have been suspended for the present by Executive
Order No. 12 of December 26, 1916,
It is ordered,
1. That the sessions of the Dominican Congress are suspended
until after elections shall have been ordered and held to fill
vacancies now existing;
2. That the Senators and deputies whose terms have not
expired are likewise expelled from office until the full Congress
shall have been called into session and that their emoluments
shall cease.
U. S. S. Olympia, January 2, 1917. H. S. Knapp.
There may have been need for financial interference;
there never was and could never be, excuse for such ruth-
less suppression of every institution of popular government
and for the substitution of a military despotism.
Incidents in the atrocious history of that despotism have
been recited by Archbishop Adolfo Nouel, and are printed
elsewhere in this issue. Other incidents, including the use
of naval airplanes as an instrument of "pacification" were
told in The Nation for February 21. If such things had
happened in Armenia or Belgium, the American people and
press would be at fever-heat in denunciation. They hap-
pened at our own doorstep, under our owTn flag, in the name
of the American people, and we are silent.
Captain Knapp of the Olympia, who sponsored these
orders, was promoted to Rear Admiral, and in 1919 was
succeeded by Rear Admiral Thomas Snowden. There has
been no substantial change in the methods of government.
Perhaps in partial response to a memorandum presented to
the American Government at Washington by the exiled
president of the Dominican Republic, Dr. Francisco Hen-
riquez y Carvajal, Admiral Snowden last October named a
Consulting Board of four prominent Dominicans to meet
with him on Wednesday afternoons "to discuss matters
relevant to the welfare of the Republic." The four Do-
minicans accepted, in the understanding that a new policy
was to be inaugurated, that the censorship would be abol-
ished, that the provost courts would give way to civil courts,
and that at least local municipal elections would be held.
They presented three memoranda to the Admiral, which are
printed on another page in this issue of The Nation. These
memoranda are careful, modest, almost humble, suggestions
for first steps toward a restoration of self-government in
Santo Domingo. They followed Henriquez y Carvajal's
memorandum. The Admiral replied, in conversation, that
Santo Domingo would continue to be a republic and would
have a congress, but that he, the Admiral, would be the Con-
gress. ' The only official answer was a new censorship decree,
also printed elsewhere in this issue of The Nation. The
Consulting Commission, convinced that they were not to be
consulted seriously, resigned; the Admiral, in reply, "re-
gretted" their resignation, and assured them that their
memoranda were being "studied."
That is the story to date. It is a story which, told
with more color and detail, is going the rounds of Latin
America. It does not engender love for the United States
nor enhance our reputation for good faith. So long as we
tolerate such business under our own flag, in the interests
of banks which invest in risky republics, the speeches of
our presidents and the pronouncements of our party plat-
forms, will be a stench throughout Latin America.
The Tragedy That Is Poland*
By BENJAMIN GINZBURG
Paris, June 10.
IT is difficult for the traveler who passes through the im-
mense expanse of territory that goes to make up the
present Republic of Poland to gather any other impression
than that of hopelessness and despair. The war has never
ended in that section of Europe, and the atmosphere of
war seems to lie like a pall of cloud over everything, spelling
inevitable and eternal doom. Talk to the common people —
the common people to whom politics has always seemed the
fatal play of powers beyond their control — and they will tell
you that the war is eternal. They do not openly doubt your
word when you tell them that the war is over for part of
Europe and for America, but they remain incredulous. It
is too big a tax on their imagination to conceive of a state
of things in which peace has been restored. By a curious
twist of human psychology these people have become accus-
tomed to war as the normal thing, and almost come to dread
peace as bringing with it the dangers of the unknown.
There are others besides the common people who have
become a prey to the abnormal psychology of war. The
aristocratic and cultured ruling classes have organized the
new state under a philosophic conception of things remote
from the normal realities of life. They have begun with a
romantic and idealistic notion of the Polish nationality, and
the desire to return to historic medievalism, like the pre-
Raphaelites in art. They have left no room in their specu-
lations for such a reality as the distasteful presence of
5,000,000 Jews [in Poland proper, the Jewish population is
about 3,000,000, the higher figure including the Jewish
population of White Russia and the Ukraine, to which
Poland lays claim], and when they find themselves face
to face with this reality they lose their heads. More than
one Polish publicist has shrieked for the extermination or
expulsion of the entire Jewish population of Poland so that
the Republic of the White Eagles might better realize the
abstract and a priori conception of nationality. The waves
of pogroms and Jew-baiting riots in which the Polish intelli-
gentsia frankly encouraged the destructive passions of the
masses are the expressions of rage of the visionary when
brought into hard contact with reality.
The same estrangement from reality is manifest in the
economic and political policies of Poland. Economically, the
plight of Poland is lamentable. Poland is today living on
what it can get from the Allies as the warrior-defender of
civilization against Bolshevism. While it may be true that
civilization has to be defended from the menace of the
Soviets, a more realistic people than the Poles would have
asked themselves whose business it was to defend civiliza-
tion, and whether they could afford to ruin themselves in a
war which they fought single-handed for the interests of
other nations.
The naked truth of the matter is that while England and
France are putting hundreds of millions into Poland for
war purposes, they are not putting in one shilling or one
franc for purposes of reconstruction and peace-time produc-
tion. As a field for investment, foreign capital is afraid
to venture into Poland, fearing the unsettled conditions, but
it is good business for England to hire the Polish army to
* This article was written a month ago and its evidence is more than con-
firmed by current events in Poland.
66
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2872
exercise military pressure against the Russian Soviets with
a view of extorting more favorable trade concessions from
them. And as for France, whose politics are probably not
so involved as those of England, while it stands a good
chance of not receiving any return on the money lavished
on Polish munitions, its investors are chary of putting
money into the country for exploiting its resources after
their sad experience in Russia.
So immersed are the Poles in their romantic historical
speculations that they do not realize that the controlling
factor in the creation of a strong Poland was not the right-
ing of historical wrongs, but the estimated service to Allied
policy. In the same way were created Czecho-Slovakia, the
Baltic states, and the various anti-Bolshevist governments
of Russia. In each case a part of the price of their exist-
ence was the waging of an offensive against Soviet Russia,
but Czecho-Slovakia and the Baltic states, as soon as they
realized the facts, extricated themselves from the net of
Allied policy.
As long as Poland continues the war against Bolshevist
Russia it is assured of free food and clothing for its
army, while the governing class is relieved of the problem
of unemployment and is afforded a plausible excuse for
postponing the solution of the agrarian question. The
Polish aristocracy is not brave enough to tackle the knotty
problems of reconstruction, which will have to be tackled
sooner or later; and in allowing the abnormal war economy
to prevail it is immensely complicating the tasks of the
future. Poland was cut off from Russia by a surgical opera-
tion severing all the ligaments which formerly united it
with Petrograd, Moscow, and the other Russian centers.
If the country is not to bleed to death economically, it is
necessary to tie up the wounds at once, and establish new
trade communications. So far from this being done, the
military administration of the country paralyzes the little
trading that has been built up with Warsaw as a center.
A consignment of cloth for the provinces has to be literally
smuggled out of Warsaw in order to reach its destination,
because the box cars are entirely taken up for military pur-
poses. The factories at Bialystock and Lodz are forced to
remain idle because there is no way for them to get raw
materials. Over a large part of the country the medieval
stage-coach has had to be reinstated because of the irregu-
larity of the train service. Even in the large centers, civil-
ians have to fight to get standing room on the few cars
available for civilian traffic.
And yet all this suffering and disorganization spring
out of a war which is waged primarily because Poland re-
fuses to accept the Soviet Government of Russia as a reality.
Pilsudski cries that he cannot make peace before there is
a constitutional government in Russia. That has also been
the cry of all the Allies, and yet they have found means of
drawing themselves out of the war and letting others do
the fighting.
There is not a single statesman, not a single political
party in Poland with sufficient courage to demand peace.
The National Democrats, a party representing the conserva-
tive aristocracy, have of late manifested a desire for peace,
but have not dared to insist on their point. The Polish
Socialist Party is pursuing the path of least resistance,
and is more jingo than the frankly chauvinist parties.
As for the other political divisions, there is nothing to mark
either the originality of their views or the courage of their
opinions.
The result is that Poland is drifting toward a catastro-
phe. It is not drifting toward organized revolution or
toward communism, but to an unredeemed state of economic
chaos. A crushing defeat or a sudden military panic may
send the whole structure crumbling. The only potent force
under such circumstances would be a strong workers' organ-
ization, but this has still to be developed, and the Govern-
ment suppression of the freedom of speech and the freedom
of assemblage is doing all that it can to assure chaos in
the event of a revolution. In any program for the redemp-
tion of Poland, peace with the Bolsheviki is the first essen-
tial. But should even that be realized, conditions will not
immediately take a turn for the better. The task of peace
financing will present an almost insoluble problem without
foreign help. The demobilization of the army will throw
into the cities tens of thousands of men without occupations
for whom work will have to be found. These are but the
usual after-the-war problems which statesmen in the coun-
tries surrounding Poland are making an earnest effort to
solve. Poland cannot expect to avoid them, nor can she,
as Dr. Keynes has well said, hope to live on the sole industry
of Jew-baiting.
Manitoba's Startling Election
By A. VERNON THOMAS
WHEN Huck Finn's alcoholic "pap" wished to convey
that he had on hand a generous quantity of whiskey
he invariably described the supply as enough for two drunks
and one delirium tremens. The startling result of the gen-
eral election in the Canadian Province of Manitoba, the old-
est of the western provinces, seems to demand some similar
standard of comparison. At any rate liberals who have had
to witness the panorama of tragedy, unrolled during the
past few years, may be pardoned some mild measure of spir-
itual intoxication when they understand what has happened
in Manitoba. Here it is in a nutshell:
Frederick J. Dixon, a Labor man, who, for his stand
against the war, endured the abuse of friend and foe, was
mobbed, charged with sedition, arrested, thrown into prison
and for a time refused bail, heads the poll in Winnipeg with
a huge plurality, a surplus of 7,274 votes as against a sur-
plus of 73 won by the Attorney General, a machine politi-
cian. The Rev. Mr. Ivens, Labor candidate, who lost his
pulpit through his pacifist views ; John Queen, Social Demo-
crat, and George Armstrong, Socialist Party of Canada, all
of them now in prison, are all elected for the City of Winni-
peg. They are serving sentences of one year each for
alleged seditious conspiracy in connection with the general
strike of last year. Eleven Labor, Labor-Farmer, or Social-
ist candidates, have been elected in the Province, four in
Winnipeg and seven outside. In the previous Legislature
there was but one Labor man — Dixon — while outside of
Winnipeg no Labor man was ever before elected. At one
bound Labor now becomes the chief opposition with Dixon
its probable leader. The Government loses some seventeen
seats and with them it loses control, as it now has twenty
members in a House of fifty-five. A group of ten Independ-
ents, mainly farmers, has been elected and nine Conserva-
tives.
The Manitoba Free Press, the chief organ of the Govern-
ment, in an editorial upon the result, practically invites the
July 17, 1920]
The Nation
67
Conservatives to dissolve as a party. It goes on to say that :
As for the Conservative Party, the vote has made clear to all
what has been quite evident to everybody who looked at the
matter coolly — the fact that its strength has gone from it. It
is a dying party which can never be revived. The Conservative
Party in Manitoba is well along the road which its namesake in
Australia traveled some years ago, the end of which will be
absorption by some party which is alive.
Modesty — or is it doubt? — restrains the Free Press from
naming the party "which is alive." In Manitoba something
has happened which can no longer be hid, although the New
York Times, at this writing, has not had the heart to inform
its readers what has taken place. For the Times devoted
many columns last summer to blackening the character of the
Winnipeg strike leaders. It is now to be sympathized with
if it feels no stomach for recording that four of these same
strike leaders, three of whom are in prison, have been
elected to the Manitoba -Legislature, and that one of them
heads the poll in the city of Winnipeg by a huge plurality.
Primarily the verdict in Winnipeg represents a revulsion
of feeling in favor of the strike leaders, notably in favor of
Mr. Dixon, whose acquittal a few weeks ago, after a
defense which he conducted himself, will remain for many a
long day one of the great trials of Canada. The seizure of
the strike leaders, and the whole course of the prosecution,
were marked by blind passion on the part of the authorities.
Mr. Dixon is one of the big men of the Canadian West.
He went out to Winnipeg some fifteen or sixteen years ago
from the English biscuit town of Reading. For some years
he worked in Winnipeg at his trade, that of designer. About
this time he read Henry George's "Progress and Poverty,"
and became not merely a disciple of the great land reformer,
but a veritable evangelist of the Single Tax. He made con-
stant headway. After years of soap-box oratory, he grad-
ually won his way to indoor favor, addressing farmers'
meetings, church gatherings, political conventions, and pro-
gressive groups of all kinds. His frank, open, radiant face
bespoke absolute sincerity and intense conviction. It was a
joy to his friends to see his big athletic figure and listen to
his great voice, which is of Madison Square Garden caliber
Although relatively unknown, and quite inexperienced polit-
ically, he came, in 1907, within an ace of upsetting one of
the old-time and old-line politicians of Winnipeg. Finally,
when the Liberals at last came into power in the Province,
in 1915, Dixon enjoyed so much popularity that although
insistent upon running as an Independent no Liberal
opposed him for the Winnipeg seat he contested, and he
received the highest majority obtained by any candidate in
the whole Province.
But the war spirit was even then developing and it meant
a Calvary for Mr. Dixon. From the first he took the paci-
fist viewpoint and steadfastly refused to join in the orgy of
hatred and unreason. He simply maintained the beliefs
and opinions he had always held. He continued to say what
he had always said, but slowly his star began to sink. Old
friends deserted him. Magazines and newspapers which
had delighted to honor him and have him write for them
found it undesirable to have his name appear in their pages,
or if it found a place there it was for the purpose of abuse
and cynical comment. Meetings at which he spoke were
broken up, and on one occasion he was attacked by a mob
and personally assaulted. A demand was made that he
resign from the Legislature. Dixon replied to this by intro-
ducing a recall bill applicable to every member. This chal-
lenge was refused and he kept his seat. But the tide of
popular favor had now left him high and dry.
One scene which took place in the Manitoba Legislature
will not easily be forgotten by those who saw it. It was
January, 1917. Dixon had made a speech against the war.
He had demanded that nothing be left undone to secure
peace. He had asked whether the Allies were as disinter-
ested as they claimed to be, whether after all the boys were
not dying for a myth. He quoted from Henry W. Nevinson,
A. G. Gardiner, and others to show that it was likely to be
the old game of grab. This speech, which, as events have
proved, was abundantly justified, greatly incensed the Lib-
erals, and after adjournment they gathered in little groups
on one side of the chamber, discussing Dixon's "disloyalty"
and "treason," while casting angry glances to where he sat
alone at his desk. Two newspaper men, one an editorial
writer, the other a reporter, shook hands with him as they
passed and dared to congratulate him on his speech. Within
a week they were both "fired" from the principal "Liberal"
newspaper of Winnipeg.
Very different is the picture today. While many factors
peculiar to Manitoba politics have undoubtedly played a
part in the recent election, it is none the less true that the
result reflects a world-wide process — the death of liberalism
as we have known it in modern times. Tragic as it is to see
men who in the past have given liberalism genuine and
sincere service being absorbed in the ranks of reaction, it is
nevertheless a fate which is bound to overtake our old
Liberal and Democratic parties. They are war casualties.
Long ago the Liberals of Manitoba lost all title to the grand
old name of "liberal." When the ordeal came in 1917 over
the question of conscription the Manitoba Liberals, with
quite negligible exceptions, proved unequal to it. They
deserted their old chief, who, if any man ever represented
traditional and historic liberalism — respect for the person-
ality and opinions of others, faith in the judgments of the
people and willingness to abide by them, toleration of the
views of opponents and a desire to understand them, a pro-
found belief in freedom of religion, of speech and of the
press — it was Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Yet he only asked that
the people of Canada be given an opportunity at once to say
by way of a referendum, as was done twice in Australia,
whether they desired conscription. And this was denied
him.
But it was not in the conscription election alone that the
Manitoba Liberals betrayed liberalism. There developed in
Canada as the war months went on much the same system
of espionage and summary arrest as has prevailed in this
country. Hundreds of innocent persons had their homes
invaded, their persons molested, were arrested and flung
into jail, usually on paltry and unsubstantial evidence. The
weak and defenceless were the object of pitiless attack.
And while this orgy of Prussianism was developing, and as
it rose to its height, the Manitoba Liberals, again with
negligible exceptions, either remained silent or supported
the campaign of tyranny. Unfortunately the spectacle is
not confined to Manitoba. The same process is recognizable
all over the world. We shall have the same phenomenon
ourselves in November, for can anything but half a dozen
miracles save the Democratic Party from humiliating de-
feat? What enthusiasm does a "Democratic" Party expect
to command and generate which has not considered it a
scandal to have A. Mitchell Palmer mentioned day after day
as an aspirant for the Presidential nomination in its gift?
68
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2872
Cox — A Provincial for President
By LUDWIG LEWISOHN
IT was in Memorial Hall, the vast auditorium in Columbus.
Louise Homer was to give the first concert of the season
and Governor Cox was to introduce her. He got up, dark,
stodgy, rather hard-voiced, shoved his left foot forward and
extended his right arm in the manner of a commencement
orator. You didn't have to look at the man twice. He left
little room for subtlety or speculation. You saw at once a
certain rough earnestness, as much honesty as can be har-
monized with political success, and genuine emotional im-
pulses constantly outstripping the mind. His peroration
rather missed fire with the audience. But he knew that
the papers would carry its message to the great heart of the
people next day. "You will hear beautiful singing, because
you will hear a voice that has sung lullabies over the cradles
of four American children!"
The point about this trivial anecdote is not that Governor
Cox was not perfectly sincere, but that he was. Mrs.
Homer's exemplary domestic arrangements aroused in him
a deep emotional conviction that her art must be admirable.
And the children were American children! How could she
not be great? Well, Governor Cox has let such homely emo-
tionalism be his guide. Without fundamental convictions
or a program for social justice, he is responsible for mothers'
pensions in Ohio, for a maximum nine-hour working day
for women, and has insisted, quite recently, on a minimum
salary of one hundred dollars a month for school-teachers.
His relations with the executive of the State University, who
was old-fashioned enough to believe intellectual culture the
foundation of democracy, have been strained and jangled.
But he has a heart for underpaid village school-teachers,
over-worked waitresses, and poor old mothers. He does not
believe in firing on strikers on sight, or in letting "public
opinion" deal with aliens until they have had a chance to
learn English and thus to "hold the emotions which stirred
the founders of our republic." He is no "ship or shoot"
extremist. He has a heart. It is no fault of his if everyone
does not know it.
The trouble with this not unkindly, rough and ready
type of provincial is that he has passed his life amid certain
conventional phrases which have unfailingly aroused in him
a definite emotional response. He has never permitted him-
self to examine the concepts employed in those phrases nor
to imagine that his loose and yet canny emotionalism
needed either tightening or testing. He wants the League
of Nations. It appeals to him. It sounds "folksy" on a
grand scale. Of course, it must not interfere with the Consti-
tution. He feels that the League will reduce armaments,
which is amusing in view of the present facts, and also
that it will help the world to get to work. He has always
been a hard worker; he believes in hard work. The disease
and despair and lack of incentive in Europe — none of these
things reach his mind. Work! Good old American hust-
ling! It gives him his emotional "kick." In confirms him
in the soundness of the world.
Then there is the League — the "vital issue" distinguishing
the two parties. Here are Mr. Cox's views: "If this ques-
tion passes to the next Administration, there should be no
fetish developed over past differences. Yet at the same time
there must be no surrender of vital principle." Such verbiage
is empty but also dangerous. If a great Power wants some-
thing we shall make no fetish over past differences; if it is
an oppressed minority we shall make no "surrender of vital
principle." In either case Mr. Cox's heart would have its
accustomed glow. Who opposes the League? You can see
him thrusting out his left foot and waving his right arm.
"Certain groups who have been deceived and to whom appeal
has been made on racial pleas." But is not the hearing of
racial pleas one of the great aims of the League? Or are
the people of Shantung or South Tyrol deceived as to their
racial identity? Then what does Governor Cox mean in
concrete terms? Alas, this type of provincial never means
anything concrete in matters that transcend his province.
He will have his glow whatever meaning the great game-
sters of power and finance attribute to his words. Who else
opposes the League? "Interests who see in it an absolute
bar to German absolutism. The election in Switzerland
shows that opposition to the League in that country, in the
main, was in the German cantons." So we have the Swiss,
the oldest and most hardheaded republicans in the world,
turned into henchmen of the Hohenzollerns, because they
have a closer and more realistic view of Europe than the
Governor of Ohio. His easy emotional responses are not
theirs. They must be rascals. Therefore they must be de-
fenders of an alien absolutism. They are Germans to boot
— Germans from whom no good can possibly come. The'
case is clear. Mr. Cox is indignant. Mr. Cox is extremely
indignant.
The curious yet characteristic paradox is that so soon as
Governor Cox gets down to what, in Central Ohio, they
call "brass tacks," he suddenly stops being emotional and
talking in the void. He wants good rural schools because
they make "farmlands appreciate in value"; he .wants the
excess profits tax abolished for the idyllic reason that it is
"not needed now"; he wants the Federal inheritance tax
transferred to the States. He talks very concretely on the
questions that affect bread and butter — the bread and butter
of himself and his class. Let him leave that and he becomes
once more and immediately the man of feeling and of swell-
ing phrases. Yes, there are industrial disputes. Far be it
from him to deny it. Let the President appoint a commis-
sion to examine these disputes. Let the findings of this
commission be made known in each instance. "Upon this
evidence public opinion will be formed. It can be depended
upon to be fair; it will always be dominant." Whose public
opinion? How shall it be tested and how applied? Who
will abide by its decisions? Such questions, one may be
sure, have never presented themselves to the mind of Gov-
ernor Cox. He says "public opinion" and feels noble and
righteous; he says "home and mother" and feels nobler and
more righteous. He almost sheds a manly tear. He says:
"Government must be something to inspire reverence — not
fear," and he feels very noble indeed. Why should he
examine things disinterestedly or test the rectitude of his
mental operations or fear the complexity of great affairs or
force his imagination to envisage the realities of other men
in other lands? Is he not honest? Has he not a heart? Is
he not sure that his provincial catch-words can cure the ills
of the world? All he needs is a chance to be President.
July 17, 1920]
The Nation
69
Another Convention — The Democratic
By ROBERT HALE
REPUBLICANS, when taunted with the charge that
Harding was nominated in a hotel room in Chicago
at two o'clock in the morning, may reply with some perti-
nence that Cox was selected just before dinner in a suite
at French Lick. Nor is there much ground for Democratic
jubilation in the testimony of freedom afforded by the long
deadlock. Both conventions were of a pattern. Neither
was bossed in the literal sense of the word, but both were
manipulated. The children of darkness exercised their tra-
ditional privilege of being wiser than the children of light.
To be sure the shades were not always quite so definite.
There were hours and days when it was very difficult to tell
just what issue was dividing the delegates. The man who
seemed closest to the spirit of the convention was John W.
Davis. His nominator declared that he would administer
affairs "with fidelity to every interest and every group."
And one of his seconders added "His legal training makes
him see two sides of every question almost instantly."
The Democrats assembled in convention seldom had any
difficulty in seeing both sides of any question which came
before them. The only difficulty lay in reaching a decision.
Seemingly they had been unable to outgrow the habits of
neutrality first urged by Woodrow Wilson himself. Thus
when Bryan presented a plank pledging the party to the
strict enforcement of the Volstead act, the convention swept
it aside with a rousing vote. But soon after when Bourke
Cockran suggested that the convention record itself as fav-
oring legislation which would permit the sale, for home
consumption, of cider, light wines, and beer, the convention
voted "no" almost as vigorously as before. The convention
feared to be dry and it didn't dare be wet. It remained in a
condition midway between the two. Likewise, although
there was much bold talk about ratification of the treaty
without nullifying resolutions the plank as sawed was broad
enough for Woodrow Wilson and James Reed.
It seems probable that the President gave few orders and
yet he did not keep his hands off the convention. He could
not have done so even if that had been his desire. There was
no possibility of divorcing Democracy and Wilsonism on the
eve of a national election. The party was compelled to
build a platform on the record of what had been done in
seven years and somehow or other Wilson's name kept creep-
ing into the record. Not all the delegates were delighted
by this fact, but even the bitterest foe of the administration
realized that the party could not go on record without sav-
ing the face of its leader. This much the convention did
for Wilson and no more. To borrow a figure from H. L.
Mencken, Wilson asked for bread and they gave him three
cheers.
The League was by no means the big issue of the San
Francisco convention. It was large enough to send James
Reed sprawling, but by that time honor was satisfied and
other rebels against the administration's treaty policy had
no difficulty in hurdling the question and remaining regular.
As Homer Cummings explained in a talk to the newspaper
men, it wasn't so much what James Reed had done as the
way he did it. The one question which split the convention
wide open was liquor. Democratic newspapers are now pro-
testing violently that the liquor question is not an issue in
this campaign. They ask voters to keep their eyes on the
League alone. But as a matter of fact in all the intimate
conferences between group and group, prohibition was the
leading topic. Many delegates were perfectly willing to
trade, and accept a one hundred per cent League of Nations
in return for 2.75 beer. Little of this talk occurred on the
floor. Indeed it was felt that Bryan was guilty of bad
trade, and accept a one hundred per cent League of Nations
admitted that he introduced his resolution only in retalia-
tion. He gave a clew to the manner in which the Democratic
wets hope to achieve their ends. In his speech for cider,
light wines, and beer he devoted practically all his attention
to an appeal to the South. He praised the South for "the
solution of the Negro problem" and said that nothing like
it had ever been seen in the history of the world. He sug-
gested that there were other amendments, also, which might
best be left to the interpretation of the States. The Demo-
cratic wets did not care to risk a frontal attack upon the
drys. They favored a more subtle process. Infiltration
the Germans called it. Accordingly there was scant support
for Edwards an announced wet. Instead the Murphy-
Nugent-Brennan-Taggart combination decided upon Cox
and stuck to him in spite of his declaration shortly before
the convention that he was not a wet. After all they had
heard Mr. McAdoo say that he was not a candidate. Mr.
Murphy and Mr. Taggart are realists. It made little dif-
ference to them what Cox chose to call himself.
Cox did not have nearly enough votes at the beginning
to win the election, but his support was exceedingly staunch.
Taggart's late move to McAdoo was no more than a gesture.
It was intended to show all the doubtful delegates that the
Cox forces were strong enough to stick even in the face of
desertion. The most discouraging thing which can happen
to a candidate is to gain new votes and then lose them, and
soon Taggart's Indiana delegation was back with Cox.
Palmer held the balance of power. It is possible that he
might have effected the nomination of McAdoo if he had
made a move at the right time. There was, however, no
very cordial feeling between the Palmer and McAdoo forces.
More than that, the attorney general had a good many anti-
prohibition delegates in his machine and as soon as they
were free they rushed to Cox and not to McAdoo. Just
why Palmer weakened when he did is not clear. Perhaps
the office of attorney general is not one to develop stamina.
Mr. Palmer has been so accustomed to waving a finger and
having a deportation or a raid occur on the instant that he
was somewhat out of his element when he entered a contest
in which he met people strong enough to fight back, in
which he gave orders of which nothing came. In pursuing
so long a policy of repression he had allowed his powers of
persuasion to atrophy and not all his orators, press agents,
shouters, and mixed quartettes were enough to convert the
necessary delegates. No one had so elaborate a publicity
organization in San Francisco as Mitchell Palmer. The city
was filled with huge posters which pictured him holding a
large and legal book in his left hand and shaking a threaten-
ing finger of his right. "Mitchell Palmer — The Fighting
70
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2872
Quaker — laying down the law," read the inscription, but one
correspondent soon changed it to the "Quaking Fighter"
and another suggested that Mr. Palmer withdrew from the
contest for the nomination because the redwoods made him
nervous.
Mr. Palmer was nominated by J. H. Bigelow in a speech
in which he was first likened to Vulcan unterrified by "the
onslaught of the serried ranks of reds." This particular
incident in mythology has escaped us. Later coming to history
he was called "a new Navarre," but no mention at all was
made as to whether his white plume was a feather. At any
rate the speaker told the convention: "His lance is that of
law; his shield is that of Justice; and democracy again tri-
umphs, led and inspired by Pennsylvania's noblest product,
whom I now name for the presidency of the United States —
A. Mitchell Palmer."
Most of the oratory was of the same school. Little which
we heard in speech or demonstration was simple or sincere.
Perhaps an exception should be made in the case of Al
Smith, presented to the convention on a platform which
comprised "After the Ball Was Over," "Sweet Rosie
O'Grady," and "The Sidewalks of New York." There was
one other outburst of enthusiasm not open to suspicion. In
nominating Carter Glass, Flood said "Carter Glass was born
in Lynchburg, Virginia," and a stout Negro woman in the
balcony got up and cheered for two minutes.
In the Driftway
THERE is still Romance in the world. To the Drifter
Romance has always meant lost causes and forlorn
hopes, desperately guarded to the end by knightly adven-
turers,— crusaders, cavaliers, Southern gentlemen. But
their songs and their stories are no more stirring than the
morning papers these days. Therein the Drifter has read
of a great adventure and, as he wandered down the prosaic
stone and steel canyon of lower Broadway, the wind from
off the sea seemed to echo the message, to shout to him of
Romance half the world away, to uplift him and to fill him
with longing to go out and die — "For a not unworthy cause,
far from a bed of sickness, under a sunset sky, the point
of a sword in my heart, and the point of a jest on my lips."
Just here the Drifter had to come back — albeit, regretfully
— to the twentieth century, and admit that it was far more
probable that a machine gun bullet or a typhus germ than a
rapier would be the death of him. But in his exalted mood
death in any form was welcome in the interest of a gallant
cause.
*****
WHAT stirred the Drifter to this line of thought was
the latest appeal from Poland for American aid.
The commander of the Kosciusko Squadron, fighting with
the Polish army against the Bolsheviki, has cabled to this
country :
We need twelve enthusiastic pilots, good flyers, gentlemen
essential; must pay expenses to Poland; accept Polish pay,
2,000 marks. Scout pilots preferable. Could offer only a
lieutenant's rank. Could American Flying Club help?
Gentlemen essential. The issue seems clear. Here we
have class-consciousness! The Drifter had always thought
it to be some horrid thing fastened upon us by the wicked
Socialists. Poland shows us our error. There, it would
seem, black is black, and white, white — or more properly,
red is red, and white, white. On the one hand is the ragged
red army of proletarians who presume to think that they
can dictate the destiny of Russia. On the other is a little
company of chivalrous volunteers, United States birdgen-
tlemen, American "eagles" fighting under the white eagles
for their dream of a Polish Empire. They call it a republic
—the Drifter smiles indulgently. In the land of Romance
one overlooks these little slips of the tongue.
*****
GENTLEMEN essential. It raises a serious question.
Will the authorities demand the name of the Drifter's
maternal great-great-grandmother which he has inadvert-
ently forgotten? Will they want to know his clubs? Will
they look him up in the Social Register? Or will they ask
him to dinner to judge his table manners and breeding?
One of the Drifter's ancestors lies buried in St. Paul's
churchyard on Broadway — but then he was only a simple
tradesman, "Smith to the Royal Artillery," as his tombstone
says. Will such lowly origin be held against him? Other-
wise the Drifter feels qualified. He is a scout pilot. To
be sure, he is poor, but 2,000 marks will probably exclude
loot and therefore suffice. He is proud, but not too proud
to sink to the grade of lieutenant. The Drifter feels he
ought to qualify. Romance is calling, and adventure. But
can he get away with that "gentlemen" stuff?
*****
THE Drifter hears with puzzled ears the Dean of West-
minster's appeal across the Atlantic for funds to keep
the Abbey going. Must the city of Thomas Carlyle's adop-
tion call thus upon the country of Thomas Carlyle's con-.
tempt for aid in the worship of British heroes? And if so,"
what citizens of these States are addressed? Palpably not
the Senatorial worthies who doze in the windowless Wash-
ington ark and mumble against the economic deluge; the
Dean is too well read to dream that they would enter a
League of Anglo-Saxon Legendarians without suitable res-
ervations guaranteeing for all time suitable homage to suit-
ably statured American lawyers and brigadiers. Palpably,
also, not the newer critics of art and literature who aim
these days to be as free as Emerson of an Old World past.
The Dean must know that those young men are much too
busy for a game of pussy-in-the-poets'-corner now; unless,
indeed, the poets too were allowed to play, and Whitman
might dodge into Longfellow's niche. One set of cis-oceanic
beings remains, and the Drifter wonders if it is not in their
direction that Westminster looks. The dollared, collared
tourists — what of them? Theirs is the ready money; why
should theirs not be the willing hand? The last two words
give the Drifter pause. The tourist hand has been willing
since anyone can remember ; but it has been willing to take,
every American must admit, rather than willing to give.
The mind that moves that hand, proverbially willing to pay
large sums for nothing, does not donate large sums for some-
thing. The Dean should devise some nothings and put high
prices on them. There are tons of stone, for instance, that
he could dispense with for esthetic as well as pecuniary
profit. The monuments to Chatham and Wolfe and Buck-
ingham and Gladstone could be quarried for thousands of
scrolled, superfluous chips which, suitably inscribed, might
bring in thousands of sterling pounds. Then, while at home
the vulgar pointed with pride to mantels embellished by
sprigs of granite laurel or tips of marble cloud, the Abbey
would be a hall where travelers poor, but possessed of taste,
could linger longer. The Drifter
July 17, 1920]
The Nation
71
Correspondence
The Eighteenth Amendment
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: The second paragraph of your issue of June 19 does
not accurately present the result of the decision of the Supreme
Court. That decision is not concerned with the will of majorities.
What it determines is that the Eighteenth Amendment is con-
stitutional, that is to say, that its passage was in accordance
with Article V of the Constitution. Article V has certainly
been complied with, so the decision could not be otherwise.
Whether the Court would reverse its decision on a showing that
the technical compliance with Article V was procured by cor-
rupt means is another matter, as undoubtedly the meaning of
Article V is that the legislatures referred to should have been
elected to do what they did. This point has not yet been sub-
mitted. It may be, some day.
To suggest that the Eighteenth Amendment represents the
will of the majority of the people of this country, or even the
will of the majority of the select body of voters, is absurd.
Therefore, on your own showing, "it will be the moral duty of
the majority to show that the accomplishment of their will is
the beginning of wisdom"; in other words, get this Eighteenth
Amendment set aside.
Consider any or all of the following points:
1. Under Article V a vote in Arizona is worth nearly 100
votes in New York.
2. The legislatures that ratified the Eighteenth Amendment
did not represent their constituents on this point, e. g., Cali-
fornia's mandate was strongly against ratification. Its legisla-
ture forswore itself.
3. No one to whom I have suggested the point questions that
the funds of the Anti- Saloon League were largely provided by
the Baptist Church, through John D. Rockefeller's support. That
these funds were lavishly expended in intimidating or bribing
sufficient of the wavering legislators of different States to
secure the required majority.
4. That such voters as thought about the matter were under
the impression that the Anti-Saloon League was what its name
implied, an association adverse to the saloon. There probably
is a majority to be found agreeing with that view; but that is
a totally different question from prohibition. The American
saloon was a unique institution, an abomination unknown to
Europe. The wine-shop or public house of Europe is on a
different basis altogether.
5. The Anti-Saloon League would not dare to face a refe-
rendum, except in the hope of a new lease of agitation for its
army of paid agitators, who are in fear of unemployment.
Berkeley, California, June 30 Lincoln Wells
The Car Shortage
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: In view of the car shortage and the possible breakdown
of the transportation facilities of the country, it seems to me
worth while to furnish you with some figures on the present
situation. I have been told during the time the roads were
under Government operation that not to exceed 100,000 new
cars were put in operation by the Government during the twen-
ty-six months of control; also that the normal purchases by the
railroads under private ownership exceeded 100,000 cars per
annum. I think you will find some of these figures in the
monthly bulletin of the Railroad Executives Association.
A very startling statement was made to me — that one of the
great railroad presidents had estimated that the car require-
ments of all the railroad systems, to be brought up to the
required standard of efficiency, would amount to approximately
700,000 cars. I rather doubt this statement and hope to have
more definite information in the near future.
It is my opinion that it is important for the public to be fully
advised of the situation and to be led to adopt a more liberal
line of thought with regard to dealing with the railroad situa-
tion. The old policy and thought in the mind of the public, of
imposing every possible penalty and restriction on the railroads
must be modified, or we will have a national disaster. I quite
agree that the flagrant abuses of public interest and public
rights by the railroad financiers in years past required and jus-
tified drastic treatment, but the country has gone so far in this
direction that the present damage and danger confronting us
far over-balance the damages that have been suffered in the
past. In other words, the greatest and best interests of the
public today are involved in maintaining the railroads at re-
quired efficiency rather than "visiting the sins of the fathers
unto the children of the third and fourth generation."
New York, June 15 S. P. WESTON
A Potent Power for Propaganda
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: It is evident that many Republicans are very confident
of success in the approaching election. It is equally obvious
that this confidence rests upon something more substantial than
a comparison of nominees or platforms. After reading "An
Open Letter to Young Voters," which recently appeared in The
National Republican with Mr. Will H. Hays's picture at the
top, and his signed name at the bottom, the whole matter is
plain. In a national spell-binding contest, what chance is left
to mere Democrats when the National Republican Chairman is
capable of such astounding flights of alliterative fancy as ap-
pear in the article referred to?
Concerning his own party, he says with becoming modesty: "I
became convinced that the Republican Party has been the most
potent power of practical progression ever devised by man; that
it has formulated the statutes, written the great laws, advanced
the theories, and carried out the great principles that have made
this country 'the mystery of the ages, the mightiest miracle of
time.' "
To his youthful readers he makes this sage comment, "Every
right-minded young person will try to be one in the total of the
world's activities, to be one in the quotient of being, and to be as
near the left side of the number as possible."
When he reaches the subject of the war, his eloquence bursts
all bonds: "In a national crisis, as if by magic, the blood in the
veins of young Americans transforms boys into bayonets, play-
fellows into patriots, dapper dandies into destroying dread-
naughts, and dancing bumpkins into Damascus blades — all
soldiers whom the world may well fear. And we thank the God
of our Fathers that this is so."
What mere Democrat, I ask, would dare to enter the lists
againt such a champion? Can one wonder that the Republicans
are confident!
Cleveland, Ohio, June 10 M. C. Harrison
Contributors to This Issue
Lewis S. Gannett is one of the associate editors of The
Nation.
Robert Hale is the pseudonym of a New York news-
paper-man whose range includes books, baseball, poli-
tics, and the drama.
Benjamin Ginzburg is an American journalist, a mem-
ber of the staff of the Paris edition of the Chicago
Tribune, who has recently returned from Poland.
A. Vernon Thomas is assistant editor of the Nautical
Gazette and a close student of Canadian affairs.
Ludwig Lewisohn is a member of the staff of The Nation.
72
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2872
Cocoons
By KARLE WILSON BAKER
Scorn is a scourge:
I need the scourge for myself.
Love is a key:
Except it open the one low door,
I must stay in my cell with my scourge.
II
I have fought for my triumph
Bitterly and long,
And I would have fought to the death
For my soul's sake and yours.
But now that it is won —
See, here is my sword :
Take it away — I do not like to look at it.
Let us play you are the conqueror.
Ill
Out into a green backyard came a woman in a blue apron
Carrying yellow meal in a bright tin pail.
The chickens came running;
And those little hungry sparrows that are my thoughts,
All day teasing and quarreling,
Settled down on the grass among the plump flock,
Greedy and pleased.
IV
I never knew a farmer who scolded the bluebirds
For thinking the fence-posts were made for them:
And I guess God will not be offended
If my heart builds its nest in His fence-posts.
Books
What Every Newspaperman Knows
The Brass Check. /± Study of American Journalism. By Upton
Sinclair. Published by the Author (Pasadena, California).
rp HIS is a most important book which every reader will want
* to pass on to his neighbor. A fascinating and thorough
treatise upon the American press, based on a variety of per-
sonal experiences and on contacts, direct and indirect, with
newspapers, newspaper stories, and newspaper men, it is an
expose and an indictment. It marshals fact after fact and
arrays incident after incident, waving aside hearsay and rumor.
Respecting no locality, it covers metropolitan and country news-
papers from coast to coast, pays its respects to magazines, and
delves into the workings of news associations. It is a complete,
masterful study, and the presentation of its facts is wholly con-
vincing. The book might well be entitled "What Every News-
paperman Knows." For a newspaperman cannot read the book
without being reminded in every chapter of identical or similar
personal experiences.
With Mr. Sinclair's conclusions, drawn from his facts, it is
not necessary to agree. Mr. Sinclair is a Socialist. He sees
everything through the spectacles of class-consciousness. He
interprets all evil in the light of the class struggle. He makes
little or no allowance for human frailties — for selfishness, for
timidity, for ignorance, for partisanship, for lack of public spirit,
for downright dishonesty — as individual manifestations. Also,
at times he is humorless, and he has been persistently naive.
He never learned from his encounters with Hearst "sob-sisters"
and Sunday feature writers. He continued to trust them; and
that is one reason why his book is so complete. Mr. Sinclair was
a glutton for punishment. He refused to take the count, and
invariably came back for more. Indeed, his book projects him
as a sort of "white hope" of journalism; and in his final chap-
ter he offers himself as such. It is undeniable that he has issued
to the entire press of America a very definite challenge. Can
the press afford to ignore it?
Many of the newspapers which Mr. Sinclair scarifies will
undoubtedly ignore it. A newspaper's management changes
often; its turn-over of personnel is greater than that in any
other intellectual occupation. Present managements will find
difficulty in remembering what was done ten or five years ago,
in remembering who ordered this story killed and that one
toned down. When they do, there can be explanations, plausible
explanations, logical explanations, specious explanations. In
most cases, at least a certificate of reasonable doubt will be
given. Many papers are entitled to such a certificate. Others,
including Socialist papers, which Mr. Sinclair would give a clean
bill, are not entitled to it, especially on subjects which touch
the prejudices or convictions of their managements. But there
is one challenge in Mr. Sinclair's book that cannot decently be
ignored, glossed over, or obscured. Mr. Sinclair's case against
the Associated Press appears very grave. The Associated
Press is a highly standardized institution. Mr. Melville E.
Stone managed it twenty-five years ago, and still manages it.
Mr. Frederick Roy Martin has been assistant manager for over
a decade, including the entire period discussed by Mr. Sinclair.
At the annual conference held in New York last April, Mr.
Frank B. Noye6, the president, spoke harshly of Associated
Press critics, saying: "We are accustomed through long experi- _
ence to the railings against our service of the uninformed, the
notoriety seeker, and the common or garden liar who charges
bias or suppression in the report of the Associated Press.
Every newspaper man, every informed person, knows how pre-
posterously untrue these charges are — whoever may make them."
To whichever category Mr. Noyes would consign Mr. Sinclair,
no one who reads this work will believe any longer that the
Associated Press can afford thus lightly to dismiss the serious
charges brought against it. It is the public duty of the Asso-
ciated Press to answer Mr. Sinclair point by point.
In the interests of accuracy Mr. Sinclair should, in later
editions of his book, modify his one obvious mis-statement — that
in every newspaper office there is a definite proviso against
uncomplimentary news about certain people. Some newspapers
may maintain black and white lists such as he encountered, but
the majority do not. To be sure, some of that majority have
an understanding about "sacred cows" and "goats" which read-
ily percolates through the shop; but here again one has to deal
with the individual bias, a human denominator common to any
economic system — capitalist, socialist, or millennial.
That all is not well with the American press, that in many
respects it is less and less fulfilling its alleged function of serv-
ing the whole public, is obvious. Yet the outlook is by no means
so dark as Mr. Sinclair would have it. The newspapers are still
the victims somewhat of war-born propaganda. It is ques-
tionable whether American journalism of the last five
years can fairly be judged without full recognition of war's
juggernauting and sterilizing effects. Mr. Frank Cobb, editor
of the New York World, has forcibly called attention to those
effects; and the efforts of papers like the World, the New York
Globe, and Springfield Republican to reach the rock-bottom of
fact are evident. War journalism, to Mr. Sinclair the crowning
infamy, while in some respects a discreditable chapter in the his-
tory of American newspaperdom, was no better and no worse
than the public temper which it reflected. There was hysteria in
the press, but there was mad hysteria in the community. To say
that the press should have been better than its community, that
July 17, 1920]
The Nation
73
it should have proved a beacon in the storm and a leader in the
wilderness, is to set an ideal for which all good citizens must
hope — but it disregards actual conditions. People, perhaps, get
the kind of newspapers they deserve. The increasing and
almost universally automatic distrust of newspapers has become
a commonplace which those who head the profession will soon
be forced to face. Competition in truth will force it, if nothing
else. Mr. Sinclair is quite right in his emphasis upon the fact
that the greatest success will lie eventually with the paper
which prints the most news and prints it the most impartially.
Achieving such a position will be journalism's next phase. To
be sure, mechanical conditions just now tend to retard such a
development. The staggering costs of conducting newspapers
make for their control by great financial interests with special
purposes to serve. On the other hand, an awakened public con-
science and an increasingly widespread acquaintance with social
and economic fundamentals will encourage an evolution in the
press world analogous to that which is altering the structure of
human society. But before we can expect much progress in this
direction, endowment on a large scale must be forthcoming to
make possible a transfer of the ultimate control of the press to
its editors — men of conscience and students of public affairs.
Ernest H. Gruening.
National Guilds and the State
National Guilds and the State. By S. G. Hobson. The Mac-
millan Company.
THE attractiveness of the National Guildsmen's proposals,
particularly to those who had not formerly embraced
"Scientific Socialism," may be laid to a general change of atti-
tude toward social maladjustments. The older type of mind
thought more in static terms; it was chiefly concerned about
abstractions like justice; it investigated wrongs and devised
means of righting them. The newer attitude is rather that of
the engineer than that of the lawyer. Its first question is "What
is the objective?" and its second is "How can the objective best
be attained?" It is concerned with principles, but only because
it must calculate strains and stresses, and must arrange a bal-
anced interplay of functions. In human society, justice can
have meaning only as it is related to the general objective.
With a machinery of institutions functioning so well as to attain
that objective, the justice sought would automatically follow.
In this sense the guildsmen, though they accept the economic
analysis of Marx, have begun to build in a spirit more truly
scientific. Their insistence upon the creative value of the pro-
ducer, if his full energies can be released, has found quick re-
sponse in the researches of the industrial engineer. Their dis-
trust of state control of industry, if exercised through bureau-
cratic management, coincides with the criticism of state Socialism
always offered by the practical organizer of production. Their
hope of a glorified trade union, developed into a self-governing
guild, has led them into the heart of immediately pressing trade-
union problems, and has furnished a vital connection between
Socialism and the powerful labor movement. On every side
their theory is linked with the currents of operative social
forces, and by means of it Socialism comes out of the books and
off the debating platforms into the plexus of life and growth.
Even the theory of the state as expounded by Mr. G. D. H.
Cole finds its strongest justification in the abandonment of legal-
istic concepts for the method of testing social institutions by
their function. What, exactly, is the state for? What does it
do? How, then, should it be limited by other forms of functional
organization in the community? This inquiry leads inevitably
to a destruction of the conception of the state as an abstract
entity with complete sovereignty.
Since this is the prime virtue of the guild theory, the guilds-
men will do well to adopt more completely the scientific method,
and to be wary of the unsupported speculation in which they
are too ready to indulge. The outlines of their proposals have
been well drawn; it remains to fill them in or to change them
through experiment and observation. Mr. Hobson in the first
chapter of this book, for instance, is guilty of substituting dia-
lectic for honest examination. A critic objects that the guilds
are likely to develop corporate exclusiveness, and to use their
power as producers to the detriment of the consumer. He also
fears that the control of production by the workmen will lead to
stagnation in processes and to inefficiency in management. By
a flourish of phrases Mr. Hobson answers that once the wage
system is abolished profiteering will be impossible, and that
there are very few consumers who are not also producers. "To
pose them as two different economic interests is to assume the
perpetuation of the commercial spirit in an organization de-
liberately designed to kill it." This, and more of the same
character, lacks the spirit of realistic inquiry. The questions
are searching ones, and the task of the guildsman is not to
answer them as a propagandist, but to ask how far and in what
ways they are justified, and then to devise the means of pre-
venting the evils suggested. Not all Mr. Hobson's protestation
could prevent an ill-advised railway guild, for example, from
securing a larger share of goods for the enjoyment of its mem-
bers than a guild of teachers or some less immediately necessary
group of producers could secure.
Mr. Hobson's difference with Mr. Cole over the state, his
exaltation of it as a "spiritual entity" rather than as the agent of
the consumer, also drives far afield from economic realism.
Whatever duties we may give the state — whether distribution,
education, foreign affairs, or encouragement of the fine arts — it
is folly to assume that the conduct of these functions will not
be influenced by dominant economic powers, under either a
capitalist or a guild form of organization. Here again a love
for the phrase betrays the author. "Spiritual" and "entity"
are fine words, but they do not mean anything apart from the
idea of function which is the very soul of guild theory.
Mr. Hobson's chapters on the workshop and the influence of
the war on labor are, on the other hand, excellent examples of
the fruitfulness of guild theories when they are applied to situa-
tions and supported by observation. Few better analyses of the
shop-steward movement and the tendencies of the unions have
been written. They are full of rich thinking and are highly
suggestive. Let us hope that criticism from scientific collec-
tivists like Mr. and Mrs. Webb will before long bring forth
similar studies in answer to the major objections urged against
the guild proposals. George Soule
The Turks in Europe
The Turks in Europe. By W. E. D. Allen. Charles Scribner's
Sons.
"HP HE Turk has no capacity to rule over alien races. Neither
*■ among Christians nor Muslims has the Turk done other
than destroy wherever he has conquered. Never has he shown
himself able to develop in peace what he has won by war." This
was the Allied answer to plaintive Turkish representations at
Paris in June, 1919. And after reading Mr. Allen's brief his-
tory of Turkish rule in Europe one cannot but newly admit the
force of the indictment.
Mr. Allen's opening observation that "for over five hundred
years an army of occupation has held South Eastern Europe"
is supported by his tale of Turkish dominion, a blend of cruelty
and deceit. It is a commonplace to say that to this occupation
is attributable the backwardness of the Balkan tribes alike in
trade, industry, and the ordinary amenities of civilization; but
it is not thoroughly enough realized in dealing with the short-
comings of the Balkan countries that only fifty years ago the
Turkish garrisons were still in Belgrade and Sofia, and that
even today the faithful are called to prayer morning and even-
74
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2872
ing from the minarets of Bosnian Sarajevo. Despite this han-
dicap, it is hard to agree with the author's rather superficial
statement that "today the Serbs, the Bulgars, the Greeks, and
the Albanians are without a national culture, without political
institutions, without coherent traditions, without a history" —
even when "today" means the period preceding the Great War.
It is precisely because of their national culture and traditions
that these populations retained a national consciousness through-
out the long Turkish night; it is the story of their restless sleep
and gradual awakening, with the resultant disintegration of the
Ottoman Empire, which forms Mr. Allen's background.
It is from the first two chapters, describing the rise of the
Empire under the Ten Great Sultans and the beginning of its
ebb after the Treaty of Karlovicz in 1698, that the layman will
probably draw the best information. It is remarkable that in
the fifteenth century the Turkish armies actually overran Friuli,
reached the Piave, and even invaded Apulia and captured
Otranto. Under Suleiman the Magnificent, friend of Francis
I of France, corsair admirals carried their raids not only along
the coasts of Italy and Spain but even to Ireland and the north-
ern ports. All this, of course, is well known to the student and
the historian (for whom the present volume can have but slight
value) , but to the ordinary reader it is both important and sur-
prising. Much is rightly made of the extraordinarily efficient
military organization which alone kept the Sultan master of
his great alien domain for many centuries, and of the disinte-
grating effects of the fatal "bakshish" system which was to
spell its doom. An occasional reference to the powerful in-
trigues which took place within the harems, setting up and
knocking down the greatest officials, spurs our imagination to
wish for a more intimate knowledge of the fascinating and
ruthless Sultanas who at one time practically ruled the Empire.
After he reaches the Treaty of Kutchuk Kainadji, in 1774, the
ordinary reader finds himself on more familiar ground. But
Mr. Allen does not treat these later events of Turkish history
along familiar lines. He maintains an impartial attitude to-
ward the conflicting claims of Serb, Bulgar, Rumanian, and
"Macedonian," sometimes by the expedient of touching their
thorny issues lightly. German designs in the Near East are
fully described, but anyone interested in the Balkans will feel
that too little stress has been laid on the long chain of Austro-
Magyar intrigue. None of the Great Powers could for long
keep fingers out of the Balkan pie. Napoleon, Stradford de
Redcliffe, General Ignatiev, Counts Andrassy and Aerenthal —
they are but a few of the more important intriguers who have
furthered the real or imaginary interests of their respective
countries by keeping the Turk in Europe. Great things were
looked for from the Porte in 1908 at the time of the Young
Turk uprising; but the reforms turned out to be merely new
devices for furthering the policy of Ottomanization, "reformes
a la Turque" as Arsene Perlant called them, and the road was
cleared for Germany's representatives, Von Biberstein and Von
der Golz Pasha, to bring complete ruin to the Empire whose
sinister ruler, Abdul Hamid, had so enthusiastically hailed the
Kaiser as the foremost Western friend of the Muslim world.
Mr. Allen leaves us at the outbreak of the Great War, since
which time Lord Bryce has not ceased to warn us that "Turkish
rule in any form under any pretext must absolutely vanish from
the lands it has ruined." It might have vanished from Europe
after the Balkan Wars in 1912 had it not been for disagree-
ments between the Balkan States and for rivalries among the
Powers. The same rivalries now operate to keep the Sultan in
Constantinople. But a sovereign whose authority is so impaired
that he cannot prevent massacres by his own generals of his
own subjects in Armenia will not long remain in power on the
Golden Horn, whatever the Supreme Council may decree. In
a few years Russia will resume her place as a powerful factor
in Near Eastern affairs, and then the lid which hopeful Allied
diplomats have clamped down over the Black Sea cauldron will
again be blown into space. Helen Byrne Armstrong
Creation and Analysis
The Foolish Lovers. By St. John G. Ervine. The Macmillan
Company.
An Imperfect Mother. By J. D. Beresford. . The Macmillan
Company.
AS a novelist the author of "Jane Clegg" reveals a somewhat
timid and restricted mind. The Protestantism of Ulster
underwent a good many transformations before it reached him.
But it is very palpably and grimly there. He describes, inci-
dentally, a little group of people who are interested in the rela-
tions of men and women and in the development of those rela-
tions, and he says about them quite what one would expect in an
irate gentleman's letter to a conservative newspaper. He de-
clares that "the English love freedom far more constantly than
other people," which is, in a limited sense, profoundly true.
But he adds: "Without them freedom would have a very thin
time in the world," which is an amusing remark for anyone to
make, and not least for an Irishman, even though Belfast be his
native city. And finally Mr. Ervine says, in order to point the
moral of his story: "It is much better to marry and breed
healthy babies than to live in an attic making songs about the
stars." Ah, but that depends on the quality of the songs. If it
were not for the people in attics attending to the stars, all the
babies in the world would grow up to be oafs and clods. It may
be said that these details do not matter, that Mr. Ervine comes
to us as an artist. But art has substance; it is, indeed, in the
last analysis, substance creating its form out of its fundamental
nature. You cannot dip out of a well save what is in it. How-
ever, it is not uncommon to find artistic intelligences transcend-
ing their innate or self-imposed limitations when it comes to the"
drawing of characters very close and very dear to them. So we
find Mr. Ervine a masterly miniaturist of homely Ulster people.
The drift and purport of his story, the interpretative report' of.
human life which he gives — these suffer from the timidities of
his mind. The people themselves do not. They are beautifully
and authentically human. They cling to the memory and warm
the heart. First come the members of the older generation.
These Mr. Ervine has seen with perfect sympathy, with that
best kind of understanding in which love remains but has be-
come detached and objective and untroubled. These are Mrs.
McDermott, Sr., for whose sake alone the book is lovable, and
her two brothers-in-law. Among the younger people the episodic
Maggie Charmichael is the very best. The English girl whom
the hero marries is simply not there at all; Lizzie, the Cockney
girl, is good, though she is drawn from literature rather than
from life. John McDermott himself is not altogether credible.
We accept his pride and intelligence and moodiness, his stub-
bornness and the essential rectitude of his mind. But his ex-
ploits, especially his wooing of Eleanor — the central thing in the
book — have none of the homely vigor and quiet truth of the
Irish scenes and incidents. Here and there Mr. Ervine gives us
glimpses of a more searching novel he might write about the
people of Ulster. But he deliberately cut himself off from that
possibility here by the kindly promises to be harmless which
he records in his dedication.
Mr. J. D. Beresford explained, in two recent articles of very
high interest, the uses to which the novelist could put the dis-
coveries of the Freudian psychology. The problem is an extraor-
dinarily fascinating one. For whatever criticism may be made
in detail, there is no doubt that Freud has discovered a very
great truth which, like all great truths, is simple enough: Re-
pressed impulses and impressions passively received do not glide
through, but become, for better or worse, permanent elements in
the affected soul. So soon as we know this the activities of our
memory undergo a change in character.. Moments that were
before but faintly lit leap dazzlingly out of the dim past and
help us to account for all we are and do. Now Mr. Beresford's
method is not to attribute to his characters a self-knowledge illu-
July 17, 1920]
The Nation
75
minated by psycho-analysis. But he explains the life of Stephen
Kirkwood through a "slight departure from the normal" which
was due "to a severe nervous shock in his early childhood." So
far, so good. But it seems to us that Mr. Beresford has actually
made his fable richer than he claims and that the nervous shock
in question is not really necessary to account for what follows.
The case is common. A woman of some artistic gifts and mor-
bidly keen sensibilities, distinctly over-sexed, has married a
grubby little shop-keeping person. The two daughters resemble
their father. The boy, the youngest, is fine and sensitive and
has from the start, to use Freud's drastic term for a thing
commonly of infinite subtlety, the CEdipus complex. But almost
at the same moment of his adolescence there flashed into
Stephen's soul the first perfectly pure yet indescribably tingling
influence from a girl, and his mother elopes with a musician.
Hence it is not in the least surprising that Margaret Weatherly's
smile, her lingering, her momentary preference for him, sink
permanently into his subconsciousness, that there occurs an
unconscious substitution of her for his mother, which is ad-
mirably brought out by the incident of the mother's shocking
laugh and the much later laughter of Margaret that recalls it,
and that Stephen is lastingly and perfectly contented when he
marries Margaret. And Mr. Beresford is quite right in asserting
that the happiness of that marriage is not due either to Mar-
garet's beauty or to any special sympathy or understanding that
unites these two. That particular marriage simply meant to
Stephen the complete abreaction of all his sex-impulses from
childhood on. Hence his content. The story is woven with great
delicacy and with unobtrusive skill and is remarkably interest-
ing. Yet it is doubtful whether really great fiction would thrive
on so much scientific awareness. In the richest creative efforts
these things will be organic and immanent as they are in life.
It is better for the critic to discover them than for the author
to have put them in. Ludwig Lewisohn
Musical Miscellanies
Musical Memories. By Camille Saint-Saens. Translated by
Edwin Giles Rich. Small, Maynard and Company.
My Recollections. By Jules Massenet. Translated by R. Villiers
Barnett. Small, Maynard and Company.
Memories of a Musical Career. By Clara Kathleen Rogers
(Clara Doria)v Little, Brown and Company.
John McCormack. His Own Life Story. Transcribed by Pierre
V. R. Key. Small, Maynard and Company.
More Chapters of Opera, 1908-1918. By H. E. Krehbiel. Henry
Holt and Company.
CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS is not only one of France's great-
est living composers but a musician who can write excellent
and witty prose, and an erudite scholar who knows how to
impart information without being pedantic. And so, in his
"Musical Memories," which cover a period of some four score
years, we find him, under the guise of the raconteur, shedding
much light on famous people such as Victor Hugo, Pauline
Viardot, Rossini, and Meyerbeer, on musical compositions, instru-
ments, and events such as Berlioz's Requiem, the organ, and the
Liszt Centenary, and, most important of all, on his own attitude
towards modern French music. Not that he has ever shown
much sympathy for the younger generation of composers! Only
it seems somewhat curious to find one of the founders of the
Societe Nationale de Musique, which has done so much for
French musical art, calling much of this art "anarchy in music."
And again, in defending Massenet against the accusation of
superficiality and of pandering to the public, he says of the
second charge: "Today the revolutionists are the only ones held
in esteem by the critics. Well, it may be a fine thing to despise
the mob, to struggle against the current, and to compel the mob
by force of genius and energy to follow one despite their resist-
ALFRED ' A ' KNOPF
lira I Efc»jfl 1 1 iv'ia 1 1 ^»*a I i cx'^j 1 ! e£*2a ! I e£*£a 1 1 e£«2a 1 1 s£*2s 1 1 e£»5s
zzo W. 42, Street, NEW YORK
Bk*jfll
A
BORZOI NOVELS FOR SUMMER READING
BARENT CREIGHTON
Don Cameron Shafer
A thoroughly enjoyable tale of adventure and love laid in the New York of eighty years
ago, during the exciting days of the Anti-rent war. A swiftly moving romance, told with
real humor, and a mystery which will hold the attention of the reader throughout. $2.00.
THE PARADISE MYSTERY
J, 5. Fletcher
"A genuinely satisfactory mystery story, better than 'The Middle Temple Murder.' .
Mr. Fletcher deserves a place well up on the list of English story writers." — New York
Globe. $1.90.
THE ROMANTIC WOMAN
Mary Borden
The Nation said : "To like immensely and to dwell fondly on a book like 'The Romantic
Woman' . . . is to have a perception of inner freedom. She conveys the richness, the
distinction, and the vigor of an arresting character and mind. One of the very brilliant
things in recent literature." F. P. A. said in The New York Tribune : "A book of unusual
honesty and excellent writing; and ought to be chucked in the face of everybody who says
there is no American literature." $2.00.
PETER JAMESON Gilbert Frankau
In the judgment of most of those who have read "Peter Jameson," the late "Frank Danby's"
son, Gilbert Frankau, has inherited her great story telling talent. In any case the vigorous,
quickly moving tale of business, war and love is making new friends each week and is now
selling better than at any time since its publication in April. We regard it as ideal for
summer reading. $2.25.
Hal G. Evarts
THE CROSS PULL
A love story — a dog story — a western adventure story — which has been compared with Jack
London's "Call of the Wild." "It is irresistible — it draws you into a state of nervous tension
and keeps you there." — Chicago News. $2.00
l^aIi*^IIf&!<0di^!^iln!&£lL
RICHARD KURT
By Stephen Hudson The story of Richard
Kurt and two very remarkable but vastly
different women, Elinor and Virginia, by a
new writer of great promise. "A unique,
almost a remarkable book, and incidentally a
very interesting one." — New York Evening
Post. $2.25.
THE RED MARK
By John Russell Here are stories that
will remind you of Kipling at his best, of the
South Seas — of adventure, daring and mystery
in the wild corners of the earth. "As enter-
taining a book as one could well wish for." —
Springfield Union. $2.00.
Other Detective Stories
THE WHISPERING DEAD
By Alfred Ganachilly
THE PATHWAY OF ADVENTURE
By Ross Tyrell
THE WHITE ROOK
By H. B. Harris- Burland
THE SOLITARY HOUSE
By E. R. Punshon
THE SHADOW OF MALREWARD
By H. B. Harris-Burland
THE MIDDLE TEMPLE MURDER
By J. S. Fletcher
THE TALLEYRAND MAXIM
By J. S. Fletcher
76
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2872
ance. Yet one may be a great artist without doing that." As
for the first charge of superficiality, he replies caustically:
"Depth, as we know, is very much the fashion. It is true that
Massenet was not profound, but that was of little consequence.
Art is vast. The artist has a perfect right to descend to the
nethermost depths and to enter into the inner secrets of the soul,
but this is not a duty." Thus does M. Saint-Saens justify his
own popularity and success, and thus, too, by his contempt for
any "affectation of profoundness," does he link himself, uncon-
sciously, with the spirit of those modern French composers
whom he apparently despises.
If men, like nations, are happy when they have no history,
then Jules Massenet must have been exceedingly so, judging
from his recently published book, "My Recollections." For the
volume in question is merely a chatty record of the triumphs,
friendships, and musical experiences of a composer who was the
idol of the public, whose career from its very beginning was one
long series of brilliant successes, and who enjoyed life to the
utmost. He tells of his prize-winning days at the Conservatoire,
of his student days at Rome, of his collaborators, and of his
associations with operatic directors, singers, and music pub-
lishers. He speaks with equal appreciation of good dinners and
the esteem in which he was held by his colleagues, and he
frankly, but modestly, confesses that he never could bear to be
present at the first performance of his works, even when their
success was assured. His narrative, like his music, reveals
facility, grace, and charm, and is alternately gay and senti-
mental to the point of bathos. One is not very much wiser after
reading the book, but one closes it with a certain regret at part-
ing from such amiable company.
The reminiscences of Mrs. Clara Kathleen Rogers, or Clara
Doria, as she was known to the operatic and concert stage, form
a volume that amply justifies its length by its literary as well as
its informative merits. For Mrs. Rogers has pungency of style
and a gift for vivid delineation of persons and events. With
father and grandfather both prominent among English musi-
cians, and Giacomo Meyerbeer as a cousin, it is not surprising
that Clara Doria, or Clara Barnett, as her maiden name really
was, should have grown up in a musical atmosphere, or that,
when she and her sister and brother displayed a marked musical
talent, they should have been given every educational advantage.
And so, beginning with her childhood days at Cheltenham, a
fashionable cure, where her father had retired for reasons of
economy when he was still a young man, she takes us through
her whole student and professional career, giving us lively
descriptions of study at the Leipzig conservatory under Mosche-
les and Richter, in Berlin under Von Buelow and Frau Zim-
mermann, and finally of her operatic experiences in Italy,
England, and America, in which last country she settled down
in marriage. The book is thickly sprinkled with anecdotes
of some of the most famous musical and literary celebrities
of the time.
"More Chapters of Operas," by Henry Edward Krehbiel,
offers historical and critical observations and records con-
cerning the lyric drama in New York from 1908 to 1918.
The learned critic of the Tribune has always displayed a pon-
derous style that reads like an encyclopedia and a mind that
runs strongly to statistics and prejudices. His last book has
proved no exception. But as he is concerned only with the dates
of those operatic premieres and deaths that have taken place in
New York, his statistics are too local to have much value for
the serious student of opera; while his anti-American and anti-
Mahler prejudices are too obvious and too well known to do
much further damage. Yet apparently he would have us believe
that he desires the "nationalization of opera." Just what he
means by this is difficult to ascertain; for he tells us, in the early
part of his book, that "when German opera supplanted for a
space the Italian form at the Metropolitan Opera House . . .
I hailed the fact with gladness because I thought and said that
it was a step toward the nationalization of opera, a consumma-
tion devoutly to be wished, but impossible of realization so long
as the Italian system prevailed." The only explanation of this
remark, in view of Mr. Krehbiel's subsequent attitude towards
American opera (and American music in general) is that on
his progress from Italy to America by way of Germany he still
remains confined within the borders of that so recently enemy
country. For in a large volume, most of which is devoted to
detailed accounts of the operas that have been presented in
New York, we find him, in regard to the American works, dis-
missing Hadley's "Azora" with three lines, De Koven's "Canter-
bury Pilgrims" with eight, and Cadman's "Shanewis" with nine-
teen. For giving three pages to Victor Herbert's "Natoma" he
apologizes by saying, "I am, perhaps, attaching more importance
to the production of 'Natoma' than it deserves; but a discussion
of it under the circumstances forms a proper part of a picture
of the times." To this picture, apparently, the other three
operas, for some inexplicable reason, do not belong. In dividing
his space, Mr. Krehbiel also manages to spare four pages of
farewell and praise for Alfred Hertz, and two pages of the same
for Toscanini; yet of that other genius of the baton, Gustave
Mahler, he has nothing to say, about either his talent, his
departure, or his death. It is only fair to Mr. Krehbiel to say
that much of his book is both true and interesting. One merely
regrets that he often tries to illuminate events by his preju-
dices, and so tends to discredit himself as a historian.
"Those of you," says Pierre V. R. Key, in his book on John
McCormack, "who thrill under the spell of the golden tone he
spins and confess to an occasional glistening eye from the pathos
with which he clothes some phrase, need wonder no longer."
Nor do we; for now we know what has become of that true
Irish hero who disappeared from our ken after Chauncey Olcott
retired from the stage. He has been singing to us for ten years
under the name of John McCormack, and we never suspected
it till Mr. Key revealed it to us. Of course, like all heroes,'
McCormack had his vicissitudes in the early years of his career,'
and it is the story of these, leading up to his final triumphs,
that Mr. Key has so obligingly transcribed. Much of the book
would doubtless be worth reading had McCormack told it to
us in his own words instead of in the pseudo-Irish style of his
official biographer; for Mr. Key has written with a tear in one
eye and with the other eye fixed upon the public. But just why,
after all, we should be treated to the details of a life that has
not yet reached its fullest accomplishment is not made very
clear. In justice to Mr. McCormack, it should be said that
he himself was opposed to the whole project. "I'm too young a
man," he is reported to have said, "to be written about. The
printing of the life and career of one barely past thirty, whose
professional efforts lie within a decade, might impress people as
premature." Henrietta Straus
Books in Brief
O ATHER a nasty bit of satire — wasn't it? — says Mr. Clarence
n
Day, Jr., in his amusing skit, "This Simian World" (Knopf),
when Nature told us, as she did about sixty years ago, that
we men were descended from the most scatter-brained, incon-
sequential, inquisitive, ridiculous, lascivious, and unpleasant
animals in creation. Suppose, instead of being, as it were, self-
made apes, we could have boasted a proud pedigree from lions,
what a royal, graceful, terrible, and majestic world we should
have created! It is true that we might then have had more
dueling and murders, but we should have had less war; and
would not the substitution of a few more private crimes, in
which we might feel agreeably at home, have been, even from
the humanitarian standpoint, an improvement on the wholesale
homicide of civilized baboons? Or, suppose that the dominant
race had been descended from a long line of ants — not, in this
case, maiden aunts — their lives would have been as pure as
Ivory Soap and socialized beyond the precepts of the gospel of
Marx. But, though we may go to the ant, we do not come
July 17, 1920]
The Nation
77
from her; nor are our monkey hearts wrapped in a tiger's
hide; therefore, we must take our world as we find it, only
pausing to realize once in a while, for the remedy of our souls,
what a simian world it is. But for our ape-like hands we should
never have made tools, have slung stones, bullets, or mud, or
have learned to thumb our noses. All our poetry, philosophy,
language, and civilization is founded on the chatter of the
Banderlog. Our sexual life, and many of our vices, are direct
descendants of that of the apes; only we have made matters
worse by trying to impose on ourselves taboos that monkey-
nature will not endure. One of Mr. Day's friends experimented
with some monkeys, and found that the only way to keep them
unbored and interested in life was to change their mates from
time to time. How human! Finally, Mr. Day toys with the
religious instinct, and shows how simian many of its manifesta-
tions are. Centuries ago Xenophanes pointed out to the Greeks
that "if horses and oxen had hands to carve and paint, they
would represent their gods in bovine or equine shape." Even so,
according to Mr. Day, we have made our gods, for the most part,
primates, in the zoological as well as in the ecclesiastical sense.
But with all the anfractuosities and perversities of the simian
mind we have inherited one great trait: curiosity. It is that
which has given us inventions and discoveries, as well as
scandal and newspapers. Since we can so beautifully do with
the intelligence that makes monkeys shine as well as monkey
shines, hurrah for our family tree!
GEORGE YOUNG'S The New Germany (Harcourt, Brace,
and Howe) is the result of studies made in Germany since
the armistice. In January, 1919, Mr. Young went to Berlin
as correspondent for the London Daily News. He "preferred
going as a journalist to Berlin rather than going in any other
capacity to Paris" because he was convinced that "true peace
could only be got by developing the forces of democracy of the
defeated peoples centering in Berlin, and not by any bickerings
between diplomatic formulae of the victorious Governments col-
lected at Paris." The book is an account of the German Revo-
lution, and concludes with a chapter on the Treaty of Versailles
and one on the German Constitution, the text of which is given
in the appendix. On the whole, although necessarily impres-
sionistic and journalistic in character, the work is an intelligent
account of the political transformations in Germany since the
armistice, lively and readable at all times, penetrating and
brilliant in places. The substance of what Mr. Young saw in
Germany (perhaps, as so often happens, it was what he went
prepared to see) was that "in spite of military occupations and
religious thanksgivings and bonfires and bonuses all round, we
were not winning the war but losing it. . . . We have not yet
won the war because we have not as yet supported in Germany
the progressive — that is, the revolutionary — elements and sup-
pressed the Prussian — that is, the reactionary — spirit; while
we have, of late, been really losing the war by actually assisting
German reaction against German revolution. And we are doing
this just from the ignorance of our democracy and the in-
souciance of our diplomacy."
T F the diction of "The Secrets of Animal Life," by J. Arthur
*■ Thomson (Holt), had been comparable with the chapter
headings it would have been one of the most notable additions
to popular science. The author has taken two score technical
papers, published in erudite Transactions and Journals, and
retold them in popular language. There is no doubt of the
success of this very admirable undertaking, for every line is
readable. But when the subjects are so tremendously interest-
ing, so stimulating to the imagination, it is a great pity the
compilation was not made perfect as well as popular. As it is,
Whales, Otters, Wasps, Ants, Penguins, Twins, Instinct, Dar-
win, Latent Life, Man's Arboreal Apprenticeship, and the Cult
of Joy should carry the work through many illustrated and
unillustrated editions.
BERNSTORFF
tells what he did at Washington in
MY THREE YEARS
IN AMERICA
"It is as interesting as an old-fashioned novel and more
interesting than a best seller. This reviewer read it
through at one sitting without laying it down. It has
the dramatic interest of the story of a struggle, a Titanic
struggle protracted through three years." — Charles Willis
Thompson in the New York Times.
"Of all the books dealing with American diplomacy in the great war
only three will be worth a tinker's dam to the man who is after the
facts ; the first, the memoirs of Woodrow Wilson ; the second, the
memoirs of Edward M. House ; the third, the memoirs of Count von
Bernstorff. . . . The third is here. It is called 'My Three Year* in
America.' " — Chicago News.
"The publication of Count Bernstorff's memoirs of the war is an
event probably of greater interest to Americans than the appearance
of any other book in its field and an occasion of unusual literary and
historical importance." — The New York Evening Post.
$5.00
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
FIFTH AVE. AT 48™ ST., NEW YORK
OPEN THE DOOR
by Catherine Carswell
This remarkable novel, which has just won
a first-novel prize in London, is the story
of a girl's revolt from a piety that is blind
and oppressive; her passionate search for
life's fulfillment, and her ultimate shelter-
ing in a love beyond the remembrance of
conventional fault. $2.00
Miss Carswell's tremendous gift as a limner of
characters is best seen in the early chapters of the
book. When she is dealing with the family of her
heroine she is doing very nearly perfect writing.
New York Tribune.
"Not a mere book of crude genius, but of a
genius of high competence and even of maturity."
Manchester Guardian.
As a story it is assuredly "true to life" ; it is not
occupied with sex to the exclusion of everything
else, and it opens up a new line of thought — that
the road to true knowledge sometimes parallels the
primrose path. The Bookman.
HARCOURT, BRACE & HOWE, ^w47^
International Relations Section
Contents
SANTO DOMINGO .
American Eule in Santo Domingo 78
The Consulting Board and the Occupation 79
Dominican Finances 80
Military Censorship in Santo Domingo 81
Liberty Under Military Law 81
The End of the Consulting Foard 82
American Rule in Santo Domingo
THE following appeal, signed by Mr. Tulio M. Cestero,
former Ambassador of Santo Domingo at Paris,
Home, and Madrid, was addressed to the Congress of the
United States.
On November 29, 1916, the Dominican Republic was occu-
pied by the United States Army, and by the authority of the
Government at Washington, the constitutional president of the
Republic, Dr. Francisco Henriquez y Carvajal, was deposed and
the Congress of the nation was suspended.
From that day the military regime has reigned in the Domin-
ican Republic with the censorship and justice administered
by officers of the army of occupation as a means of preven-
tion and of punishment. All the functions of the executive and
legislative powers are exercised by a rear admiral of the
United States whose sole restriction is his own will; and a
cabinet of seven officers of the navy and of the marine corps
exercises the powers which the Constitution grants to the secre-
taries of state. Thus without previously consulting the Domin-
ican people and without granting them legitimate represen-
tation, existing laws are amended, new laws are promulgated
which affect the morale and the traditional culture of the coun-
try, and new taxes are created; the public debt has been in-
creased by an emission of 5 per cent gold bonds and the cus-
toms dues reduced, both of these being sovereign rights which
by Article 3 of the Convention of 1907 between the Dominican
Republic and the United States require a prior agreement be-
tween the Government of the United States and Dominican
Government, now non-existent.
The methods and procedure of the Military Government
against which the Dominican people protest in so far as they
are permitted to do so by the little liberty which the censorship
and the Provost Courts leave them, have been defined in a let-
ter which on December 29, 1919, Monsefior A. A. Nouel, Arch-
bishop of Santo Domingo and Metropolitan of America, wrote
to the Honorable W. W. Russell, Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States who had asked
for "his impressions concerning the general state of the
country."
In a judicious spirit the illustrious prelate enumerates the
following points: (1) sentences of the Provost Courts in purely
civil matters; (2) judgments without appeal decreed by the
Claims Commission which regulates the new debt; (3) the
patronages of the national budget distributed among numerous
foreigners of no greater capability than the Dominicans and
in many cases of less ability and of no morality; (4) a prop-
erty tax law which is so complicated as to be incomprehen-
sible; (5) the public funds administered by an Office of Public
Works whose chief is a North American with no technical
knowledge, and these funds used for the payment of extrava-
gant salaries; (6) the censorship of the press, humiliating and
contemptuous, ridiculous and puerile; (7) acts of injustice like
the imprisonment for six months in a filthy dungeon of a
Spanish priest of exemplary conduct for having, in a private
.conversation and long before the United States entered the
war, praised the valor and the organization of the German
Army; (8) the water torture; (9) the cremation of women
and children, that is to say, women and children burned to
death in houses that were set on fire; (10) torture by torsion
or the use of tourniquets; (11) men hunted through the coun-
try like wild animals; (12) an old man, a septuagenarian,
dragged at the tail of a horse in the full light of midday in the
public square of the village of Hato Mayor; (13) the National
Guard which is the urban and rural police force, the creature
of the Military Government, without adequate selection or ade-
quate officers.
The Military Government itself has made the following spe-
cific declarations with respect to the system and the officials
of the occupation prior to the appointment of the present chief,
Rear Admiral Thomas Snowden: "There was a time in which
the Military Government repelled violence by violence and there
were even secondary authorities who distinguished themselves
by their cruelty, surpassing themselves in their measures of
prevention and repression." This authentic statement was
published in the daily press of the Dominican capital and
among others in the Listin Diario (issue number 9193 of Jan-
uary 12, 1920), under the heading "Official Section, Military
Government." Soon after, however, the following fact was
communicated in private letters and was inserted in a news-
paper of San Juan de Puerto Rico: the home of the citizen
Jose Cepeda, who was suspected of hiding arms, in the dis-
trict of Bainoa, Province of Santiago de los Caballeros, was
searched at midnight. Two young ladies, his daughters, were
forced to appear nude before the troops and in order to make
Cepeda confess, he was tortured and the soles of his feet
burned, so that he could no longer walk. Another case is re-
ferred to in private letters. Some of the details are here omitted
as their nature makes them almost unbelievable. Two coun-
trymen who were witnesses in an extortion suit were testifying
before the Court of Appeals of Santiago de los Caballeros.
One of them suddenly opened his shirt and showed the judge
the burns left by the torture to which he had been subjected
by officers of the army of occupation. The President of the
Court, Dr. Juan Perez, rose and striking the table so hard
that the force caused the figure of the Christ, that presides
at all the courts of the country, to fall and break, exclaimed:
"This is horrible. It is a farce. I am going. I cannot con-
demn these poor people while the crimes of these officers re-
main unpunished."
By Military Order No. 385 (January 15, 1920) the cen-
sorship was declared abolished, but by the same order it is for-
bidden to publish in "magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, peri-
odicals, leaflets, or any other publication articles which are
hostile to the Government of the United States, its policy or its
officials, or to criticize these in any way that will incite the
people to restlessness, disorder, or rebellion;" "articles which
by their tone are hostile to or are against the Military Govern-
ment, its policy, or its civil and military officers or which criti-
cize these in such a manner that they incite the masses to
restlessness, disorder, and rebellion;" "articles which defame,
dishonor, ridicule, the conduct of the Government of the United
States, the Military Government or their officials, in such a way
that their publication would provoke disorder or rebellion in the
Republic;" and "articles which point out the actual state of
affairs in Santo Domingo in a form manifestly unjust and
untruthful and which could provoke disorder among the
masses." Offenses against this order are called "offenses against
the Military Government," wherefore although the order re-
ferred to does not determine the jurisdiction, it is understood
that the Provost Marshal shall deal with them and apply the
penalties. These penalties are not specified which is contrary
to the universal law by which every offense should be accom-
panied by its corresponding preestablished penalty.
The Order defines the coresponsibility of all directors of pub-
July 17, 1920]
The Nation
79
lications which insert such articles, of all the owners of places
where such speeches are made, and of "all persons who know-
ingly help or encourage the writing, the pronouncing, or the
publication of these."
In December, 1919, the directors of the periodicals El Pro-
greso of la Vega, Ecos del Norte and Pro Civilismo of Puerto
Plata, were condemned to three months hard labor or to pay a
fine of $300 respectively, and at the end of January, 1920, the
parish priest of Puerto Plata, Dr. Rafael Castellano, Canon of
the Cathedral and Ex-Representative in the National Congress,
was imprisoned for several hours for some words spoken at a
literary meeting.
A work of the writer Federico Garcia Godoy, entitled "El
Derrumbe" was confiscated in 1916, and according to a letter
of Lieutenant Commander Lake, Secretary of the Military Gov-
ernment, dated January 20, 1920, and published in a news-
paper of San Juan de Puerto Rico "it is impossible to return
the copies to you as they have been burned," and "in spite of
the high literary value of the work" he is permitted "to
distribute it neither in nor out of the Republic in the form in
which it is written."
On February 23, of this year, Julio Azeno, director of the
periodical Pro Civilismo of Puerto Plata, for a violation of the
Order No. 385 has been condemned to a year in prison or to pay
a fine of $600, according to a notice published in the Listin
Diario of Santo Domingo City (March 4, No. 9335).
President Henriquez y Carvajal in various memoranda
which he presented to the State Department between August
and October, 1919, as acts preliminary to a modus operandi
for the reestablishment of self-government in the Dominican
Republic, suggested the suppression of the censorship and of
the provost courts, and a "Consulting Board" appointed by
the Military Government in November of last year made a
similar recommendation. This committee, of which Arch-
bishop Nouel was a member, resigned in full on January 7
because they inferred from the publication of "Rules and Regu-
lations for the Censorship," of December 22, which is essen-
tially identical with Military Order No. 385 by which the cen-
sorship and the provost courts are maintained, "that the Mili-
tary Government does not believe that the time has come to
inaugurate the reforms advised." They had accepted the
mission "convinced that only by the immediate execution of
this plan of reforms which has for its ultimate end the resto-
ration to the nation of the full but orderly exercise of its sov-
ereignty, can its future welfare be assured." This plan com-
prises the reform of these laws: electoral; the organic munici-
pal law; the organization and government of the Provinces;
conscription law; public finance; and of some articles of the
Constitution. This plan coincides substantially with that for-
mulated in the said memoranda of President Henriquez y Car-
vajal for the gradual and progressive restoration of the
Dominican Government, the acknowledgment of which by the
State Department has been repeatedly solicited by the under-
signed in his character of personal representative of the Presi-
dent deposed by the military occupation. The press of Santo
Domingo has published declarations of approval of the pro-
test expressed by the resignation of the Consulting Board,
and of adhesion to those who ask the return of its sovereignty
to the Dominican nation which suffers an irreparable moral
hurt through the imperious and irresponsible governmental
regime to which the military occupation subjects it.
The facts herein stated already begin to circulate in the
foreign press and their propagation can certainly not be bene-
ficial to the high pan-American interests to whose solidarity
the Dominican Republic subscribes. The impartial investigation
of the events which have occurred since the troops of the
United States landed on the territory of the Dominican Re-
public will reveal the truth, and the punishment of the guilty
would prove that the equitable spirit of the institutions of the
United States has not been weakened in the different climes to
which the enterprises of their so often glorious flag have car-
ried them, to cooperate with afflicted peoples, and not to cover
miserable criminals with its glorious folds. . . .
Tulio M. Cestero
Ex-Minister Plenipotentiary of the Dominican Republic
Washington, April 2, 1920
The Consulting Board and the Occupation
THE Consulting Board of four prominent Dominicans
appointed on October 28, 1919, by the American Mili-
tary Governor of Santo Domingo to help him "guide the
Dominican people towards their future welfare," submitted
to him on November 12 the following memorandum on the
general needs of the country.
Rear Admiral Thomas Snowden, Military Governor.
Honorable Sir:
Owing to the fact that the actual condition of the public
finances and the practical wisdom demonstrated by the country
during the past three years are bringing near the moment in
which the Government of the United States will order her armed
forces to withdraw from our territory and cause Dominican
sovereignty to be restored (since said Government never meant
to destroy it, but to enable the country, by helping her back
into a condition of internal stability, to comply with the pro-
visions of the Convention of 1908 and with the performance of
the duties devolving upon her as a member of the family of na-
tions), the Consulting Board firmly believes that the first and
best advice that can be offered you in answer to the request you
made, prompted by your desire of promoting the future welfare
of this country, is to the effect that you initiate the reform of
all those among our political laws which figured as joint causes
in the revolutionary disturbances of the past, and consequently
are responsible for our economic disorganization. . . .
These laws are, among others, the Electoral Act, the Town-
ship Organization Act, the Conscription Act, the Act on the
Administration and Organization of the Provinces, the Regula-
tion of Public Finances Act, and some of the provisions of our
national Constitution. . . .
The Consulting Board looks to the future of the Dominican
people in the full enjoyment of its sovereignty and self-govern-
ment, and sees the future welfare of that people involved in the
reforms now proposed. It is the Consulting Board's conviction
that if such laws are promulgated and gradually brought into
practice, their educational influence will be immediately felt. If
the people are called upon to choose, in order to organize the
first of the political institutions of the state, let us say, the
municipal officials, then the provincial functionaries, etc., until
arriving, by the restoration of the national sovereignty, at the
election of the highest authorities in the land, the efficiency of
the electoral law will be proved and the political organization
of the country will rest on firm foundations. The people, who are
already accustomed to the advantages of order, who are becom-
ing convinced of the direct and immediate benefits that the
nation derives from the economic orientation being taken by
the present government, and who are realizing the benefits en-
suing from the regulations on public instruction dictated during
the last three years; these people, we say, once given back their
sovereignty, will exercise it with a genuine love for peace, and
it will be found impossible to lure them, as was done before,
into resorting to violence as the best means of solving their
political problems.
But to attain such an end and also to enable the Consulting
Board to transmit to you, as you have asked it to do, the senti-
ments and thoughts of the Dominican people, it will be neces-
sary to create a condition in which the people will be able to
exercise their rights, especially that of voicing their opinions in
an orderly but untrammeled way. The Consulting Board deems
80
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2872
it fitting therefore that you dictate regulations pertaining to:
(1) The censorship now regulating the press.
(2) The provostal justice [system of provost courts].
Regarding the censorship now in existence for the press,
the Board considers that it should be abolished. In order that
abuse of liberty may be prevented and that no attacks may be
made on the Military Government, nor incitations to rebellion
be published, a regulation might be adopted making responsible
for such offenses not only their authors but the editors of the
journals and the owners of the printing plants in which the
offense has been committed.
As to the provostal justice, the Board believes that it ought
to be limited to purely military matters, if not found completely
unnecessary, because the courts of the country are functioning
in a satisfactory manner ; and it is evident that provostal justice
is absolutely unnecessary except in cases related to military dis-
cipline and the safety of the army of occupation. Besides, it is
a source of discontent without rendering any tangible service.
These are in their outline the principal suggestions that the
Board deems it its duty to submit. . . .
Adolfo, Archbishop of Santo Domingo,
Jacinto R. de Castro,
Francisco J. Peynado,
Federico Velazquez y Hernandez,
Dominican Finances
IN a memorandum addressed to the American Military
Governor of Santo Domingo the Consulting Board made
the following suggestions regarding the question of floating
a loan.
Santo Domingo, December 3, 1919.
Rear Admiral Thomas Snowden, Military Governor.
Honorable Sir:
The Consulting Board has had under consideration the plan
you deemed proper to submit in re the floating of a loan of from
$5,000,000 to $7,000,000 to be applied to the completion of cer-
tain public works now under way and the construction of new
ones.
The matter is no doubt of momentous importance for
the future welfare of the Dominican people; and the Board
considers said works to be a necessary complement of the re-
forms recommended in its note of November 12, intended to
renovate the political institutions of the state, bring back self-
government in a gradual way, and create conditions under which
peace and order will be assured more by the efficacy of these
institutions than by fear.
To establish a system of communications that shall embrace
all the towns of the Republic, to improve our ports by dredging
them and constructing wharves that will facilitate the traffic
which is becoming more and more extensive, to initiate all these
enterprises of a remunerative character tends not only to pro-
mote the growth of public wealth, to attract foreign capital by
the facility given for the exploitation of our lands and spon-
taneous immigration, but furthermore to establish contact be-
tween the different sections of the Republic, now so remote, and
thus to create, with the interchange of ideas and the example
of good habits, a spiritual community that will result in unity,
strength, and solidarity healthful to national life.
The Board, the above-mentioned facts notwithstanding, does
not consider that a new loan should be floated now, sk.ce it
would cause (at least if we judge by the four plans that you
have submitted) the only sources of reserve still free to be
affected, and what is very serious, would cause an increase of a
third or a half and perhaps of two-thirds in the taxes on real
estate which the Military Govewiment has just established.
To tap the only sources of revenue that now remain free
would be a dangerous step if we take into consideration: (1)
that we do not possess the slightest knowledge of the effect to
be wrought on the treasury by the tariff reforms recently intro-
duced by the Military Government, which will not be in force
until next January; further, it is not yet possible to ascertain
the revenue the tax on real property will bring, since the col-
lections for the first year have not been completed, and final
decisions have not been rendered on the complaints presented;
(2) that in all events, even in case the amount of income the
Republic still has free is known, to tie up these revenue sources
for the payment of interest and principal on a loan would leave
the Republic helpless to face any emergency, such for instance
as an epidemic.
To augment by one-third, one-half, or two-thirds the tax just
established on land values would be of disastrous consequences:
(1) Because the country, which accepted the establishment
of a tax that, like the one on land holdings, meant a just and
scientific departure from our old system of taxes, now resents
the inequality brought about by regulation of this tax. . . .
(2) Because many complaints have been caused by the fact
that the Direction of Internal Revenue does not content itself
with imposing the legal tax of five cents on each peso comu-
nero on persons who do not possess a single inch of land, and
who have only title or pesos plus the expectation of becoming
proprietors some day when the partition of the lands shall be
made, but the Direction asks those persons to declare an owner-
ship of land they have never possessed, and thus, by virtue of
such erroneous interpretation, compelling them to pay, besides
the five cents on each peso, an arbitrary amount of money; and
the complaints would increase if the tax on the land holdings
should be augmented, because the exaction on those persons
would also be increased.
(3) Because when the new tax on land holdings was created,
in order to make it popular efforts were made to persuade the
people that with the suppression of certain taxes, as for in-
stance, the 4 per cent on electric light and the reduction of,
others, the amount paid would be less. Now the clear foresight
of Your Excellency misses the fact that to augment the amount
of the recently established tax at this time would discourage
the people, who would see in the projected loan, instead of a
measure aimed to develop the resources of the country, a means
of holding them under intolerable burdens for an indefinite
length of time.
The Consulting Board, in offering these reasons for considera-
tion, fulfils its duty of making known to you the feelings of
the Dominican people; and in accordance with them, it deems
that instead of announcing, as contemplated, an augmentation
of taxes that would increase the burdens imposed by the high
cost of living, it would be preferable to begin studying the re-
forms proposed in the memorandum of November 12, and the
amendment of all those laws which require amendment; for as
Your Excellency no doubt well understands, it is only by the
execution of a general plan whose ultimate aim is the reestab-
lishment of Dominican sovereignty that the Dominicans will
realize that efforts are being made for the future welfare of the
people.
The above statement does not imply that the Board rejects
the plan of the Military Government to continue all public works
on a previously established basis. On the contrary, the Board
believes :
(1) That among the public works mentioned by Your Ex-
cellency those should be undertaken which are of urgent neces-
sity, or will bring immediate results, such as the highways,
the improvements of the ports, the penitentiary, and the lepra-
sorium.
(2) That all other works not of the above-mentioned char-
acter should be postponed, such as a building for the Direction
of Post and Telephones; a house of correction in the north, and
a house of correction in the south; a building to be used as a
depository for the Public Finances Auditorship and the Bureau
of Public Works; an insane asylum, since we have one that
can be renovated at much less cost than building another, and
July 17, 1920]
The Nation
81
buildings for offices of the national Government in the provinces,
since we can continue using for several years to come those now
adapted to that purpose; . . . that the functions of the
Direction of Public Works be transferred to a department of the
secretary of Public Works, thus abolishing the former. . . .
Should an investigation be undertaken to find out what has
been done in this Direction of Public Works since its creation
to date, we should see that many sums have been spent in sur-
veys that afterwards have been abandoned, in works never
accomplished or which have necessitated new plans before being
undertaken, or which after completion it was necessary to
change completely or in part, all this being wasteful of the
funds intrusted to it.
Since all the changes proposed would cut the budget of public
Works to less than three million dollars, the Consulting Board
believes that the public works mentioned could be undertaken in
a gradual way, without any need of resorting to loans, but
applying to their construction whatever reserves now exist, and
the moneys saved by the suppression of the department known
as General Direction of Public Works. . . .
Adolfo, Archbishop of Santo Domingo,
Jacinto R. de Castro,
Francisco J. Peynado,
Federico Velazquez y Hernandez.
Military Censorship in Santo Domingo
IN the order printed below the Military Governor of
Santo Domingo issued directions for the censorship of
the Dominican press.
Regulations for the Censorship
December 28, 1919
From: Military Governor of Santo Domingo.
To: Brigade Commanders.
Subject: Regulations for the censorship.
It is recommended that the following regulations be published
and a copy of them given to the commanders of districts and
officers in charge of the censorship so that they may act in
accordance therewith.
(1) The censorship shall be governed by the following rules:
(2) In order to prevent public disturbances it is forbidden to
print in the press, or in pamphlet form, or in any other way,
articles of the following nature:
(a) Articles preaching the doctrine generally known as
bolshevism or anarchy, which under prevailing conditions would
cause unrest and disorder;
(b) Articles that preach doctrines and practices contrary to
public morality, as the same is understood in civilized nations;
(c) Articles hostile to the Government of the United States,
its policies, and its functionaries, or that criticize them in such
a way as to excite public unrest, disorder, or revolution.
(d) Publications that by their nature are hostile to the Mili-
tary Government, its policies, and its functionaries, whether
civilian or military, or that criticize them in such way as to
incite the masses to unrest, disorder, or revolution.
(e) Articles defaming, discrediting, or ridiculing the con-
duct of the Government of the United States, or of the Military
Government or its functionaries, in such way that its publication
may cause disorders or revolt in the Republic.
(f) Articles pointing out actual conditions in Santo Domingo
in a way manifestly unfair and untrue, in terms that may pro-
voke disorders among the masses.
(3) Every writer or editor of a periodical should be invited
to hold frequent conferences with the functionaries invested
with the powers of the censorship, so that they may become
familiar with these regulations and comply with them in the
best way possible. All persons herein interested must keep in
mind that the purpose of this order is not to deprive the press
of its freedom, nor to suppress free expression of opinion, but
simply to prevent such liberty from degenerating into abuse
that might cause public peace to be disturbed and therefore hurt
the Dominican people themselves.
(4) No person can be arrested, confined, or judged for viola-
tion of this order except in cases of unusual gravity; or when
previous authorization has been granted by the commander of
the district in which the violation has taken place.
(5) The rights of assembly and of free speech must not be
curtailed except when necessary for the maintenance of public
order. As a general rule, discussion on the above-mentioned
topics should be prohibited, and must be prevented after the
necessary notice has been given. On learning that a meeting
is to be held in which his intervention is necessary, the com-
petent official, before taking any action, must ascertain what is
going to be discussed. The general rules that shall be observed
will not tend to prohibit discussions from which revolts, vio-
lence, or disorders would not result.
Liberty Under Military Law
THE Consulting Board put forward in the following
memorandum suggestions relative to the reestablish-
ment of civil liberty in Santo Domingo.
To the Honorable Sir Thomas Snowden, Rear Admiral in the
United States Navy and Head of the Military Government.
Honorable Sir:
The Consulting Board has the honor of submitting two out-
lines of executive orders: one pertains to the press; the other
to the demarcation of functions incumbent upon the provostal
justice.
As to the first, the Board has deemed it convenient to deal
only with certain rules by means of which the authorities as
well as the individual therein interested, could easily ascertain
the persons responsible for any infractions of law committed
through the press. These rules aim at providing also the method
of procedure best calculated to obtain the prosecution and
punishment of the guilty parties, without having to resort to
elaborate investigations that would hinder such action, unduly
delay it, and even render it wholly ineffective in certain cases.
The Consulting Board thus limited its endeavors on this subject
because, in its estimation, the Penal Code of the Republic makes
ample provision under the proper chapter for dealing with all
offenses that can be committed through the press or with the
assistance of the press; and, should that not seem sufficient,
further provisions of a general character are to be found, in
Article 103 and following.
As to the provostal justice, the Board considers it to be per-
fectly in order to circumscribe its province to purely military
matters, and to bring outside its jurisdiction all non-military
residents of the district in which it sits. This would render
easier the task of arriving at a proper and well-established
separation between the two jurisdictions: namely, that of the
provosts, as instituted by the Military Government, and the
regular judicial system consecrated by the laws of the Re-
public, which Captain H. S. Knapp saw fit to leave untouched
in his proclamation of November 29, 1916, this document being
as it were the basic law of the Military Government that you
represent.
It is true that this proclamation placed outside the domain
of ordinary courts any acts implying contempt or defiance of
the Military Government; but since abnormal conditions then
existent have happily subsided, there is no reason today why
such acts should not fall under the national laws, in which pro-
visions are made to deal with them; nor for keeping the of-
fenders outside the ordinary courts of justice. It is only during
troubled times, when military law reigns supreme so that the
public peace may be preserved at all costs, that excuse can be
found for considering as punishable infractions acts which pre-
vious to their commission have not been clearly defined in the
82
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2872
laws in such way as to leave no doubt as to what constitutes the
offense; and it is also only under such extraordinary circum-
stances that excuse can be found for bringing the accused to
trial before other than his natural judges.
Now the Republic is at peace and to further the very ends
of the military occupation which the country is undergoing, to
make said ends as they were set forth by Captain H. S. Knapp
in his above-mentioned proclamation something that will be
beneficial to the best interests of the Dominican people, it is
imperative to see to it that their rights are given back to them,
particularly such rights as the individual ones, which seem to
be man's natural inheritance. One of the primary purposes of
the Military Government was to help the Dominican people in
establishing such an orderly state of affairs as would enable
them to perform all duties devolving upon a member of the
family of nations. As you will perceive, such an end can not
be attained while people are not allowed to exercise their rights
under their proper laws and institutions, so that as we pointed
out in a previous communication, peace and order come to reign
more as a result of the efficacy of said laws and institutions than
by respect born of fear. It is obvious that liberty, the medium
in which right prospers, is a prerequisite essential to such high
accomplishment. With that in view, the Consulting Board
recommended and is now recommending, reform of our existent
political laws and the adoption of new ones; the suppression of
the censorship; the curtailment of provostal justice. By the
former a condition of freedom will be obtained, by the latter
the undisturbed exercise of every legitimate right will be made
possible. Thus, were such a course to be adopted, the military
occupation, which has been so diligent in the attainment of one
of its ends, to wit, the reorganization of public finances, would
also become active toward the other, which is none other than
to give back to the Dominican people their national sovereignty,
and along with it full enjoyment of their rights.
Guided by such ideas, the men composing the Consulting
Board have agreed to share with you in an endeavor that they
consider timely and all important; they beg to assure you that
no sacrifice will be omitted on this side to make their coopera-
tion useful and beneficial to the best interests of the Republic.
In furtherance of this purpose, the Consulting Board, while
recommending to your attention the projects referred to in this
communication, does not hesitate in asking that an opportunity
be granted for its members to undertake the most agreeable
task of drafting the laws necessary to the execution of said
plan of reforms, and begs that authorization be given to begin
such work at once.
The Dominican people wish to be free and independent. Such
is a supreme, everlasing hope. May God grant that yours be
the coveted honor of turning that hope into a reality !
Adolfo, Archbishop of Santo Domingo,
Francisco J. Peynado,
Federico Velazquez,
Jacinto R. de Castro.
The^End of the Consulting Board
THE "greeting" of the Military Governor to the Domini-
can people, printed below, resulted in the exchange of
letters between himself and Monsenor Adolfo A. Nouel,
Archbishop of Santo Domingo, which terminated the activi-
ties of the Consulting Board.
Thomas Snowden, Rear Admiral, U. S. N., greets all Domini-
cans and all other inhabitants of the Republic and extends to
them his best wishes for their happiness in the year just com-
menced.
He takes advantage of the opportunity thus offered him by
this occasion, to make certain declarations which are of interest
to the Dominican people and for the Military Government which
he represents, and which is the most devoted servant of the
country in whose destines it is now its privilege to intervene.
There are persons, whose number is fortunately few, who
lack faith in the declarations made by officials of the Occupa-
tion and who harbor fears, or at least show fears, for the future
independence and sovereignty of the Dominican Republic.
In my capacity of Military Governor, I most emphatically
reiterate the declaration that the United States of America do
not covet the possession of a single inch of Dominican territory.
Our mission is not a selfish one, but highly altruistic, based on
the fraternity that should prevail among all peoples, singularly
so between those of the Americas who are called to cooperate
with each other and lend reciprocal assistance among them-
selves. We are not here as conquerors but as cooperators in
the great task of pacification, prudent management of public
resources, and new orientation of the generous and good Do-
minican people, whose only fault has been lack of proper leader-
ship that would conduct them towards the highest human
achievement.
The Military Government and the troops of the United States
are still in the Dominican Republic; but there is not any inten-
tion of their remaining here permanently nor even for an in-
definite length of time.
They are and they will continue in the country only for the
time necessary for the reforms conducive to the welfare of the
Dominican people to be well established and to function in a
normal way. They are in this country waiting for the harmful
domination of personal ambition to disappear, leaving in its
place a noble and useful policy of ideals in which doctrines in-
stead of men will be the subject of discussion. They will remain
here until the time when, after some problems of a fiscal nature
have been solved, the Republic shall be capable of self-govern-
ment and be freed of hindrances that would swerve her from
the triumphal path that leads to progress, for whose achieve-
ment she has so many and such valuable assets.
I do herewith, in this message of New Year, reiterate my
previous declarations to the Dominican people, and beg to
assure them that their country's future is in their own hands.
Let them cooperate with enthusiasm, with intelligence, and
with sincerity of purpose in the great work of cementing peace,
of leading towards progress, of consecrating the public mind
to high ideals, and the Military Government will hasten to
place in the hands of the best Dominican citizens the direction
of the destinies of the Fatherland, in order that they may make
a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.
To suspend the Occupation at a time like this would be
bad faith. It would be necessary for us to come back after a
short time, for political passion would again break loose and
blood would redden anew the lands of Colon's favorite country.
We wish to leave a country in which peace has been firmly estab-
lished, inhabited by peaceful, contented, friendly citizens with
whom it will be possible for us to cultivate relations not only
friendly but fraternal. We wish the glorious Dominican flag to
float forever over the Dominican territory.
I beg to close by expressing to the Dominican people my
fervent desire to see them cooperating in a heartfelt way in
the work. of reconstruction along civic lines; and I hope that this
new year may be the dawn of a new epoch of permanent happi-
ness for all who inhabit this beautiful and noble land.
Santo Domingo, January 7, 1920.
Rear Admiral Thomas Snowden, Military Governor.
Honorable Sir:
By the message that you addressed to the people in the last
days of the year just ended, the Consulting Board is prompted
to believe once more that you are in accordance with the plan
of reforms which it was its privilege to recommend to you.
You state that the troops of the United States will remain in
the country only for such period of time as is necessary to have
all the reforms conducive to the happiness of the Dominican
people well established and regularly functioning, and this
body likes to believe that among those reforms you include those
July 17, 1920]
The Nation
83
mentioned in the memorandum dated November 29, 1919.
The Board considers then that you acknowledge as truth that
the future welfare of the Dominican people is dependent upon
the execution of these reforms, since they are the means of
preparing a prompt restoration of our sovereignty, and to avoid
the domination of personal ambition and the return to a state
of violence.
But at the same time, the Board seems to see, .in the regula-
tions for the censorship proclaimed on December 22 last, proof
that the Military Government does not deem it proper, or at
least timely, to create conditions in which the people may be
permitted to exercise their rights, particularly that of free
expression of their thoughts and sentiments, which you desire
to know by having the Consulting Board report them to you.
The regulations for the censorship leave unaltered the system
of provostal justice which has existed since the military occu-
pation of this country by North American troops, and main-
tain the menace that goes with a method in which actions not
previously denned as violations of law, and for which no pro-
visions as to penalties have been made, are punished according
to the will of a provostal judge or a commander of a district,
when both decide that the actions or publications under con-
sideration are calculated to cause disorder, to foster public dis-
contentment, or to bring on any other disturbance.
Therefore, by reason of the fact that these regulations have
been made public, the Board believes the Military Government
does not think this moment appropriate to carry out the reforms
proposed by the Board among which are the suppression of the
censorship and of provostal justice for non-military persons, as
two steps preliminary to the undertaking of all other reforms
and essential to their success.
Should that belief of the Board prove in accordance with
the facts, the Board deems it its duty to declare that its mission
is at an end, since its members accepted appointment only be-
cause they were convinced that the plan of reforms which aims
at giving back to the people full exercise of their sovereignty is
the only one calculated to promote their future welfare. . . .
Adolfo, Archbishop of Santo Domingo,
Federico Velazquez y Hernandez,
Francisco J. Peynado,
Jacinto R. de Castro.
Office of Military Governor.
Santo Domingo City, R,. D., January 9, 1920
Monsenor:
I sincerely regret that the Consulting Board should consider
its mission ended, owing to the fact that the Military Governor
does not deem this the appropriate time to lift the censorship
and declare the provostal courts out of existence.
I deplore the fact that I am not able to see my way clear to
abolish the above-mentioned functions for the time being, and
beg to state that they have been curtailed, even to a point near-
ing that of total extinction, which ought to suffice for the present.
The action of the provostal courts has been limited to cases
such as the bearing of arms, insurrections, assaults upon the
military forces, and the sale of intoxicating liquors to soldiers
and marines in uniform.
There are not in the Dominican laws any provisions covering
such offenses, and the Dominican courts are therefore lacking
the means to deal with those charged with them.
I again state my sincere regret that the Consulting Board
can not continue cooperating with me in promoting the future
welfare and happiness of the Dominican people, the furtherance
of which has been always my first aim.
It is my belief that in forsaking the administrator of the
Dominican national Government the Consulting Board is making
a mistake. It ought to be true happiness for any Dominican
to be able to assist in building his country's future, and to
know the Governor's opinion as to how far he can go in the
endeavor gradually to suppress rule by the military power.
The Board will no doubt recall that it was first appointed as a
consulting body to assist the Governor with its experience and
counsel, and that the presentation of memoranda came as a later
feature.
I take the liberty of informing the honorable members of
the Board that all matters dealt with in the three memoranda
sent me by that body are being duly studied in the appropriate
department, and that legislation is being prepared to fit each
case. . . .
Signed: Thomas Snowden,
Rear Admiral in the United States Navy, Military Governor of
Santo Domingo.
To Monsenor Adolfo A. Nouel,
Archbishop of Santo Domingo City.
- -r~ ■-■ --—.--.
GERMAN
CITY BONDS
offer to-day unusual investment pos«
sibilities. They can now be bought
for a fraction of their nominal value.
Germany has the power to pay and the in-
terest on these bonds is being paid steadily.
There is no doubt in the minds of the world
that Germany's exchange will return to nor-
mal with consequent profit to bondholders.
Correspondence Solicited
vonPolenz&Calnc.
60 Broadway, tfewYorK
Philadelphia \Jtilu)aukce~£ 'Cincinnati Dcnoer Berlin, Germany.
INDEX for
VOLUME 110
(January— June 1920)
has been delayed, but it will
be ready for distribution in a
few weeks.
One copy will be sent to each
library on our subscription
list, but to other subscribers
only upon request.
If you want this index let us
know at once.
SUBSCRIPTION DEPARTMENT
The Nation
20 Vesey St. New York, N. Y.
84
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2872
ui?arljerB' ArjrnrtrB
Evirbtt O. Fisk * Co., Proprietor*.
Boston, 2a Park Street. Ckicag», 814 Sterer Bid*.
New York 225 FiftH At*. Denver, 317 Maso«le Bid*.
Syracuse, 402 Dillaye Bid. Portlaad, 500 Journal Bldf.
Plttsburs. 640 Un. Arcane. Berkeley, 2161 Shattuck At.
Birmingham, 809 Title B14. Loi Anreles, 510 Spring St.
Send t» any address ab»ve for registration form.
Harlan P. Fmnch, Prae. W. W. Anbmwi, Sec.
ALBANY TEACHERS' AGENCY, I»e.
Supplies Scheols an« Colleges wita Competent Teach-
ers. Assists Teachers in obtaining positions. Send
for Bulletin. 81 Chapel Street, Albany, N. I.
Foreign and American
Dealers m
Books, Autographs, Manuscripts, Engravings
To All Book-Collectors
Messrs. HENRY S0THERAN&C0.
will be pleased to hear from Col-
lectors, who are in want of any indi-
vidual Book, of which they will en-
deavor to find and report particulars,
without any obligation to the in-
quirer. They also keep a register of
special Subjects, and if Collectors
will let them know the class of Book
they are interested in, they will re-
port suitable items as they come
into stock from time to time.
HENRY SOTHERAN & CO.
43, Piccadilly, W. 1.
•r, 14», Strand, W. C. 2,
London, England.
Cables : Bookmen, London.
Autsffraphs BOOKS Manuscripts
Catalogue* post free from HERBERT E. GORFIN.
1, WaleranJ Road, Lewisham London, S. E. 13
BACK NUMBERS OF MAGAZINES TO BE HAD
at ABRAHAM'S BOOK STORE, 145 4th Avenue
The Heroic Legends of Denmark ^^J
A study of folklore in a country rich in popular
legend. $5.00. Order from
THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN FOUNDATION
25 West 45th Street, New York.
Spanish Books
WHOLESALE ALL SUBJECTS RETAIL
Spanish Dailies and Periodicals
COMPANIA HISPANO-AMERICANA
156 West 14th St., cor. 7th Ave., N. Y.
LABOR LAWS of SOVIET RUSSIA
These laws have been reprinted, with an ex-
planatory introduction, from "Soviet Riiia."
and are sold to the public at 10c per copy.
Other laws and official documents will be re-
printed later in similar pamphlet form. Special
rates in quantities.
"SOVIET RUSSIA"
1 10 Weot 40tk St. R—m 304 New York. N. Y.
Are you reading the weekly "Soviet Russia" ?
Strength of Organization
Experience of over forty years has
developed executive ability. Scien-
tific advancement has brought the tele-
phone from a crude experiment to one
of the most perfected of all mechanical
devices. Engineering has mastered
countless problems involved in the
distribution of service. Construction
has carried the telephone into the
most remote corners of the country.
Operative skill has combined the efforts
of executives, scientists, engineers and
commercial management. These with
vision and foresight are the powers
which unite in the accomplishment
of the Bell Telephone System.
Working in the closest cooperation
with its chiefs is the nation-wide or-
ganization of telephone employees.
Nothing less than finest loyalty, the
most untiring devotion, the recognition
of the great importance of their work,
coupled with a fixed determination
to serve faithfully; nothing less than
this unified strength which has been
so wonderfully displayed by the man-
agement and employees of the Bell
telephone could have carried the
system through the years of strain
which began with the war and have
not passed.
Hardly ever has public service re-
quired so long and severe a test of a
business organization. Never has an
army responded with more hearty
united and loyal support.
American Telephone and Telegraph Company
And Associated Companies
One Policy One System Universal Service
c/lny change of address
should be mailed to our Subscription Department at least two
weeks before it is to become effective. This will insure unin-
terrupted delivery of The Nation to you, and will materially
lessen the pressure of work in our office.
When notifying us be sure to give both old and new addresses
and stipulate the exact date upon which you desire the change
made.
SUBSCRIPTION DEPARTMENT
20 Vesey Street
The Nation
New York, N. Y.
ALICE KAUSER
1402 BROADWAY
NEW YORK
DRAMATISTS' AGENT— PLAYS
ESTABLISHED 1896
Motion Picture Department
R. L. GIFFEN, Associate Manager
Upton Sinclair's Press-titution, 25c.
At last here is the damning truth about the capitalist press, by Upton
Sinclair. "Press-titution" is the term for the journalistic prostitution
from which the people have long suffered without knowing the source
of the evil.
APPEAL TO REASON, C.IRARD, KANSAS.
The
«4l
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 24, 1920
No. 2873
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 85
EDITORIALS :
The Third Party Effort 88
The Public Servant 89
Fisher 90
Bolshevism at Middletown 90
Literature and Politics 91
CHRISTENSEN'S CONVENTION. By Arthur Warner 92
THE BRITISH LABOR CONFERENCE. By J. Ramsay Macdonald 94
EPIGRAMS. By Clara Shariafelt and Eda Lou Walton 95
THE BOLIVIAN REVOLUTION AND TACNA-ARICA. By Latinus 96
ON HAMLET AND HAMLETS. By Arthur Symons 97
IMPORTING THE WHITE TERROR. By Eugene S. Bagger 99
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By The Drifter 100
CORRESPONDENCE 101
THE DEPORTED. By Anzia Yezierska 102
THE FEASTERS. By Ridgeley Torrence 102
BOOKS:
My Second Country. By B. U. Burke 103
Philosophers Abroad. By Irita Van Doren 103
Science and Peace. By Benjamin C. Gruenberg 104
Faith and War. By Ludwig Lewisohn 105
The Strategy of the Great War. By X. Y. Z 106
Man and Mystic. By Glen Mullin 107
BOOKS IN BRIEF 108
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION 110
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER ARTHUR GLEASON
LEWIS S. GANNETT
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Adress : Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising: Swathmore Press, Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
WITH rather surprising vigor Senator Harding took
the opportunity afforded by the conference between
Governor Cox and President Wilson, first, to predict the
easily predictable — that these eminent statesmen would find
themselves in sweetest and completest accord — and, second,
to ask the Governor four questions as to the latter's real
attitude toward the treaty. If the Governor answers the
questions — and we do not see how he can fail to do so —
we shall have a real illumination of the Democratic candi-
date's stand such as is not obtainable at this writing. Thus,
President Wilson's statement issued after the conference,
"I found . . . that he and I were absolutely at one
with regard to the great issue of the League of Na-
tions . . .," is rather surprising in view of Governor
Cox's own statement that he favors certain reservations,
and of the declaration of the Democratic platform in favor
of reservations that will not impair the "essential integrity
of the Covenant." But as Mr. Wilson has refused thus far
to accept any specific reservations, we are obviously in
need of further enlightenment. Governor Cox may furnish
it if he answers Mr. Harding's questions. For instance,
does Governor Cox believe that Article X is the heart of the
treaty, and will he renew Mr. Wilson's request for a man-
date for Armenia, if he is elected President? By all means
let us have light on Governor Cox's position, since other-
wise the country must feel that the Democrats are once
more attempting the familiar dodge of facing both ways.
If Senator Harding or anybody else can get a little of the
cant, humbug, hypocrisy, and false sentimentality out of
this campaign he will do a national service.
AS Mrs. Squeers consolatrix would remark to the Dothe-
boys Hall sufferers, "It will be all the same a hundred
years from now." The exact date of women's emancipation
will, perhaps, be of slight importance to historians, but is it
necessary that America should form the extreme rearguard
in the march toward democracy for which it has just made
the world safe? Czarist Russia conferred by two years upon
the nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposi-
tion that all men are equal" the distinction of being the last
on earth to free its slaves. Already in the second section of
the world's equal suffrage train, we ought not to covet being
the last aboard. Whether it be a Republican Green Moun-
tain or Nutmeg Executive, or Florida's Governor Catts de-
fying Mrs. Catt's wrath, or a Democratic Legislature gravely
resolving to enfranchise the — "God bless 'em" — white
women, is important only in aiding our puzzled future
chroniclers to attach a distinguishing tag to the Tweedledum
or Tweedledee who, while competing in safe and sane
methods of preserving us, forgets that 'tis woman who's the
life of the party.
THE Spa conference ended, as we predicted last week
would probably be the case, with a compromise on the
question of coal and no agreement as to the amount of in-
demnities. The German representatives were forced to
agree to the Allied demand for the delivery of 2,000,000 tons
of coal a month, but the obligation is to run for six months
only, and during that time Germany will be credited with
the difference between the price of coal at the time the
Treaty of Versailles was signed and the market price at
the time of delivery. These credits, which virtually amount
to an Allied loan to Germany, will, it is estimated, aggre-
gate from $60,000,000 to $100,000,000 for the six months'
period. The question of reparations was confided to a com-
mission of the principal Allied Powers, on which Germany
will be represented. The commission will meet soon at
Geneva. The vexed question of how the amounts received
from Germany should be apportioned, in regard to which
Italy, it will be remembered, had strongly objected to an
earlier arrangement, was disposed of by allotting 52 per
cent to France, 22 per cent to Great Britain, 10 per cent to
Italy, 8 per cent to Belgium, and three-fourths of one per
cent to Japan and Portugal respectively. In addition, Bel-
gium receives confirmation of its claim of priority to
2,500,000,000 marks, out of which it proposes to pay various
loans from the Allies. Both Mr. Lloyd George and M.
Millerand refused to withdraw the provision of the dis-
armament agreement which they had earlier forced upon
the Germans, threatening to occupy the Ruhr or some other
part of Germany in case of the non-fulfilment of Germany's
obligations, so that further military occupation of the
country is possible. It is upon this military provision that
86
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2873
M. Millerand will probably have to lean heavily to save his
face in France, where the proceedings of the conference
have been followed with anything but satisfaction by the
press. Whether the German Ministry will be able to with-
stand the criticisms to which it is being subjected is doubt-
ful.
THIS business of invading the Ruhr and assuring the
Western world an abundant flow of coal is not so simple
as it sounds. In the first place, the Allies may find them-
selves in the triumphant position of Governor Henry Allen,
who made it a crime to strike in Kansas and thereby drove
some thousands of coal miners into a strike till then un-
dreamed of. The Allies may occupy the Ruhr, and may pro-
claim that every Ruhrite shall dig coal, but they are not
likely to increase thereby the enthusiasm of the individual
miner for his task. In the second place, they will come face
to face with the question of hours. German coal miners
have been working on a seven-hour day for more than a
year; recently, at the special request of the German Chan-
cellor, and in consideration of double pay for overtime and
extra rations of bread and fat, they have been induced to
work two extra half-day shifts per week. The result has
been a considerable increase in total production, although
the production per man per hour diminished when the extra
shifts were added. The French miners, however, have only
recently won the eight-hour day. It is not to be supposed
that they will relish the thought that French soldiers are
being used to force Germans to work shorter hours than
the French. Either they will demand — and get — the seven-
hour day in France, or the military authorities will have
to attempt to force the German miners to go to an eight-
hour schedule. And, entirely apart from the doubtful ques-
tion of whether or not the German miners at present have
the physical stamina to endure such a regimen, it may be
difficult to persuade them to dig that extra hour per day.
The problem of involuntary labor is still unsolved — both in
Kansas and in the Ruhr.
KIEV, Rovno, Lemberg, Minsk, Vilna — these names tell
the tale of Polish defeat, of the end of the latest
boomerang campaign against Soviet Russia. Along a seven-
hundred mile front, against Polish troops equipped with
British and American guns and uniforms, fed in part — we
are told — by the American Young Women's Christian Asso-
ciation, commanded and advised by some thousand French
officers, the soldiers of Russia have pushed steadily on. But
the outcome of the story is not yet known. On July 11 the
Supreme Council sent to Russia a note suggesting an
armistice with Poland, and promised at the same time "full
assistance" to Poland if the Russians should refuse. The
Poles have felt "obliged to accept" the terms of the pro-
posal, but no answer has yet come from Moscow. If the
Poles can bring themselves to look back at the history of
the last two years instead of contemplating solely the glories
of 1772, they will note the fate of the other "buffers" and
"bulwarks against bolshevism." One and all, at the insti-
gation of the Allies, they have attempted the impossible,
failed, and then been abandoned by those who led them
into the adventure. The job of whipping-boy for Allied
imperialism is always open, but it is a thankless task.
Whether the Bolsheviki accept or reject the terms advanced
to them depends upon whether they covet peace and trade
more than military triumph. If the Bolsheviki are willing to
make terms of any sort, the Poles would do well to accept
them lest in the end they get no terms at all.
THE Third Internationale, now sitting in conference in
Moscow, has before it a different world from that
which faced it at its birth more than a year ago. The class
struggle goes on, the revolution has not been declared a
stalemate, but there are signs that Europe is tired, and
that the organized workers in each country are hardly up
to the stringent requirements imposed by the Russian exem-
plars of revolution. It is probable that the future of
the socialist movement in Europe lies with the Communist
Internationale, but it is also probable that that body will
have to cease reviling as "yellow" all who have not yielded
to Moscow domination over their souls and their politics.
With this in mind the proceedings of the present conference
should be closely studied; they cannot be dismissed nor
minimized with a phrase such as appeared in a recent arti-
cle in the New York Evening Post: "the Moscow Interna-
tionale has not succeeded in recruiting into its ranks a
single important Socialist group in Western Europe." This
is far from true. The Norwegian Socialist Party — an ex-
ceedingly powerful organization — has affiliated with the new
Internationale, as has the Italian party. A large section of
Spanish Socialists has joined. The German Independent
Socialists have specifically declared their adhesion to the
Moscow organization in the event of their failure to organ-
ize a new united Internationale ; while two French Socialists
are reported to be in Moscow at the present time discussing
the possibility of affiliation on the part of the French ma-
jority party. Nor can the decision of the Socialist Party
of the United States to apply for admission to the Third
Internationale be honestly ignored.
THE Allies have spoken stern words to Turkey, and by
way of reply it appears likely that the Turkish Gov-
ernment will sign the treaty; then, with the amenities out
of the way, the fighting can proceed. How can the Turkish
Government, even if its will were good, carry into effect the
demands of the Allies? How can it, crippled as it is, assist
in the occupation of Thrace and crush the victorious bands
of Nationalist soldiers and bandits operating throughout
the whole of the former Turkish Empire? Will the Turk-
ish treaty, laughed at or ignored by some of the Allied na-
tions themselves, quiet the unrest in Palestine or Syria or
Anatolia or Cilicia? What is to stop the warfare between
the Allies and Greeks on the one hand, and the Arabs and
Turks on the other? What is to save the Armenians from
destruction? What is to prevent the Bolsheviki from domi-
nating the Near East? It is easy to see that the treaty will
do none of these things. It is harder to say how they can
be accomplished. If a little honest diplomacy were substi-
tuted for force, if plebiscites and autonomy were substituted
for mandates under the control of greedy imperialisms,
there would be some hope of peace in the Near East. With-
out these the wars will continue — the new and serious war
between France and the Syrians has now begun in dead
earnest — the Moslem population in India and elsewhere will
be inflamed, and thwarted nationalism will still play its
bloody part in European politics. Do the Allies understand
these things? Is their realpolitik truly realistic, or are
their minds made stupid by dreams of trade and power?
July 24, 1920]
The Nation
87
ROBERT SMILLIE has returned to the leadership of
British labor. That is the explanation of the recent
vote by the British Trades Union Congress in favor of direct
action to force the withdrawal of troops from Ireland and
the cessation of munition-making for military operations
against Ireland and Russia. The vote does not mean a
general strike. It means a series of votes by the affiliated
unions, deputations to the Prime Minister, another Trades
Union Congress, and, finally, if necessary, a general elec-
tion. This is the method of the British social revolution.
It will please neither Lenin nor Samuel Gompers. The
British will continue to be themselves though Europe
crumble and the Empire fall. All sections of labor united
in a demand for the return of Mr. Smillie to active com-
mand. Against the advice of physicians he consented to
resume the fight. His presence in the front line had become
necessary.
THE British people, including the workers, are tired out
by the last six years. They have just enough energy
left to be busy with the immediate job. But they have no
heart for a strenuous reconstruction or a romantic revolu-
tion. In this fatigued and indifferent community, Mr.
Lloyd George is securely anchored in power for the present.
In recent months, labor has drifted and become incoherent.
By the breakdown in health of Robert Smillie and Arthur
Henderson it lost its national leaders. Its varied de-
mands in hours and wages will in a few years create a
fundamental issue, with a sharp alignment of opposing
forces. But meantime the lack of unity was becoming in-
creasingly costly. Labor representatives in Parliament,
with a few exceptions such as William Graham and Ben
Spoor, proved themselves wanting in policy and weak in
debate. The trade unions prefer sending to Parliament a
plodding official, harassed by executive demands, to the selec-
tion of skilled parliamentarians like Ramsay Macdonald and
Philip Snowden. As a result, labor is hopelessly outpointed
on foreign and home policy. By the time the present sum-
mer arrived, a sense of gathering weakness had spread over
the movement, which had begun the year 1919 with a revo-
lutionary strike. It was in this mood that the emergency
call went out to Robert Smillie.
HE case of the American people versus the American
Woolen Company is now on trial in more ways than
one. If the Supreme Court decides that cloth is not cloth-
ing, as highly paid lawyers of the American Woolen Com-
pany would have it believe, then only the sky need be the
limit. The price of wool is already exorbitant; the quality
of wool is execrable. And now, during the two busiest
months of the year, the mills throughout New England
have declared a lockout. The law of supply and demand is
cited by officials as the reason, but the man in the street
ponders in his heart. He knows that the American people
have not all taken to silken raiment to the exclusion of wool.
He suspects that if the mills were kept going the law might
be made to work his way for once — the supply would be
increased to a point where the price might go down. But
he also realizes that too large a supply and too small a price
would mean less money for Mr. Wood and his friends.
Hence the lockout — and business is business. Yet Mr. Wood
himself was very nice about it. He gave a great garden
party for the working people of his town on the lawn of
his New England home. But the meal served was un-
fortunately not substantial enough to last over long weeks
of unemployment. In the organ of the textile trade, the
Daily News Record, there is perhaps a franker explanation
of the present reason for that unemployment than any Mr.
Wood may have given his guests :
It seems more than likely that when conditions do improve an
effort may be made to get operatives back in the mill at lower
wages and longer hours. Labor leaders say they believe this is
planned. It will not be successful, they maintain. But they will
not say what is to prevent operatives long out of work and
without funds from returning to work at almost any rate of
wages and any schedule of hours.
THE dear good Texas judge whose lament over divorce
is going the rounds of the press is entitled to sympathy.
He has discovered that the number of divorces is increas-
ing— increasing alarmingly, in fact. This, of course, is a
great evil. Looking over the thousands of divorce suits
which have come before him, however, the judge finds that
they are particularly common where the wife in the case has
gone into business. Women who stay properly at home
and attend to their home duties, the judge has observed,
rarely find their way to the divorce court; it is the cares
of the business world and the deceitfulness of riches gained
in trade that tend to throw them off the moral track. We
know exactly how his Honor feels. What he wants is a
nice "homey" kind of a wife who will keep the house in
order, mend his socks, tidy up his room, look after the
children, have dinner and supper ready on time, and think
his thoughts after him. It is too bad that even in Texas
there should be so many married women who refuse to be
satisfied with board, clothes, and tips.
SAMUEL GOMPERS, Warren S. Stone of the locomo-
tive engineers, W. G. Lee of the trainmen, T. V. O'Con-
nor, and Matthew Woll are still officers of the National Civic
Federation. It will be interesting to see whether they will
continue to remain such without protesting. Ralph Easley,
chairman of the Executive Council of the Federation, has
given them a splendid opportunity to object. It appears that
Mr. Easley took it upon himself to communicate to an
official of the United States Steel Corporation an advance
copy of a report which a committee of the Federation
had had prepared regarding certain liberals in the Inter-
Church World Movement. The liberals in question were
among those who had prepared the now famous steel report.
Mr. Easley, in his letter, suggested that the church and
business friends of the official might be interested in the
revelations, which included attacks upon members of the
Y. M. C. A. and the Federal Council of Churches. "There
certainly ought to be no trouble," he said, "in having the
loyal American members of the Protestant churches have
these men kicked out of their positions, or at any rate put
in places where they cannot poison anyone but themselves."
A New York World reporter, who seems to have seen a
copy of the Easley documents, tells us that representatives
of the Movement were discussed seriatim, "usually
employing their names incorrectly and connecting them in-
discriminately with the I. W. W., bolshevism, and similar
movements." Some day we may learn what share the
Federation played in the rumored proposal to hold back
the Inter-Church report on the steel strike and in the subse-
quent collapse of the Inter-Church Movement.
88
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2873
The Third Party Effort
DESPITE all the hostile criticism of the idealists who
met at Chicago to formulate a domestic policy and a
program for honest political and economic reform, the ef-
fort to create a third party has not been wasted. The be-
ginning seems at the moment unpropitious, but at least it
was a beginning. There is a gain, too, in the national com-
ing together of industrial workers and farmers, even though
the first approach is made by comparatively small groups
of each. Moreover, every ocular demonstration of the ex-
tent of the prevailing unrest helps. Nor do we look upon
it as an unmitigated evil that various points of view are
to be presented to the electorate. The kindest thing that
can be said about our major parties is that they are stand-
ing still while the world moves. They are now, save for
the Japanese Conservatives, about the most reactionary con-
servatives on the globe. Between them and the most ex-
treme Communist beliefs there is a wide gulf; but between
these extremes there ought to be shock absorbers, and it
may be that several such will prove necessary.
On the other hand, the disappointment at Chicago cer-
tainly raises the question whether liberalism, as distinct
from radicalism, has any future in American political life.
Liberalism seems to be dying in England, where the Liberal
Party is being well punished for its attitude in going into
the war and then fusing with the Conservatives. In Ger-
many the old liberalism of Barth, Richter, and Bamberger
has long since been ground to pieces between the upper mill-
stone of Kaiserism and the lower of socialism. In France
and Italy one finds the same phenomena. More than that,
liberalism where it still exists suffers from the dearth of
able leadership. Mr. Asquith has gained nothing in public
influence by his return to Parliament; Mr. Lloyd George
continues to play the role of Judas to the English Liberals,
and some of the finest figures in that party have joined the
Labor Party in disgust. Writing in the London Nation
about the possibility of a future usefulness for the British
Liberals, Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald, who is now reaping the
reward of his steadfast opposition to the war by his extraor-
dinary growth in popularity among British labor groups of
all shades of opinion, declares that, "taking the country as a
whole, liberalism is held in no esteem, it possesses no confi-
dence, it arouses no expectation; the meetings it holds are
so meager in size and so devoid of devotion that they cannot
raise the temperature of the halls above zero." There is
not in England a single outstanding Liberal leader, distin-
guished, like Campbell-Bannerman, for faithful devotion to
the traditions of the party during the war, who can be
thought of as a successor to Mr. Lloyd George.
It is not surprising, therefore, that in the third party
gathering at Chicago there was no dominant figure, and
that the choice of a national candidate fell upon an unknown
man. Senator La Follette comes nearest in this country to
the position held in England by Mr. Macdonald; but partly
because of unintentional distortion by the Associated Press
and positive lying by the press in general, he is still
far from receiving, outside of Wisconsin and the States
in which the Nonpartisan League has raised the banner of
revolt, the recognition which he deserves. Had he been
chosen to lead the third party elements we should probably
have seen a campaign in those States which would have
worried the Republicans a good deal, and this despite
Senator La Follette's limitations as a leader and as a cam-
paigner. Very possibly he might have polled a larger vote
in the Electoral College than Mr. Taft did in 1912. But the
platform adopted by the dominating labor group not only
frightened him off, but was criticized by the Forty-Eighters
as too extreme, certainly for 1920, as differing too little
from the program of the Socialists to make a clear issue,
and as going far beyond the fundamentals of abolishing
privilege. So the opportunity for a strong third party is
still to come. It would not have passed had there been a
man with anything like Mr. Roosevelt's popularity to lead,
or men like Palmer and Buckner to inspire respect through-
out the country as in the Gold Democrats' inspiring cam-
paign in 1896.
Yet we count it a gain that the beginnings of a Labor
Party were made at Chicago, however radical the platform
and however small the group which carried the day. We
welcome this political activity as we shall welcome that of
any other of the great labor groups, for we believe that a
sound and strong Labor Party would be beneficial to the
welfare of the United States. There must be a break-up of
our political deeps and a reorganization along both con-
servative and radical lines. The outworn names used by
the old parties as cloaks for their hypocrisy and corruption-
must be done away with. Every day the present campaign
advances makes clearer the sham performance in which the
major parties are engaged — the sham of trying to make -the
American public believe that there is any essential differ-
ence between them or their platforms on most issues.
After laboring long over the platforms the American Fed-
eration of Labor has finally decided that the Democratic
Party is a bit more worth while in this campaign than the
Republican; but it is entirely characteristic of the political
situation that while the Cox papers feature the report as
pro-Democratic, the Harding newspapers are able to head-
line it as anti-Democratic.
The leaders of all three groups that met at Chicago worked
honestly indeed. More political experience would certainly
have helped them, but they tried unselfishly to serve their
country, knowing the while that a hostile press would prob-
ably ridicule and misrepresent them. Happily, their sin-
cerity compelled some of the newspapers, like those of Chi-
cago and the World and Times of New York, to treat the
convention seriously and report its doings with more than
usual accuracy. Nevertheless, the disappointment is great.
But the liberals and reformers who are looking for a nobler
and better America than that of the profiteer, the exploiter,
and the political imperialist will know how to possess their
souls in patience. There is evidence on every hand, in every
day's newspapers, that the old system is ruining itself. The
economic changes which are making over the world are
ceaseless in their advance ; when the Governor of New York
asks the State to monopolize the milk business, no one can
doubt that some politicians are beginning to notice what
is going on. There is no ground for ultimate discourage-
ment; the stars in their courses fight for the old traditions
of American freedom which, whatever the divergency of
economic belief, are at the bottom of the political striving
of every group which seeks to better American politics.
July 24, 1920]
The Nation
89
The Public Servant
AMAIN problem of democracy is the creation of the
administrator. As industrial democracy extends its
area, the need is for ever-increasing numbers of men who
will bring to public service the same efficiency and initiative
which business men have usually brought to private enter-
prise. Within the next few decades we shall probably see
certain key industries and services pass under public owner-
ship. Who is to run them? For the display of his gifts,
the business man has demanded as incentive and reward
handsome profits. Unlike the other and productive groups
in the community, he has not merely received a salary for
his services. The technician, chemist, teacher, electrician,
physician, clergyman, social worker, research scientist,
artist, manual worker, architect — these and the other crea-
tors of values are men who are limited to the wage for
which they do the work. Some of them find recompense in
the achievement itself. The ambitious among them contend
for fame. But they are alike in not basing their life pri-
marily on the profit-making motive.
Accordingly, business men who are witnessing the steady
extension of the functions of government into industrial
lines, such as the venture of Louisiana into cotton ware-
housing and of North Dakota into banking and terminal
warehouses and similar enterprises, and who read of the
demands of Governor Smith of New York that the Legis-
lature put the State into one business enterprise after an-
other, are asking themselves how these governmental in-
dustries are to be conducted. Their chief opposition to the
nationalization of railways, for instance, is the fear that the
railways may be as badly managed by the government as is
the postoffice under Mr. Burleson, and with as much red tape
and waste as is the army of the United States. Plainly,
democracy, if it is going to extend the functions of gov-
ernment, has, among numerous problems which the change
going on under our eyes will create, a large one in de-
veloping industrial and business administrators in the pub-
lic service and providing them with the necessary human
incentives to make government efficient. If this cannot be
done, the new status will certainly be as bad as the old.
Hence, anything bearing upon this question of bringing
about efficiency in public service is of the utmost moment.
The most important contribution of recent years to this
problem of the government servant, the employee of the com-
munity, is a statement of Viscount Haldane to the British
Coal Industry Commission. Lord Haldane had reorganized
the Ministry of War. He had made it possible to mobilize
and deliver a brilliantly efficient expeditionary force within
a few hours. He had remade a great state department.
The problems given to him by the Coal Commission for his
opinion were the following: (1) If nationalization is de-
cided upon, is the present civil service, or some remodeling
of the present civil service, in a position successfully to cope
with the problems facing it in case the coal industry is
run nationally? (2) Is it possible to train a body of civil
servants fit for rapid and efficient administration? Viscount
Haldane's answer, the answer of one who has proved him-
self one of the great administrators, runs in substance as
follows :
"We took young men and put them through a special
course of training. Education is of vital importance — spe-
cial education coming upon the top of a sufficiently generally
educated mind. We took the London School of Economics,
and with the help of Mr. Sidney Webb we induced them
to take in hand the task of training forty administrative
officers for us in each year. On these officers later were
placed enormous responsibility and a great deal of neces-
sity for devising initiative for themselves. It is quite true
the young man has not got what is the great impulse in the
business world, the desire to make a fortune for himself, but
he has another motive which, in my experience, is equally
potent with the best class of men, the desire to distinguish
himself in the service of the state. That public spirit and
devotion to duty will make him do anything. There is a
source which is neglected from which public servants might
be drawn."
Lord Haldane then outlined the steps: first, schools with
a broad, general basis, not special schools, to develop the
mind; then a special course of administrative training, to
be attended at about the age of twenty-five or twenty-six.
"I am not sure I know anything much better than the kind
of atmosphere we had in the London School of Economics.
There they were trained in making contracts and in local
government, in the law of administration, in railway man-
agement. . . . Good salaries do not mean the salaries
which rich men require in order to live as rich men. Your
general in the army, your colonel, your captain, your admiral
in the navy, your commander, live on what the rich man
often calls very little indeed, but their reward comes to
them in another way. They have social advantages which
he has not. They are rewarded by the public, by honors,
and by positions which tell. I do not like that being a
monopoly of the fighting services. I want to see it extended
to the other administrative services of the state."
Mr. Justice Sankey, himself chairman of the Coal Indus-
try Commission, said upon this subject: "I think that the
danger to be apprehended from the certainty of the con-
tinuance of strife in the coal mining industry [under pri-
vate ownership] outweighs the danger arising from the
problematical fear of the risk of the loss of incentive [in
nationalization]. The civil servant has not been trained to
run an industry, but the war has demonstrated the poten-
tiality of the existence of a new class of men who are just
as keen to serve the state as they are to serve a private em-
ployer, and who have been shown to possess the qualities of
courage in taking the initiative necessary for the running
of an industry."
These are certainly encouraging views, yet they record
only a beginning of enlightenment, and that, too, on the
other side of the Atlantic. For the situation in America
we offer a constructive suggestion: the immediate appoint-
ment of a commission headed by ex-Secretary Franklin K.
Lane, with Assistant Secretary Roosevelt a member there-
of, together with representatives of public employees
in Washington and elsewhere, for the purpose of devising
proper incentives for energy and enterprise and above all
for the democratization of our government service. With
the long battle for a retirement pension just won. this is
the time to look far ahead and to redeem the government
employees from the position which they now hold of being
autocratically ruled, and, in the District of Columbia, of
being set apart without even that vote which other Ameri-
can citizens enjoy.
90
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2873
Fisher
JOHN ARBUTHNOT FISHER, former First Sea Lord
of the Admiralty, creator in part of the modern British
fleet, is dead — thirteen years after he struck out his famous
plan of "Copenhagening" the German fleet in peace time.
He believed it would be "a sagacious act on England's part
to seize the German fleet when it was so very easy of ac-
complishment in the manner I sketched out to his Majesty."
Unfortunately, this ruthless piratical memorandum to King
Edward somehow leaked all the way to Germany and the
Kaiser. And it contributed its share to the tremors that
were rocking the balance of power. Each nation in greater
Europe had its Prussians in the last years before Europe
fell, and none was more perfect than "Hell Jack" Fisher.
He had the merit of a clear sincerity. What he said and
did always contained his full weight. This gave to his con-
versational and literary style a candor and zest that caused
him to be quoted. He threw a full program into a phrase —
such a phrase as "Sack the lot." When von Tirpitz pro-
posed the limitation of size of guns and ships, Fisher sent
word : "Tell him I'll see him damned first." He saw the fu-
ture of oil for transport. 'Wo engineers, no stokers, and no
funnels, no boilers. Only a damned chauffeur. The economy
prodigious. But what will it be for war? Why, all the past
pales before the prospect. I say to McKenna: 'Shove 'em
over the precipice, shove.' " Other sentiments of his were :
"The Germans are in a blue funk of the British Navy";
"it's quite silly not to make war damnable to the whole mass
of your enemy's population"; "when war does come, 'might
is right,' and the Admiralty will know what to do"; "we
shall have sixteen British dreadnoughts with the 13V2-inch
gun before the Germans have one." This is the true
language of preparedness, of military necessity, of ethical
frightfulness.
Fisher believed passionately in the coming European war
from as far back as 1905. He worked toward it as earnestly
as any German militarist, and finally he and all good Prus-
sians saw their dreams and schemes come true. Knowing
that their work had been effectual, Fisher embraced even his
enemy in a mystical blood-brotherhood, and wrote to von
Tirpitz: "You're the one German sailor who understands
war. Kill your enemy without being killed yourself. I don't
blame you for the submarine business. I'd have done the
same myself, only our idiots in England wouldn't believe it
when I told 'em." It would be a gross injustice to the
memory of the great sailor to believe that he was bragging.
His words were the straight talk of a single strong man to
whom the ideas of God, sea power, empire, and the destiny
of the British race are of one piece.
Fisher was one of those men of genius who have made
Britain great as a "Power." He outguessed his opponents.
He had a prevision that was intuitive. He made use of
able men for his plans. He shrewdly estimated the value of
such men as Mr. Charles Schwab. He was also one of those
men of "humor" whose line of salty individualism, wit,
and quirks has not failed for several centuries in the story
of the British Isles. He clothed his single-mindedness in
the whimsical unexpectedness that wins attention. At a
ceremony in Westminster, clad in pure white, short, stal-
wart, he was clearly one of those few who are born to rule
idiots, weaklings, and lesser breeds.
Fisher wrote in 1919 his "Memories" — a volume that may
become a classic because it clearly states England's dream
of world-dominion, because it reveals a salient and dis-
tinguished personality, and because it swings a vivacious
style. Fisher continues the tradition of the conquerors
who could use language as they used weapons of war. He
describes his book as "a collection of memories of a life-
long war against limpets, parasites, sycophants, and jelly-
fish." He dates as of the year 1907 "a long, secret conver-
sation with his Majesty in which I urged that we should
'Copenhagen' the German fleet at Kiel a la Nelson." "It is
admitted that it was not quite a gentlemanly sort of thing
for Nelson to go and destroy the Danish fleet at Copen-
hagen without notice, but 'la raison du plus fort est tou-
jours la meilleure'." Because of the failure to Copenhagen
the German fleet in peace time "came those terrible years
of war, with millions massacred and maimed." The text of
Fisher's working life was that "the only thing in the world
that England has to fear is Germany, and none else."
Of the dead, Fisher liked Moses, Gideon, and Cromwell,
Elijah, Nelson, Cecil Rhodes, Stead, Lord Kelvin, Abraham
Lincoln, King Edward, Abdul Hamid. He believed in the
life eternal; even the late Pierpont Morgan was not more
fervent in his consciousness of the presence of God. He
possessed a strong mystical sense. He often quoted these
lines as describing his country and his race:
Time and the ocean and some guiding star
In high cabal have made us what we are.
Bolshevism at Middletown
ON the evening of December 2, 1919, Mr. Wilfred Hum-
phries, a former Y. M. C. A. and Red Cross worker
in Russia, delivered a lecture on Russia at the Berkeley
Divinity School at Middletown, Connecticut. The lecture
was given at the invitation of the Social Study Club, a stu-
dent organization, and was open to the public. Mr. Hum-
phries, who had spent eleven months in Russia, appears, in
the words of Dean Ladd of the School, to have there "formed
the opinion that although, in the first weeks of the Soviet
Government, there were atrocities, the Soviet rule is now
efficient and humane." Among the lantern-slide pictures
shown were pictures of Lenin and Trotzky and the flag of
the Soviet Republic. Mr. Humphries had already given
numerous addresses before churches, forums, city clubs, con-
ventions, and other meetings, and had, or since has, spoken
to college audiences at Vassar, Mt. Holyoke, Amherst, Massa-
chusetts Agricultural College, Smith, Clark, Wellesley, Sim-
mons, Radcliffe, and Harvard.
On December 10 the Middletown Press published a garbled
account of the lecture, based largely upon the report of an
excited woman auditor whose state of mind may be judged
by her own remarks that "one picture almost made me
scream" and "a friend with me held me down." The news-
paper editorial on the subject concluded:
It is time for action. The trustees of the Divinity School
should not hesitate a day to purge the School of the influences
at work. When mental poison is being administered the best
way to check its effects is to deal quickly with those who secretly
inject it into receptive minds. Incidentally it may be recalled
that there is a movement to take the school to some larger
city. Evidently there is a keen desire for a greater opportunity
to spread Bolshevik doctrines. We wonder what the great lead-
ers of the Protestant Episcopal Church think about it all?
July 24, 1920]
The Nation
91
Perhaps they are ignorant of what is going on. If so, the
Press has now enlightened them.
A committee of the Middletown Chamber of Commerce,
appointed to investigate the "Americanism" of the School,
interviewed a number of persons, but for some reason re-
frained from consulting either Dean Ladd or any member
of the faculty. In the meantime sensational newspaper re-
ports about "Bolshevism at Berkeley" continued to appear.
Dean Ladd, in an open letter (unfortunately not published)
to the Chamber of Commerce, denied that bolshevism
or anything un-American was taught at Berkeley, and
vigorously defended the methods of teaching which the
School employed. Professor Rice of Wesleyan University,
respected and beloved wherever the alumni of that Methodist
institution are to be found, wrote to the Middletown Press
strongly deprecating its "violent attack," and declaring that
while he did not hear the lecture, and had no doubt that the
lecturer "expressed opinions which I heartily disapprove,"
nevertheless, "if I was unwilling to hear or read opinions
contrary to my own I should mostly avoid public assemblies,
seldom venture to go to church, and never read the Middle-
town Press."
Following the request of Dean Ladd, a committee of the
trustees was designated by Bishop Brewster to investigate
the charges. The report, only an imperfect version of which
appears to have been published in the metropolitan press,
was delayed until June 14. It is a vicious document which
should give every friend of liberty pause. While acquitting
the Dean and the faculty of approval "of anything of a
violent or revolutionary nature," and finding Dean Ladd's
Americanism "beyond question," the committee are neverthe-
less "satisfied that it would have been much better had the
lecture not been given at Berkeley." Mr. Humphries, it
appeared from the evidence of Y. M. C. A. members "who
know him well," was "a Bolshevik propagandist," and came
to Berkeley "under the auspices of the Intercollegiate
Socialist Society." The lecture, however, was "only a sec-
ondary matter:" "some suspicions against the School" as
"the center of radical socialism" "had prevailed for a con-
siderable period." The committee were not able to learn
that socialism "in a radical or advanced form" was taught
at Berkeley ; but they did discover that Dean Ladd had been
a member of the executive committee of the Intercollegiate
Socialist Society, of the Committee of 48, "a political organi-
zation with socialistic tendencies," and of the Church League
for Industrial Democracy — the latter a society within the
Episcopal Church with fifteen bishops among its members.
The report so mingles charges, exceptions, implications,
and disclaimers as to make it hard to determine whether the
committee think that, on the whole, Dean Ladd and his as-
sociates should be acquitted or condemned. But the mis-
chief has been done. While adroitly covering itself at
numerous points, the hostile bias of the committee is plain.
Freedom of teaching in social matters at the Berkeley Di-
vinity School is for the time being under the ban. The
School has been pilloried before the church and the country
as a place of social heresy, its financial support has been
imperiled, the attendance of students has been jeopardized,
and the Dean and his associates have been branded as
suspicious persons. Once more "Americanism" has been
made the cloak of ignorance and reaction. All that is
needed to complete the folly is for the trustees to dis-
charge Dean Ladd and his colleagues; then, perhaps, we
shall know how liberty fares in the Episcopal Church.
Literature and Politics
IN relation to politics there are two kinds of authors:
those who understand the conflicts of the world far too
well to engage in them actively, and those who understand
nothing, who defend every popular delusion and rush into
turmoil with noisy alacrity. In the first class will be found
the poets and seers — Goethe, the great, calm European;
Shelley, the essential revolutionary; Arnold and Emerson,
who possessed a certain noble shrewdness and sobriety of
vision. And at times a critical mind of the first order, like
Georg Brandes, will enter this class. Allies and Germans
besieged him for his partisanship. His cool and reasoned
answers could be summed up in Heine's famous couplet con-
cerning the Rabbi and the Priest. The smaller poets burn
with the popular ardors of the hour, but, like other people,
they grow mild and rational in time. It is safe to say that
Lissauer will not spend his life singing Hassgesdnge, nor
Regnier his in hurling serments. It is the second class of
writers who, whenever they touch politics, bring literature
into disrepute. They do not sing; they are the purveyors
of yarns, the crafty and prosaic scribes whom the vast and
uninstructed audiences of modern times have raised to a
station far above their humble deserts. They have sensi-
bility without vision and the conviction of leadership with-
out inward power. And hence it is they who become the
vainglorious tools of diplomats and foreign offices, defend-
ing the indefensible, exhibiting throats of leather and fore-
heads of brass.
The latest exhibit in the dangerous second class is Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle. Not that the job of what Hazlitt was
fond of calling a "government tool" is a new one to him.
The great sleuth tracked the Boer mind to its evil lair long
ago. But the turn of world affairs has recently shown up
his type of mind in peculiar starkness. On May 18, 1918,
Sir Arthur in a widely circulated letter declared for the
benefit of innocent Americans : "There are no secret treaties
of any kind in which this country [Great Britain] is con-
cerned. It has been publicly and clearly stated more than
once by our Foreign Minister, and, apart from honor, it
would be political suicide for any British official to make a
false statement of this kind." Well, the secret treaties in
due time were published, and it was then made clear
that the Foreign Minister had lied, and the treaties
were duly written into the super-treaty of Versailles where
they are still busy wrecking the world. So when the tumult
and the shouting died down a bit, Sir Arthur was asked to
admit his unhappy error. His silence was long and sturdy.
Finally he condescended to inform Mr. W. R. Browne, of
Wyoming, New York, that it was not his fault, since he
was no diplomatist and "had no more knowledge of secret
treaties than any other man." Mr. Browne thereupon
asked Sir Arthur to permit the publication of a moderate
statement to the effect that he, being no diplomatist, had
been taken in and had thus unintentionally deluded others.
Sir Arthur's reply is an inimitable document: "With equal
sincerity and frankness may I beg you, after reading your
last letter, to consult some reputable medical man, as I am
convinced that your health is not normal." Unintention-
ally, Sir Arthur has given another illustration of the
methods of British propaganda during the war, and of the
defense of it even now by men who ought to know better.
92
The Nation
[Vol. ill, No. 2873
Christensen's Convention
By ARTHUR WARNER
IT was Christensen's convention from the welter of events
— dramatic, picturesque, amusing, pathetic — that filled
the sessions out of which a new party has just been evolved
in Chicago. This Utah giant emerged through old-fashioned
democratic processes. A convention which had assembled
with its mind made up to choose La Follette as standard
bearer ended by nominating a man not known to a baker's
dozen at the outset who without any trace of self-seeking
had become its acknowledged leader.
From the standpoint of personality, Parley P. Christensen
was the dominating figure in the series of meetings that led
to the creation of the Farmer-Labor Party, just as the essen-
tial fact of policy was the victory of radicalism over bolshe-
vism. Unlike Bryan in 1896 Christensen came to the front
without a dramatic gesture that served to stampede the con-
vention, but by natural selection working as it can when
men revert to that kind of political gathering, almost ex-
tinct in the country, in which the rank and file determine
their own destiny by action from the floor. The convention
of the Committee of Forty-Eight, most of whose members
were unknown to each other, set the ball rolling by electing
Christensen as presiding officer, chiefly, it would seem, be-
cause of his bulk and geniality. Towering more than six
feet in height and with breadth and depth to correspond,
this Westerner instilled the delegates with immediate con-
fidence in him and in themselves. Bland, smooth shaven,
and smiling, he stood before them in a Palm Beach suit a
kind of pillar of cloud by day, and by a subtle telepathy
put himself in contact with the thought of the assembly and
helped to make it articulate, with here a flash of humor and
there a word of common sense. He calmed excited tempers
and resolved intricate situations — careless sometimes of
parliamentary rules, solicitous always to seek out what the
people before him were trying to do and help them do it.
"It's a law of psychology that when a man lets a crowd
heckle him it's hi3 own fault," he told a speaker who was
complaining of interruptions. "Quit telling us about your
ancestors and get to your point." When the Forty-Eighters'
Platform Committee reported that it could not agree with
a similar body from the American Labor Party, but the
delegates nevertheless insisted upon merging, Christensen by
his unerring grasp of situations and his quick decisions
saved the meeting from chaos. A few hours later, at Car-
men's Hall, he saved the United Labor and Forty-Eight Con-
vention from disruption, the two bodies having simply
merged, without any arrangement as to organization or
procedure. The love feast had scarcely begun before jeal-
ousy and controversy broke out. Even under the best condi-
tions a thousand or so persons are too many for a deliber-
ative assembly. Presently half a hundred persons were
shouting, gesticulating, and swarming the aisles, demanding
recognition. J. A. H. Hopkins, who was presiding, lost con-
trol of the situation and turned the gavel over to Max
Hayes, of the labor forces. Hayes failed to quell the tumult
and finally voices began to call for Christensen. He was
hurried to the front platform: he raised his hands, said a
few smiling stentorian words and there was order again.
For the rest of the afternoon he stood between the assem-
blage and uproar. He was arbitrary at times — he admitted
it — but it was in executing the will of the gathering, not in
thwarting it. Tom Mooney's brother had been speaking
from the platform, in favor of a resolution on behalf of the
prisoner. Suddenly Christensen sensed that the meeting,
though sympathetic, had heard enough. "Carried," he
shouted, short-circuiting the usual parliamentary procedure,
and waived the astonished speaker to the floor.
"Is that too much steamroller?" he asked a moment later,
pausing to get the feeling of the meeting before railroading
through some perfunctory business. But in spite of his
demurring good nature and ability, he was not immune
from criticism and at one point halted proceedings for a
word of personal explanation : "Somebody says I am a plute
because I am wearing a Palm Beach suit. I want to say
that I bought this suit five years ago for seven dollars and
fifty cents."
Christensen comes from Salt Lake City, where he has
made a reputation as a lawyer, particularly in criminal
practice and has defended numerous labor men without re-
gard to fee. He was formerly a Republican but went into
the Progressive Party with Roosevelt in 1912. He voted
for Wilson in 1916. According to members of the Utah*
delegation in Chicago, Christensen has for some years con-,
sidered his life and interests so identified with those of the
wcrkingman that he has held aloof from the professional
and commercial organizations of his community, having kept
out even of their social clubs. He is, however, prominent
in fraternal organizations, an Odd Fellow, and an Elk. He
was born in Idaho forty-nine years ago, is a graduate of
Cornell University and unmarried. Christensen came to
the front at Chicago as La Follette receded. The Forty-
Eighters and the Labor Party represented two different
ideas at least so far as the majority in each was concerned.
The first sought political reform; the second, economic re-
construction. "Not more laws but more liberty," demanded
Allen McCurdy in his keynote speech to the Forty-Eighters.
The restoration of civil rights was their chief demand, their
hope was for a leader and their faith was for victory next
November. The Labor Party was not less insistent for the
return of civil liberty, but it could see no hope of securing
it except through attacking the industrial system that has
come to control political action. It distrusted the method
of looking for a leader and formulating a platform to con-
form to his ideas. It proposed to lay down principles and
wait until they produced their own champion. It was less
concerned with the result next November than in building
a party for subsequent years.
These differences appeared in the physical aspects and in
the spiritual atmosphere of the two conventions before they
merged as one. Among the Forty-Eighters one observed
the presence to a striking degree of faces that stamped the
personalities behind them as belonging to that high-minded,
finely conscientious type that formed the ideals of our earlier
America. They had been stung to protest by Palmerism,
Burlesonism, Wilsonism, and other governmental autocrats
of recent years. Their meeting had a religious fervor. The
first session opened with the singing of "The Star-Spangled
July 24, 1920]
The Nation
93
Banner" followed by prayer, yet they seemed to be persons
whose lives had been isolated from the great struggle be-
tween capital and labor which has been the economic back-
ground and the fundamental reason for changed political
conditions in the United States. The Forty-Eighters to a
large extent had the spirit of '76 but not of 1920.
The Labor Party convention, so long as it remained sepa-
rate, had a different character. It did not open with song or
prayer, although it began on Sunday morning while the
Forty-Eighters were adjourned until Monday. It opened
like the business gathering that it undoubtedly was. Here
were hard-handed, hard-headed practical men who had come
to their political and economic ideas through experience.
They were leaders among their own kind and had come to
the front largely because of their fighting or administrative
skill. They were the captains of industry on the side of
labor, men unemotional, unimpressionable. Presently they
were joined by another of the same type, John Fitzpatrick,
head of the Chicago Federation of Labor, and prominent
in the counsels of recent big strikes. His was the
keynote speech. It was halting and uninspiring while he
talked of generalities. Then suddenly he began to speak of
recent labor troubles in which he had had part and the bear
changed into a tiger. He snarled and roared, the perspira-
tion dripped from his face, and one side of his collar caved
in while he pleaded: "Oh, that the workers of the United
States would concentrate their efforts so they could do a
job like Russia."
Such were some of the differences between the two con-
ventions, accentuated by the reiteration (for which out-
siders were largely responsible) that the Committee of
Forty-Eight was there to supply the intellectual leadership
of whatever new party might be possible on the other hand.
There was one single strong force working toward amalga-
mation, the desire for La Follette that was undoubtedly in
the minds of a majority of both the labor delegates and the
Forty-Eighters. This force prevailed, but a wrong psy-
chology had been created in advance of it, one of suspicion
and doubt. When the announcement came that La Follette
did not wish to have his name placed before the convention,
it could not fail to take the spirits out of the amalgamation
movement. Right on top of this, unhappily, came the report
of the platform committee, which threw into stark relief the
gulf in the convention just at the moment when the hope
of a bridge disappeared.
In their actual content there was not enough difference
between the majority and the minority reports to worry
anybody. Had La Follette been willing to run on either
platform, it would have been acceptable to virtually the
entire convention. Gilbert Roe, spokesman for La Follette
at the convention, told the next day why the Wisconsin Sen-
ator had refused to run. In the first place, the platform
committee had reached its decision so late that La Follette
had not been able to see in person, much less to study,
either the majority or minority declarations. But more
important than that, said Mr. Roe, the Senator could not
convince himself that the joint convention represented a
real unity of purpose or a movement that would survive a
single election.
There were assertions made at the convention that
La Follette was for government ownership but not for demo-
cratic control and that he did not want a plank guaranteeing
civil rights to the Negro. These assertions, it became evi-
dent later, were due to a misapprehension of the facts, but
they added to the tension of the convention which, with
La Follette eliminated, resolved into a straight contest be-
tween the liberals and the radicals, using those words in
their common acceptation, the first including those who seek
political reform, and the second those who demand economic
reconstruction. Judged by other contemporary standards,
the radicalism demanded at Chicago was mild. The ma-
jority report on platform asked, among other things, the
recognition of Ireland and Russia, for no conscription mili-
tary or industrial, and no compulsory military training.
It called for public ownership and democratic control of
natural monopolies and the repeal of the Esch-Cummins
Railroad Law. It advocated national and state ov/ned
banks and direct income taxes rather than consumption and
other indirect taxes. It demanded land taxes sufficient so
that property should not be held out of use for speculation.
The minority report was more of a political than an
economic document but it covered most of the same ground,
except the plank for national and state owned banks. The
real trouble with the minority report from the labor stand-
point was not so much its content as its signers and indeed
its mere existence. It was put forward by George L. Record,
Amos Pinchot, and Gilson Gardner, three of the five mem-
bers representing the Committee of Forty-Eight. The ma-
jority report was signed by all five of the Labor members.
Thus a direct issue was raised between labor and the Forty-
Eighters. Robert M. Buck, editor of the New Majority, and
head of the labor members of the platform committee, took
the floor and said that their demands had been whittled
down one after another until "we got to a spot where we
said: 'by God, we won't compromise any longer.' " Actually
the line to which the radicals receded was about the same as
the one to which the liberals were willing to advance, but
such opposition had developed in the skirmish that neither
could see each other for the smoke. The radicals won on
the vote, the minority report going down to defeat 308
to 125.
It would be pleasanter to end the story of the convention
here, but a call was issued that evening for a separate ses-
sion of the Committee of Forty-Eight the next day at the
original headquarters. There is some doubt whether there
was any Committee of Forty-Eight at the time — whether
it had not lost its identity as such by merging with the
convention of the Labor Party. In any event many of the
delegates had gone home before the old convention was re-
sumed the next day. A substantial number were satisfied
with the platform and candidate of the Farmer-Labor Party.
Others were not, but decided to take their medicine and
say nothing. Even at the gathering when it first assembled
in the morning, there was evidence of a considerable senti-
ment in favor of sticking by the Farmer-Labor Party, but
the atmosphere was not congenial for such expression and
one by one most of the delegates of that opinion withdrew.
Late in the afternoon a committee came in, and after re-
calling the original objects of the Committee of Forty-
Eight recommended that "not having fully accomplished
this purpose" the Committee should continue its organiza-
tion and the national executive committee should have
power to call another convention should it seem desirable.
This resolution was carried by viva voce vote without op-
portunity for amendment or debate — although not without
protest — and the meeting adjourned.
94
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2873
The British Labor Party Conference
By J. RAMSAY MACDONALD
London, July 7
IN every way the greatest conference ever held by the
British Labor Party has just finished its sittings at the
somewhat fashionable watering place of Scarborough.
There were something like 1,200 delegates present, about
one-fourth of whom came from the local parties and the
remainder from the trade unions and Socialist societies.
The former group contained a large element of new people,
and it was interesting to hear the tones of the English pub-
lic school and university following in debate the burr of
the Northern miner or the Doric of the Clyde worker.
Modestly, in the midst of a row of working-class delegates,
sat one of our titled folks bearing a name that was brought
over by the Conqueror. There, massed in front of us who
were on the platform, was the proof positive that the Labor
Party is no longer a class affair, but has appealed with
success to the intelligence of all classes.
The varied teams pulled well together. Before the meet-
ing, some of our newspapers brought out their annual stunt
that Scarborough was to see devastating disagreement.
Scarborough displayed energetic unity and evangelical har-
mony. It settled once and for all that the Labor Party is
a great national political movement with principles and a
policy which justify its claim to be considered as a govern-
ing party. War divisions have gone absolutely. The war
Right has moved over to the Left, which finds its ideas and
proposals becoming the unanimous finding of the whole
party. The men who stood solitary in these conferences
four years ago led easily in Scarborough. Not only did they
enjoy a monopoly of personal tributes (not a new thing),
their lead was accepted and by great majorities they had
their way. Cotton remains somewhat conservative, but
the miners and the railway workers are a solid Left block.
The new formidable combination of unskilled labor still
lacks good leadership and is in the hands of men who were
swamped by the war, have become very respectable, and so
may remain swamped. The great bulk of the local party
representation is Left. One small section of the Socialists —
the British Social Party — represents Moscow, but the great
overmastering section — the Independent Labor Party —
repudiates both Moscow and Geneva and occupies common
ground with the French Socialist Party and the German
Independents. In some Labor Party hearts there is still
something like jealous enmity against this powerful polit-
ical Socialist party, but that enmity cannot lift its head at
these conferences now. That Denikin kind of counter-
revolution within the Labor Party is now scotched and will
soon be forgotten. It is important that American readers
should understand where the center of gravity of tho Labor
Party is, and Scarborough left that matter in no doubt.
Another important question is: "What is the party's po-
sition in the international movement?" This question in-
cludes : "By what method does the party propose to gain its
ends?" At present the party is affiliated to the Second
International and two resolutions were debated proposing
a change. One was that the party should join the Third,
and the other that it should simply break its connection
with the Second. Both were defeated, the first by 2,940,000
to 225,000, the other by 1,010,000 to 516,000. The meaning
of this is that the Labor Party definitely declares that it
will neither aid nor abet revolution by violence, nor does it
enter into its head to seize power except by democratic
means. The Russian social revolution is not the only way
by which Socialism can come; the Soviet is not the only
way by which the proletariat can rule. The British Labor
Party at Scarborough put itself at the head of the demo-
cratic Socialist movement. It was as determined as any
Third International group, that Allied hostility to Russia
should cease and that Russia should not be hampered by
outside interference in choosing its political and social
forms of government, but at the same time it set itself up
quite definitely as the exponent and champion of a method
of Socialist advance in sharp conflict to that advocated from
Moscow.
But while it took up this attitude it remained realist.
It is not to create an imaginary world from bricks of logic.
There it was faced by a Government that is as independent
of public opinion as King Charles I, a Government that gets
an overwhelming majority upon issues that were always
humbug and are now confessedly so, a Government that uses*
that majority to make wars and embark upon policies irre-
spective of the national will, a Government whose conception
of democratic control is that, from the moment that election
results are declared until the Parliament is prorogued, ma-
jorities are absolute and unrepresentative. We are in a
worse fix than even that, for we have ministers whose words
are but wind and upon whose statements no reliance can be
placed. Is a constitutional party, a party that believes in
organic transformation, deprived, by reason of its princi-
ples, of every swiftly acting weapon which it might use to
curb the autocratic power of such a government and counter-
act the work it does in violation of parliamentary methods ?
The Labor Party says : "No," but in saying "No," it makes
it clear that this action — as when the dockers refused to
load the "Jolly George" with munitions for Poland — is ex-
ceptional and can be justified only when taken against those
underhand policies inaugurated by self-will and by a wanton
disregard of the responsibility of ministers to a sovereign
people. The mere schoolman will, I know, make havoc with
this departure on the part of the Labor Party from strict
parliamentary methods and with this . engrafting of revo-
lutionary action upon parliamentary stems. But the Labor
Party has political practical sense for its justification and
that is all that it cares about. In the development of policy,
time is everything. The Labor Party may protest in Parlia-
ment, but if the Government is allowed to commit the na-
tion, the leaf follows the bud, the flower the leaf, and the
fruit the flower, and no man can stay the evolving process.
The Labor Party must stay the hand of the sower of the
tares, and to do that it is willing to support "direct action"
if everything else fails. But, varying the simile, this is a
medicine for an ailing body, not a food for a healthy one.
When considering this problem, the Scarborough Con-
ference was met with a difficulty of a temporary, it is to
be hoped, but a troublesome nature. Its parliamentary
representatives as a team are conspicuously inadequate. The
July 24, 1920]
The Nation
95
almost complete failure of Mr. Asquith since his return to
Parliament has alone prevented the total eclipse of the
Labor Opposition. In an article already published in The
Nation, I explained the unfortunate attitude of the cotton
operatives in filling in a candidate for the Nelson bye-elec-
tion. The selection has since been made and a candidate
was chosen so ill adapted for the position that during the
contest he failed completely to rouse any interest and his
election meetings were a series of dead failures. This is
the secret of the weakness of Labor in Parliament. The
Conference was greatly disturbed by this, but it could not
censure its parliamentary representatives without damag-
ing the movement and the press was there for spicy tit-
bits. It resolved, however, by 1,813,000 votes to 832,000
that "the time had arrived for developing a greater efficiency
on the part of the Parliamentary Labor Party" and re-
quested "bodies affiliated to the party to make such arrange-
ments as will permit their parliamentary representatives
to give continuous attention to their duties in the House
of Commons." The academic advocates of industrial Parlia-
ments would do well to study the experiences of the British
Labor Party. The recommendatory ending of this resolu-
tion does not touch the real point, though, if carried out,
it would bring a minor improvement.
Unsatisfactory as the parliamentary party may be in
breadth of vision and in resource, the Conference itself
was lacking in neither. No matter what was the subject
under discussion there were delegates present who were
masters of it and whose contributions to the debates kept
the discussions on an admirably high level. Men who had
been in Russia, in Hungary, in Poland, in Germany spoke
on the international resolutions ; men who had been in India,
in Egypt, in the Dominions, spoke on the imperial ones;
men who were leaders of trade unions, chairmen of munici-
pal bodies, responsible for administration, spoke on indus-
trial and domestic ones. No other British political party
could have brought under one chairmanship such a body of
delegates. From the opening on Tuesday morning till the
closing late on Friday afternoon, I sat looking upon a
crowded and an intent hall and listening to debates kept
upon the highest possible level of importance and to speeches
rich in their matter and accomplished in their delivery.
Applause was given generously to what was nothing but
sentiment; votes were given rigidly to what was nothing
but common sense. There was no narrow class interest
displayed; the subjects were related to world affairs and
were in proportion to their importance ; a unity of idea ran
throughout.
The Scarborough program was a Labor manifesto to the
nation and the world. In the forefront were International
concerns — the revision of the Peace Treaty so as to settle
the conflicts of Europe and put the nations on their feet
again ; the recognition of the Russian Government ; the end-
ing of all intrigues directed against foreign states and of
interference in their affairs by military missions; the de-
nunciation of all secret agreements; economic arrange-
ments to deal with the famine in Central Europe; the re-
construction of the League of Nations. It resolved to send
a deputation to the Prime Minister to bring before him the
results of the investigation which the party's representa-
tives have made in Hungary, Russia, and Finland. In the
affairs of Empire, it pinned its faith to self-determination
as a fundamental, though not absolute, principle and ac-
cepted as a rule of statesmanship that governments, whether
in India, Egypt, or Ireland, should have national assent. It
condemned the Amritsar shootings, but insisted that the
civil authorities were responsible, that the military crimi-
nals should not be made the scapegoats to carry the sins of
others, and that the Viceroy should be recalled.
On domestic matters it made declarations on several minor
matters important here but of no interest abroad, but it re-
affirmed its belief that the continued existence of an enor-
mous debt was a menace to national placidity and a means
of grievous oppression and that the debt could be dealt with
only by the conscription of wealth. It stood by nationaliza-
tion of industries and services like mines, railways, canals,
and electric power, but it rejected the nationalization of the
liquor traffic. Curiously enough, the body which brought
about this defeat was the Socialist Independent Labor Party.
We are no dogmatists here, and whatever may guide us it is
not the mental servility of verbal consistency. A battle
royal raged round this question, the Independent Labor
Party speakers dealing the decisive blows, and prohibition
was rejected by 2,603,000 votes to 472,000, public control
by 1,672,000 to 1,352,000, while the Independent Labor
Party resolution in favor of an extended form of local op-
tion was carried by 2,003,000 to 623,000. On housing the
Conference called for the resignation of Dr. Addison, the
Minister of Health, state loans for building, the control of
building material, and the encouragement of direct labor, to-
gether with an increased hygienic standard of houses. One
of the greatest difficulties which face housing projects was
pointed out by a Glasgow delegate who produced official
figures showing that on a typical working-class house built
before the war the interest on capital was £8 per annum,
whereas the same house built now would have to bear £60
for interest.
Sanity and courage, practical capacity and well-defined
principle ruled the Conference. Its voice was the voice of
constitutionalism and organic change speaking in the midst
of revolutionary conditions. From beginning to end it was
the deliberations of men who are largely responsible for
municipal government and who are ready at a moment's
notice to take over the control of national affairs.
Epi
ngrams
By CLARA SHANAFELT
It is easy for you, daffodil,
For you, young cherry with your polished stem ;
In me was not set so clear a sense
Of my identity.
Leaning over the curb
With a gesture of supreme grace,
And of supreme indifference,
An ash tree remembers the forest.
By EDA LOU WALTON
Your mind
Is not the clear spring
I thought it,
And though its waters
Are blown clean again
By hill-winds,
I am ashamed
Of my reflection.
96
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2873
The Bolivian Revolution and Tacna- Arica
By LATINUS
THE war that Chile fought from 1879 to 1883 against
the Peru-Bolivian alliance was ended with respect to
Peru by the Treaty of Ancon, and with respect to Bolivia
by a truce converted into a peace treaty in 1904, but the dis-
pute with regard to the Pacific seacoast persists. It still
threatens wars and causes revolutions. Peru is now appeal-
ing to the League of Nations for its settlement, while Chile
stands pat upon the Treaty of Ancon and her present posses-
sion, and Bolivia is thrown into revolution by the struggle
between the pro-Peruvians and the pro-Chileans.
According to the Treaty of Ancon, Chile waived all pe-
cuniary indemnity and obtained from Peru the perpetual
and unconditional surrender of the province of Tarapaca,
where the Chileans had had valuable industrial interests for
many years. She also obtained temporary control of Tacna and
Arica, small provinces of no great value, which were to re-
main in the power of Chile for a period of ten years, at the
end of which time a plebiscite was to decide whether the
territory was to remain under Chilean control or be returned
to Peru, the successful nation paying the sum of ten million
"silver pesos" or Peruvian "soles" to the loser of the
plebiscite. In order to effect the plebiscite, the treaty stipu-
lated that in a separate protocol the parties should decide
upon the procedure to be followed; that is to say, an agree-
ment should be reached regarding who should vote, how they
should vote, and under what circumstances.
From this it will be clearly seen that the plebiscite could
take place only after the two nations, in common accord, had
fixed the conditions. During the intervening years Chile
hoped to be able to Chileanize the territory so that the
plebiscite would result in her favor. At any rate it must be
considered a diplomatic blunder and a serious misunder-
standing on the part of the negotiators, not to have deter-
mined at the time the basis for the plebiscite nor provided
for the provinces affected in case no satisfactory conditions
for the plebiscite should be arranged.
The treaty as formulated favored Chile because it left her
the recourse of legitimately maintaining Chilean control over
Tacna and Arica so long as an agreement was not reached
for holding the plebiscite. When the period of ten years was
nearing a close, both governments began diplomatic negotia-
tions for drawing up the additional protocol but never ar-
rived at a satisfactory conclusion. While Peru demanded
that only the natives should be allowed to vote, Chile was of
the opinion that the voting privilege should be extended to
the natives, the Chileans, and the foreigners, with certain
common restrictions as to residence and civil rights.
Many and varied diplomatic negotiations were carried on
at one time or another for twenty years. The governments
went as far as signing a tentative agreement known as the
"Billinghurst-Latorre" agreement which came to naught in
the Chilean Parliament. They also tried to make some ar-
rangements for compensation and determination of the
boundary line upon the basis of dividing the disputed terri-
tory instead of effecting the plebiscite. Chile has offered Peru
commercial advantages and in addition the construction
of a railway from Santiago to Lima, with other minor com-
pensations. She also had the idea of purchasing the prov-
inces outright and doubling the amount of the indemnity.
All these negotiations have failed, sometimes because Peru
had no hope of the plebiscite resulting in her favor and at
others for the reason that Chile had not satisfied all the
Peruvian aspirations. On both sides there has been an
ardent desire to acquire the provinces, Chile, however, being
more interested as her original intention had been to con-
quer them and insure her national territory against future
aggression. On the other hand, Peru has staked her pride
on their recovery and that ambition serves as an axis for
her domestic and foreign policy. The Peruvian officials,
like Billinghurst, who have shown their willingness to
negotiate with Chile, have been the target of the revolution-
ary action of the opposing party. The people of Chile be-
lieve that these provinces must be definitely annexed to the
country, or at least that their northern frontier must be
secured.
The Chilean-Peruvian diplomatic relations received a seri-
ous jolt in 1909, because of an unpleasant incident brought
about by Peru's refusal to accept from the Chilean Minister,
Mr. Echenique, a wreath the government of Chile wished
to place on a monument erected to the heroes of the war
of 1879. The breach was widened when the counter propo-
sitions of the Peruvian government frustrated the efforts
of the last Charge d' Affaires of Chile in Peru, Mr. Perez
Canto, and later, of the Chilean Minister of Foreign Rela-
tions, Mr. Edwards, who tried to make their plan for settle-
ment acceptable, and the rupture in relations occurred in
1910. The immediate cause of the break was the expulsion
from Tacna and -Arica of some Peruvian priests who had
assumed a hostile attitude toward Chile and the Chilean laws.
One of the recent proposals rejected by Chile was that of the
Peruvian President Billinghurst to postpone the plebiscite
for twenty-one years, a period that Chile considered ex-
aggerated and one that delayed the solution of the problem
more than was expedient.
The situation created by this severance of relations has
subsisted to this day, with evident detriment to both coun-
tries. Now Peru desires to have the matter adjusted by the
League of Nations while Chile stands firm by her decision
to comply with the Treaty of Ancon, which is to have the
plebiscite take place. A new phase of the question has come
up with the determination of Bolivia to interpose a kind of
third claim upon Tacna and Arica and with the prevailing
idea among various leading Chileans that Bolivia should ac-
quire an outlet to the sea through these territories.
By the peace treaty of 1904, Bolivia definitely ceded in
favor of Chile all her rights to the coast province of Anto-
fagasta, which for many years before the war had been a
bone of contention between the two nations until Chile
withdrew her claims by the treaties of 1866 and 1874. This
was done in exchange for permanent guaranties for the
Chilean industrials who exploited the saltpeter in Anto-
fagasta in the same way that the Americans work their oil
interests in Tampico, Mexico. When Bolivia ignored these
treaties and placed new restrictions upon the Chilean
workers, going so far as to confiscate the property of the
Compania de Salitres of Antofagasta, Chile declared the
pacts void and renewed her territorial claims to that region.
The war which followed and which Peru entered only
July 24, 1920]
The Nation
97
because she was allied with Bolivia by the secret treaty of
1873, ended with unconditional surrender by Bolivia and
the recognition of the right of Chile to rule over Anto-
fagasta. Thus Bolivia lost her coast.
In 1895 two peace treaties between Chile and Bolivia
were signed, which were not ratified, however, but by which
Chile gave Bolivia the assurance that she would give her a
port in Arica should the plebiscite result in her favor.
Chile has at different times expressed her willingness to
grant Bolivia some maritime facilities. The truce treaty
with Bolivia was extended until 1904, when the final peace
treaty was signed and ratified. The transfer of Antofagasta
was confirmed and, in exchange, Chile agreed to construct a
railroad for Bolivia, connecting La Paz, the Bolivian capital,
with the port of Arica, to grant her free customs house
privileges, similar to those enjoyed in the ports of Anto-
fagasta and Mejillones. Chile built the railroad within
the time stipulated and it is the shortest route of communi-
cation Bolivia has to the sea. Peru protested against this
covenant, contending that Chile had no right to exercise acts
of authority in the territory of Arica.
The question of Tacna and Arica has passed through a
crisis during the last fifteen months, because of Peru's de-
termination to regain the territory through Allied media-
tion, without recognizing the Treaty of Ancon with its
plebiscite. Things became so tense that it was feared a new
war would break out in that part of the American continent.
Chile has continued to uphold the validity of the Treaty of
Ancon, and Peru to demand arbitration through the League
of Nations. Chile says the way to settle the question is
either by plebiscite or a direct adjustment between Peru
and Chile, and has refused to accept mediation by any other
Power or Powers. Never during the whole controversy has
there been a more deep-rooted discord than from 1915
to this date. Since Peru broke diplomatic relations with
Germany while Chile remained neutral, the neutrality of
Chile was presented by propagandists as a demonstration
of Chile's Prussian sympathies and from that moment Tacna
and Arica became the Alsace-Lorraine of South America.
Meanwhile, Bolivia launched a vigorous policy to acquire
the port of Arica for herself, by promising compensation to
Chile and Peru if they gave up their claims in her favor.
Peru categorically refused to recognize the Bolivian pre-
tensions, maintaining besides that Chile could not enter into
any negotiations with Bolivia, as the territory of Tacna and
Arica was Peruvian. In Chile the current was favorable
toward Bolivia, while the hostility in Bolivia toward Peru
was increased by a note sent to Bolivia by the Peruvian Gov-
ernment, in which Bolivia was warned that Peru could not
accept her aspirations in Arica.
The latest chapter in this involved story of claims and
counter-claims is the revolution in Bolivia which has ousted
Gutierrez Guerra from the presidency, and brought Bautista
Savedra into leadership. Gutierrez Guerra was largely re-
sponsible for the pro-Chilean policy pursued by the Bolivian
Government in recent years, and Savedra belongs to a party
which has long maintained that Bolivia should receive from
Chile, not a port which Chile took from Peru but a port in
Antofagasta, which Chile took from Bolivia. The revolu-
tion, if permanent, means a realignment of the republics,
Bolivia allying herself with Peru in the demand for media-
tion by the League of Nations. Peru holds that the dispute
is "a circumstance affecting international relations which
threatens to disturb international peace" and so a proper
concern of the League of Nations by virtue of Article XI.
It is unlikely that the government of Chile will materially
change its position because of any shift in Bolivian policy.
Chile insists that the Treaty of Ancon must be fulfilled, and
that she is ready to carry out the plebiscite under fair
terms. She feels confident that the present outcome of such
a plebiscite would favor her claim. Moreover, she holds not
only Antofagasta, taken from Bolivia forty years ago, but
Tacna and Arica as well; and she has recently purchased a
battle cruiser, three destroyers, an auxiliary vessel, four
coast guard cutters, and a quantity of munitions from the
British Government, and in any question of control of sea-
ports, these ships are sure to be powerful arguments.
So there is little in the present temper of the three gov-
ernments concerned to indicate an early solution of the
question. Bolivia is not likely to have her outlet to the sea
until there is more neighborly goodwill among the west
coast republics.
On Hamlet and Hamlets
By ARTHUR SYMONS
I HAVE seen many Hamlets. I have seen romantic, tragic,
passionate, morbid, enigmatical, over-subtle and over-
exceptional Hamlets, the very bells on the cap of "Fortune's
fool." And as almost every actor has acted this part, every
one of them gives a different interpretation : that is to say,
from the time of Shakespeare to our own age. One knows
that Shakespeare, besides other of the dramatists, acted at
least one part, which seems to have surprised his audience:
the Ghost in "Hamlet." And as Shakespeare put more of his
inner self into Hamlet's mouth than into the mouth of any
of his other characters, it is not to be forgotten that perhaps
the most wonderful prose in our language is spoken by
Hamlet in that famous scene with the Players. Take, for
instance, this speech : "I have of late — but wherefore I know
not — lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercise; and
indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this
goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory,
that most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
over-hanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with
golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul
and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work
is a man ! How noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in
form and moving how express and admirable : in action how
like an angel ! in appearance how like a god ! The beauty of
the world ! the paragon of animals ! And yet to me, what is
this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me: no, nor
woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so."
If any prose is immortal, this is; and creative also, and
imaginative, and lyrical: it has vision, and it has the sense
of the immense contrast between "this majestical roof" and
"this quintessence of dust" to which we are all reduced at
the end.
I have always felt that a play of Shakespeare, seen on the
stage, should give one the impression of assisting at "a
solemn music." The rhythm of Shakespeare's art is not
fundamentally different from that of Beethoven, and
"Romeo and Juliet" is a suite, "Hamlet" a symphony. To
act either of these plays with whatever qualities of an-
other kind, and to fail in producing this musical rhythm
from beginning to end, is to fail in the very foundation.
98
The Nation
[Vol 111, No. 2873
It has been said that Shakespeare will sacrifice his drama
to his poetry, and even Hamlet has been quoted against
him. But let Hamlet be rightly acted, and whatever has
seemed mere meditation will be realized as a part of that
thought which makes or waits on action. The outlines of
the tragedy are crude, irresistible melodrama, still irre-
sistible to the gallery ; and the greatness of the play, though
it comes to us by means of its poetry, comes to us legiti-
mately as a growth out of melodrama.
I have often asked myself this question, when I have sat
in the stalls watching a play, and having to write about it:
is the success of this piece due to the playwright's skill or
to the skill of the actors? Nor is any question more difficult
to answer than this; which Lamb certainly does his best to
answer in one of his underlined sentences, in regard to the
actor. "He must be thinking all the while of his appearance,
because he knows that all the while the spectators are judg-
ing of it." And again when he says: "In fact, the things
aimed at in theatrical representations are to arrest the
spectator's eye upon the form and the gesture, and to give a
more favorable hearing to what is spoken: it is not what
the character is, but how he looks; not what he says, but
how he speaks it." Was anything more fundamentally true
ever said on what the actor ought to do? Lamb answered
it again, in his instinctive fashion of aiming his arrow
straight at the mark, when he said of a performance of
Shakespeare in which there were two great actors, that "it
seemed to embody and realize conceptions which had hitherto
assumed no distinct shape," but that "when the novelty is
past, we find to our cost that instead of realizing an idea,
we have only materialized and brought down a fine vision
to the standard of flesh and blood."
Every artist who has the sense of the sublime knows that
the pure genius is essentially silent, and that his revelation
has in it more of vision than of reality. For when he
deigns to appear, he is constrained, under penalty of extinc-
tion, to lessen himself so as to pass into the Inaccessible.
He creates; if he fails in creation, he is of necessity con-
demned to the utter darkness. He is the ordinator of chaos :
he calls and disposes of the blind elements ; and when we are
uplifted in our admiration before some sublime work, it is
not that he creates an idea in us : it is that, under the divine
influence of the man of genius, this idea, which was in us,
obscure to itself, is reawakened.
I am confronted now with Villiers de l'lsle Adam in his
conjectures in regard to certain questions — never yet settled
— in "Hamlet." A modern man of taste might ask what
Shakespeare would have answered if the actor who played
Hamlet's part were to interrogate the Specter "escaped from
hideous Night" as to whether he had seen God's face,
whether he wanted to be concerned with, not the eternal
mysteries, but with what he had seen in hell and what he
hated seeing on earth; and, if he had come only to utter
absurdities, really, why need he have died at all?
The Ghost, by the mere fact of being there, seems, at first
sight, an absurdity; but if he has really seen God and the
Absolute and if he has entered into them — which is impossi-
ble^— the sublimity of his words might seem to be superflu-
ous ; and yet the incoherences that he utters are all the more
terrifying because of their incomprehensibility. "The secret
of the Absolute cannot be expressed with syntax, and there-
fore one cannot ask the ghost to produce more than an im-
pression." The Specter, for Shakespeare, is not a human
being: he is obsession. Had he wanted Hamlet really to
perceive the ghost and had he thought this dramatic effect
ought to seize on the imagination of the audience, it was
because he was certain that every one of them, in the ghost
perceived by Hamlet, would see the familiar ghost that
actually haunts himself.
Hamlet's soliloquy "To be or not to be" is a magnificent
disavowal — on the part of Shakespeare. And if one excuses
the contradiction by supposing that Hamlet tried to deliver
himself from the obsession, to doubt, one can only reply that
he never doubts the Ghost itself, but the nature of this
ghost; for he says at the end of the second act:
The spirit I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps,
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
(As he is very potent with such spirits),
Abuses me to damn me.
Therefore if we compare the motive and the spirit of those
sickly phrases with those of the soliloquy, we shall realize
that this has no relation whatsoever with the superstitious
character of Hamlet; even more so, because every single
word of them is in fragrant contradiction with the entire
drama.
I have no intention of discussing either Mr. Martin
Hervey's representation of Hamlet or the somber and sin-
ister Hamlet acted by Josef Keinz in Berlin; or the per-
formance of Tree, or of Forbes-Robertson; or of anyone's,
with the exception of that given by Edward Sothern. He is
by no means the only Hamlet, for there are always — to quote
Browning — "points in Hamlet's soul unseized by the Ger-
mans yet." Sothern had depth in his acting; and there was
nothing fantastic in his grave, subdued, powerful, and pite-
ous representation, in which no symbol, no figment of a Ger-
man brain, no metaphysical Faust, loomed before us, but a
man more to be pitied and not less to be honored than any
man in Elsinore. Yet when one considers what Hamlet
actually was — and there is no getting at the depths of his
mystery — one finds, for one thing, a man too intensely rest-
less to make up his mind on any question of thought, of
conduct, and that he does for the most part the opposite of
what he says. The pretense of madness is an almost trans-
parent pretense, and used often for a mere effect of mali-
cious wit, in the confusion of fools, or at the prompting of
mere nerves. To me Hamlet seems to be cursed with the
veritable genius of inaction. Always he is alone, even when
he is in a crowd ; he is the most sensitive of all Shakespeare's
creations ; his nerves are jarred, when knaves would play on
him as one plays on an instrument; his blood is feverish,
infected with the dark melancholy that haunts him. Does
he love Ophelia? I see in him no passion for loving: to him
passion is an abstract thing. In any case, irresolution is
baneful to him ; irresolution that loses so many chances, for
which no one forgives himself. This Swinburne denies, sup-
posing that the signal characteristic of Hamlet's inmost
nature "is by no means irresolution or hesitation or any
form of weakness, but rather the strong conflux of contend--
ing forces"; adding, what is certainly true, that the com-
pulsory expedition of Hamlet to England and his hot-headed
daring prove to us his almost unscrupulous resolution in
time of practical need. Only, when all Hamlet's plans of
revenge have been executed, with the one exception of his
unnecessary death, before he utters his last immortal words
"The rest is silence," the thought of death to him is as if a
veil had been withdrawn for an instant, the veil which ren-
ders life possible, and, for that instant, he has seen.
July 24, 1920]
The Nation
99
Importing the White Terror
By EUGENE S. BAGGER
IN these restricted days of near-peace, when our Depart-
ment of State insists on a close scrutiny of the records
and motives of aliens desiring to enter this country, the
presence in our midst of Mr. Charles Huszar, late Premier
of Hungary, is apt to elicit curiosity. Officially, Hungary is
still at war with this country; and as landing permits are
granted even to Allied citizens only in what to State Depart-
ment wisdom appears as "meritorious emergency" the ques-
tion arises what, in the case of Mr. Huszar, are the dis-
tinctive features of personality and purpose which have in-
duced our government to extend to a leader of a technically
enemy nation a privilege withheld, among others, from that
distinguished Frenchman, M. Jean Longuet or more recently
from Mr. Huszar's own countryman, Dr. Oscar Jaszi, the
Hungarian scholar and pro-ally statesman.*
This curiosity is all the more justified as Mr. Huszar's ap-
pearance coincides with the authentic revelation of unspeak-
able atrocities perpetrated with the connivance — to put it
mildly — of the government of which Mr. Huszar is unofficial
ambassador. The publication of the Wedgwood report on
the White Terror in Hungary has filled Europe with horror
and amazement. In the parliaments of Britain, Italy, Hol-
land, and Sweden; in the press of every European country
the present Hungarian regime is denounced as the most
brutal tyranny in existence. To combat this tyranny the
peoples of Europe, as distinguished from their governments,
have united in a novel departure. Since June 20 the first
international labor boycott in history has been in force
against Hungary- Possibly the State Department is un-
aware of this. Possibly the State Department would not
care even if it knew. But at least the State Department
ought to know that the present Hungarian regime is entirely
dominated by the pro-Hapsburg pro-Hohenzollern militarist
element; that it maintains a live connection with Ludendorff,
Liittwitz, and the former Kapp outfit in Germany; that it
plans a new war against America's late allies, Czecho-
slovakia, Serbia, and Rumania. These things are known to
every intelligent reader of European newspapers. Mr.
Huszar is the emissary of this regime. Who is he, and
what does he propose to do in the United States?
Before the war Mr. Charles Huszar was a rather insig-
nificant member of the Hungarian diet, adherent of the
Catholic People's Party, a group of extreme jingo clericals
much in favor with Vienna court circles. This party was
among the enthusiastic supporters of the attack on Serbia
and the war policy of the Central Powers in general. Else-
where in this issue we print a document shedding light on
a phase of Mr. Huszar's wartime career. It reveals his
* This case is illuminating. During the war Professor Jaszi was the leader
of the anti-German, anti-militarist party in Hungary. His attitude was
analogous to that of a Hermann Fernau or Dr. Grehling, except that, unlike
the German pacifists, he stayed at home and fought his Government on the
spot. For two decades prior to the war he had been the champion, against
overwhelming odds, of the rights of oppressed nationalities in the old Hun-
gary. He struggled for the Wilsonian principles before Mr. Wilson ever
dreamed of them. He is not a Bolshevik ; not even a Socialist, but a bour-
geois radical. He was a member of Count Karolyi's Government which, in
October, 1918, overthrew the Hapsburg monarchy. When Communism came,
Jaszi left Hungary and has lived in Vienna since. Not long ago he applied
for admission to the United States, stating literary and scientific study as the
purpose of his visit. He was turned down by the Vienna representative of
the State Department on the ground that literary and scientific study did not
constitute a "meritorious emergency," or words to that effect. Thus Dr.
Jaszi, the enemy of the Hapsburgs and friend of the Allies, is excluded. Mr.
Huszar, the friend of the Hapsburgs and enemy of the Allies, is admitted.
An official explanation might be instructive.
share in the massacre of a number of Rumanian non-com-
batants in the Transylvanian town of Brasov. Journalist
by profession, during the Bela Kun regime Mr. Huszar
drew from the Communist government the standard salary
of newspapermen, 2,000 kronen a month. Suspected of
counter-revolutionary tendencies, he was arrested and con-
fined for a few weeks, his family continuing to draw his
salary. In August, 1919, after the overthrow of com-
munism, he was appointed Minister of Education in the
Friedrich cabinet which the Allies, thanks to the interven-
tion of Mr. Hoover, refused to recognize because of its
avowed championship of Hapsburg restoration.
In November, 1919, after the Rumanian evacuation of
Budapest, Mr. Huszar assumed the premiership in the con-
centration cabinet formed under the auspices of the Allied
representative, Sir George Clerk. Mr. Huszar obtained
recognition by the Supreme Council on the strength of cer-
tain pledges, the most important of which referred to the
inclusion of two representatives of the Social Democrats,
and to the holding of free and impartial elections. Pres-
ently these pledges were violated. The Socialist members,
whose tameness is vouchsafed by the fact of Sir George
Clerk's patronage, were literally bullied out of the cabinet.
The elections were conducted under a terrorism unparalleled
even in Hungarian political history. Leaders of Socialists,
trade unionists, even of moderate liberals were bludgeoned,
imprisoned, or driven out of the country; the rank and file
was terrorized into refraining from the ballot. On the eve of
the elections Mr. Huszar's government issued the infamous
decree providing for the internment, in the Hajmasker camp
at the discretion of the Administration, of all persons sus-
pected of "being out of sympathy with the purposes of the
Government." All the while the "unofficial" terror of the
officers' detachments raged. Hundreds were murdered or
tortctred to death for no other reason than being Jews,
Socialists, or trade unionists. In the issue of The Nation
of April 3 a document was published relating to the massacre
of 200 prisoners at Kecskemet. Reports of this horror, as
well as of others, were submitted to Mr. Huszar, yet no
action of any kind was taken beyond the issuance of oc-
casional denials. When, in the middle of February, the
Socialist editor Somogyi was murdered at Budapest, even
Mr. Huszar's conscience revolted. He threatened his
resignation unless the assassins — every newsboy knew their
names — were arrested within twenty-four hours. They were
not arrested. Mr. Huszar did not resign. He quit office
several weeks later and for reasons unconnected with the
case. Such, in brief, is Mr. Huszar's record in Hungarian
public life. Now a remark or two as to his errand.
Mr. Huszar disclaims any political mission whatsoever.
He says he represents the Hungarian Red Cross, here with
the sole purpose of arranging for the repatriation of Hun-
garian prisoners of war in Siberia. As a matter of fact,
however, these arrangements were made some time ago.
Repatriation is in progress; some of the prisoners have
actually arrived at home ; others are on the way ; about five
thousand await embarkation. Ships have been provided
through the American Red Cross, which organization has
also underwritten the expenses. A drive to raise these ex-
100
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2873
penses by popular subscription is on foot both in Hungary
and among Hungarians in the United States.
In Hungary the repatriation campaign is conducted under
the auspices of the Minister of War and the so-called
"M. 0. V. E.," the Hungarian National Defense Union. This
is the political organization of the terrorist officers. Besides
repatriating prisoners of war, it is engaged in preaching
anti-Semitism, organizing pogroms, terrorizing members of
the National Assembly, as well as private citizens, conduct-
ing a royalist propaganda, and fostering irredentism in
Slovakia, Jugoslavia, and Transylvania. Under the latter
heading is included, apparently, the hiring of assassins to
murder officials of the neighbor states, as shown by an
affidavit published in the International Relations Section of
The Nation of July 10. Among American Hungarians the
drive to raise funds for repatriation is in charge of men who
are wholly in sympathy with the present Hungarian regime.
An effort is being made to organize American Hungarians
on the basis of "Christian concentration," the polite name
for anti-Semitic jingo rowdyism. Irredentism, the doctrine
of restoring the old Hungary by means of a new war, if
necessary, is being preached to the Hungarian-American
masses. Immediately after his arrival Mr. Huszar was in
contact with the leaders of this movement. To date the
Hungarian-American fund for repatriation of war prisoners
amounts to $92,655. As arrangements of a technical or
diplomatic nature concerning the Siberian prisoners have
already been completed, it may be assumed that the only
possible connection Mr. Huszar could have with this cam-
paign is to handle its financial end.
Now, however praiseworthy the purpose of repatriating
the long-suffering Siberian prisoners may be, the Hun-
garian government should not require the hard-earned dol-
lars of the Hungarian workers of America. It has plenty of
money to maintain an army far in excess of the country's
needs — an army that can only be and is actually an instru-
ment of terrorism and aggression. The Hungarian govern-
ment has plenty of money, as revealed in the Vienna press,
to buy in Austria huge quantities of arms and ammunition,
to appropriate ten million kronen for pro-Hapsburg propa-
ganda in Austria, and for the maintenance of a legion of
Austrian monarchist ex-officers in an armed camp at Zalae-
gerszeg, near the Austrian border, the formal and emphatic
protest of the government of the Austrian republic notwith-
standing.
What are the guaranties that funds raised among Hun-
garian-Americans for prisoner repatriation will not be ap-
plied to military preparations against America's former
allies, or for propaganda aiming at Hapsburg restoration?
Surely the person of Mr. Huszar, arch-terrorist and persona
grata in Hapsburg circles — his principal literary effort is a
volume de luxe entitled "Our Royal House" — offers no
guaranties. There is, moreover, evidence to the contrary.
Some time ago a Dutch committee transmitted money for
relief to the Hungarian government. Later a member of
Mr. Huszar's own cabinet, Mr. Julius Rubinek, Minister of
Agriculture, was compelled to admit that these funds had
been diverted to electioneering purposes.
To sum up: Mr. Charles Huszar has been the head of the
White Terror Government of Hungary. • He is one of the
principal advocates of the restoration of the Hapsburg king.
His activities here cannot but stimulate racial and religious
hatreds and prejudices among Americans of Hungarian
origin, and to stir up feuds between them and their neigh-
bors of Slav and Rumanian extraction. Certainly if there ia
any justification of the present, and let it be hoped, tempo-
rary, scrutiny and exclusion on political grounds, of foreign
visitors, the intelligence and good faith of the authority
which has freely let Mr. Huszar into the country may well
be questioned. From the standpoint of democracy his pres-
ence is thoroughly objectionable. Or can it be that the
Government of the United States will actually countenance
the raising of American dollars to restore Hapsburg autoc-
racy for the ending of which our young men died?
In the Driftway
NOW while the Premiers fumble the sick body of Europe
and in America the candidates mumble toothlessly
over the dead bones of ancient issues, The Drifter, in the
midst of so much public unwisdom and corruption, likes to
turn to certain instances, sticking here and there in his
memory, of fine braveries and heroic kindnesses done by
plain men and women. There was that black slave in Ken-
tucky who desired freedom enough — when his master had
finally lost all right to his slave's respect, and only then —
to run away with his scared, unwilling wife, a larger child
or two, and two little ones whom he carried on his back
across the whole of Ohio into Canada. They had to travel
all the way by night, clinging to the most deserted roads,
hiding by day in the woods, slinking to freedom. That black
father, besides carrying his babies, had the even harder task
of keeping up his wife's courage and of quieting the children .
when the family was in danger, as it repeatedly was, of being
discovered; he had to find food for them, and shelter from the
weather, and the path across a State almost as blindly as a
mole working in the darkness. The whole race of man takes
dignity from such an achievement. And there was the
young wife whose husband died suddenly on Christmas Eve.
While others might have been plunged into a paralysis of
grief, and naturally, she thought first of the ardent plans
which her husband and her tiny daughter had made for
Christmas; and half that night she worked away at carry-
ing them out. With the help of one of her husband's friends
she set up a tree and decorated it with the jolly tinsel of the
season. She arranged the family stockings as the child had
expected them to be arranged, even to those of the father
who lay dead under that same roof. Then the next morning,
before the daughter knew she was an orphan, she had tasted
the delights of the first Christmas she had ever been old
enough to appreciate or particularly notice. The Drifter
feels there are not half enough medals for heroism to go
around. Heroism, perhaps, is all the more heroic for that.
The Drifter
Contributors to This Issue
Eugene S. Bagger is a New York journalist who has
specialized in Hungarian and Central European politics.
J. Ramsay Macdonald, former member of Parliament,
author, leader of the Independent Labor Party, while
perhaps the foremost figure in the Scarborough Con-
ference, modestly omits all reference to his prominent
participation therein.
"Latinus" is the pseudonym of an Hispanic-American
publicist residing in New York.
Arthur Symons is the well-known British writer.
"X. Y. Z." is an eminent American army officer.
July 24, 1920]
The Nation
101
The Conquest of Haiti
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of July 7,
1920, inclosing an article regarding the conduct of marines in
Haiti, and also a copy of letter in regard thereto addressed to
the Assistant Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The work of the Marine Corps in Haiti started with the
occupation in 1915 when it became necessary to land sailors
and marines at Port au Prince for the protection of American
lives. At that time revolution and anarchy reigned throughout
Haiti. The President had been killed and many other murders
and atrocities had been committed in the city of Port au Prince
as well as in other parts of Haiti. The country was overrun
with bandits and murderers, and unscrupulous politicians of the
worst kind were assisting in the disorders. A new president
was elected by the assembly and American forces were kept in
Port au Prince for the preservation of order and the protection
of Americans and other foreigners. It became necessary to
establish marine guards at all the sea ports for the protection
of lives and property, all at the request of the Haitian Gov-
ernment. Since the occupation and the signing of the treaty
with Haiti it has been the endeavor of the Marine Corps to
carry out its instructions in Haiti in as efficient a manner as
possible, every consideration and thought being given to the
welfare of the Haitians and the advancement of the country.
At times strong measures were necessary for self-protection
and for the protection of honest and peaceful inhabitants.
Orders regarding proper sanitation were issued, roads were
improved, and other work was carried on for the general wel-
fare of the Haitians. As the Haitian army was abolished it
was necessary that a force be established to replace the army.
The Haitian Gendarmerie, consisting of natives and officered
by marines was organized in 1916, and has increased in size
and efficiency under the supervision of the occupation. It has
been necessary for the marines to assist the Gendarmerie at
times when revolutions broke out. As in all work in countries
like Haiti mistakes are bound to be made, and policies, orders,
and instructions are sometimes not carried out properly. As
regards the Marine Corps, some officers and men have failed,
at times necessitating courts-martial and other punishments,
but it has been and is the duty and aim of the Marine Corps
authorities here and in Haiti to work solely for the interests
and advancement of Haiti and the Haitian people, and progress
has been and is being made in Haiti today.
Washington, July 12 John A. Lejeune
Major General Commandant
U. S. Marine Corps
[Major-General Lejeune's reply is substantially an admis-
sion of the truth of the charges against the American occupa-
tion in Haiti contained in The Conquest of Haiti by Mr.
Herbert J. Seligmann, published in The Nation of July 10.
General Lejeune prefaces his remark that "strong measures"
were necessary with a picture of the "anarchy" that reigned
in Haiti. The fact is that American lives had been safe for
years and were safe at the time of intervention. At no time
before the American intervention was there the anarchy that
prevailed afterward when the United States Marines were
murdering, torturing, and robbing peaceable Haitians and pro-
voking them to armed rebellion. To admit that "in countries
like Haiti mistakes are bound to be made" is to dismiss, in a
phrase, cruelties, stupidities, violations of humanity and de-
cency which, had they occurred in Armenia, Siberia, Ireland,
India, or Belgium, would have elicited storms of protest from
United States citizens. As for the "duty and aim" of United
States Marines in Haiti, that is a secret which the Department
of State has not yet seen fit to divulge to the American pub-
lic.— Editor.]
Why Be a Farmer?
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: We wondered, with our little boy who called our at-
tention to it, why you published the advertisement of Swift and
Company in your June issue. Somehow I believe you did it in
order to hear from the farmers, and for our part we would like
to know where the money goes if not to the middleman.
In December, 1919, we sold fat hogs at 12 cents a pound and
fat beef at 7 cents. Some farmers got as low as 9 cents for
hogs. My relatives whom I visited in Indianapolis at Christ-
mas time were paying 50 cents for beef and 60 for pork. Since
then we have slaughtered our hogs ourselves for our own use,
and we know that the work of slaughtering and curing the meat
is nothing compared to that of raising hogs — and must be
infinitely easier in big modern abattoirs. We must carry
buckets of slop several times a day, buy ground feed at high
prices, and plow, plant, cultivate, cut, and shuck the corn — a
big summer's work, it is too — that we need.
One farm boy we know bought a carload of corn at $1.50
a bushel last fall and fattened some hogs to sail this spring
when he thought the price would be good, but he lost money.
No wonder we cannot keep boys on the farm. The only reason
we older folks stay is because we have to. The farmers are too
tired, ignorant, and impoverished to organize to set prices, but
I am hoping La Follette's plan of organizing them may be car-
ried out. His magazine, The Nation, and the Socialist papers
we read have sympathy for the poor, and the farmers are cer-
tainly among these. There is absolutely nothing to induce a
boy to stay on the farm.
Moores Hill, Indiana, June 23 (Mrs.) F. L. Houston
Suppressing Polish Atrocities
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: You probably know that some time ago the British Gov-
ernment sent a delegation headed by Sir Stuart M. Samuel to
investigate the persecution of Jews in Poland. After endless
delays which caused debates and inquiries in Parliament the
report was made public by the government on July 5, 1920.
It was not a pleasant report. The commission placed the
entire guilt of the pogroms on the government. It gave the
number of killed and wounded and brought details of the bru-
tality employed by the Polish soldiers in punishing the Jewish
population. It proved conclusively that the pogroms were
organized by the military forces and that the government neither
punished the offenders nor made any monetary retribution for
the great damages that were done. The findings of the com-
mission were corroborated and strengthened by the reports of
Captain Wright and Sir Horace Rumbold. These reports were
incorporated with the reports of Sir Stuart M. Samuel in the
"White Book" of the British Government.
The Jewish Correspondence Bureau sent a cable giving a
concise resume of these reports to all the Jewish newspapers in
the land. The report appeared in full with editorial comment
in all the Yiddish dailies And here comes the puzzling part of
the affair. For a week not a word about this report appeared in
the English language newspapers either in New York or the
other cities! How do you explain this? Can it be that the Asso-
ciated Press, the United Press, and the other organs of informa-
tion had missed this report? Or did they, on account of the
nature and character of the report, deliberately chose to close
their eyes and ears and pass it by in silence? A representative
of the American Jewish Congress finally supplied material to
two papers which printed some of it; a third, the New York
Times, printed a belated cable mentioning the Samuel report,
but printing, instead of the report, an attempted rebuttal of it.
New York, July 13 George Kessner
102
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2873
The Deported
By ANZIA YEZIERSKA
I am the deported.
The ship on which I stand is leaving the harbor.
The foaming waves converging at the throbbing stern of
the boat are pushing me irrevocably away.
This America whose mountains I dashed myself against
as against insensate stone,
These rock barriers on which I beat out the anguish of
my protest and rebellion,
This country on which I vented the rage of my frustrated
ideals,
The hard commercialism that I cursed and denounced —
where is it now?
Behold ! The mountains are springing into life, the bar-
riers of prejudice and hate are dissolving in the mist.
These very waves that are separating me, somehow seem
to link me with the land I am leaving.
Through the transfigured distance, I see the spires of
great buildings, temples of achievement, landmarks of men
who built and created while I tore down and destroyed.
Oh God! Why do I just begin to see America, now that
I am torn away?
In my adolescent blindness, I thought that America was a
quick leap into Utopia.
I thought that America was a ripe fruit that I could pluck
from the visionary garden of liberty.
Instead of nurturing this garden that would some day
bring forth the fruit I longed for, instead of propping up
the boughs of the young trees, clearing out the weeds, I
lopped off the branches, tore at the roots, trampled on tender
buds.
Now, when it is too late, now I see what America is —
and what I might have made of America.
Now, I see that America was a dream to be realized, a
potential love to be fathomed, a child to be warmed and
nurtured, a personality to be created, an unchartered world
to be explored.
Oh America! The barb of my anguish is that in losing
you for myself I lost the chance of helping to make you
for all Americans.
Beloved land of my dreams! My body is torn away, but
am I really losing you?
No — I can never lose you — knowing how I loved you.
My ceaseless longings have made you part of the throb and
pulse of my innermost being.
All my hates were but the blind gropings of my love.
I see now that I have loved you even when I hurt you,
even when I stormed and raged and trampled on you !
Oh America! Though now I am cast away — branded —
exiled,
It was worth all I suffered finding you.
All my life have I waited for this flash of light — this
glimpse of understanding — this clairvoyance of the spirit.
All my life have I struggled to know that which I now
know:
America is not here or there, America is everywhere man
in his helplessness reaches out to God.
America is everywhere man in his loneliness builds up the
vision of love.
I, the deported, go forth linked forever to America by my
exile from America.
I go forth to spread among the people of the earth the
faith in the better world to come — the deathless dream —
America!
The Feasters
By RIDGELY TORRENCE
I.
At Makah Indian Reservation.
From the waters of the east
Came a people bleak and eager,
Sailor, priest and stern beleaguer,
Sailing meager to the feast
From the waters of the east.
Leave the hunger to the least —
And their hosts were least among them.
So the bitter crust they flung them
And they sung them when they ceased,
"Leave the hunger to the least."
To the waters of the west
Go a people few and lonely,
Having now their hunger only,
Going lonely on their quest
To the waters of the west.
Watch them only, it is best;
Braves and lovers, gods and daughters
Dumbly to the west sea waters
Go and let the ancient breast
Find the banquet and the guest.
II.
At the Rio Grande.
Toward the river in the south
Feasting fingers reach to battle,
Glide and rattle in the drouth
Toward the fats that follow battle;
Oils and ores and desert cattle;
Sweet to feed a feasting mouth,
Past the river in the south.
So the children of the sun,
With the feasters* fingers near them,
At the stream, have learned to fear them
When they hear them reach and run
Toward the morsels one by one,
Toward the ores and oils that smear them,
Toward the gardens of the sun.
When their doom is not far off
Then the feasters' faiths grow hollow.
When their leaders turn and follow
From their wallow by the trough,
When they march, through raving hours,
Breeding war to bear them dreams,
When the nightmare foals, with screams,
Rolling on the bloody flowers,
When a death shall save a trough
Then the doom is not far off.
July 24, 1920]
The Nation
103
Books
My Second Country
My Second Country. By Robert Dell. John Lane Company.
|\/f R. DELL, who has lived twelve years in France, writes of
*■ ■*■ the French people with sympathy and affection, but does not
allow those feelings to color his judgment or subdue his criticism;
since his object is, by examining into certain defects of French
methods and institutions, to push the recovery of the land
he has chosen as his home. In his opinion it is Voltaire's
influence to which France returns after every reaction; "the
French in the majority remain at bottom skeptical, rationalist,
and intellectualist." He warns against the common tendency
of travelers to accept Paris as typical of the rest of France
and to forget that the provinces are as varied as the races which
make them up. Though Paris has long dominated France polit-
ically and intellectually, and continues to govern it politically by
reason of an extremely centralized administration, intellectually
there is already a movement toward decentralization — essential,
he shows, to any measure of democracy or internationalism.
The key-note of Mr. Dell's book is his conviction that the
present regime is nearing its close. "By timely reforms the par-
liamentary system might have been saved, but the bourgeoisie,
which has ruled France during the nineteenth century, has been
as blind and conservative as was the noblesse in the eighteenth
century, and is likely to pay the same penalty." Through the
maze of paradoxes which French character presents, definite
pictures emerge of the outstanding types. In these definitions
lie the clues on the one hand to the spirit which has governed
France so fatally as regards her own interests, the reckless
greed of a money-lending bourgeoisie which has allowed the high
priests of finance to pull too many wires, and on the other hand
to the blind indomitable spirit of devotion to La Patrie which
has sustained the French soldiery throughout the war and has
proved the French people anything but the decadent race they
were supposed to be. The reactionary power of the French
Government becomes more comprehensible when we are brought
to realize that Republican France has a Royalist constitution
and a Bonapartist administration. "A dictator or a bureauc-
racy armed with such an instrument as the French administra-
tive system," says Mr. Dell, "can secure the absolute mastery of
the country and reduce opposition to impotence unless and until
it becomes revolt." Little interest is taken in foreign affairs,
which as a rule are left entirely to the Foreign Minister. Among
other powers, the President has that of making treaties such
as the Franco-Russian Alliance, countersigned only by one Min-
ister, and of withholding knowledge of them from both Cabinet
and Parliament for as long as he deems fit. Thus "two men
have the power to commit the French people without their
knowledge or consent to obligations which may involve the risk
of their lives and property and the gravest danger to the coun-
try." When to this are added such evils as the medieval struc-
ture of the judicial and criminal procedures, and the fact that
the Senate can indefinitely obstruct measures passed by the
Chamber, it is small wonder that the French parliamentary
system has become discredited.
France is far behind England and Germany in social and
industrial legislation, and it is indeed well that attention has at
last been drawn in print to the shocking sanitary conditions
prevalent throughout the country, with their effects on typhoid
and tuberculosis. Mr. Dell attributes the lack of progressive
legislation in part to the general ignorance of economics among
Frenchmen of all classes and parties, even Socialists. There is
no organized movement, for instance, in favor of free trade,
though the protectionist policy has rendered French colonial
administration unprofitable, stifled French trade, and bids fair
to postpone indefinitely the restoration of the devastated areas.
French national finance is represented as being in so desperate
a state of chaos as to present no solution save repudiation of
the National Debt, which means revolution. Mr. Dell insists
that France is naturally an agricultural rather than an indus-
trial country, and that her hope for the future lies in develop-
ment along agricultural lines. The methods of cultivation, how-
ever, are far behind the times, and the pettifogging system of
land ownership — each peasant proprietor growing just what he
wants for himself — renders improved machinery or production
on a large scale difficult to arrive at. The terrible loss of life
in the war is another deterrent factor. "Unless," says Mr.
Dell, "there is an immediate and radical change in French agri-
cultural methods, a large quantity of land will inevitably go out
of cultivation" — whereas, if such change could be effected,
greater production would result from half the labor. Mean-
while, time only adds emphasis to his complaint that the French
Government, instead of concentrating on fundamental needs of
reconstruction, concerns itself primarily with boundary dis-
putes and territorial acquisitions.
"Without a knowledge of the proletariat one cannot know the
true France," says Mr. Dell. His experience has certainly
been wide and he has friends in all walks of French life. He
tells of the recent tendency of the salaried bourgeoisie, including
actors and bank clerks, to form trade unions and throw in their
lot with the proletariat; but he admits that the unions in general
are far weaker than in England or America. Syndicalism,
Etatisme, and State Monopolies are discussed at length in pages
from which it is possible to gather a definite notion of all the
French parties. What is badly needed at present is a general
clarification of terms in such matters, so that the various fac-
tional labels may come to have approximately similar meanings
in all countries. The war seems to have brought the French
Socialist and Syndicalist movements together, each adopting
something of the other's theories. "In the new synthesis be-
tween Socialism and Syndicalism," says Mr. Dell, "the economic
function of the state, or rather of the administration, will be
what the Manchester Liberals said that it should be — to protect
the interests of the consumer. The state as an organ of adminis-
tration will replace the state as an organ of authority; the
administration of things will replace the government of men.
Some means will be found of conciliating the interests of the
community as a whole with those of each group of producers."
This is beyond doubt a model program, though the means remain
to be worked out, and leaders of the quality of Jaures remain
to be found. But Mr. Dell is confident that "when the moment
comes, the men also will be forthcoming." B. U. Burke
Philosophers Abroad
Letters from China and Japan. By John Dewey and Alice Chip-
man Dewey. E. P. Dutton and Company.
F)ROFESSOR and Mrs. Dewey have discovered that most of
*■ the things they always knew about China and Japan are
fascinatingly true. Their letters were written to their chil-
dren here with no view to publication and edited by their daugh-
ter Evelyn Dewey. It is not difficult to guess the authorship
of most of the letters, and Mrs. Dewey's interest in the more
pictorial aspects of the countries, in the women, and in their
educational and domestic problems, admirably supplements Pro-
fessor Dewey's more historical and speculative observations.
From the time they landed in Japan they found themselves im-
pressed by .the fine surfaces of a country in which no discourte-
ous words were ever heard and no bad manners exhibited. In
all the habits of the people they felt the essential antiquity of
the Japanese. "Any country is old where birth and death are
like the coming and dropping of leaves on a tree, and where
the individual is of as much importance as the leaf." After
overcoming the "fear of the pain of being drawn by a fellow-
being" they traveled with great comfort in 'rickshas and auto-
mobiles and Professor Dewey was given a pass on the Japanese
104
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2873
railways. Mrs. Dewey, alas, must pay, as the Minister of the
Interior explained with great sorrow that such a privilege could
not be extended to a woman. Japanese food soon came to be
attractive, and the travelers got to the point where raw fish and
raw chicken wrapped in seaweed had no terrors. Mrs. Dewey
could boast the ability to sit on her heels for the length of a
Japanese meal, but Professor Dewey ignominiously sat as he was
accustomed. The amount of tea to be drunk at all the lunch-
eons, festivals, teas, and dinners to which they were invited
at first completely submerged them, but before long they could
write with pardonable pride that they had drunk tea six times
within, three hours in addition to eating a meal the consump-
tion of which had occupied most of that time. Their friends
and acquaintances throughout Japan were the "representative
intellectual liberals," not the "official crowd," so that Professor
Dewey felt after six weeks that he had "seen less but found
out more than I ever expected about Japanese conditions, which
is quite the opposite of European experience in traveling."
They lived in Japanese homes, attended the Japanese "movies"
and theater, where they saw Ganjiro, the greatest actor of
Japan, on the stage in every scene for eight hours, encountered
courtesy even in shopping expeditions, lectured with interpre-
ters to audiences of teachers from which women were conspicu-
ously absent, visited the Women's University and numbers of
schools, attended tea ceremonies, the festival of dolls, a wedding,
a funeral, saw the Emperor, were entertained by geisha danc-
ing, when a woman (Mrs. Dewey) appeared "for the first
time in history at a man's carouse in Japan," visited the tem-
ples, and saw the famous cherry blossoms.
After three months in Japan they went on to China, expect-
ing to spend but a few weeks there. Almost as soon as they
landed in Shanghai they began to realize that everything in
Japan "is a little overmade, there seems to be a rule for every-
thing, and admiring their artistic effects one also sees how near
art and the artificial are together." It is quite evident from
the tone of the Chinese letters that Professor Dewey found in
China meat for a pragmatist and a democrat that Japan had
failed to provide. There is comparatively little account of the
more superficial aspects of the Chinese experience such as filled
the letters from Japan. Mrs. Dewey occasionally reminds her
children that they are being fed, frequently and well, and de-
scribes for them the domestic arrangements and social limita-
tions of the small-footed Chinese lady. But both she and Pro-
fessor Dewey found themselves plunged from the very begin-
ning into the turmoil of the Chinese political situation. At first
they felt that one must begin at the end to read the Chinese
book, and they found themselves almost completely baffled by
the Chinese acceptance of things as they are. After a month
whose revelations complicated the problem for him and at the
same time increased his interest in it, Professor Dewey wrote:
"Status quo is China's middle name, mostly status and a little
quo." And again: "It is very easy to see how cultivated people
take refuge in art and spirituality when politics are corrupt
and the general state of social life is discouraging; you see it
here, and how in the end it increases the decadence." The
Chinese helplessness before the "single-track mind" of the Japa-
nese appealed to the travelers more and more strongly. The
student strikes, the Japanese boycott, the refusal of the Chinese
delegates at the Peace Conference to sign the treaty — all seemed
hopeful signs, though at first the visitors were a little afraid
that a Chinese clerk in a tailor shop might be right when he
told them: "Chinaman he got weak mind; pretty soon he for-
get." But the unexpected success of the student strikes and
their far-reaching effect won Professor Dewey's complete admi-
ration. "To think of kids, in our country, from fourteen on,
taking the lead in starting a big clean-up reform political move-
ment and shaming merchants and professional men into joining
them." There was hope in such a movement, and the philosophers
added a year to their intended brief stay that they might take
some part in its fruition. Irita Van Doren
Science and Peace
Science and War. The Rede Lecture for 1919. By Lord
Moulton. Cambridge University Press.
Wealth from Waste; Elimination of Waste a World Problem.
By Henry J. Spooner. London : George Routledge and Sons.
The Place of Agriculture in Reconstruction; a Study of National
Programs of Land Settlement. By James B. Morman. E. P.
Dutton and Company.
The World's Food Resources. By J. Russell Smith. Henry Holt
and Company.
The Strategy of Minerals; a Study of the Mineral Factor in the
World Position of America in War and Peace. Edited by
George Otis Smith, Director U. S. Geological Survey. D. Ap-
pleton and Company.
The Outlook for Research and Invention. By Nevil Monroe
Hopkins. D. Van Nostrand Company.
IN the Rede Lecture at Cambridge University last year Lord
Moulton gave a graphic summary of the great problems solved
during the war through scientific investigations, and showed
the dependence of our society upon the continuous solution of
such problems, in peace as well as in war. The role played in
battle by new types of explosives, by the internal combustion
engine, by the storage battery, and by the wireless occupies the
bulk of the booklet; while there are briefer references to the
gyroscope, to photography, to chemical warfare defense, to sound-
ranging, and to hygiene. As an Englishman Lord Moulton is
proud of the achievements of the Allies; but as a scientist he
sees vastly more in science than the special knowledge needed to
fight Germans. He insists that the power which science gives
to mankind must be used henceforth to promote the universal,
welfare. The glory of science after all does not lie in what it
can do to make war a more intense and more efficient hell.
Mr. Spooner's book bears all the ear-marks of the war psy-
chology. His world still consists of separate nations which must
through all eternity be in conflict with one another for power
and wealth and competitive advantages. It will always be
necessary to appeal for thrift in terms of hatred, and to point
the moral of high efficiency in terms of damage to be inflicted
upon "enemies." The book is nevertheless a valuable collection
of concrete materials showing where actual savings are possible
in household and industrial management. Significant, too, are
the sections on the waste which is owing to the neglect of
organic factors in industry such as health, safety, and nutrition.
The commercial wastes involved in adulteration, misused fuels,
neglected agricultural opportunities, and the failure to reclaim
waste lands or reforest denuded areas are criticized soundly and
constructively, if sometimes monotonously. A hundred pages of
the book contain interesting examples of savings brought about
through the utilization of materials previously considered useless
by-products of industrial, agricultural, and domestic processes;
and there are many suggestions as to lines along which further
development may be expected. The time of setting hens and grow-
ing children can be put to better use, he says; the children of
England he admits to be both adorable and infinitely capable.
Mr. Morman, who was Assistant Secretary of the Federal
Farm Loan Board, has brought together in convenient form a
body of valuable information on the plans that have been de-
veloped for returning demobilized soldiers to the land in Canada,
France, and Great Britain. In addition he points out clearly
enough the important problems connected with the maintenance
of agricultural production and the difficulties of keeping up a
trained agricultural population. He does not blame the maga-
zines and the movies for drawing young people to the cities;
he believes that rural life should and could be made both at-
tractive and profitable. He seems especially well informed on
the matter of rural credits, and on the difficulties in the way
of a satisfactory solution. But Mr. Morman's economics is of
the kind manufactured for home consumption before the war.
July 24, 1920]
The Nation
10c
In discussing the general problem of the return from a war to
a peace basis, he seems to think of the "employment" of men
and women in productive labor as an expense to the country-
analogous to the expense of carrying on campaigns. While the
production of food and clothing and habitations is necessary to
the welfare of the nation, it is necessary, he implies, because it
enables people to carry on business, earn wages, and make
profits, not because it enables them to satisfy fundamental
organic and spiritual hungers. For him the great problem is
not to supply people with homes and food and clothing through
the organization of our ingenuity and skill and effort; the great
problem is to return to business as was usual before the great
interruption.
A very satisfactory compendium of significant information is
Professor Smith's study of the worldfe food supply. It is of
course largely statistical, but the statistics are presented in a
live and interesting manner, and they are so surrounded with
descriptive and illuminating discussion that the quantitative
aspects of the problems treated can be at least tolerated by the
reader who has "no head for figures" whatever. The argu-
ment runs in effect that wheat and rice and other cereals, pota-
toes and pork, milk and fish, and various fruits, sugar and
legumes, have a definite place in maintaining the human race in
a condition essential for civilized living; that these various ma-
terials are necessary in such and such amounts; that the con-
ditions for their production are favorable within certain speci-
fied areas, and call for the application of labor and intelligence.
Here, in short, is the problem of keeping the race alive without
making any part of it believe that its welfare depends upon
exploiting some other part. Now the lines along which per
capita production may be increased without a proportionate in-
crease of per capita labor constitute the foundations of peace
and progress. These lines are indicated in the various chapters
with a most fascinating elaboration of detail, involving tractors
and threshing machines here, the improvement of varieties
through scientific breeding there, the scientific feeding of stock,
the drying of milk and other foods for preservation, the possi-
bilities of fish resources, the destruction of insect pests, and the
overcoming of food prejudices. The application of science to the
solution of these fundamental problems makes possible the eco-
nomic autonomy of such countries as the United States, with
relatively large areas and large variety of natural resources;
but it makes increasingly undesirable such economic autonomy
on the part of any country, since this is to be had only at the
cost of increasing discomfort and waste of resources. "The con-
trast between Japan and Georgia, between one and one-fourth
and twenty or more acres per family, is the stuff of which wars
are made." The lust for land together with the lust for power
are the great enemies of human peace and progress; they can
be met together by establishing conditions of trade that enable
every country to profit from the specialized resources and
efficiency of every other country — not by attempting to secure
for each country complete economic independence or dominance
over others. Mr. Smith's book contains over six hundred pages
of sound sociology and statesmanship based on exact knowledge.
The conflict between the feeling that makes men strive for the
"economic independence" of a nation and the knowledge which
makes the same men see that such "independence" is an im-
possible abstraction is well illustrated in the compilation of
useful information called "The Strategy of Minerals." The
several chapters on the importance and distribution of essential
minerals — fuels, iron and coal, copper, lead and zinc, the minor
metals, minerals required in chemical and other industries — are
by experts of the United States Geological Survey, of which the
editor is the director. There is an introduction by ex-Secretary
of the Interior Franklin K. Lane, who expresses the convic-
tion that there will be no end to wars or threats of war "until
the nations of the world regard themselves more really the
trustees of their resources . . . for the world at large."'
In A Look Ahead, Mr. Smith says that the kind of industrial
organization now needed is one gauged for enduring peace and
involving a world-wide interchange of essentials on a democratic
basis, avoiding imperialism and dominance; "industrial inde-
pendence is the goal toward which a nation should face, but not
a goal which it should have either the intention or the desire
to attain." The folly and waste of industrial independence are
recognized by Mr. Smith and by Mr. Lane; most of the other
contributors, however, seem to assume that the United States
must either make itself completely independent of other nations
or must make other nations so dependent upon its resources
that its power will remain permanently secure. These engineers
know their business, and they tell their technical stories in an
interesting way; but it would seem that other specialists could
better take over the study of international relations. An ap-
pendix prints the Food and Fuel Control Act of August, 1917,
a great deal of historical material on the administration of
mineral resources during the war, and a number of good dia-
grams on mineral supplies, production, and reserves.
Mr. Hopkins's book will be of special interest to young men
and women who are interested in research and invention as
careers, particularly if they happen to be without the ad-
vantages of higher technical education. There is a warm en-
thusiasm here both for the game and for the service, there is
an appreciation of some of the great contributors to scientific
and technical progress, and there is an abundance of suggestion
as to the kinds of problems that inventive ability can profitably
tackle.
Every one of the twenty-odd scientists represented in these
half-dozen books seems to have a clear understanding of the
complexity of modern life, at least so far as it touches his
specialty; every one realizes the far-reaching interdependence of
all parts of the world; and every one has learned that in science
at least there is constant change. Nevertheless, most of these
men seem obsessed with an almost childish provincialism in their
attitudes toward "foreign" lands and peoples, with a dread of
conceiving any system of human relations substantially different
from the one that prevailed while they were children, with a
simple hope in the ultimate preeminence of their own nations
not as leaders in science or service but as masters of other
peoples' destinies. Each pays tribute to the lofty sentiments
pronounced by Woodrow Wilson in his several messages to the
people of the world between Lusitania and Armistice; yet with a
few exceptions each conceives Democracy to be an arrangement
whereby the shrewdest and strongest can with certainty come
into their own — the mastery of others. Science is without doubt
essential to the very existence of the sort of thing we call
civilization; but it is evident that the rising generation must
give its scientists a training somewhat different from that which
our own generation received.
Benjamin C. Gruenberg
Faith and War
Twentieth Century French Writers. By Madame Mary Du-
claux. Charles Scribner's Sons.
THIS volume was in the printer's hands in August, 1914.
For its publication today Madame Duclaux has added a
post-war preface and interpolated a passage here and there.
But substantially it is now what it was then, and therein lies
its extraordinary value. The war turned everything into legend
and made of every face an angel's or an ogre's mask. Now that
the world is mildly and tentatively beginning to use its mind
again, a book like this serves to mend the broken continuity of
truth and to restore the normal temper of one's studies.
No one who was in intelligent contact with the literature of
France in the opening years of the twentieth century was un-
familiar with the movement which Madame Duclaux — the friend
and biographer of Ernest Renan and once the wife of James
Darmstetter — viewed and recorded with a reluctant and be-
106
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2873
wildered sympathy. The movement arose, long before, when
Ferdinand Brunetiere announced the bankruptcy of science and
Paul Bourget led the Neo-Catholic reaction in literature. The
outside world discovered Anatole France in his old age and
misinterpreted the spectacular success of Bergson's lectures at
the Sorbonne. But a few here and there were conscious of the
fact that the soul of twentieth-century France was rather to
be sought in the conversion of Maurice Barres to the doctrine
of "national energy," and that to the country's youth Jean
Christophe was already "a man of yesterday." It was this
spiritual scene which Madame Duclaux beheld with a wistful
eye. "Truth? Humanity? The old-fashioned words are rarely
heard. We hear of Authority, of Order, of the claims of one's
race, of the rights and responsibilities of the strong. This new
generation, which has witnessed no war, has the mind and dis-
position of conquerors."
Even in its mysticism, however, and in its new dedication
to the doctrine of "Force and Faith," the mind of France pre-
served its ancient order and harmony of method. Fifty years
of positivism and skepticism had left it weary and ill at ease.
■"Pour attenuer certaines peines morales," Barres felt the need
of "merging himself into something larger and more durable
than any individual existence." He found that something
larger and more durable in an intense and militant nationalism.
Younger men united with the same nationalism a return to the
doctrines of their ancestral Church, and thus arose the genera-
tion described by Madame Duclaux: "Fresh and frank and
admirably valiant, full of prompt physical courage and intellec-
tual docility." "Intellectual docility" — those words express the
core of the situation. To submerge the reason and to engage,
at the dictates of patriotism and religion, in expansive activities
— is not that, in every country, the instinctive refuge of men
from "certaines peines morales"? Only in France it became
a conscious doctrine; it was inscribed on the banners of all the
younger intellectuals; it attained its highest symbolical em-
bodiment when Ernest Psichari, the grandson of Renan, en-
listed before the war in the Colonial Artillery, entered the
Catholic communion, and declared: "La force est toujours du
cote du droit."
Might is right! These words which have made so many
good people shudder were of the essence of the spiritual atti-
tude with which the young artists and writers of France, the
followers of Paul Claudel, the admirers of Charles Peguy, went
into the Great War. And why not? If you have persuaded
yourself, with Claudel, to believe in "an absolute Existence —
where right is always right and where wrong is always wrong,
to all eternity," what chance have you, being human, of not
identifying your particular brand of right with that eternal
rightness? If, in addition, you are by impulse and philosophy
a militant patriot, are you not bound to believe that your di-
visions and tanks and dreadnaughts will, because they are on
the side of the eternal right, have might against the powers of
darkness? Thus he who has the might proves thereby that he
was right. For can might, in a mystic and moral universe,
fail to be on the side of right? You must not, of course, re-
member any more than you must think. How would that doc-
trine have worked in 1870? But the point of this sort of phi-
losophy in every country is a voluntary abstention from memory
and reflection.
The gifted poet Charles Peguy, who fell in the first battle of
the Marne and became the idol of France during the war,
represents this whole attitude in his single person and career.
He had a "withering contempt for science and scientists."
It is not they who will help us, he cried,
Mais la Foi qui nous sauve et seule nous discerne
Saura nous retrouver dans la fange et l'ordure.
He came to reject all that is political, temporal, personal, for
the mystical, spiritual, general. He repudiated the socialism
of his youth and approached the "military and aristocratic
theory of a state." He ended with an apotheosis of militarism:
"II n'y a rien a faire a cela, et il n'y a rien a dire. Le soldat
mesure la quantite de terre ou on parle une langue, ou regnent
des mceurs, un esprit, une ame, un culte, une race. Le soldat
mesure la quantite de terre ou une ame peut respirer. Le soldat
mesure la quantite de terre ou un peuple ne meurt pas." And
that, too, is logical enough, if only you have faith, faith in
your own eternal rightness and hence in your inherent superi-
ority, faith, therefore, in the violent and, if necessary, bloody
affirmation of your culture and your race. Faith may not
always move mountains; it does move armies and annex colo-
nies and silence scruples. Not until you have faith enough can
you see your enemy as a "beast of prey" and yourself as. the
warrior of God.
Once only does Madame Duclaux betray a sense of the ter-
rible irony of the situation. The war swept from her mind
the doubts and hesitations which it harbored in' 1914. In her
post-war preface she recants — as so many have done — her whole
intellectual past and flings at Romain Rolland the reproach
of "high-minded crankiness." Her study of Barbusse is brief
and distant. She, too, needed to assuage her "peines morales";
she, too, merged herself into something larger by embracing
the faith of all the nationalists at war. It is the only way of
making war endurable. The reason and the heart must be
silenced before hate and cruelty can become sufficiently effective.
War must have faith. Only humility and doubt and the facing
of our "peines morales" can save what is left of civilization.
Ludwig Lewisohn
The Strategy of the Great War
The Strategy of the Great War. By William L. McPherson.
G. P. Putnam's Sons.
DECAUSE this book relates to military policy, it is equally
"-* interesting to the trained soldier and to the intelligent civil-
ian. To the general reader the most interesting side of the art
and science of war is grand strategy; strategy in general being
nothing but an exercise of trained common sense, and its prin-
ciples being unchanging and universal.
Germany lost the war because she sought sea power. Mr.
McPherson makes that very plain in his best chapter, Sea Power
in the War, where indeed he might also have pointed out how
Russia lost her war with Japan because she chose, before the
war began, to attempt the defense of the eastern flank of her
empire with sea power. Russia took over Port Arthur as a
base for that sea power and sent half her navy there to invite
destruction before the other half could arrive, similarly to be
destroyed. And while she was spending money on battleships
destined to provoke a disgraceful war and to be worse than
useless in that war, she could not find the money to double-
track a Trans-Siberian Railway which would have made her
strategically safe from Japan's attack while constituting at
the same time a proper tool for the peaceful development of
Siberia. If Russia never had possessed a warship she probably
would have been spared a disastrous defeat and many billions
of peace-time expenditure. Precisely the same thing may be
said of Germany.
Mr. McPherson was an "Eastern Fronter." He believes, and
he argues with great force, that either side might have won
before the autumn of 1918 if it had remained upon the defensive
in France and Belgium and devoted itself to operations in the
East. Germany, for example, he thinks might thus have put
Russia out of the war long before the spring of 1917, in time,
in fact, to keep Rumania neutral. He believes that the Germans
engaged in the Verdun offensive in 1916 might have sufficed for
such a task, and, of course, no one can be sure that he is not
right. With Russia out and Rumania neutral, and with the
United States not yet dragged in through submarine operations,
the Central Powers might very well have won the war a year
July 24, 1920]
The Nation
107
or two before they definitely lost it. He is convinced, too, that
the Gallipoli operation should have been persisted in by the
Allies at all hazards, and presents fairly good evidence that the
fleet might have taken the straits if it had made one more deter-
mined effort. At any rate he is sure, and not without excellent
reason, that Allied troops from the vicinity of Salonica could
have taken Constantinople at a little later period. And if the
entrance to the Black Sea, or the Black Sea itself, had fallen to
the Allies before Germany could place Russia hors-de-combat,
such assistance might have been extended to Russia as would
have preserved her effectiveness and retained her most valuable
alliance; which again might have ended the war before 1918 —
under these circumstances, in favor of the Allies.
Accepting Mr. McPherson's view that either side might have
won if it had devoted its offensive energies to the Eastern front,
it is interesting to speculate upon what would have happened
if not one but both sides had restricted their offensive operations
to that front. Doubtless then the element of time would have
become the determining factor, the question being whether the
sea route to Odessa could be commanded by the Entente before
Russia was overwhelmed by Germany and Austria. In the re-
viewer's opinion, with offensive operations confined to the East-
ern front, the Allies would still have won. Mr. McPherson seems
habitually to underestimate the Russians, believing, for example,
that Hindenburg struck them a mortal blow in 1915. Now the
events of 1915, so disastrous to Russia, were inevitable when
the war developed into a contest of munition manufacture; for
Russia was not a manufacturing nation and was cut off from a
ready supply by her allies. As it was, by 1916 Russia had
turned every railway repair shop into a gun foundry or shell
factory, and by the spring of 1917 there was in addition a
plentiful stream of guns and ammunition flowing from her
Allies. In the spring of 1917 there were nearly as many Rus-
sians mobilized as there were men among all the other Allies
put together. What ruined Russia as a belligerent was the
destruction of discipline in her army, and what destroyed dis-
cipline was revolution. When the revolution occurred the mili-
tary outlook for Russia was excellent, far more excellent than
it had been at any time during the previous two years. The
Russian revolution might have occurred in peace times. It.
could not have occurred as it did, with great disciplined armies
under the control of military chiefs, if these latter had under-
stood the situation, and had not thought that they were acquies-
cing in a mere palace revolution intended to bring about a con-
stitutional regime under another Romanoff sovereign. X. Y. Z.
Man and Mystic
William Blake the Man. By Charles Gardner. E. P. Dutton
and Company.
^ EARLY a century and a half ago the sapient Mr. Henry
^ Mathew wrote an apologetic Advertisement to the Poetical
Sketches of William Blake. To the Muses was printed in that
collection. So was How Sweet I Roamed, and To the Evening
Star. And the Reverend Mr. Mathew sponsored such songs
with his tongue in his cheek! For the visions of Blake, however,
the whirligig of time has, in the past fifty years, brought in
ample and sweet revenges. Praise and understanding have
come apace. For the stodgy and futile Hayleys and Stothards
of the eighteenth century, blind to the real soul of Blake, the
late nineteenth century has interpreted him through the poetic
genius of Swinburne and Yeats. Patient study has yielded up
the key to the "Prophetic Books," once regarded as chaotic rav-
ings. They have been found to have a fairly consistent symbolic
scheme which may be understood with little difficulty. Most
of the later writers on Blake have stressed his unique mo-
dernity. It is not a false enthusiasm, either, that proclaims him
as the precursor in certain respects of such rebels as Nietzsche,
Butler, and Shaw. "The Proverbs of Hell," for instance, consti-
tute a revolutionists' handbook as pungent in new points of
view as "Man and Superman"; and in "The Visions of the
Daughters of Albion," Blake analyzes self-love as mercilessly as
Meredith does in "The Egoist." One can scarcely credit such a
dynamic apparition as Blake among a generation to whom Dr.
Johnson's horse-sense was neighing most ponderously and pon-
tifically.
Mr. Gardner's "Blake the Man" is especially valuable for its
emphasis on Blake's modern aspect. It traces his mental and
spiritual growth, and presents a clear and plastic image of the
man. Mr. Gardner has a pleasant and elastic style devoid of
that deadly pedantry, that windy verbosity which is a familiar
dry rot on the style of the learned in mysticism. His exposi-
tion is convincing because of his easy assurance, his humorous
sense of proportion, and his thorough understanding of the
men of Blake's circle and of the books in which Blake found
profound affiliations and violent reactions. The personal influ-
ence in turn of Cromek and Flaxman, Stothard and Hayley,
are commented upon in detail. Of the books that go far in
explaining Blake, the most important is Swedenborg's "Angelic
Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love." Mr. Gardner quotes mar-
ginal annotations from Blake's own copy of this work to show
how Blake gradually diverged from his author's point of view
as he discovered the rationalistic foundation of Swedenborg's
supersensual world. "Thel" and "Tiriel," it is pointed out, were
both written early under the influence of Swedenborg. "Thel" re-
flects the cloying sweetness and passivity so inimical to Blake's
fundamental creed, but "Tiriel" in his contempt of the beautiful
foreshadows Blake's revolt from the reasoned coldness of Swe-
denborg. "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" is later quoted to
reveal Blake's ultimate dissatisfaction with the Swedish mystic.
What Blake found most admirable in Swedenborg was his
devils. In their wonderful exuberance and energy they fitted
into Blake's doctrine of obedience to energy and passion. The
angels of Swedenborg's Heaven, on the other hand, were dull
negations of the devil virtues — mere passive, spineless dis-
courses of theology. One can imagine Blake laughing sar-
donically as Swedenborg's devils peep into Heaven and then
disgustedly plunge headforemost back into Hell. That portion
of Mr. Gardner's book which deals with Blake's relations with
Swedenborgian thought is exceedingly well done.
The much-misunderstood "Prophetic Books" are not analyzed
in detail by Mr. Gardner, but their significance in the growth
of Blake's thought is well suggested. Blake's central theme is
shown to be the fall of man from a state of imaginative freedom
into a muddy existence swayed by Reason and its attendant
evils. Excerpts are taken from the "Jerusalem," the "Milton,"
and the "Four Zoas" to illustrate Blake's mature thought con-
cerning deism, various theological dogmas, sex, and his sym-
bolical view of Christ as the fierce apostle of energy and passion,
as the embodiment of the creative imagination. The two great
symbolical protagonists in the spiritual conflicts of the "Pro-
phetic Books" are Los (Imagination) and Urizen (Reason).
These wage hideous warfare in the soul of man, for since they
have fallen out of the Divine Order there is no harmony be-
tween them. Blake engraved two awe-inspiring figures illus-
trating these two forces, and they are reproduced in this volume.
As the "Prophetic Books" contain passages of rare beauty and
power, it is to be hoped that Mr. Gardner's work will stimulate
many to read poems generally ignored. The beautiful lament
of Ahania in the "Book of Ahania" is one of many gems known
only to Blake enthusiasts.
The engravings used as illustrations here are handsomely
reproduced. One's only regret is that there are not more. The
text is so interesting on the subject of Blake's and Stothard's
engravings of The Canterbury Pilgrims that it would have
been a happy thought to reproduce the two rival versions side
by side. The famous engraving, The Ancient of Days, meas-
uring out a new universe with vast compasses, is happily re-
produced in all its impressive grandeur. The mention of it
108
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2873
leads one back to Blake's modernity, for The Ancient of Days
was engraved by Blake as a preface to "Europe, a Prophecy."
The forces gathering for conflict in this poem and deluging the
world with blood curiously foreshadow the war but lately ended ;
yet what irony attaches to the poem when one is drawn to read
the peace of Versailles in the symbolical light of The Ancient
of Days arriving after the gory tumult to mark out a new
idealistic order for man! Glen Mullin
Books in Brief
Til THEN it comes to wearing armor soldiers would rather
* * risk the ills they know not of than bear those they have
already. In the sixteenth century they hastened the decline of
armor by throwing it aside (or away) whenever they could;
so in the twentieth the infantrymen of the Allies who had to
march and charge under equipment weighing sixty pounds or
more could not be convinced that additional pounds would be
worth in protection what they would cost in effort. Moreover,
the aesthetic element is larger than the layman guesses.
Young soldiers resent an ugly helmet as young civilians resent
an ugly hat. Not only the undeniable utility of the British-
American "porridge-bowl" model commended it to its wearers
but also its equally undeniable set and swing. It suited many
faces. In the French helmet, with its jaunty crest and brim
the most popular of helmets, utility and beauty most inti-
mately met. This helmet was first adopted and least changed
of all the types of armor used in the war. General Adrian de-
signed it as a steel cap before December, 1914, and no less an
artist than Edouard Detaille gave it its now classic form. That
helmets were not the only forms of armor employed, or at least
tested, during the World War appears from the admirable
monograph on "Helmets and Body Armor in Modern Warfare"
(Yale University Press) published for the Metropolitan Museum
Homer Folks'
NEW BOOK
THE HUMAN COSTS
OF THE WAR
"Like Gibbs' Now it Can Be Told, and
Keynes' Economic Consequences of the Peace,"
says The Survey, "this is a book to be
owned and read — and like them it is read-
able. Mr. Folks' subject is as important as
theirs, and his competence is unquestionable.
What we have is not a succession of
harrowing scenes, but the real explanation of
what happened to the people."
Here is a book for every thinking man and
O woman who would take stock of the price
^ humanity must pay for the madness of war.
SJX Get it today from your bookseller,
\<y or fill out the coupon attached and
THE HUMAN \4 mail to the publishers. The book is
COSTS OFTHE WAR \<fc fully illustrated, cloth bound, and
\
\
N-l
%
HARPER & \\
BROTHERS \%
Franklin Squire \f>
NEW YORK A,
I enclose $2.40 to
cover all charges
on my copy of
By Homer Folks
w
\
costs $2.25 net, or $2.40 postpaid.
\
\
B
HARPER & BROTHERS
Est. 1817
NEW YORK
EBBBBBSBOBfl
BRENTANO'S
Retail Book Department
Fifth Avenue and 27th Street, New York City
Reference Books for the Banker,
Lawyer, Editor, Writer, etc.
Who's Who, 1920, in England
(Nov/ ready) Cloth, $15.00
An Annual Biographical Dictionary with which is
incorporated "Men and Women of the Time."
Who's Who in America, 1920-21
(Ready early in July) Probable price, $7.50
A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Living Men
and Women of the United States.
Who's Who and Why in Canada, 1917-18
(Latest edition available) Cloth, $6.00
A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Canadians.
The American Year Book
Cloth, $5.00
A Record of Events and Progress for 1919. Here, in
one volume, is a complete digest of the events of
interest to Americans that have taken place in busi-
ness, politics, science, art, education, literature and
every other field of human endeavor during the past
year.
The China Year Book, 1919
Cloth, $9.
A mine of information on all that appertains to that
country.
The Japan Year Book, 1919-20
$5.00
Complete Cyclopaedia of Information and Statistics
on Japan.
Exporters' Gazetteer of Foreign Markets,
1920-21
Edited by Lloyd R. Morris Cloth, $10.00
The sort of analysis of the world's trade which every
manufacturer, exporter, shipping man, economist, and
banker should have.
Postage Additional
BRENTANO'S
Retail Book Department
Fifth Avenue and 27th Street
New York City
July 24, 1920]
The Nation
109
of Art by Mr. Bashford Dean, Curator of Armor at the Museum
and lately a major of ordnance in the American army. Au-
thoritative as regards the British, French, and Americans, Mr.
Dean at least glances at the other armies engaged, though in
these directions much remains to be done. Within his field of
special knowledge he has touched and illuminated almost every
phase of the art and craft of the armorer ancient or modern.
Rarely indeed has such historical erudition as Mr. Dean's been
applied to a theme so recent and in most respects so businesslike.
BOLSHEVISM AT WORK," by William T. Goode (Har-
court, Brace and Howe), employs the same method and
covers about the same ground as Arthur Ransome's "Russia in
1919." By records of his interviews with Lenin and the prin-
cipal commissars and by direct observation of a few industrial
plants, Mr. Goode tries to suggest the impression of an ener-
getically creative society working with confidence and imagina-
tion at the building of a well-planned structure. He has less
difficulty in convincing the reader of the earnestness and the
self-denying devotedness of Russia's present leaders than in
proving the value of the work that has thus far been accom-
plished. It is clear that the writer approaches the Bolsheviki
with unfavorable preconceptions and, finding their character
and their conduct unlike what he had been led to expect, al-
lowed himself to be carried too far in appreciation. We miss
the guarded reserve which is discernible in an avowed sympa-
thizer like Mr. Ransome, whose longer familiarity with the
subject has taught him where to look for flaws. For all that
he sees he is filled with admiration — for the workings of the
political machinery, for the elaborate industrial organization,
for the judiciary, for the system of education, for the cultiva-
tion of art, and the imperfections which he recognizes are no
more serious than may be found in any system devised and
operated by human fallibility. Experimental ideas and emerg-
ency programs are treated as if they already enjoyed the sanc-
tion of long trial. If we accepted Mr. Goode's version of the
situation we should believe that the Bolsheviki are much nearer
to realizing their original communist scheme for the control
of the land and of industries and have a much firmer hold on
the population than was claimed for them by Mr. Ransome.
The six months which elapsed between Mr. Ransome's visit and
Mr. Goode's were scarcely enough to produce such a difference
in the state of things as to explain the discrepancy in their
records. There can be little question of the latter's sincerity
and freedom from bias, and there can be no ground for sus-
picion of political propaganda; but it is permissible to enter-
tain some doubt about his critical sagacity.
THE need of a one-volume history of France in English,
imperfectly supplied by such manuals as Mr. Cecil Head-
lam's "France," Professor George Burton Adams's "Growth of
the French Nation," and the translations from French histo-
rians like Duruy, is met by Professor William Stearns Davis's
"History of France from the Earliest Times to the Treaty of
Versailles" (Houghton Mifflin). However admirable they may
still be from certain standpoints, the pre-war histories treat
in far too summary a fashion the period since 1815, relegat-
ing to one or two final chapters that century which is most
important to the reader of today. To this period, with its
many abrupt and perplexing changes of government, Pro-
fessor Davis devotes a full third of his book, considering at
length the tangled politics of the Third Republic, the develop-
ment of the French colonial empire in Africa, and sketching
briefly in his last chapter the course of the world war. In-
ferior to Adams's work in philosophic grasp, and making no
pretence to original scholarship, the volume provides for the
student and general reader not a military or diplomatic his-
tory but a history of the French people, full of those well-
chosen and interesting details which a writer of successful his-
torical romances and a high school history might be expected
to recognize and include. As in the case of his text-book,
"Mediaeval and Modern Europe," Professor Davis has worked
with collaborators, entrusting in this case all the drudgery of
scholarship, including the maps, the translations, the redac-
tion of the text, the chronological table, the concise appendix
on the Estates General, and the full and excellent critical
bibliography of English books, to Miss Gertrude Jacobsen.
TV/fR. GEORGE WHITEFIELD MEAD, author of "The
*■ * Great Menace" (Dodd, Mead), thunders in the index of
his little book and roars as gently as a dove in the appendix.
He first calls upon us to place our heels on the Dragon of
Bolshevism, then to dig him up by the roots, finally to exorcise
him by the spirit of justice and brotherhood. The New York
Times intones the curse and the Apostle Paul the benedic-
tion. And what is this great menace? Something which aims
to produce in America conditions similar to those prevailing in
Russia. What are conditions in Russia? Ask Mr. Hoover.
He has not been there, it is true, but he knows that "the streets
of every city and village have run with the blood of execu-
tions." Or ask the United States Senate Judiciary Committee
on Bolshevism about the suppression of Sunday-schools and the
desecration of Easter by the Bolsheviki. But for meticulous
accuracy of detail consult the Minneapolis Tribune, and learn
that "Russian Bolshevism, triumphant in this country, would
be followed by the confiscation of 203,432 church edifices . . .
and by atheist dictatorship domination over 41,926,854 church
members." Some optimist who refuses to be "shocked out of a
false sense of security" may continue to nurse the unconquerable
hope that there is an overlooked 41,926,855th church member
who will intrench himself in a possible 263,433d church edifice
and hold the fort for Christianity. But that optimist must be
made to see that he who does not share the Great Fear is him-
self a subtle agent of the Great Menace.
Fiction Sociology History Belles -Lettres
Open the Door
An English novel of unusual
theme and quality.
CATHERINE CARSWELL
$2.00
Darkwater
The tragedy and aspiration of
the Negro Race.
W. E. B. DU BOIS
$2.00
11 ST
m
W^at the Workers Want
The aims of British labor, told ARTHUR GLEASON
in the workers' ovi n words. C A r\r\
An Introduction to Social Ethics
JOHN M. MECKLIN
$3.75
A study of the conscience of
State acting upon social
institutions.
A. F. POLLARD
$3.25
J. M. BUDISH
and GEO. SOULE
$3.00
A Short History oi the Great War
^^ith 19 special maps that are
marvels of clearness.
The New Unionism
The origin, structure, methods and
program of the new type of unionism
in the clothing industry.
A Guide to Russian Literature
Great Russian writers from 1825 to M. J. OLGIN
1917 sympathetically interpreted. $3.00
Musical Portraits PAUL rosenfeld
Remarkable appreciations of 20 modern £2 §0
composers, from Wagner to Bloch.
HARCOURT, BRACE & HOWE, i&47&S
International Relations Section
Contents
HUNGARY
The War Record of Ex-Premier Huszar 110
Count Karolyi'e Manifesto HO
The Political Results of the Hungarian Boycott HI
The Austrian Intellectuals on the Boycott HI
THE CRISIS IN SOUTH AMERICA
The Treaty of Ancon 112
The Truce Between Chile and Bolivia 113
The War Record of Ex-Premier Huszar
THE following deposition concerning the conduct of
Charles Huszar, former Hungarian Premier, and his
associates, is reprinted from Az Ember (Vienna) for June 6.
Affidavit: Taken on January 20, 1920, at Brasov (Brasso)
before Colonel Vecerdea, Royal Rumanian Prefect of Police;
Colonel John Neculea, Judge-Advocate; and Lieutenant Alex-
ander Stefanescu, clerk.
Subject: Hungarian atrocities at Brasov, committed in 1916.
The deponents : Michael Russ, principal of a public school, and
his companions relate as follows:
When on October 10, 1916, the Rumanian army evacuated
Brasov, the city was entered, by order of the Hungarian Gov-
ernment, by a Hungarian intelligence detachment. The leaders
of the detachment were First Lieutenant Arpy and Sergeant
Charles Huszar, at present Premier of Hungary. The detach-
ment consisted of 120 gendarmes and several secret service
agents in civilian clothes. Immediately on their arrival, at
night, they surrounded the so-called Bolgarszeg quarters of the
city, driving the people out of their homes and corralling them
on the Porond Square. Those refusing to hurry along were
shot instantaneously. Thus the following were killed: Deme-
trius Mosoi, aged 52; John Lazar, 64; Theodor Farkasan, 58;
Alexander Russ, 60; Nicholas Gavoi, 56; Mrs. Aspasia Ungu-
rean, 36 (mother of four children) ; Alexander Popa, 50; Peter
Vacar, 46 (a one-armed invalid) ; and a few others unidentified
■*— in all, fourteen persons. The drive ended at 4 a. m. We
were all lined up on the above-named square and interrogated
one by one. The hearing, conducted by Lieutenant Arpy, con-
sisted in taking down our names and addresses, and asking us
the question: "What did you steal?" Woe unto those who said
they did not steal anything! They were at once stripped naked
and no matter whether it was a woman, man, or child, young
or old, each received twenty-five blows with canes on the bare
body. This terrible "hearing" lasted all day. Of course, every-
body said in the end that he had stolen this or that, though all
were innocent.
In the evening, in front of the Church of St. Nicholas, Ser-
geant Charles Huszar announced that he was going to have
every one of us executed. He ordered some German troops in
his command to prepare for the execution, and bade us to kneel
down and say our prayers. We knelt down and awaited death,
but at the last moment Major Opitz, of the Commissariat, a
humane Czech, arrived and told Huszar that the Heir-ApDarent
(the Archduke Charles) was expected to arrive next day and
that he (Major Opitz) declined responsibility for the proceed-
ings. Thereupon Sergeant Charles Huszar became angered to
such extent that he fired his rifle point blank into the crowd.
By accident he did not hit anybody. Thereupon all the male
prisoners were driven into the Church of St. Nicholas and there
flogged into insensibility. The deponent, Michael Russ, princi-
pal of a public school, was beaten by Charles Huszar himself,
who used the butt of his rifle. There is no end to the atrocities
committed by these two bestial men (Arpy and Huszar) in the
counties of Brasov and Haromszek. The so-called K-Stelle was
located in the Brasov School of the lumber industry, the prison
in the cellar and the citadel. Here the following were executed :
Basil Muntyan, Damian Nistov, Denis Procan, and John Calu-
ger, all priests. The merchant Eremia was flogged till he be-
came insane. In the casemates of this citadel hundreds of
corpses lay about unburied. We request that the depositions
of the following be taken: former Sergeant of Gendarmes
Csepes and Private Anthony Gregor. They were members of
the detachment, but became so disgusted with the horrors that
they deserted. At present Csepes is domiciled at Petrocile 32,
Brasov.
Count Karolyi's Manifesto
THE following manifesto of Count Michael Karolyi, at
present living in exile in Czecho-Slovakia, is reprinted
from Az Ember (Vienna) for April 3.
To the Enslaved Hungarians-:
There is no hour of the day but that my thoughts dwell with
you, my imprisoned, downtrodden, tortured brethren.
Tears burst into my eyes, my fists clench with rage when-
ever I think of the crimes committed against you. To know
that the number of innocent victims increases day by day; to
know that we in our enforced exile cannot rush to your aid
and smite down your executioners is unbearable.
Hungary today is a great death chamber. Under the guise
of Christianity, with the catchword of neighborly love, the sys-
tem on which rests the guilt of five years' war has been revived,
The darkest pages of medieval history, with their vaults of
torture, are repeated.
During the war clericalism, that henchman of rapacious mili-
tarism, pronounced its blessing on the cannon. Today, with
crucifix in hand, robed in the surplice, it blesses the thumb-
screws of the Awakening Hungarians and unites with the mur-
derers who have massacred hundreds of innocent people at
Kecskemet and elsewhere.
But the reign of the Magyar Torquemada cannot last much
longer. That edifice of lies and sham slogans must crumble.
We who live abroad cannot preach to you war and rebellion,
however justified. We know only too well the fate of those who,
loyal to their principles, refuse to bend their knees before the
Terror. Yet we wish to inspire strength, courage, and faith
in the souls of the despairing, of those who in their terrible
visitation have lost trust in the final victory.
You who in the internment camps of Hajmasker, in the prisons
of Budapest and other parts of Hungary endure unspeakable
torment of the body and soul — may your faith live strong and
unshakable. We homeless exiles shall not forget you; we shall
do whatever little we can to enlighten the conscience of the
world, to stir humanity to active protest against the Hun-
garian horrors.
All the frantic efforts of the reactionaries cannot drown the
voices that rise, as from Dante's Inferno, from the hosts of
nameless heroes in their mortal agony. As we hear those
voices, so does the world, this new world struggling onward on
the road of progress. Every blow is echoed, every drop of
blood will bear its fruit a hundredfold.
Only on the road of suffering and trial does man find his
better self, does he discover in the depth of his soul the strength
that otherwise may have remained hidden forever. Reformers,
messengers of a new faith, have been persecuted everywhere, in
all ages ; yes, by the blood of martyrs the Idea always triumphs.
It is you who lend us strength to struggle on. And whenever
our hour of trial shall strike, it will be your example that will
enable us to bear our cross.
July 24, 1920]
The Nation
111
But the time will come when the scourge drives the publicans
and Pharisees out of the House of God. May this thought, the
faith in a regenerated humanity, live in you.
Your sufferings, your spilt blood will be the brick and mortar
of the Socialist world, built on the rock of true brotherhood,
the Gospel's kingdom of the poor of today. Workers of Hun-
gary, my enslaved brethren, however hard it all may seem, re-
member the words: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a
corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone;
but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."
Signed: Michael Karolyi
The Political Results of the Hungarian
Boycott
THE announcement on June 4 of the International Trade
Union Federation that an embargo on all communica-
tion with Hungary would be put into effect on June 20,
created great consternation in political circles at Budapest.
On June 5 the existence of the White Terror was for the
first time admitted on the floor of the National Assembly.
In a secret session Deputy Hencz, a Christian Nationalist,
exposed the abortive plan of the officers of the Hejjas and
Ostenburg detachments and the Society of Awakening Hun-
garians to overthrow the Assembly and proclaim a military
dictatorship.
For the first time Lieutenant Hejjas and Count Ostenburg
were denounced by name, and their punishment was de-
manded even by supporters of the Government. One of the
speakers was Count Albert Apponyi, the veteran conserva-
tive statesman, who said, in part:
Let us call a spade a spade. The atrocities are committed,
not by civilians disguised as officers, but by genuine officers who
are not worthy of the name. Officers' gangs commit one revolt-
ing murder after the other with bestial cruelty. This sort of
thing must be stopped if the country is not to be ruined.
Measures to combat the Terror were discussed in subse-
quent meetings, spokesmen of the Government persisting in
the stand that the excesses were committed by "irresponsible
elements" masquerading as officers. On June 13 the Official
Gazette promulgated a decree, signed by the Minister of
Defense, General Soos, purporting to dissolve the "detach-
ments" and to prohibit interference with civilians by mem-
bers of the armed force. On this decree Becsi Magyar
Ujsag (a Vienna Hungarian paper, organ of the non-
socialist radical refugees) comments editorially as follows
in the issue of June 15:
We have read carefully the text of this order, as transmitted
in official dispatches, and we declare on our honor and con-
science this order means that everything remains unchanged.
The Budapest correspondent of the newspaper transmits
the following text of the decree:
All activities of all military formations, of agents of the
armed force, and of detachments and their investigators, must
cease in matters pertaining to civilians. These formations will
henceforth be incorporated in the organization of military justice.
Military authorities and their subordinate officials may proceed
against civilians only in cases arising from crimes against the
military force of the state. Confiscations, and the searching of
persons and homes, may even in such cases be carried out only
on written warrants issued by the military commander in charge.
Exception to this rule obtains in cases where civilians are
caught in a criminal act; but civilians thus arrested must
within forty-eight hours be arraigned before the (military)
judge-advocate of the district. During the period of transition,
pending the enactment of laws restoring political and social
order, military authorities and their organs must limit them-
selves to proceedings undertaken at the request of the civil
authority concerned, and in cases brought to the knowledge
of the military authority all evidence must be submitted to the
civil authority concerned. Those military officials and investi-
gators who abuse their power by transgressing the above regu-
lations, must be arrested at once and turned over to the nearest
military authority.
Analyzing this decree Becsi Magyar Ujsag points out that
(1) the incorporation of the "detachments" into the Na-
tional Army means absolutely no change, as the most dreaded
units, the Pronay and Ostenburg detachments, are already
so incorporated as the Third and Twenty-sixth Chasseur
Battalions respectively; (2) that "for a period of transition"
the power of the military organs remains unaffected; (3)
that the military may arrest anybody charged with an of-
fense against the army, such offenses to be defined by the
military themselves; (4) that military officers transgressing
the regulation will be dealt with by the military authorities
themselves. The paper continues :
We ask: Of the hundreds of atrocities enumerated by the
British Labor Party report how many would not be repeated
because of this decree? Not one; and if the boycott had not
been declared already, it ought to be declared now, and con-
tinued until somebody other than Horthy will issue decrees
against Horthy. Ceterum censemus Horthy culturam esse
delendam.
Ernest Garami, leader of the Right Wing of the Hun-
garian Social Democratic Party, who went into exile at the
establishment of Bela Kun's Government, comments in
Az Ember for June 20 as follows:
There is no change in the Hungarian situation. The change is
merely in the tactics of the Government. So far the Govern-
ment has denied the existence of the White Terror; from now
on it merely disclaims responsibility for it.
In the same issue of Az Ember its editor, Frank Gondor,
writes :
What the Hungarian Government, with the cooperation of
Herr Apponyi, is trying to put over now is nothing but humbug
of the most impudent sort. ... A more murderous, a more
rabid terror is raging in Hungary now than ever before. . . .
It is not true that Horthy, the cabinet, and the National As-
sembly are in earnest about abolishing the Terror. What they
want is not abolition of the Terror. What they want is merely
to make Europe believe that there is no Terror. . . . Nobody
ought to expect that the regent of the White Terror would
abolish the foundation of his very existence, the bloody rule of
the Terror.
The Austrian Intellectuals on the Boycott
THE Free Association of the Cultural Societies of Ger-
man-Austria has transmitted the following document
to the Executive Committee of the International Trade
Union Federation at Amsterdam. The document was pub-
lished in Becsi Magyar Ujsag (Vienna) on June 17. It is
signed by William Borner, an exponent of contemporary Ger-
man philosophy.
It is with the deepest horror and stupefaction that we observe
the atrocities the responsibility for which rests on the present
Hungarian Government. Our Federation, which has for its aim
the advancement of intellectual and moral culture, regards those
deeds as such an incredible deviation from the principles of
humanity that we learn with satisfaction the announcement of
112
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2873
the international boycott against Hungary. The Hungarian
Government must see that every class of the peoples of all
civilized countries is prepared to sever all connection with a
country whose political leaders trample upon the precepts of
humanity in such a brutal manner. We are aware that the
boycott will gravely affect the innocent, and we profoundly
regret this sad phase of it. Nevertheless we are convinced
that, unlike the blockade of wartime, the present embargo is
justified by events. It means stigmatizing a country which,
with the connivance and often even with the encouragement
of its government, indulges in acts at the sight of which civil-
ized beings of the twentieth century cover their faces in shame.
This boycott rests on facts; for in what other manner would
it be possible to bring to its senses an inhumane government
except by severing all relations with it, isolating it, and switch-
ing it outside of the circuit of civilized life? Although the boy-
cott is enforced by the class-conscious proletariat of all coun-
tries and is intended to benefit the Hungarian proletariat first
of all, we wish to give expression to the fact that here in
Austria many men and women, regardless of party ties and
viewpoints, greet with enthusiasm your course in the name of
human solidarity and transmit to you their heartfelt thanks
for organizing this epoch-making action. We hope that your
well-planned intervention will soon achieve the desired and
hoped-for result.
Signed: Wilhelm Borner,
For the Free Federation of the Cultural Societies of
German-Austria.
The Treaty of A neon
THE Treaty of Ancon, on the basis of which Chile still
hopes to settle the question of Tacna and Arica now
disturbing the peace of South America, was signed in 1883.
The Republic of Chile on the one part, and the Republic of
Peru on the other, wishing to reestablish friendly relations be-
tween the two nations, have determined to celebrate a treaty of
peace and friendship, and with this object have named and ap-
pointed their plenipotentiaries, namely:
His Excellency the President of Chile appoints Mr. Jovino
Novoa, and his Excellency the President of Peru appoints Mr.
Jose Antonio Lavalle, Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Mr.
Mariano Castro Zaldivar.
The above mentioned, after having shown their full powers
and authority, and finding them in due and correct form, have
agreed on the following articles :
Article 1. Relations of peace and friendship are reestab-
lished between the Republics of Chile and Peru.
Article 2. The Republic of Peru cedes to the Republic of
Chile, perpetually and unconditionally, the territory of the coast
province of Tarapaca, the limits of which are: on the north the
valley and river of Camarones, on the south the valley and river
of Loa, on the east the Republic of Bolivia, and on the west
the Pacific Ocean.
Article 3. The territory of the provinces of Tacna and
Arica, limited on the north by the River Sama, from its origin
in the Andes, conterminous with Bolivia, to its mouth, where
it flows into the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the valley
and river of Camarones, on the east by the Republic of Bolivia
and on the west by the Pacific Ocean, shall remain in the posses-
sion of Chile, subject to the laws and authorities of Chile during
the term of ten years, to be counted from the date of the ratifica-
tion of the present treaty of peace. This term having expired a
plebiscite shall decide by popular vote if the territory of these
provinces shall remain definitely under the dominion and sov-
ereignty of Chile or if they shall continue forming part of the
territory of Peru. That one of the two countries in whose favor
the provinces of Tacna and Arica shall be annexed, shall pay to
the other ten million dollars Chilian silver money or Peruvian
soles, of equal percentage of fine silver and also of equal weight
as the former.
A special protocol, which shall be considered as an integral
part of the present treaty, shall establish the form in which the
plebiscite shall take place, and the terms and conditions on which
the ten million dollars shall be paid, by the nation that remains
in possession of the provinces of Tacna and Arica.
Article 4. In conformity with the disposition of the supreme
decree of February 9, 1882, by which the Government of Chile
authorized the sale of a million tons of guano, the net product
of this substance, after deducting all expenses, as referred to
in Article 13 of that decree, shall be divided in equal parts be-
tween the Government of Chile and the creditors of Peru, whose
titles of credit appear to be based on the security of guano.
On the termination of the sale of the million tons, referred to
in the anterior clause, the Government of Chile will continue
delivering to the creditors of Peru the 50 per cent of the net pro-
ceeds of guano sold, as established in Article 13, until the debt
is totally paid or the guano deposits in actual working are ex-
hausted.
The product of the deposits that may be discovered in the
future in the territories ceded to Chile belong exclusively to the
Chilian government.
Article 5. If deposits of guano be discovered in the terri-
tories that remain under the dominion of Peru, in order to avoid
competition in the sale of this substance, both Governments, of
common accord, shall previously determine the proportions and
conditions under which each of them shall dispose of this manure.
The stipulation made in the preceding clause shall also refer to
the existence of guano already discovered, that may remain on
Lobos Islands, at the time of the delivery of these islands to-
Peru, in conformity with Article 9 of the present treaty.
Article 6. The creditors of Peru, to whom are conceded the'
advantages referred to in Article 4, shall submit, for the quali-
fication of their titles and for other proceedings, to the regla-
mentation established by the supreme decree of February 9,
1882.
Article 7. The obligation that the Government of Chile ac-
cepts by Article 4 of delivering 50 per cent of the net product
of guano of the deposits actually working, shall subsist, if this
extraction takes place in conformity with the existing contract
based upon the sale of one million tons, or if it be effected in
virtue of another contract, for the exclusive account of the
Government of Chile.
Article 8. Except in virtue of the declarations specified in
the preceding articles and of the obligations that the Govern-
ment of Chile has voluntarily accepted in the supreme decree
of March 28, 1882, that regulates the nitrate property of
Tarapaca, the aforesaid Government of Chile will recognize no
credits of any class that affect the new territories acquired by
the present treaty, whatever may be their nature and ante-
cedents.
Article 9. The Lobos Islands will continue to be admin-
istered by the Government of Chile until the existing guano de-
posits have furnished one million tons of guano, as stipulated
in Article 4 and Article 7. When the million tons have been
extracted the islands shall be returned to Peru.
Article 10. The Government of Chile declares that there
shall be ceded to Peru, from the day that the present treaty
shall be ratified and constitutionally exchanged, the 50 per cent
appertaining to that Republic from the product of guano from
Lobos Islands.
Article 11. While no special treaty is made, the mercantile
relations between the two countries shall subsist in the same
state that they were before April 5, 1879.
Article 12. The indemnity owing by Peru to Chilians who
have suffered damages on account of the war, shall be de-
termined by a tribunal of arbitration, or by an international
mixed commission, immediately after the ratification of the
present treaty, in the form established for the conventions re-
July 24, 1920]
The Nation
113
cently agreed upon between Chile and the Governments of Eng-
land, France, and Italy.
Article 13. The contracting governments recognize and ac-
cept the validity of all administrative acts and judicial sentences
made and passed during the occupation of Peru, derived from
martial law exercised by the Government of Chile.
Article 14. The present treaty shall be ratified and the
ratifications exchanged in the city of Lima as soon as possible,
within a maximum period of one hundred and sixty days, count-
ing from this date. . . .
Dated at Lima the twentieth of October of the year of our
Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighty three.
Signed: Jovino Novoa
J. A. Lavalle
Mariano Castro Zaldivar
The Truce Between Chile and Bolivia
THE following "pact of truce" between Chile and Bolivia
was signed on April 4, 1884, and made over into a
treaty in 1904. In view of the present Bolivian crisis its
provisions are of particular interest.
I
The Republics of Chile and Bolivia celebrate an indefinite
truce, and, in consequence, they declare the state of war
terminated, and that the same cannot be again carried on unless
one of the contracting parties notifies the other, with at least
one year of anticipation, its determination to resume hostilities.
In this case the notification shall be made directly, or through
the diplomatic representative of a friendly nation.
II
The Republic of Chile, during the period that this treaty is
in force, shall continue to govern according to Chilian law the
territories situated between the parallel 23 degrees south and the
mouth of the River Loa, these territories being bounded to the
east by a right line, drawn from Zapalegui, from the intersec-
tion of the limit of the Argentine Republic to the volcano
Licancaur. From this point it follows a right line to the sum-
mit of the extinct volcano Cabana; from there continues an-
other right line to the spring of water (ojo de aqua) that is
found to the south of Lake Ascotan; and from there another
right line that, cutting by the side of the lake, terminates on
the volcano Ollagua. From this point another right line to the
volcano Tua afterwards follows the divisional line between
Tarapaca and Bolivia.
In case difficulties may arise, both parties shall point a com-
mission of engineers that shall fix the limits as indicated, sub-
ject to the landmarks here determined.
Ill
The property and goods confiscated from Chilian citizens by
Government edict or by order of civil and military authorities
shall be immediately returned to their owners or to their repre-
sentatives.
There shall also be returned the products that the Govern-
ment of Bolivia may have received from these properties and
that appear to be proved by the documents in the case.
The damages that in these cases have been suffered by
Chilian citizens shall be indemnified by reason of the actions
that the interested parties may bring before the Government
of Bolivia.
IV
If no agreement can be arrived at between the Government
of Bolivia and the parties interested with respect to the amount
of indemnity for the loss and damage suffered, the points in dis-
pute shall be submitted to a commission of arbitration com-
posed of three members, one named by Chile, one by Bolivia,
and the third to be named in Chile, by mutual accord, from
among the representatives of neutral nations resident in Chile.
This commission shall be appointed as soon as possible.
V
Commercial relations shall be reestablished between Chile and
Bolivia.
In future raw material produced in Chile, and articles manu-
factured there, shall enter Bolivia free from all duties, or
customs-house dues; and Bolivian productions of the same class
and fabricated in the same way shall enjoy the same freedom
in Chile, on their importation or exportation through a Chilian
port.
The commercial freedom of Chilian and Bolivian manu-
factures, as well as the enumeration of these said products, shall
form matter for a special protocol.
Nationalized merchandise entering by the port of Arica shall
be considered as foreign merchandise for the effects of its entry.
Foreign merchandise introduced into Bolivia via Antofagasta
shall have free passage, notwithstanding such measures as Chile
may take to prevent contraband trade.
Until a special convention is made, Chile and Bolivia shall
enjoy the commercial advantages and freedom that either na-
tion accords to the most favored nation.
VI
At the port of Arica foreign merchandise, even that entering
for consumption in Bolivia, shall pay the customs dues in force
by the Chilian tariff; this merchandise shall not pay, in the
interior, any further duty. The sums received in payment of
duty shall be divided in this way: 25 per cent shall be applied
as dues received for merchandise to be consumed in the terri-
tories of Tacna and Arica, and as working expenses, and 75 per
cent shall be for Bolivia.
This 75 per cent shall be divided, at present, in the following
way: 40 parts shall be retained by the Chilian administration
to pay the sums owed by Bolivia, as the settlement of the
amounts, to be executed according to Clause III of this treaty
and to pay the unsettled part of the Bolivian loan raised in
Chile in 1867; the remainder shall be handed over to the Bo-
livian Government in cash or in drafts at its order. The loan
shall be considered, for the effecting of its payment, as on equal
terms with the damages to personal property effected during
the war.
The Bolivian Government, when it thinks proper, is at liberty
to examine the accounts of the Arica customs-house, by means
of its agents.
As soon as the indemnity specified in Article 3 has been
paid, and the retention of the 40 parts therefore ceases, Bolivia
is at liberty to establish customs-houses in the interior of her
territory, if it be thought fit. In this case foreign merchandise
may pass free, via Arica.
VII
Any acts of the subordinate authorities of either nation that
tend to alter the situation formed by the present treaty of
truce, especially in what may refer to the limits that Chile
continues to occupy, shall be repressed and punished by the
respective Governments, officially or by request.
VIII
As the object of the contracting parties in celebrating this
pact of truce, is to prepare and facilitate a solid and stable
treaty of peace between the two republics, they reciprocally
promise to act in a manner conducive to this end.
This pact shall be ratified by the Government of Bolivia
within forty days, and the ratifications exchanged at Santiago
during the month of June. . . .
Signed: A. Vergara Albano
Belisario Salinas
Belisario Boeto
That which was stipulated having been complied with in a
complementary protocol, the ratifications of this treaty were
exchanged at Santiago, on November 29 of the same year, 1884.
114
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2873
How are you going
to vote?
In voting for the next President of the United States,
the people assume a new burden of responsibility —
the result of issues which have been forced upon
a creaking and exhausted world.
No election has ever been more important than
the one which will take place next November —
and no election has been more confused.
THE NATION, between now and November, will
publish the truth about all the candidates. Many
of the facts published will be astounding and all of
them will be fair and absolutely free of party bias.
You need THE NATION to help you make your
decision. You can have it every week for the next
six months for $2.50. Send your remittance at
once, and in acknowledgment of your support we
will include free a copy of H. N. Brailsford's "The
Covenant of Peace" — the essay which was awarded
a prize of £100 by a distinguished jury as being the
best short study of a league of nations.
The Nation,
20 Vesey Street,
New York, N. Y.
Inclosed herewith you will find remittance for $2.50, for which please send me THE
NATION for six months, together with H. N. Brailsford's "The Covenant of Peace."
Name .
Address .
City
State
7-24
»8?
The Nation
FOUNDED 18 65
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 31, 1920
No. 2874
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 115
EDITORIALS :
The Menace of Another War 118
The Railway Award 119
Steel and the Inter-Church 120
SOVIET RUSSIA— 1920. By Bertrand Russell 121
THE FORTY-EIGHTERS' POSITION. By Allen McCurdy 126
THE GOLDEN CAGE. By Joseph L. Freeman 127
A BOLT FROM THE BLUE. By Heywood Broun 128
NEW YORK : DICTATOR OF AMERICAN CRITICISM. By Mary Austin 129
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By The Drifter 130
CORRESPONDENCE 131
IN SUMMER. By David Morton. 132
BOOKS:
Bernsdorff in America. By Norman Hapgood 132
Historical Miscellanies. By Preserved Smith 133
What the Workers Want. By George Soule 133
Woman. By Ludwig Lewisohn 134
Books in Brief 135
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION 138
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER ARTHUR GLEASON
LEWIS S. GANNETT
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Adress: Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising: Swathmore Press, Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
REFRESHING and hearty is the irruption by Parley
P. Christensen, Farmer-Labor candidate, into the
cloying "we are all safe and sane fellows together" atmos-
phere of the Cox-Harding campaign which even the more
recent "just where do you stand on this issue" questioning
has but slightly acidulated. His telegram of last week to
the Republican and Democratic nominees recalls sharply
that there are other issues, other worlds, other people than
those which these two good-natured candidates have been
amiably pattering about. There is, for instance, Eugene
V. Debs, also a candidate for the Presidency, confined be-
hind the bars of the Federal penitentiary at Atlanta. Mr.
Christensen dislikes, he says, to start on a campaign while
one of his opponents is in prison "for no other crime than
an honest expression of his political views," and he asks
that Messrs. Cox and Harding join with him in asking
President Wilson to release Debs. Whether they will honor
him with assent is doubtful. That Eugene Debs, twenty
months after the war, ought to be out of the jail to which
he should never have been sent admits of no doubt.
w
E referred last week to the pointed questions which
Senator Harding has addressed to Governor Cox
regarding the treaty and Democratic foreign policy gen-
erally, following the interview between the Governor and
the President at Washington. It will be remembered that
Governor Cox, according to his own statement issued to the
press, had a "delightful" meeting with Mr. Wilson "from
every viewpoint." Mr. Wilson, on his part, found the inter-
view "in every respect most satisfactory and gratifying,"
he and the Governor being "absolutely at one with regard
to the great issue of the League of Nations." Mr. Roose-
velt added the unctious wish "that every American could
have been a silent witness to the meeting between these
two great men." Now comes a correspondent of the New
York World, however, who declares that the Washington con-
ference "went into no details of the League of Nations,"
and that the discussion "was on broad and general lines
and never did get down to specific reservations." The same
correspondent cites Mr. Roosevelt as authority for the state-
ment that neither the treaty nor the League can be regarded
as "fixed issues" in the campaign, and that "the status re-
garding them . . . may be much changed before
March 4." Governor Cox, it is said, will shortly reply to
Senator Harding's questions. We do not wish to prejudge
his reply, but we may at least point out that nothing short
of a frank answer will satisfy the public. The exact words
that were exchanged at Washington are not particularly
important. What the country wants to know is precisely
where the Democratic nominee stands with reference to the
treaty and the League; whether he accepts Article X with-
out reservations, or if with reservations what they are ; and
whether he is prepared to indorse and continue the Wilson
foreign policy which Senator Harding has indicted.
SENATOR HARDING seems bent upon pursuing his in-
quiries still further. Following his embarrassing ques-
tions addressed to Governor Cox, he has now called atten-
tion to an extremely important statement by Colonel House
made to the foreign service of the Philadelphia Public
Ledger, in London, on July 11. According to Colonel House,
a suggestion was made in Paris just after the armistice to
proceed at once in the making of a preliminary treaty of peace
with Germany alone, based upon broad general lines and con-
cerning four subjects — army, navy, reparations, and delineation
of boundaries. The boundaries need not have been exact, but
should have been so drawn as to give Germany the assurance
that her loss of territory would not be greater than indicated.
Such a treaty could have been made by Christmas of 1918, and
would have been not only the usual but the obvious thing to do.
There was at that time facing Germany the entire Allied army,
militant and flushed with victory, and there would have been no
delay or evasion of terms.
"All along," declares Senator Harding, "this has been the
Republican conception of what ought to have been done."
That may or may not be the case. The point is, if a pre-
liminary peace with Germany could have been had by
Christmas of 1918, why was the proposal rejected? Why
did Mr. Wilson join with the Allies in summoning a peace
conference which not only did not meet until January, but
which failed to settle even preliminarily any of the ques-
tions at issue with Germany until, more than seven months
after the armistice, it should have gone through the form
116
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2874
of settling them all? Was Mr. Wilson so overweeningly
devoted to his scheme of a League of Nations that he was
willing to keep the whole world hanging for months be-
tween peace and war until he could have his way?
A NORTH CAROLINA Negro, charged with assaulting
a white girl, was taken from the Person County jail
and lynched. The next day it was shown indisputably by
his white employer that he was innocent. Governor Bickett
promptly offered the largest reward legally permissible for
the apprehension of each member of the mob. A week later
three Negroes, charged with assault, were jailed in the
town of Graham. The Governor immediately sent a ma-
chine gun company of the State National Guard with an
order which should rank well with the famous epigrams in
our history which from their school days Americans like
to repeat: "Captain Fowler, protect those prisoners at all
hazards, and notify the people I have ordered the necessary
men and machine guns to shoot straight if an attempt on
the life of the prisoners is made." Unfortunately, it was
deemed necessary to carry out these instructions fully. A mob
formed and the machine gunners killed one and wounded
two — but the Negroes were saved, law and order was vindi-
cated, and a new name, that of Governor Thomas W.
Bickett, was formally placed on the roster of those who
understand their duty and are not afraid to do it. They
are none too numerous, these courageous Governors of
Southern States. Bickett, Democrat, has ably seconded a
similarly brave stand by Governor Morrow, Republican, of
Kentucky. These party distinctions have some significance
in the South. Meantime, there is the other kind of State
Executive. In Paris, Texas, two Negroes were burned
at the stake for the alleged killing of two white men. The
next day the County Sheriff declared that "at least one of
the two was not the right one," and that he was doubtful
whether the "other was the right party." No arrests have
been made or will be, but Governor Hobby promptly re-
plied to a telegram of protest from the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People that "Lamar County
and Texas are amply able to take care of the situation with-
out suggestions from the outside."
"T BELIEVE the Federal Government should stamp out
1 lynching and remove that stain from the fair name
of America" — thus Senator Harding in his speech of
acceptance. He is right in pointing to Federal control as
the best approach. For while a courageous Governor can
do much in his State to stamp out mob murder — contrast
North Carolina's one lynching to date this year with the
seven in Texas — a condition so grave, so inherently de-
structive of everything that America must stand for, cannot
be left to chance manhood in the gubernatorial seat. No
passages in Senator Harding's address are more praise-
worthy than those dealing with our color problem. If, as
we hope, his utterances are sincere and not merely cam-
paign rhetoric, and if the colored people and the country
are not to be shamefully betrayed as they were in this, and
indeed in other matters, by Woodrow Wilson, Senator
Harding should define specifically what he means by say-
ing: "The Negro citizens of America should be guaranteed
the enjoyment of all their rights." The minimum re-
quirements, in addition to a Federal anti-lynching law, are
the abolition of segregation and discrimination in civil ser-
vice, army, and navy, and of Jim-Crowism in interstate
travel, and the enforcement by Federal commissioners of the
Fifteenth Amendment.
AMERICAN adventures in imperialism are usually not
on a grand scale. They manage to include most of the
elements that enter into the establishment of empires farther
flung, but such elements are done in miniature. Instead of
girdling the Seven Seas, the American empire girdles, for
the most part, a sea not even included among the seven —
the Caribbean; but within those modest limits we have
added to the white man's burden a whole kit-bag full of
troubles. The stories of Haiti and Santo Domingo have been
told in other issues of The Nation. This week we publish
in the International Relations Section some documentary
evidence as to the misuse of power by the United States in
relation to another small island and another small nation.
The record of the Taboga Island affair is one of high-handed,
if politely-worded, diplomacy at Washington, of bullying
arrogance on the spot. In November, 1918, the Governor
of the Canal Zone notified the President of Panama that in
a few days' time the American Government would occupy the
island of Taboga for military purposes. That such dis-
courteous haste was unnecessary is evidenced by the fact
that in January, 1920, more than a year later, Secretary
Lansing spoke of the "improbability of initiating the con-
struction of defensive works on a large scale ... in 1920,"
and by the fact that no steps have even yet been taken to
start such construction. The earnest appeals of the repre-
sentatives of Panama have received polite, evasive replies —
replies which indicate only too clearly that the Department
of State looks upon Panama as an inferior, fit to be notified
but not consulted as to its fate. Without raising the ques-
tion, which Panama itself raised only tentatively, of the
original right of the United States to annex Taboga and
expropriate the property of its citizens, we should certainly
demand that prompt attention be paid to the moderate claims
made in the various notes printed in this week's issue.
IF it be true, as a press dispatch reported the other day,
that the jurists who have been busy at The Hague
drafting a scheme for a High Court of International Jus-
tice have agreed that proceedings before the court may in
some cases be secret, the enlightened part of the world will
have little use for the plan. The reason for secrecy, it is
said, is the necessity of safeguarding diplomatic interests.
Whenever a case brought before the proposed court is one in
which an open hearing might reveal the diplomatic secrets
of either party, that party may in its discretion demand
that the doors be closed and public reports of the hearings
withheld. Once more, this time in a high court of the na-
tions, the odious demands of secret diplomacy are obse-
quiously to be regarded. One wonders what arguments
moved Mr. Elihu Root and his eminent associates, whose
work at The Hague has from the beginning been lauded
by the press, to give their blessing to this particular infamy.
One wonders why a rule of publicity which obtains in courts
of last resort in all civilized countries should be thrown to
the winds when an international court is to be erected.
Nothing could show more clearly the low moral plane to
which those who deal with international affairs are prone
to fall than this deliberate proposal to perpetuate, in the
field of international jurisprudence, a practice which has
repeatedly proved itself a curse. It is certainly to be hoped
July 31, 1920]
The Nation
117
that the Council of the League of Nations, before which
the project of a High Court now comes, will have the cour-
age to veto the proposal of the jurists' conference.
AGAIN we see vengeance about to be visited upon a
state that made the error of taking the Allies at their
word. When King Hussein, ruler of the Hejas, agreed to
enter the war against Turkey, Great Britain, with the ap-
proval of France, made the Arabs a definite offer of an
independent Arabia to be divided between the three sons of
the king of the Hejas. Money was provided for the purpose
of financing the new state; and the war was won with the
help of the Arabs under the brilliant personal leadership of
the young Englishman, Colonel Lawrence. At the Peace
Conference the pledge to the Arabs began to lose its clear-
cut outlines, although the independence of the new state was
partially recognized by the admission of its delegation headed
by Prince Feisal. The French thirst for Near-Eastern
power and the jealous guardianship of Great Britain over
the approaches to its eastern Empire combined to put the
Arabs in a defensive position. "If Syria is given to France,"
said Prince Feisal, "the Arabs will drive them into the sea."
On March 8 the Syrian Congress at Damascus proclaimed
Syria an independent kingdom with Prince Feisal as its
ruler. The British and French responded by announcing
their refusal to recognize the new state. Syrian aspirations
have received little encouragement either in the vague terms
of the Turkish treaty or in the recent conferences of the
Supreme Council. Such treatment of its claims, coupled
with the constant menace of French occupation, has re-
sulted in a general mobilization of Syrian troops, a military
alliance with Turkey, and now, at last, a war with France.
Damascus has been occupied by French troops composed of
"white infantry, Algerian riflemen, African chasseurs, with
Moroccans and Senegalese." "It goes without saying," re-
ports a correspondent of the New York Times, "that the
French will insist on the abdication of Prince Feisal, who
turned on them after Paris had paid him 80,000,000 francs.
He will be succeeded by a man who will consent in advance to
follow French advice." What crime is greater than that of
the nation that will not stay bought?
IT is always pleasant to see the dawn of enlightenment,
especially where darkness has reigned. The New York
Times, editorializing on Russian peace proposals, now says:
"Lloyd George hardly conceals today his belief that Eng-
land has 'backed the wrong horse' in Russia. It has, in
fact, backed several of them — Denikin, Kolchak, Judenich."
It may be said that this editorial hardly conceals that the
Times, too, has persistently "backed the wrong horse," be-
ing never more fervent during months of editorializing
than on the dire need of recognizing and aiding Kolchak
and the various other anti-Bolshevik leaders. Its readers
may well ask what horse Lloyd George should have backed,
and pause for the Times's reply. If it is now admitted that
the Denikins, Kolchaks, Judeniches, and the other efferves-
cent "White hopes" against Red Russia were wrong horses,
who then, indeed, should Lloyd George, the Times, and the
almost unanimously anti-Soviet papers of America have sup-
ported? The Bolsheviki? Not necessarily, by any means.
There has always been the alternative of decent neutrality,
fair play, and willingness to let the Russians work out their
own destiny without the monstrous cruelty of the blockade
and a systematic campaign of deceit to justify such a course,.
AMERICAN newspapers are nationalizing the Russian
women again. It cannot bother the Russian women
very much, for they never hear of these strange foreign-
born decrees, but the meditative observer finds in them curi-
ous food for reflection on the nature of the editorial minds
that give them birth. The latest fable appears on the front
page of the New York Globe, in the Minneapolis Tribune,
and doubtless in other papers whose editors take to the por-
nographic inventions of the "Cross-Atlantic News Service."
Copenhagen, July 16, this tale is dated — although the New
York Sun, elaborating on the story two days later, gives it
a Paris date-line — and it reads as follows :
"A Week of Love" has been proclaimed by Lenin, according
to a report from Moscow. All unmarried women under forty-five
are ordered by the decree to marry any Bolshevik desiring
them. Women who have been married for four years and have
not become mothers are granted immediate divorce and are sub-
ject to the same orders, to hasten their re-marriage. All women
affected by the proclamation are ordered to register immediately,
and later will be conducted to the Winter Palace for marriage in
squads. The report says that the state has taken charge of all
children over three years of age, and that family life in Russia
is completely disorganized.
We are not quite sure just what a "Week of Love" may be.
We should rather like to see one; Europe might profit by
such an experience. Suppose that Hindenburg or Foch had
proclaimed a Week of Love along the battle-front in 1918!
Suppose that Lenin and Witos should proclaim such a
week along the Polish frontier! Or that Clemenceau — but
the thought palls. The rest of the Cross-Atlantic yarn
sounds like the product of that type of mind which found
such splendid opportunities for moral self-expression in the
days of the white slave campaign.
IF editors must needs reflect upon the nationalization of
women, and could put their anti-Bolshevist politics aside,
they might find more authentic material in the files of the
Paris Medical, a leading French medical journal. One of
the editors, Paul Carnot, has been writing a series of
article on the subject, "How to Save Two Million French
Women from Sterility." France has no such high birth-
rate as Russia, and if it is to continue to rank as a first
class Power it must keep up its population. Dr. Carnot points
out that France has two million more women than men
today, and that if they are doomed to celibacy France will
lose nearly six million potential children. The problem, he
says, "demands an immediate solution, however that may
modify current ideas of the family and of social responsi-
bilities. ... No convention, moral or social, seems to
us worth depriving impoverished France of six million
births." So he attempts to work out a system by which
maternity — for unmarried women — may be made "a re-
munerative feminine career." He suggests that "maternity
volunteers" be called for and be paid by the state, special
prizes to be awarded for the physically fittest children. It
appears that his readers, especially feminine readers, have
welcomed the project with enthusiasm. This is no mere fig-
ment of an editor's imagination, like the stories of Russia;
nor do we quote it in any endeavor to prove French doctors
and the French nation immoral and degraded. It is simply
a part of the after-war population problem which confronts
many European countries today. Another French project
also has interest. The new French tax upon childless men
and celibates — does it not look like a step toward the nation-
alization of men?
118
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2874
The Menace of Another War
EUROPE hangs wearily and almost indifferent on the
brink of another war. The callous statesmen who
govern today do nothing to stop the threatened catastrophe.
The outlook is gloomier than at any time since the failure of
the Peace Conference sent the world's hopes crashing; but
it is not without hope, and the hope lies in the Bolsheviki.
Those astonishing statesmen who have refused to hold non-
Russian territory, who have canceled the old Russian blood
bonds held against China and Turkey, and who have made
peace on more than generous terms with the little Baltic
states, are today the single liberal force in European
diplomacy.
The Bolsheviki replied to Mr. Lloyd George's crafty sug-
gestion of a general peace conference at London by a
lengthy note which said in effect : "Mind your own business
and we'll mind ours." They pointed out that they had al-
ready made peace with Esthonia, Lithuania, and Georgia,
and that they are negotiating peace with Latvia and Fin-
land ; and they recalled the anything but peaceful attitude of
the Allies in warning the Esthonians, when Russo-Esthon-
ian negotiations began, that if they made peace with the
Bolsheviki it would be at their own risk. But times have
changed, and so has the attitude of the Allies. The Red
armies have driven the Poles back some two hundred and
fifty miles — a greater distance than that which separates
Paris and Cologne — and the British Government has de-
veloped a sudden interest in peacemaking. When the Poles
invaded the Ukraine two months ago, Soviet Russia ad-
dressed a wireless message to the Governments of Great
Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, announcing a
desire for peace. The Polish legions were then advancing
victoriously, and the note went unanswered. Today, the
Russian armies are approaching the tentative eastern fron-
tier of Poland drawn by the Supreme Council last autumn;
Mr. Lloyd George cries out against the menace, and hastily
suggests that everybody get together in London and talk
things over. The Russians reply quite properly that they
will be glad to treat with the Poles directly. They even say
that they will give the Poles a better frontier than the
Allies drew some months ago, and their acts in Esthonia and
Lithuania give credence to their words. Their correct atti-
tude makes more disgraceful the reported action of the
Washington authorities in offering aid to the Poles.
It is little wonder that the Russians show small confidence
in the good faith of the Allied peace proposal. The past
and present actions of the British and the French give
them every reason to suspect a trap. They have not for-
gotten that Lord Curzon induced them to cease operations
against General Wrangel in South Russia pending peace
negotiations, and that General Wrangel seized the occasion
to open a new attack; nor are they unaware that five hun-
dred British soldiers of various ranks were with General
Wrangel's army. They are not ignorant of the three
thousand Frenchmen, including nine generals, who are
attached in various capacities to the Polish army; nor have
they forgotten the British and French support given to
Kolchak and Denikin and Judenich, nor the intervention at
Archangel. Small wonder indeed that they refused to ac-
cept such Powers as disinterested mediators.
Indications are that the French Government will do
everything in its power to sabotage the peace negotiations
and prolong the war on Russia. Mr. Lloyd George, cannier
and more cautious, works with both hands. With one hand
he gestures to the Poles to open negotiations with the Rus-
sians; with the other he starts his war machinery into
action in case peace fails. Military attaches are hurried
from Berlin to Warsaw; military missions start from Paris;
it is said that Foch may repeat his rumored visit of two
months ago. Mr. Lloyd George knows well that British
troops will not take kindly to another continental expedi-
tion, and reserves his promises to munitions and money;
France, more generous — this France which cannot afford to
pay the interest on its debt to America — is apparently ready
to lavish munitions and men and money. We are not told
upon what conditions this aid is promised; whether the
opening of peace negotiations will put an end to the east-
ward current of war materials, or whether it is only the
Russians who will be expected to cease military operations.
If the Russians should, as it is reported they will, insist
upon Polish disarmament as the first condition of peace, the
Allied premiers fresh from Spa will find it hard to protest
such a dose of their own medicine.
If this European crisis is safely passed, we shall have
to thank the moderation of the Bolsheviki for that mercy,
for there is nothing in present Allied policy to help the cause
of peace. The Bolsheviki make stern but generous peace
proposals and the Poles should accept them. For the
Pilsudski-Grabski-Witos group it is indeed a Kaiser's choice.
That aggregation of statesmen is tarred with the smirch of
its imperialist pretenses. For it to abandon its territorial
claims, as in any reasonable peace it must, would be to suffer
a humiliation than which abdication could be no greater.
An even more serious question is the effect of the Bol-
shevik advance upon Germany. Colonel House believes that
if Poland succumbs to Russian invasion, Germany too will
turn bolshevist. He thinks that the Germans would hail
the Russians as deliverers. It is doubtless true that the
dictated peace terms have driven many conservative Ger-
mans in their despair and bitterness to such a pass; it is
also true that large masses of radical German workingmen
are heart and soul Bolsheviki. But the present German
Government is of a different cast; it is dominated by men
of the Stinnes type — millionaire captains of industry who
believe that they can and will restore the old industrial
Germany. The majority Social Democrats and the Center
parties would stand with Stinnes against bolshevism; and
if Soviet Russia drives its military frontier to the eastern
boundaries of Germany, the reaction may be such as to
force Germany to throw itself upon the Allies. Stranger
things have happened. Red-hating has replaced Hun-hating
in the circles that today dominate Allied policy, and if the
Allies have to choose between Russians and Germans, they
will doubtless choose the latter. Mr. Lloyd George, in the
same speech in which he pictured the plight of Poland and
the necessity of giving aid, spoke in the most cordial terms
of Fehrenbach and Simons, Germany's new pilots. A Ger-
man-Ally combination against Soviet Russia is not beyond
history's capacity for irony. If French diplomacy suc-
ceeds in stiffening the Poles into refusal of the Soviet con-
ditions, we may look for another Spa Conference concerned
less with disarmament than with the price of military
assistance.
July 31, 1920]
The Nation
119
The Railway Award
A FAT and resounding award to the railwaymen has
been made by the Railway Labor Board. The increase,
as quoted by the Board on figures not yet available to the
public, is $600,000,000. This lump sum makes such an
imaginative appeal that the men will be generally advised
to accept it. The indications as we go to press are that
they will accept it. If they do, they will have commended
arbitration as a sensible method of dealing with wage dis-
putes, even if in this particular case they may be able to
show that the result obtained by arbitration is not all that it
should have been. In any event the country is to be con-
gratulated that recourse to forcible methods of settlement
has been avoided.
The reasons for acceptance are three, all of them con-
cerned with public opinion. In the first place, the average
man, when he hears the rich total, says : "They are getting
a lot." He does not pull out pencil and paper and divide the
amount by 2,000,000 men and 300 days, and compute that it
means a dollar a day. Accordingly, if the award does not
tally with the rise in the cost of living, it will be necessary
for the experts to make this clear. This implies carefully
prepared figures for the various grades of workers, and a
lucid summary of the calculation for the general public, all
of which requires time. A strike, called in advance of such
a scientific appeal to public opinion, would outrage senti-
ment which is impressed by the figure of $600,000,000.
In the second place, the composition of the Labor Board
won the approval of the same general public. If the Board
was in fact unfairly weighted or if its method of arriv-
ing at a decision is unjust, those points have not yet been
established. To reject summarily, by strike or lockout, the
findings of such a board after its award had been made
would subject the dissenting party to the merited disap-
proval of public opinion. Appeal from a decision is one
thing; forcible rejection is quite another matter. Appeal
means patient collection and classification of facts, careful
publicity, and the lapse of time for public opinion to shift
from one set of facts to another. It is high time for labor
to learn to make use of research departments and the press —
its own press, if necessary — to present its case in terms not
of sudden ultimata but of reasoned statements of fact. The
consuming public — the community that buys goods and ser-
vices— remains in control of any producing group, and
always will remain in control. The third reason is that
the burden of expense which would be entailed by a strike
at this time would fall directly upon the government, and
the unpopularity of the act would be immense and hence
upon the public.
For these reasons, labor is well advised in accepting the
award even "under protest." At the moment, this is the
attitude of a majority of the railwaymen who have been con-
sulted. The nest egg of back pay awarded will have a pow-
erful appeal in winning a favorable decision from the men.
A series of moves is now in order as the result of the
wages award. Each railway and each group of railways in
the eastern, southern, and western systems will now turn
in to the Interstate Commerce Commission the costs of the
recent wage increase. This bill will be added to the rate
increases which the roads were already demanding. The
point is that the increase will in any case be handed on to
the public, since the roads have the guaranty of a fixed
return on capital. We have seen a set of figures, prepared
by one bureau, on the annual compensation of railway em-
ployees. We offer them, not as final, but as an example of
the sort of calculation by which the matter will in the end
have to be settled.
Summing up these figures, it appears that all classes (64)
of railway employees, including general and division officers,
were receiving for the fiscal year 1915 an average of $830.
In 1920, on the January basis, they were receiving $1,587.
It is estimated roughly that the new award will give an
average of $1,900. The percentage of increase in 1919 over
1915 was 73 per cent. The percentage of increase in 1920
(the January basis) over 1919 was 10.5 per cent. The
present award is estimated to amount to a further increase
of from 20 to 27 per cent. It is clear that, as percentages
go on the average, the increases, if the calculation is correct,
have kept pace with the rise in the cost of living. This,
however, does not answer the question as to whether or not
the present wages of many grades of railwaymen meet the
cost of living, or whether or not they did so five years ago.
We know nothing until we know that. What does $1,900 for
all classes come to for the majority of workers? What is
the cost of living, estimated for various parts of the coun-
try, in the month of the award?
The figures to which we refer apply to "Class I Railways,"
which is supposed to include over 90 per cent of the rail-
ways of the country. The figures are previous to the award
just announced. In the fiscal year 1915, general officers
received salaries averaging $4,528; in 1920 (on the January
basis), for the calendar year, $4,313. Maintenance of way
and structural foremen received $1,107 in 1915, and $1,913
in 1920; section foremen $772 and $1,381; machinists $1,030
and $2,036; air brakemen $812 and $1,946; car repairers
$751 and $1,752; section men $454 and $960; other unskilled
laborers $560 and $1,119; other men in construction gangs
and work trains $516 and $1,132; train dispatchers and
directors $1,600 and $2,776 ; station agents $937 and $1,742 ;
station masters and assistants $1,095 and $1,918; station
service employees $605 and $1,157; yard engineers and
motormen $1,528 and $2,349; yard firemen and helpers $916
and $1,712; yard switch tenders $720 and $1,481; other
yard employees $662 and $1,201; road freight firemen and
helpers $1,136 and $2,168; road freight conductors $1,589
and $2,664; road passenger engineers and motormen $2,141
and $3,129; road passenger firemen and helpers $1,287 and
$2,281; road passenger conductors $1,850 and $2,730; road
passenger baggagemen $1,049 and $1,962; road passenger
brakemen and flagmen $1,026 and $1,816; other road train
employees $840 and $1,510; crossing flagmen and gatemen
$476 and $945.
Mr. Gompers, in a public statement, declares that under
the award the average wages of a section worker will be
$101 a month, those of a machinist less than $45 a week,
those of a carpenter less than $39 a week. Are these figures
correct? If so, are they a living wage? On what basis is
a living wage computed? These are the facts which ought
to be determined by patient inquiry in the next few weeks.
The lump sum of the award is not the point. The percentage
increase in wages of approximately 100 per cent is not the
point. If the workers were below a proper level in 1913 or
1915, then a 100 per cent increase would not satisfy them.
What amount will? The railwaymen themselves can render a
service to the public at this time by studying the award from
this statistical side and letting the country know the facts.
120
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2874
Steel and the Inter-Church
AT last the report on the steel strike of 1919, prepared
by the Commission of Inquiry of the Inter-Church
World Movement, has been issued. The dates reveal the
delay. The investigation was made between October, 1919,
and February, 1920. The secretary of the Commission was
Heber Blankenhorn, who had been a captain in the Military
Intelligence Division of the United States army, and whose
adventures in propaganda in France helped to crumble the
German resistance. The investigators associated with him
were George Soule, D. J. Saposs, M. Karl Wisehart, Miss
Marian Savage, and Robert Littell. The report was adopted
unanimously by the Commission of Inquiry on March 30,
1920. The Commission had for its chairman Bishop Francis
J. McConnell, and the other members were Dr. Daniel A.
Poling, associate president of the World's Christian En-
deavor Union and president of the National Temperance
Council; George W. Coleman, president of the Open Forum
National Council; Dr. Alva W. Taylor, Dr. John McDowell,
chairman of the Social Service Commission of the Presby-
terian Church; Dr. Nicholas Van der Pyl, chairman of the
Social Service Commission of Congregational Churches;
Mrs. Fred Bennett, president of the Women's Board of Home
Missions of the Presbyterian Church and of the Council of
Women for Home Missions. Two advisory members, who
also signed the report, were Bishop William Melvin Bell and
Bishop Charles D. Williams.
Blessed by the bishops and laymen the report was passed
on, and then the lag began. The report was received by the
executive committee of the Inter-Church Movement on May
10. It was recommended for publication by a sub-committee
of the executive committee on June 25. It was adopted
unanimously by the executive committee on June 28. On
July 28 it was released for publication.
The report continues the line of important American
studies of great corporations — the line begun by Henry
Demarest Lloyd, Ida M. Tarbell, and Paul U. Kellogg. It
makes clear the fact that the steel strike is not yet a closed
question, for the causes remain, the main issues are un-
settled, and the nation is ignorant of both causes and issues.
The working conditions in the steel industry, which caused
the strike, persist. It is now time for the nation to face
the facts. The report concerns itself with these facts.
Judge Gary has sailed for Europe in a refreshingly opti-
mistic, almost gay, condition of mind. "Sunny Jim" could
not have issued more tonic interviews. But there are groups
of Judge Gary's workers not so gay, and it is of these that
the report speaks.
The number of steel employees who are working the
twelve-hour day is 69,000. The number of those who receive
the lowest rate of pay— under $1,466 a year— is 70,000.
This means that approximately 350,000 men, women, and
children have their living conditions determined by a cor-
poration which fixes pay and hours without conference with
the labor force. "Espionage replaced collective bai gaining
or cooperative service."
The investigators found that the ultimate control of the
plants was vested in a small group of financiers whose rela-
tion to the producing force was remote. The annual earn-
ings of more than one-third of all productive iron and steel
workers of the Steel Corporation were, and for years had
been, below the level set by the government experts as the
minimum standard of subsistence for families of five. 38.1
per cent of the employees of the Steel Corporation received
less than $1,466 a year, and 31.5 per cent received less than
$1,952. The government figures set $1,575 as a minimum
subsistence level for a family of five, and $2,024 as necessary
for the maintenance of an American standard of living.
Nearly three-fourths of the steel workers could not earn
enough for the American standard.
Further, "black lists were used, workmen were discharged
for union affiliation, 'under-cover men' and 'labor detectives'
were employed. In western Pennsylvania the civil rights of
free speech and assembly were abrogated without just cause.
Personal rights of strikers were violated by the State
Constabulary and Sheriff's deputies." "The organizing cam-
paign of the workers and the strike were for the purpose of
forcing a conference in an industry where no means of
conference existed." "Charges of bolshevism or of industrial
radicalism in the conduct of the strike were without founda-
tion."
The chief reason for the failure of the strike was the size
of the Steel Corporation. Then, too, "the immigrant steel
worker was led to expect more from the twenty-four inter-
national unions of the American Federation of Labor con-
ducting the strike than they, through indifference, selfish-
ness, or narrow habit, were willing to give." The causes of
the strike lay in grievances which gave the workers just
cause for complaint and for action. These unredressed
grievances still exist in the steel industry. The report,
recommends a commission, set up by the Federal Govern-
ment, to inaugurate conferences between the Steel Corpora-
tion and its employees for the elimination of the twelve-hour
day and the seven-day week and for the readjustment of
wage rates.
And for that the three hundred and thirty-six million
dollar Inter-Church World Movement was ditched by Mr.
Gary's friends. When one recalls the extraordinary way in
which the Movement was organized and advertised, and the
support which it received from clergymen and laymen high
in the councils of their several denominations ; when one re-
members that not only wealthy men and women, but persons
with slender means or the scanty accumulations of a life-
time contributed generously to the enterprise ; and when one
thinks of the great objective of united religious effort for
the spiritual and social good of the country at which the
Movement aimed, one wonders that the enterprise should
have collapsed without at least a strenuous effort to maintain
itself. What, after all, was the driving force behind the
Movement? Was there no one among its leaders to see in
advance the rock upon which the undertaking might split,
and to warn of the danger in time to avoid calamity ? Now
the wreck has come, and let the churches take heed. From
the point of view of the Steel Corporation the elimination of
the twelve-hour day and of the seven-day week, and the
raising of wage rates to a level permitting a decent Ameri-
can standard of living, or even to a level permitting a work-
man's wife and children to subsist, is none of the churches'
business, and if they persist in interesting themselves in
such matters the funds for their missionary propaganda will
be cut off. The long suppression of the Inter-Church report
will at least have made clear just what the churches may and
may not do, and who pulls the strings.
July 31, 1920]
The Nation
121
Soviet Russia — 1920
By BERTRAND RUSSELL
I. THE PROBLEM
THE attempt to form anything like a judicial estimate
of the Bolsheviki is beset with difficulties. To begin
with, one approaches them through a mist of myth and
melodrama; their friends and their foes alike deal only
in superlatives, treating them as angels or devils, not as
ordinary human beings. But even when one has come
to know their regime, one has still a difficult work of analy-
sis to perform before one can arrive at what is specifically
bolshevist. Much in their methods is merely Russian, and
does not distinguish them from their compatriots of other
parties. It is difficult to exaggerate the difference between
a Russian and an Englishman. I am convinced that there
is far more resemblance between Mr. Smillie and Mr. Wins-
ton Churchill than between the former and Lenin or the
latter and Kolchak. If one is to judge of the Bolsheviki
one must judge them in relation to the Russian" people and
the possible alternative governments of Russia. It is only
in their international propaganda that the comparison of
their ideas with those of Western Europe becomes decisive.
There is another point which is very necessary to remem-
ber in estimating what one sees. Russia was one of the
nations that suffered defeat in the war; it is, therefore,
more just to compare the state of affairs with what exists
in Germany or Austria than with what exists in England
or America. In both these respects I felt myself very in-
adequately equipped. I did not know Russia before the
Revolution, and I have not seen Germany or Austria since
the war. I hope, however, that the mere realization of the
problem has helped me to avoid errors to which, as it seems
to me, many English observers in Russia have been prone.
Before entering Russia, I had read a great deal of what
has been written about bolshevism, both in praise and in
blame; nevertheless I found both the theory and the prac-
tice of the Soviet Government very different from what I
had expected. In order that the reader may know how
much weight to attach to my impressions, it will be well to
begin with the circumstances of my journey.
I entered Soviet Russia on May 11 and recrossed the
frontier on June 16. The Russian authorities admitted
me only on the express condition that I should travel with
the British labor delegation, a condition with which I was
naturally very willing to comply, and which that delegation
kindly allowed me to fulfil. We were conveyed from the
frontier to Petrograd, as well as on subsequent journeys,
in a special train de luxe covered with mottoes about the
social revolution and the proletariat of all countries; we
were received everywhere by regiments of soldiers, with
the Internationale being played on the regimental band
while civilians stood bareheaded and soldiers at the salute;
congratulatory orations were made by local leaders and
answered by prominent communists who accompanied us;
the entrances to the carriages were guarded by magnificent
Bashkir cavalrymen in resplendent uniforms; in short,
everything was done to make us feel like the Prince of
Wales. Innumerable functions were arranged for us: ban-
quets, public meetings, and military reviews.
The assumption was that we had come to testify to the
solidarity of British labor with Russian communism, and
on that assumption the utmost possible use was made of us
for bolshevist propaganda. We, on the other hand, desired
to ascertain what we could of Russian conditions and Rus-
sian methods of government, which was impossible in the
atmosphere of a royal progress. Hence arose an amicable
contest, degenerating at times into a game of hide and seek :
while they assured us how splendid the banquet or parade
was going to be, we tried to explain how much we should
prefer a quiet walk in the streets. I, not being a member
of the delegation, felt less obligation than my companions
did to attend propaganda meetings where one knew the
speeches by heart beforehand. In this way I was able, by
the help of neutral interpreters, mostly English or Ameri-
can, to have many conversations with casual people whom
I met in the streets or on village greens, and to find out
how the whole system appears to the ordinary non-political
man and woman. The first five days we spent in Petro-
grad, the next eleven in Moscow. During this time we
were living in daily contact with important men in the
Government, so that we learned the official point of view
without difficulty. I saw also what I could of the intellec-
tuals in both places. We were all allowed complete freedom
to see politicians of opposition parties, and we naturally
made full use of this freedom. We saw Mensheviki, Social
Revolutionaries of different groups, and Anarchists; we
saw them without the presence of any Bolsheviki, and they
spoke freely after they had overcome their initial fears.
I had an hour's talk with Lenin, virtually tete-a-tete; I met
Trotzky, though only in company; I spent a night in the
country with Kamenev; and I saw a great deal of other
men who, though less known outside Russia, are of con-
siderable importance in the Government.
At the end of our time in Moscow, we all felt a desire to
see something of the country, and to get in touch with the
peasants, since they form about 85 per cent of the popula-
tion. The Government showed the greatest kindness in
meeting our wishes, and it was decided that we should
travel down the Volga from Nijni Novgorod to Saratov,
stopping at many places, large and small, and talking freely
with the inhabitants. I found this part of the time extraor-
dinarily instructive. I learned to know more than I should
have thought possible of the life and outlook of peasants,
Ullage schoolmasters, small Jewish traders, and all kinds
of people. Unfortunately my friend, Clifford Allen, fell ill,
and my time was much taken up with him. This had, how-
ever, one good result, namely, that I was able to go on with
the boat to Astrakhan, as he was too ill to be moved off it.
This not only gave me further knowledge of the country,
but made me acquainted with Sverdlov, Acting Minister of
Transport, who was traveling on the boat to organize the
movement of oil from Baku up the Volga, and who was one
of the ablest as well as kindest people whom I met in Russia.
There are a few historical facts which ought to be borne
in mind. The Kerensky regime, which attempted to intro-
duce freedom as we understand it, led to chaos and a gen-
eral cessation of work; some sterner discipline was ob-
viously necessary if the country was to be saved from
122
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2874
utter destruction. Moreover, Kerensky was equally incapa-
ble of waging war and of making peace. He could not
wage war because he could not preserve discipline, and he
could not make peace because he was dependent upon the
Allies. The Bolsheviki, who were, as Lenin himself told
me, still very unpopular so late as July, 1917, acquired sup-
port quickly in the following months because they were
the only people who seemed able and willing to give land
to the peasants and peace to the country. At first, after the
October Revolution, they were allied with the Left Social
Revolutionaries, who, however, broke with them on the
question of the Brest-Litovsk peace. The Left Social Revo-
lutionaries took, and apparently still take, the position that
Soviet Russia ought not, as a matter of principle, to make
peace with any country that has not accomplished the social
revolution; on this ground they have opposed the willing-
ness of the Government to make peace with the Entente.
English opinion goes astray through its obstinate deter-
mination to classify Russians as pro-German or pro-Entente.
Because of Brest-Litovsk it falsely imagined that the Bol-
sheviki were pro-German. One might as well consider the
Germans pro-Entente because of the Treaty of Versailles.
The Russians were beaten, and only those who refused to
face facts imagined it possible to continue the war. These
same people, in the same spirit, protested later against
attempts to make peace with the Entente.
The Bolsheviki found themselves compelled to take severe
measures against the Social Revolutionaries of the Right
because they joined Kolchak, and of the Left because they
killed Mirbach. Since that time, opposition political par-
ties have been illegal, with the exception of the Mensheviki.
Even they were illegal for a short time, when one of their
Central Committee (so at least the Bolsheviki assert) joined
Denikin's cabinet. But they are now tolerated, and some
of them are members of the Moscow Soviet.
After the Bolsheviki had made peace with Germany and
given land to the peasants, they lost their popularity; for
in Russia, as elsewhere, parties are popular on account of
what they promise for the future, not on account of their
performance in the past. It became clear that they could
not give real peace, and that they would be compelled to
remilitarize the country. They antagonized the peasants
by the roughness of their methods of obtaining food for
the towns, which seemed unavoidable so long as they had
nothing but paper to offer in exchange for agricultural
produce. Unpopularity drove them to greater repression
and centralization, while the imperative need of production
led them to adopt severe methods of industrial conscription.
All this has produced an atmosphere which is disagreeable to
a lover of freedom; but it has to be remembered that the
lack of freedom is traceable to war and the blockade as its
prime cause. Nothing but peace and a sufficient supply of
manufactured goods can relieve the pressure from which
the present evils result.
II. BOLSHEVIST THEORY
One of the first things that I discovered after passing
the red flag which marks the frontier of Soviet Russia,
amid a desolate region of marsh, pine wood, and barbed
wire entanglements, was the profound difference between
the theories of actual Bolsheviki and the version of those
theories current among advanced Socialists in this country.
Friends of Russia here think of the dictatorship of the
proletariat as merely a new form of representative govern-
ment, in which only working men and women have votes and
the constituencies are partly occupational, not geographical.
They think that "proletariat" means "proletariat," but "dic-
tatorship" does not quite mean "dictatorship." This is the
opposite of the truth. When a Russian Communist speaks
of dictatorship, he means the word literally, but when he
speaks of the proletariat, he uses the word in a Pickwickian
sense. He means the "class-conscious" part of the prole-
tariat, i.e., the Communist Party. He includes people by
no means proletarian (such as Lenin and Chicherin) who
have the right opinions, and he excludes such wage-earners
as have not the right opinions, whom he classifies as lackeys
of the bourgeoisie. The Communist who sincerely believes
the party creed is convinced that private property is the
root of all evil ; he is so certain of this that he shrinks from
no measures, however harsh, which seem necessary for con-
structing and preserving the communist state. He spares
himself as little as he spares others. He works sixteen
hours a day, and foregoes his Saturday half-holiday. He
volunteers for any difficult or dangerous work which needs
to be done, such as clearing away piles of infected corpses
left by Kolchak or Denikin. In spite of his position of
power and his control of supplies, he lives an austere life. He
is not pursuing personal ends, but aiming at the creation
of a new social order. The same motives, however, which
make him austere make him also ruthless. Marx has taught
that communism is fatally predestined to come about; this
fits in with the Oriental traits in the Russian character, and
produces a state of mind not unlike that of the early suc-
cessors of Mahomet. Opposition is crushed without mercy,
and without shrinking from the methods of the Czarisf
police, many of whom are still employed at their old work.
Since all evils are due to private property, the evils of the
bolshevist regime, while it has to fight private property,
will automatically cease as soon as it has succeeded.
These views are the familiar consequences of fanatical
belief. To an English mind they reinforce the conviction
upon which English life has been based ever since 1688,
that kindliness and tolerance are worth all the creeds in the
world — a view which, it is true, we do not apply to other
nations or to subject races.
In a very novel society, it is natural to seek for historical
parallels. The baser side of the present Russian Govern-
ment is most nearly paralleled by the Directory in France,
but on its better side it is closely analogous to the rule of
Cromwell. The sincere Communists (and all the older
members of the party have proved their sincerity by years
of persecution) are not unlike the Puritan soldiers in their
stern politico-moral purpose. Cromwell's dealings with
Parliament are not unlike Lenin's with the Constituent As-
sembly. Both, starting from a combination of democracy
and religious faith, were driven to sacrifice democracy to
religion enforced by military dictatorship. Both tried to
compel their countries to live at a higher level of morality
and effort than the population found tolerable. Life in
modern Russia, as in Puritan England, is in many ways
contrary to instinct. And if the Bolsheviki ultimately fall,
it will be for the reason for which the Puritans fell —
because there comes a point at which men feel that amuse-
ment and ease are worth more than all other goods put
together.
Far closer than any actual historical parallel is the parallel
of Plato's Republic. The Communist Party corresponds to
July 31, 1920]
The Nation
123
the guardians; the soldiers have about the same status in
both ; there is in Russia an attempt to deal with family life
more or less as Plato suggested. I suppose it may be
assumed that every teacher of Plato throughout the world
abhors bolshevism, and that every Bolshevik regards Plato
as an antiquated bourgeois. Nevertheless, the parallel is
extraordinarily exact between Plato's Republic and the
regime which the better Bolsheviki are endeavoring to
create.
Bolshevism is internally aristocratic and externally mili-
tant. The Communists have all the good and bad traits of
an aristocracy which is young and vital. They are cour-
ageous, energetic, capable of command, always ready to
serve the state; on the other hand they are dictatorial, lack-
ing in ordinary consideration for the plebs, such as their
servants, whom they overwork, or the people in the streets,
whose lives they endanger by extraordinarily reckless motor-
ing. They are practically the sole possessors of power, and
they enjoy innumerable advantages in consequence. Most
of them, though far from luxurious, have better food than
other people. Only people of some political importance can
obtain motor-cars or telephones. Permits for railway jour-
neys, for making purchases at the Soviet stores (where
prices are about one-fiftieth of what they are in the mar-
ket), for going to the theater, and so on, are of course
easier to obtain for the friends of those in power than for
ordinary mortals. In a thousand ways the Communists
have a life which is happier than that of the rest of the
community. Above all, they are less exposed to the un-
welcome attentions of the police and the extraordinary
commission.
The communist theory of international affairs is exceed-
ingly simple. The revolution foretold by Marx, which is to
abolish capitalism throughout the world, happened to begin
in Russia, though Marxian theory would seem to demand
that it should begin in America. In countries where the
revolution has not yet broken out, the sole duty of a com-
munist is to hasten its advent. Agreements with capitalist
states can only be makeshifts, and can never amount on
either side to a sincere peace. No real good can come to any
country without a bloody revolution : English labor men may
fancy that a peaceful evolution is possible, but they will
find their mistake. Lenin told me that he hopes to see a
labor government in England, and would wish his supporters
to work for it, but solely in order that the futility of
Parliamentarism may be conclusively demonstrated to the
British working man. Nothing will do any real good except
the arming of the proletariat and the disarming of the
bourgeoisie. Those who preach anything else are social
traitors or deluded fools.
For my part, after weighing this theory carefully, and
after admitting the whole of its indictment of bourgeois
capitalism, I find myself definitely and strongly opposed to
it. The Third Internationale is an organization which exists
to promote the class war and to hasten the advent of revolu-
tion everywhere. My objection is not that capitalism is less
bad than the Bolsheviki believe, but that socialism is less
good, at any rate in the form which can be brought about
by war. The evils of war, especially of civil war, are certain
and very great; the gains to be achieved by victory are
problematical. In the course of a desperate struggle the
heritage of civilization is likely to be lost, while hatred,
suspicion, and cruelty become normal in the relations of
human beings. In order to succeed in war a concentration
of power is necessary, and from concentration of power the
very same evils flow as from the capitalist concentration of
wealth. For these reasons chiefly I cannot support any
movement which aims at world revolution. The injury to
civilization done by revolution in one country may be re-
paired by the influence of another in which there has been
no revolution; but in a universal cataclysm civilization
might go under for a thousand years. But while I cannot
advocate world revolution, I cannot escape from the conclu-
sion that the Governments of the leading capitalist coun-
tries are doing everything to bring it about. Abuse of our
power against Germany, Russia, and India (to say nothing
of any other countries) may well bring about our downfall,
and produce those very evils which the enemies of bolshe-
vism most dread.
The true communist is thoroughly international. Lenin,
for example, so far as I could judge, is not more concerned
with the interests of Russia than with those of other coun-
tries ; Russia is, at the moment, the protagonist of the social
revolution, and as such valuable to the world, but Lenin
would sacrifice Russia rather than the revolution if the
alternative should ever arise. This is the orthodox attitude,
and is no doubt genuine in many of the leaders. But nation-
alism is natural and instinctive; through pride in the revo-
lution it grows again even in the breasts of communists.
Through the Polish war, the Bolsheviki have acquired the
support of national feeling and their position in the country
has been immensely strengthened.
The only time I saw Trotzky was at the opera in Moscow.
The British labor delegation were occupying what had been
the Czar's box. After speaking with us in the ante-chamber,
he stepped to the front of the box and stood with folded
arms while the house cheered itself hoarse. Then he spoke
a few sentences, short and sharp, with military precision,
winding up by calling for "three cheers for our brave fel-
lows at the front," to which the audience responded as a
London audience would have responded in the autumn of
1914. Trotzky and the Red Army undoubtedly now have
behind them a great body of nationalist sentiment. The
reconquest of Asiatic Russia has even revived what is essen-
tially an imperialist way of feeling, though this would be
indignantly repudiated by many of those in whom I seemed
to detect it. Experience of power is inevitably altering com-
munist theories, and men who control a vast governmental
machine can hardly have quite the same outlook on life as
they had when they were hunted fugitives. If the Bolshe-
viki remain in power, it may be assumed that their com-
munism will fade, and that they will increasingly resemble
any other Asiatic government — for example, our own gov-
ernment in India.
III. COMMUNISM AND THE SOVIET CONSTITUTION
Before I went to Russia, I imagined that I was going to
see an interesting experiment in a new form of representa-
tive government. Everyone who is interested in bolshevism
knows the series of elections, from the village meeting to the
All-Russian Soviet, by which the people's commissaries are
supposed to derive their power. We were told that, by the
recall, the occupational constituencies, and so on, a new and
far more perfect machinery had been devised for ascertain-
ing and registering the popular will. One of the things we
hoped to study was the question whether the Soviet system
is really superior to parliamentarism in this respect.
We were not able to make any such study because the
124
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2874
Soviet system is moribund. No conceivable system of free
election would give majorities to the Communists, in either
town or country. Various methods are therefore adopted
for giving the victory to government candidates. In the
first place, the voting is by show of hands, so that all who
vote against the government are marked men. In the second
place, no candidate who is not a Communist can have any
printing done, the printing works being all in the hands of
the state. In the third place, he cannot address any meet-
ings, because the halls all belong to the state. The whole of
the press is, of course, official; no independent daily is per-
mitted. In spite of all these obstacles, the Mensheviki have
succeeded in winning about 40 seats out of 1,500 in the Mos-
cow Soviet by being known in certain large factories where
the electoral campaign could be conducted by word of mouth.
But although the Moscow Soviet is nominally sovereign
in Moscow, it is really only a body of electors who choose
the executive committee of forty, out of which, in turn, is
chosen the Presidium, consisting of nine men who meet
daily and have all the power. The Moscow Soviet as a whole
is supposed to meet once a week, but did not meet while we
were in Moscow. The Presidium, on the contrary, meets
daily. Of course, it is easy for the Government to exercise
pressure over the election of the executive committee, and
again over the election of the Presidium. It must be remem-
bered that effective protest is impossible, owing to the abso-
lutely complete suppression of free speech and free press.
The result is that the Presidium of the Moscow Soviet con-
sists only of orthodox Communists.
Kamenev, the President of the Moscow Soviet, informed
us that the recall is very frequently employed; he said that
in Moscow there are, on an average, thirty recalls a month.
I asked him what were the principal reasons for the recall,
and he mentioned four: drinking, going to the front (and
being, therefore, incapable of performing the duties),
change of politics on the part of the electors, and failure to
make a report to the electors once a fortnight, which all
members of the Soviet are expected to do. From what I
saw of Russians, I should judge that almost all would be
guilty in this last respect. It is evident that the recall
affords opportunities for Government pressure, but I had no
chance of finding out whether it is used for this purpose.
In country districts the method employed is somewhat
different. It is impossible to insure that the village Soviet
shall consist of Communists because, as a rule, at any rate
in the villages I saw, there are no Communists. But when I
asked in the villages how they were represented on the
Volost (the next larger area) or the Gubernia (the area
next above the Volost), I was met always with the reply
that they were not represented at all. I could not verify
this, and it is probably an over-statement, but all concurred
in the assertion that if they elected a non-Communist repre-
sentative he could not obtain a pass on the railway and,
therefore, could not attend the Volost or Gubernia Soviet.
I saw a meeting of the Gubernia Soviet of Saratov. The
representation is so arranged that the town workers have an
enormous preponderance over the surrounding peasants;
but even allowing for this, the proportion of pea&ants
seemed astonishingly small for the center of a very impor-
tant agricultural area.
The All-Russian Soviet, which is constitutionally the su-
preme body, to which the People's Commissars are responsi-
ble, meets seldom and has become increasingly formal. Its
sole function at present, so far as I could discover, is to
ratify, without discussion, previous decisions of the Com-
munist Party on matters (especially concerning foreign pol-
icy) upon which the Constitution requires its decision.
All real power is in the hands of the Communist Party,
who number about 600,000 in a population of about 120,000,-
000. I never came across a Communist by chance: the peo-
ple whom I met in the streets or in the villages, when I could
get into conversation with them, almost invariably said they
were of no party. The only other answer I ever had was
from some of the peasants, who openly stated that they were
Czarists. It must be said that the peasants' reasons for dis-
liking the Bolsheviki are very inadequate. It is said — and
all I saw confirmed the assertion — that the peasants are
better off than they ever were before. I saw no one — man,
woman, or child — who looked underfed in the villages. The
big landowners are dispossessed, and the peasants have
profited. But the towns and the army still need nourishing,
and the Government has nothing to give the peasants in
return for food except paper, which the peasants resent hav-
ing to take. It is a singular fact that Czarist rubles are
worth ten times as much as Soviet rubles, and are much
commoner in the country. Although they are illegal, pocket-
books full of them are openly displayed in the market places.
I do not think it should be inferred that the peasants expect
a Czarist restoration; they are merely actuated by custom
and dislike of novelty. They have never heard of the block-
ade; many hardly know that there is a war with Poland:
consequently they cannot understand why the Government
is unable to give them the clothes and agricultural imple-
ments that they need. Having got their land, and being
ignorant of affairs outside their own neighborhood, they
wish their own village to be independent, and would resent,
the demands of any government whatever.
Within the Communist Party there are, of course, as al-
ways in a bureaucracy, different factions, though hitherto
the external pressure has prevented disunion. It seemed to
me that the personnel of the bureaucracy could be divided
into three classes. There are first the old revolutionists,
tested by years of persecution. These men have most of the
highest posts. Prison and exile have made them tough and
fanatical and rather out of touch with their own country.
They are honest men, with a profound belief that commu-
nism will regenerate the world. They think themselves
utterly free from sentiment, but in fact they are sentimental
about communism and about the regime that they are creat-
ing; they cannot fac*e the fact that what they are creating
is not communism, and that communism is anathema to the
peasant, who wants his own land and nothing else. They
are pitiless in punishing corruption or drunkenness when
they find either among officials; but they have built up a
system in which the temptations to petty corruption are
tremendous, and their own materialistic theory should per-
suade them that under such a system corruption must be
rampant.
The second class in the bureaucracy, among whom are to
be found most of the men occupying political posts just
below the top, consists of young arrivistes who are enthusi-
astic Bolsheviki because of the material success of bolshe-
vism. It is these men who make the regime so odious in
many ways. With them must be reckoned the army of
policemen, spies, and secret agents, largely inherited from
the Czarist times, who make their profit out of the fact that
no one can live except by breaking the law. This aspect of
bolshevism is exemplified by the Extraordinary Commission,
July 31, 1920]
The Nation
125
a body practically independent of the Government, pos-
sessing its own regiments, which are better fed than the Red
Army. This body has the power of imprisoning any man or
woman without trial on such charges as speculation or coun-
ter-revolutionary activity. It has shot thousands without
trial, and though now it has nominally lost the power of
inflicting the death penalty, it is by no means certain that it
has altogether lost it in fact. It has spies everywhere, and
ordinary mortals live in terror of it.
The third class in the bureaucracy consists of men who
are not ardent communists, who have rallied to the Gov-
ernment since it has proved itself stable, and who work for
it either out of patriotism or because they enjoy the oppor-
tunity of developing their ideas freely without the obstacle
of traditional institutions. Among this class are to be found
men of the type of the successful business man, men with
the same sort of ability as is found in the American self-
made trust magnate, but working for success and power, not
for money. There is no doubt that the Bolsheviki are suc-
cessfully solving the problem of enlisting this kind of ability
in the public service without permitting it to amass wealth
as it does in capitalist communities. This is perhaps their
greatest success so far outside the domain of war. It makes
it possible to suppose that, if Russia is allowed to have
peace, an amazing industrial development may take place,
making Russia a rival of the United States. The Bolshe-
viki are industrialists in all their aims; they love every-
thing in modern industry except the excessive rewards of
the capitalists. And the harsh discipline to which they are
subjecting the workers is calculated, if anything can, to give
them the habits of industry and honesty which have hitherto
been lacking, and which alone prevent Russia from being
one of the foremost industrial countries.
IV. LENIN AND TROTZKY AND GORKY
Soon after my arrival in Moscow I had an hour's conver-
sation with Lenin in English, which he speaks fairly well.
An interpreter was present, but his services were scarcely
required. Lenin's room is very bare: it contains a big desk,
some maps on the walls, two book-cases, and one comforta-
ble chair for visitors in addition to two or three hard chairs.
It is obvious that he has no love of luxury or even comfort.
He is very friendly and apparently simple, entirely without
a trace of hauteur. If one met him without knowing who he
was, one would not guess that he is possessed of great power
or even that he is in any way eminent. I have never met a
personage so destitute of self-importance. He looks at his
visitors very closely, and screws up one eye, which seems
to increase alarmingly the penetrating power of the other.
He laughs a great deal; at first his laugh seems merely
friendly and jolly, but gradually I came to feel it rather grim.
He is dictatorial, calm, incapable of fear, extraordinarily
devoid of self-seeking, an embodied theory. The material-
istic conception of history, one feels, is his life-blood. He
resembles a professor in his desire to have the theory under-
stood and in his fury with those who misunderstand or dis-
agree, as also in his love of expounding. I got the impres-
sion that he despises a great many people and is an intel-
lectual aristocrat.
The first question I asked him was as to how far he recog-
nized the peculiarity of English economic and political con-
ditions. I was anxious to know whether advocacy of violent
revolution is an indispensable condition of joining the Third
Internationale, although I did not put this question directly
because others were asking it officially. His answer was un-
satisfactory to me. He admitted that there is little chance
of revolution in England now, and that the working man is
not yet disgusted with parliamentary government. But he
hopes that this result may be brought about by a labor min-
istry. He thinks that if Mr. Henderson, for instance, were
to become Prime Minister, nothing of importance would be
done; organized labor would then, so he hopes and believes,
turn to revolution. On this ground he wishes his supporters
in this country to do everything in their power to secure a
labor majority in Parliament; he does not advocate absten-
tion from parliamentary contests, but participation with a
view to making Parliament obviously contemptible. The
reasons which make attempts at violent revolution seem to
most of us both improbable and undesirable in this country
carry no weight with him, and seem to him mere bourgeois
prejudices. When I suggested that whatever is possible in
England can be achieved without bloodshed, he waved aside
the suggestion as fantastic. I got little impression of
knowledge or psychological imagination as regards Great
Britain. Indeed, the whole tendency of Marxism is against
psychological imagination, since it attributes everything in
politics to purely material causes.
I asked him next whether he thought it possible to estab-
lish communism firmly and fully in a country containing
such a large majority of peasants. He admitted that it was
difficult, and laughed over the exchange the peasant is com-
pelled to make of food for paper ; the worthlessness of Rus-
sian paper struck him as comic. But he said — what is no
doubt true — that things will right themselves when there
are goods to offer to the peasant. For this he looks partly
to electrification in industry, which, he says, is a technical
necessity in Russia but will take ten years to complete. He
spoke with enthusiasm, as they all do, of the great scheme
for generating electrical power by means of peat. Of course
he looks to the raising of the blockade as the only radical
cure; but he was not very hopeful of this being achieved
thoroughly or permanently except through revolutions in
other countries. Peace between bolshevist Russia and cap-
italist countries, he said, must always be insecure; the
Entente might be led by weariness and mutual dissensions
to conclude peace, but he felt convinced that the peace would
be of brief duration. I found in him, as in almost all lead-
ing Communists, much less eagerness than existed on our
side for peace and the raising of the blockade. He believes
that nothing of real value can be achieved except through
world revolution and the abolition of capitalism; I felt that
he regarded the resumption of trade with capitalist coun-
tries as a mere palliative of doubtful value.
He described the division between rich and poor peasants,
and the government propaganda among the latter against
the former, leading to acts of violence which he seemed to
find amusing. He spoke as though the dictatorship over the
peasant would have to continue a long time, because of the
peasant's desire for free trade. He said he knew from
statistics (what I can well believe) that the peasants have
had more to eat these last two years than they ever had
before, "and yet they are against us," he added a little wist-
fully. I asked him what to reply to critics who say that in
the country he has merely created peasant proprietorship,
not communism; he replied that that is not quite the truth,
but he did not say what the truth is.
The last question I asked him was whether resumption of
trade with capitalist countries, if it took place, would not
126
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2874
create centers of capitalist influence and make the preserva-
tion of communism more difficult. It had seemed to me that
the more ardent Communists might well dread commercial
intercourse with the outer world, as leading to an infiltration
of heresy and making the rigidity of the present system
almost impossible. I wished to know whether he had such
a feeling. He admitted that trade wrould create difficulties,
but said they would be less than those of the war. He said
that two years ago neither he nor his colleagues thought
they could survive against the hostility of the world. He
attributes their survival to the jealousies and divergent
interests of the different capitalist nations, also to the power
of bolshevist propaganda. He said the Germans had laughed
when the Bolsheviki proposed to combat guns with leaflets,
but that the event had proved the leaflets quite as powerful.
I do not think he recognizes that the Labor and Socialist
Parties have had any part in the matter. He does not seem
to know that the attitude of British labor has done a great
deal to make a first-class war against Russia impossible,
since it has confined the Government to what could be done
in a hole-and-corner way, and denied without a too blatant
mendacity.
He thoroughly enjoys the attacks of Lord Northcliffe, to
whom he wishes to send a medal for bolshevist propaganda.
Accusations of spoliation, he remarked, may shock the bour-
geois, but have an opposite effect upon the proletarian.
I think if I had met him without knowing who he was, I
should not have guessed that he was a great man ; he struck
me as too opinionated and narrowly orthodox. His strength
comes, I imagine, from his honesty, courage, and unwaver-
ing faith — religious faith in the Marxian gospel, which takes
the place of the Christian martyr's hopes of Paradise, except
that it is less egotistical. He has as little love of liberty as
the Christians who suffered under Diocletian and retaliated
when they acquired power. Perhaps love of liberty is incom-
patible with whole-hearted belief in a panacea for all human
ills. If so, I cannot but rejoice in the skeptical temper of
the Western world. I went to Russia believing myself a
communist; but contact with those who have no doubts has
intensified a thousandfold my own doubts, not only of com-
munism, but of every creed so firmly held that for its sake
men are willing to inflict widespread misery.
Trotzky, whom the Communists do not by any means
regard as Lenin's equal, made more impression upon me
from the point of view of intelligence and personality,
though not of character. I saw too little of him, however,
to have more than a very superficial impression. He has
bright eyes, military bearing, lightning intelligence, and
magnetic personality. He is very good-looking, with ad-
mirable wavy hair; one feels he would be irresistible to
women. I felt in him a vein of gay good humor so long as
he was not crossed in any way. I thought, perhaps wrongly,
that his vanity was even greater than his love of power —
the sort of vanity that one associates with an artist or actor.
The comparison with Napoleon was forced upon one. But
I had no means of estimating the strength of his communist
conviction, which may be very sincere and profound.
An extraordinary contrast to both these men was Gorky,
with whom I had a brief interview in Petrograd. He was
in bed, apparently dying and obviously heartbroken. He
begged me, in anything I might say about Russia, always
to emphasize what Russia has suffered. He supports the
government — as I should do, if I were a Russian — not be-
cause he thinks it faultless but because the possible alterna-
tives are worse. One felt in him a love of the Russian people
which makes their present martyrdom almost unbearable,
and prevents the fanatical faith by which the pure Marxians
are upheld. I felt him the most lovable, and to me the most
sympathetic, of all the Russians I saw. I wished for more
knowledge of his outlook, but he spoke with difficulty and
was constantly interrupted by terrible fits of coughing, so I
could not stay. All the intellectuals whom I met — a class
who have suffered terribly — expressed their gratitude to him
for what he has done on their behalf. The materialistic
conception of history is all very well, but some care for the
higher things of civilization is a relief. The Bolsheviki are
sometimes said to have done great things for art, but I
could not discover that they had done more than preserve
something of what existed before. When I questioned one
of them on the subject, he grew impatient, and said: "We
haven't time for a new art any more than for a new re-
ligion." Unavoidably, the atmosphere is one in which art
cannot flourish, because art is anarchic and resistant to
organization. Gorky has done all that one man could to
preserve the intellectual and artistic life of Russia. But he
is dying, and perhaps it is dying too.
The Forty-Eighters' Position
By ALLEN McCURDY
npHE Committee of 48 failed to create a new party at
L Chicago. This failure was inevitable; but it was a
failure which revealed more clearly than ever the necessity
for a new party. "One event is more clarifying than vol-
umes of words," says Disraeli in Tancred. Such an event
was the failure of the Committee of 48 at Chicago. More
than a year ago the Committee issued a call to Americans
equally opposed to revolution and to reaction, and asked the
assistance of all citizens who believed that a party which
should appeal to every class of our people who could not
express their convictions either through the reactionary
Republican and Democratic Parties or through the Socialist
Party should be created. An economic platform designed
to destroy privilege was created. The responsible leaders of
the Committee of 48 believed that the abolition of privilege
would benefit the entire American people ; that a party aim-
ing at this abolition would create an issue which could not
be ignored in the campaign of 1920 ; and that the vanishing
faith of the people in the ballot-box would be restored by
the opportunity thus created to destroy economic power by
political action. It ought to be remembered that this call
was issued at a time when any individual who made known
his opposition to both the Republican and the Democratic
Parties was immediately classified as a Socialist. There
was no other category in which to classify him. Conse-
quently, the press advertised the Committee of 48 as a group
of men socialistically inclined. There is no doubt that some
Socialists believed the Committee of 48 was some form of
socialism under another name. For many Socialists who
joined the Committee of 48 expressed their preference for
Eugene Debs as the Committee of 48's candidate for Presi-
dent, and some of these Socialists were delegates to our
convention in Chicago. For this same reason, many citizens
who believed with the responsible leaders of the Committee
of 48 in every detail did not join the Committee of 48
because they feared it was socialistic, and it was im-
July 31, 1920]
The Nation
127
possible to reach this unknown support of our real program.
The determination of the responsible leaders of the Com-
mittee of 48 today is clear. They desire a political party
operating in accordance with American institutions and
American traditions and expressing its will through the
ballot-box for the abolition of economic privilege for the
benefit of all people. The Labor Party of the United States,
whose responsible leaders are not workers, but, on the con-
trary, a Connecticut lawyer, a New York school teacher, a
newspaper editor, and trade union labor leaders, who for
years have been removed from the experience of the rank
and file worker, started out to create a class party which
should appeal only to organized workers and, through polit-
ical propaganda, reach the minds of the rank and file of the
American Federation of Labor to the end that the control of
the Federation of Labor should pass from its present leader-
ship into the leadership of the insurgents, so that, through a
combination of political action and direct action, guild
socialism should be introduced into American life. It is
plain to any intelligent person that it is impossible for these
two convictions to meet, join, merge, or amalgamate. Oil
and water do not mix.
It must be remembered, in this connection, that the Labor
Party of the United States was founded under the direct
influence of the British Labor Party program. Journalists
of opinion idealized the British Labor Party program and
created a campaign throughout the country that what had
been evolved in English experience through over a hundred
years of growth could be transplanted from English soil and
superimposed upon American life. Earnest and sincere men
everywhere believed that intelligent believers in American
progress could unite with the American trade union move-
ment and form a great coalition party. This belief was so
widespread as to compel the responsible leadership of the
Committee of 48 to make every effort possible to secure this
result. But America is not England any more than, as the
intelligent leaders of the British Labor Party wisely declare,
"England is not Russia." This is a fact which no words,
arguments, criminations or recriminations could have estab-
lished. It required the actual experience at Chicago to dis-
close this fact to every intelligent observer who saw beneath
all the superficial manifestations this fundamental, irrecon-
cilable difference of opinion between a leadership insistent
upon an American political party aiming at the welfare of
all the people, and a leadership insistent upon a class party
devoted to the interests of the workers alone. It is the con-
viction of the leaders of the Committee of 48 that the rank
and file of the workers of the United States of America do
not know what guild socialism is, do not believe in it when
they do know what it is, and will not follow a political leader-
ship which has this end in view.
It is true that industrial life is tending more and more
toward collective action. We have bankers' associations,
manufacturers' associations, medical associations, and trade
unionism. Within the limits of their own business or indus-
trial activity, individual members work together and submit
to the policies of their respective organizations. But it is
not true that workers — any more than bankers, lawyers or
doctors — vote collectively. The worker, the manufacturer,
the lawyer, the professional man, vote as individuals, no
matter how many associations or unions they belong to.
This is far more universally true in America than it is in
England with its older industrial civilization and its more
intelligent and statesmanlike leadership which the trade
union movement has been so many years in development.
The value of the failure to amalgamate at Chicago is,
therefore, plain. At the right of reaction stands the Demo-
cratic and the Republican Parties. Any one who believes in
reaction can vote for either of these parties and secure his
heart's desire. At the left stand the Socialists, split today
into two contending groups — the Socialist Party and the
Farmer-Labor Party — with the idea of direct industrial
action never far from their philosophy, however far it may
be, and often is, from their present determination. Between
these two stands the average American citizen — who is the
most numerous man — belonging to every class, engaged in
every kind of work. He believes neither in reaction nor in
any kind of socialism. Representing these average men who
are burdened by the increased cost of living, bewildered,
distressed, anxious to have the problem solved peaceably
according to American methods, in harmony with American
traditions, through the ballot-box, stood the responsible
leaders of the Committee of 48 at Chicago. They would not
yield to the demands of Marxian socialism. Their stand
was just as determined against the reaction of the Repub-
lican and the Democratic Parties.
This is the first time in forty years we have indicated that
the three groups of opinion in America are clearly defined:
First, the reactionaries as represented by the Republican
and Democratic Parties; second, the group represented by
the Committee of 48 opposed to reaction. No longer can
they be called Socialists. Any man in America can get up
since the Chicago incident and declare his opposition to the
reactionary policies of the Republican and Democratic Par-
ties without being classified as a Socialist; and third, the
Socialists. Believers in socialism have the same oppor-
tunity to express their belief as have the believers in reac-
tion. They can vote either for socialism as represented by
Eugene Debs and the Socialist Party, or for socialism as
represented by Mr. Christensen and the Farmer-Labor
Party. The new party with its ballot-box through which the
average American citizen can express his convictions has
not yet appeared. Unless this party is organized, the ex-
tremes of reaction in conflict with the extremes of radical-
ism will have the field to themselves, and in tearing each
other to pieces, orderly progress in America will be de-
stroyed. The need for the new party was never so im-
perative.
The Golden Cage
By JOSEPH L. FREEMAN
Earth, sea, and sky; the proud and patient stars;
The gradual rainbow with its flags unfurled;
These are but golden unrelenting bars
Upon the secret edges of the world.
We move in beauty and are touched to tears,
Wakened to wonder, and made clean with peace;
But guarded by a thousand unseen spears
Like royal captives. There is no release.
The moments mutiny, the days rebel,
The passions clamor; better to be still;
Seek open spaces for a magic spell,
Kiss lips across a tender book, until
The last rains falling on the final leaves
Dissolve all dreaming and the heart that grieves.
128
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2874
A Bolt From the Blue
By HEYWOOD BROUN
JOHN ROACH STRATON died and went to his ap-
pointed kingdom where he immediately sought an audi-
ence with the ruler of the realm.
"Let New York be destroyed," shouted Dr. Straton as
he pushed his way into the inner room. The king was en-
gaged at the moment in watching a sparrow fall to earth
and motioned the visitor to compose himself in silence, but
there was an urgency in the voice and manner of the man
from earth which would not be denied. "Smite them hip
and thigh," said Dr. Straton and the king looked down at
him and asked, "Is the necessity immediate?"
"Delay not thy wrath," said Dr. Straton, "for today on
thy Sabbath sixty thousand men, women, and children of
New York have gathered together to watch a baseball
game."
The ruler of the realm looked and saw that 11,967 persons
were watching the Yankees and the White Sox at the Polo
Grounds.
"A good husky tidal wave would confound them," urged
Straton, but the king shook his head.
"Remember the judgment you heaped upon Sodom and
upon Gomorrah," suggested Straton.
The ruler of the realm nodded without enthusiasm. "I
remember," he said, "but as I recollect it didn't do much
good."
Dr. Straton's bright hopefulness faded and the king has-
tened to reassure him. "We can think up something better
than that," he said, and had the visitor been an observant
man he might have noticed that the streets of the kingdom
were paved with tact. "Now there was the Tower of
Babel," said the ruler of the realm reflectively, "that was
a creative idea. That was a doom which persisted because
it had ingenuity as well as power. That's what we need
now."
Suddenly there dawned in the face of the king an idea,
and it seemed to Dr. Straton as if he were standing face
to face with a sunrise. The doctor lowered his eyes and
he saw that the men and the women sabbath breakers of
New York were all upon their feet and shouting, though
to his newly immortal senses the din came feebly. "Now,"
he said, with an exultation which caused him to slip into
his old pulpit manner, "let 'em have it."
But the king with keener vision than Dr. Straton, saw
that it was the ninth inning, the score tied, runners on
first and second, and Babe Ruth coming to bat. "The time
has not come," said the king, and he pushed the doctor
gently and made him give ground a little. And they waited
until two strikes had been pitched and three balls. The
next one would have cut the heart of the plate, but Babe
Ruth swung and the ball rose straight in the air. Up and
up it came until it disappeared from the view of all the
players and spectators and even of the umpires. Soon a
mighty wrangle began. Miller Huggins claimed a home
run and Kid Gleason argued that the ball was foul. The
umpires waited for an hour and then, as the ball had not
yet come down, Dineen was forced to make a decision and
shouted "Foul!" while the crowd booed. One of the pop
bottles injured him rather badly and there was a riot for
which it was necessary to call out the reserves. Every-
body went home disgruntled and a month later the Lusk bill
abolishing Sunday baseball was passed.
And all the time the ball continued to rise until suddenly
the king, thrusting out his left hand, caught it neatly and
slipped it into his pocket. It was not a conventional pocket,
for there were planets in it and everlasting mercy and other
things. For a long time Dr. Straton had been awed into
silence by the mighty miracle, but now he spoke, reverently
but firmly.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "but you will observe that
there is a sign in the baseball park which says 'All balls
batted out of the diamond remain the property of the New
York Baseball Club and should be thrown back!'"
The ruler of the realm smiled. "You forget," he an-
swered, "that if I threw the ball back from this great height
it might strike a man and kill him, it might crash through
a huge office building, it might even destroy the Calvary
Baptist Church."
Then for the first time a touch of sharpness came into
the voice of Dr. Straton. "All that is immaterial," he said.
"I think I know my theology well enough to understand
that law is law and right is right, come what may."
"Oh, but it's not nearly as simple as all that," remon-
strated the king. "There are right things which are so
harsh and unpleasant that they become wrong; and wrong
things which are, after all, so jolly that it's hard not to
call them right. Why, sometimes I have to stop a fraction
of a century myself to reach a decision. It's terribly com-
plicated. The problem is infinite. No mere man, quick or
dead, has any right to be dogmatic about it."
"Come, come," said Dr. Straton, and now there was noth-
ing but anger in his voice, "I've heard all those devilish
arguments before. When I came here I thought you were
God and that this was Heaven. I know now that there's
been a mistake. God is no mollycoddle."
He turned on his heel and started to walk away before
he remembered that he was a Southern gentleman as well
as a clergyman and bowed stiffly, once. Then he went to
the edge of the kingdom and jumped. Where he landed
it would be hard to say. Only a carefully trained theologian
could tell.
Contributors to This Issue
Bertrand Russell, British scholar, mathematician, phi-
losopher, was conspicuous during the war for his paci-
fism and suffered imprisonment in his conflict with the
authorities. His adherence to radical economic doctrines
was set forth in his recent book "Roads to Freedom."
A.LLEN McCuhdy is one of the leaders in the Committee of
48 movement.
Heywood Broun is the literary and dramatic critic of the
New York Tribune.
Mary Austin is a well-known western novelist and student
of primitive North American literature.
Norman Hapgood, American journalist and publicist, was
formerly United States Ambassador to Denmark.
William Duncan is a Washington newspaperman versed
in Latin-American affairs.
July 31, 1920]
The Nation
129
New York: Dictator of American Criticism
By MARY AUSTIN
EVER since, in 1914, we turned, with a first faint sense
of dereliction, an inquiring eye on our national con-
sciousness, there has been a steady output of books about
American writing and American thinking. That at least
is what one would conclude from a list of the titles. But
an examination of the contents of such books proves that
the greater number of them are about what a small New
York group thinks ought to be written and thought.
Against our hundred million the smallness of the group
stands out; the list of authors is shorter than the titles,
for in the past six or seven years some of them have found
it necessary to express themselves twice. There are a few
detached, academic studies from men attached to universi-
ties, and the rest are from young New Yorkers, all under
forty, in one case under thirty. Evidently there is some-
thing in our American temperament which is complaisant
to the immature point of view, or we do not take criticism
seriously enough to make it worth while for men of mature
years to devote their time to it.
And this immaturity of view is apparent not only in the
books but in the periodicals devoted primarily to criticism;
youth and the pastime of youth, the building up of criteria
of criticism in cliques and groups. There is a notable dis-
position of the critics towards election among themselves,
towards the badge and gesture of augury. But even where
the groups differentiate, they exhibit a common derivation
from New York.
Something more is indicated here than the natural con-
centration of literary workers around the publishing trade
centers. Most of the criticism which rises to book publica-
tion has had its turn in London, or even in Paris. But a
very little inquiry reveals that its authors have never lived
west of Broadway or north of Fifty-ninth. There are even
editors of magazines devoted to the development of the
literary consciousness in America who have never held it
to be an indispensable condition of their work that they
should know something outside of New York. All this, of
course, without prejudice; it is simply that nothing out-
side New York has presented itself to them as being worth
knowing.
Under these conditions criticism in America is urban —
citified to a degree not approximated by the urbanity of
London or Paris. English writers have homes in the coun-
try along with the significant members of their audience.
Paris is the capital of a homogeneous people. But New
York is, in respect to the rest of our country, only a half-
way house of immigration, a little less than a half-way
house for European thinking. The preponderance of the
foreign-born or foreignly derived among our self -constituted
literary mentors partly accounts for their detachment from
the vast extra-Manhattan territory. Criticism is the nat-
ural resort of half knowledge; with an active intelligence
and a City College degree one may go far in a milieu which
poses a total ignorance of the American process as the
best qualification for classifying its product.
Recently in a London journal one of these young critics
had fun with the general movement of non-New York
American writers to absorb into their work the aboriginal,
top layer of literary humus through which characteristi-
cally national American literature, if we are ever to have
it, must take root. He succeeded in making it appear that
it appeared to him ridiculous. But no English critic, sup-
posing one to arise so ignorant of the true processes of
national literature, could get space for ridiculing the abo-
riginal roots of Shakespeare or Yeats. One suspects that
the New Yorker is only admitted to the making of an
exhibitional ass of himself because it flatters the English
concept of our being still a colonial dependency. The point
of our departure from such a state would be marked by our
ceasing to celebrate half mythical Irish kings in Celtic
measures, and by our beginning to handle our American
material in generic American metrics.
^ One wonders what part is played in this schism between
literature and the process of nationalization by the pre-
ponderance of Jews among our critical writers. There is
nothing un-American in being a Jew; it is part of our
dearest tradition that no derivation from any race or re-
ligion inhibits a contribution to our national whole. We
could not without serious loss subtract the Jewish con-
tribution from our science or our economics, or dispense
with the services of the younger Jewish publishers. It is
only when the Jew attempts the role of interpreter of our
American expression that the validity of the racial bias
comes into question. Can the Jew, with his profound
complex of election, his need of sensuous satisfaction quali-
fying his every expression of personal life, and his short
pendulum-swing between mystical orthodoxy and a sterile
ethical culture— can he become the commentator, the arbi-
ter, of American art and American thinking?
One of the books on my list, in the attempt to do just
this, answers, without suspecting it, the question. In
"Our America" Waldo Frank gives us what must be— since
it is an America unguessed of the average American — the
country of the intellectual affiliations of his group.
It is a country centered in New York, with a small New
England ell in the rear and a rustic gazebo in Chicago;
the rest of it is magnificently predicated from a car window.
There is some excellent matter in the book concerning Puri-
tanism and pioneers, which, since these are the only ele-
ments collated and partly digested by other minds, are the
only elements Mr. Frank sees as contributing to our na-
tional character. There is interesting, discriminating com-
ment on the New England writers, especially such of them
as are already dead. The rest of the book is chiefly con-
cerned with Mr. Frank's own coterie and those outside
writers who have done selected work. This includes the
younger Chicago group, Sandburg, Anderson, Masters, and
Dreiser. Two women are mentioned as having stimulated
American thought; they are Amy Lowell and Emma Gold-
man. There is also a footnote somewhere in the book ad-
mitting the existence of other poets and critics, and "sev-
eral novelists." And in New York there are Mr. Frank's
friends solemnly engaged in "releasing the soul of Amer-
ica," "organizing an American tradition which shall . . .
bring to birth an articulated people," "quite simply . . .
creating a consciousness of American life." The names of
these gentlemen are Stieglitz, Stein, Ornstein, Rosen-
feld, Oppenheim, Mencken, Littell, Hackett, and Brooks.
130
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2874
Characteristic of the New York attitude toward the vast
America of our affections is a chapter on the Southwest
stuffed with encyclopedic information about the Aztecs, who
never occupied the territory of the United States, and some
superficial observations of Pueblo Indians. It is totally
void of any reference to such writers as Fewkes, Hodges,
Lumholtz, Lummis, Cather, Mathews, Cushing, and Alice
Fletcher. Yet the debt of American literature to Washing-
ton Mathews and Frank Cushing has no parallel in Europe,
unless it be Germany's debt to the Grimm Brothers, or
England's to Malory. And it is impossible to get the gen-
eral relation of the work of Masters, Sandburg, and Ander-
son to American life without some understanding of the
work of Alice Fletcher, which preceded theirs by some years.
This utter blankness to the sources of form and social
inspiration is equally apparent in nearly all the comment
of New York magazines devoted to the same high, self-
descried mission of pointing American genius the way it
should go, the same studied neglect of any indication of the
way it may be going.
One of them, whose very name dedicates it to our na-
tive newness, gives 73 per cent of a year's reviewing space
to non-American matter. This leaves out of account about
10 per cent of the whole space where the name of the author
was unfamiliar to me and neither the review nor the pub-
lisher's announcement furnished any clue to the book's
derivation. One knows, in the absence of such indices,
that Thorstein Veblen is an American, and that there is no
hall-mark of nationality to the sociological abstractions
which he so competently handles. But why should a story
by Zona Gale be so reviewed that the uninitiate reader does
not know whether it happened in Wisconsin or in Sene-
gambia — since the important contribution that Miss Gale
has to make is the delimitation of life in the small American
community? And is the distinction between two such poets
as Louis Untermeyer and Alfred Noyes vested solely in the
differences of their respective literary endowments? Is
not there a great deal to be said about the distinctions
which arise from one's being the product of an almost
cloistral English university and the other's being the well-
found, smartly schooled, urban American? Surely, if writ-
ing and the criticism of writing is to become an aid to
that development of the American consciousness to which
the New York critic is devoted, some relating of the work
to its generating sources is indispensable. It is the ab-
sence of such feeling, grounded on ignorance of anything
that the book might be related to, which gives to the New
York magazine review the fructifying power of a dried
specimen in a herbarium, and which accounts for the rise
in importance and popularity of the newspaper Sunday
Supplement review section. For newspapers are obliged
to treat books as news, and news they are, if of nothing
but the poverty of man's invention, and good news, what-
ever they contain, to the extent of their capacity to express,
and so in turn to affect, our living.
To the American writer who happens not to be of the
New York elect, the ascendancy of the provincial New York
reviewer is a deep exasperation. Vain our search for the
American form if in the end we are to be judged without
any reference to the forces in American life out of which
such a form should spring. And how, in hours of inde-
cision, are we to trust to criteria which have already proved
themselves to be burrs in the tail of our American Pegasus?
Take, for example, the movement toward what is styled
free verse, which is loudly acclaimed by New York to have
risen upon the American scene since 1912 under the patron-
age of Miss Lowell. As early as 1904 we were discussing
it in the English Club at Stanford University and were
linking it by the help of the Japanese students there with
its genetic Oriental source. Many experiments were tried,
and two plays that I know of in this medium actually were
produced, one of them in New York as early as 1911,
though it was written five years earlier. And so utterly
dropped at the tail of events was New York criticism of the
time that the publishers insisted for the first publication of
one of these plays that the lines should be written to simu-
late prose as a protection against urban obtuseness.
Then there was the movement represented in New York
by the Provincetown Players. Practically every experiment
tried by them can be found ia the annals of the Little
Country Theater of North Dakota. Even now there is aris-
ing in another part of the country that new metrical me-
dium, based on intrinsic American rhythms, which William
Archer long ago predicted as indispensable to the reestab-
lishment of poetic drama. But what New York critic has
heard of it?
At a recent convention of community enterprises at
Washington it was made clear that the United States will
no longer accept the dominance of New York in recreation,
in communal ritual and celebration, in music as an element
of community life, or in painting. The centralization of
publishing trades in and around Manhattan alone makes it
possible for New York to assume the postures of literary
leadership which it has actually forfeited so far as the.
genuinely native product is concerned. It would seem, if
decentralization is the only way to accomplish the release
of the American genius, that decentralization must inevi-
tably take place. New York criticism — we have the critics'
own word for it — intends the best in the world by Ameriea.
It can hardly escape their notice much longer that America
begins to be possessed of a definite intention toward New
York.
In the Driftway
THE Drifter was a little shocked when Upton Sinclair
brought out "The Profits of Religion." In the first
place it sounded irreverent — even blasphemous. Then the
Drifter has grown up in a suburban parish near one of
our largest cities where the rector earned — and still earns
— a precarious nine hundred dollars a year. Remembering
this, the Drifter thought that he could give Mr. Sinclair
some valuable hints as to the profits to be made in the
ministerial profession. Now, however, he is not quite so
sure. In his Sunday newspaper, which the Drifter reads
more religiously than his Bible — as every good Christian,
100-per-cent American should — he finds the following re-
markable statement:
The Parish of Trinity Church has just issued its Year Book
and Register. . . . The financial situation of the corpora-
tion showed improvement. . . . The income from real es-
tate was $1,031,228 and from interest $19,327. The total income
of the corporation was $1,101,766.
The report goes on to emphasize the attention attracted
to the church in England, Canada, and Australia by declar-
ing the pews free to all! And there is an appendix to the
Year Book giving an account of the visit of the Archbishop
July 31, 1920]
The Nation
131
of York in April, 1918, and of the Prince of Wales last
November, when "he attended a special service and occu-
pied the same pew in which his grandfather sat when as
Prince of Wales he visited this country in 1860."
The word which had puzzled the Drifter in the report,
he now realizes, was not misused. It was fitting to write
up the finances of Trinity, its income, and its noted visitors
exactly as one would any other "corporation." And as
such, the Drifter now looks upon the Temple of Wall Street
as he passes it going up Broadway. He must also pass
Old St. Paul's, which is now part of the Parish of Trinity.
And sometimes, when he steals a moment to wander among
the old tombstones that are crumbling there, he wonders
why a corporation of such wealth cannot spare the cash to
keep the old marks in better shape. The gentle, obliterating
work of wind and rain the Drifter would not hinder. But
he does regret the diri>— not earth, but modern dirt and
dust — which has mounted so high against many stones that
he cannot read the inscriptions.
Stop here and read as you Pass By,
As you are Now, so Once was I,
As I am Now, so shall you be —
and the next line, which may hold the secret of all eternity,
is covered up. If the Drifter had an income of $1,101,766
a year he would take better care of the old stones. At least
he thinks he would. But then he has never been exposed to
the temptation such profit would offer. And he wonders a
little, too, what a certain radical young proletarian who
drove the money changers from the Temple would do with
it— and them— today!
*****
UP to the present time the Drifter has been able to
escape the 100 per cent Americanism germ partly
through a chronic distaste for such snobbishly high marks,
and partly by shutting his ears and eyes to all the propa-
ganda that has been flung around so prodigally in favor of
it. But his simple evasions are to avail him no longer. The
Interracial Council has prepared reports on "Americaniza-
tion" which it is ready and anxious to distribute not only
for publication in shop bulletins where they may be skipped
over, or in posters which do not have to be looked at, but
in pay envelope slips! The Drifter has formerly received
his modest remuneration with a certain innocent and
childish pleasure at the thought that this little David was to
wrestle with and conquer, if in a rather incomplete way, the
cost-of-living Goliath. But now this harmless diversion is
to be denied him, for in the potent and attention-compelling
pay envelope are to intrude the means whereby he must be-
come a dutiful citizen, a model householder, a red-blooded,
two-fisted, stick-to-itive, thoroughgoing hundred-percenter.
Alas for the days when seventy was still a passing mark!
Friday can no longer be a red-letter day; it must from now
on be red, white, and blue.
*****
DURING the war the Massachusetts branch of the
League to Enforce Peace, fearful lest some defense
society should suspect that word peace of meaning pacifist,
had the word enforce on its stationery printed in red ink.
This practice has been abandoned; but Rumor whispers to
the Drifter that the League is to adopt a new motto: Dic-
tated but not Red.
The Drifter
Correspondence
Dictatorship of the — ?
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: After considerable hesitation I am venturing to bring
to your attention a statement made recently by Dr. Ettinger,
the head of our city schools, relating to the resignation of Dr.
Wolfson of the High School of Commerce. I quote from the
New York Times of July 11:
"I [Dr. Ettinger] am very frank to confess that I dissent
most heartily from the basic thesis set up by Principal Wolfson
that it is the function of our schools to allow students and
teachers to express their belief freely, to meet argument with
argument, and not either overtly or covertly to suppress opin-
ions which are held in honesty and in good faith."
As a teacher, and more particularly as one who has an infinite
faith in the "democratic idea," it seems to me that this is the
most genuinely tragic pronouncement — considering the position
and power of the man who said it — in American history. Dr.
Ettinger goes on to say, in the interview from which I am quot-
ing, that he believes the Anglo-Saxon point of view should
dominate all our teaching and that only the opinions of the
majority should be voiced by the teacher. But if he will turn
back to the earlier pages of Anglo-Saxon history he will dis-
cover that the heart and soul of the crude, but deeply significant,
rudiments of self-government which distinguished the Anglo-
Saxon community was the moot-hill around which both ma-
jority and minority opinions seem to have been voiced freely.
We hear these days a great deal of passionate denunciation
— and rightly so — of the so-called "dictatorship of the Prole-
tariat." But does not Dr. Ettinger's thesis presuppose a "dic-
tatorship of the majority" — something quite as vicious and as
un-American? Surely the majority must rule in a democracy,
but have we fallen so low in our social idealism as to deny the
right of the minority to give expression to its opinions? Have
we forgotten how often the minority has been right? Can we
ever be certain that the majority point of view is right as long
as it stifles every other point of view but its own? I do not
see how we can keep faith with our belief in democracy and in
"the American Idea" and deny these truths. And admitting
them, I cannot see how, for one instant, we can dare to elimi-
nate from our schools — particularly our High Schools — that
free and full discussion of all points of view which must of
necessity be a vital part in the preparation of our boys and
girls for life in a democratic community.
The Nation has recently expressed a democratic repugnance
at the plight of Dr. Wolfson and other forward-minded teachers.
But what of the great mass of students of our public schools?
Are they to be left to such deliberately prejudiced and un-
American leadership as that of Dr. Ettinger and his "system"?
New York, July 1U D. A. Lyons
Children in Need
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: For one hundred marks a month ($2.50 at present rate
of exchange) the American Church in Munich can keep an
under-nourished, semi-tuberculous city child in a vacation
colony, where good feeding may bring him back from half-
starvation to sound health. It has colonies in the mountains
where there is an especially good milk supply, and places many
of its children in separate families. It has raised thirty thou-
sand marks for this work, but needs more.
We are hoping that our friends and the friends of humanity
will help us to continue our work. William E. Nies
Chairman of the American Church
Munich, June 19 Relief Committee
132
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2874
In Summer
By DAVID MORTON
I think these stars that draw so strangely near,.
That lean and listen for the turning Earth,
Are never wholly careless when they hear
The murmur of her hushed and quiet mirth —
But looking out upon a world in bloom,
They half -remember, and they heed and hark:
A reminiscent sweetness in the gloom,
A music older than this singing dark.
Their summers gone, so many aeons past,
Bird-song and bloom and swallow from the sky,
These dead, desireless worlds find here, at last,
Something remembered when the Earth turns by,
Sweet with these blowing odors they had known,
This happy music that was once their own.
Books
BernstorfFin America
My Three Years in America. By Count Bernstorff. Charles
Scribner's Sons.
AMONG the few things for which the world can be thankful,
in this post-war period, is the degree to which the immedi-
ate causes of the beginning and prolongation of the Great War
are being cleared up without the usual delay in publishing essen-
tial papers. For this promptness in publication the complete
collapse of the old governments in Germany and Russia is
responsible. The Bolsheviki have published one set of docu-
ments of first-rate historical importance, and the Germans,
quarreling over their responsibilities, have published another.
In the second set Count Bernstorff' s testimony takes a high place.
The American translation comes at a fortunate time. Not
long ago the calm discussion of any German treatise that was
loyal to the essential German case would have been impossible in
America; but our passions are now being partly drained off in
other directions. Count Bernstorff is as simply patriotic about
the long-distance causes of the world-conflict as he is severe in
his view of German mistakes in diplomacy. It would be too
much to expect him to look with unbridled horror upon sub-
marine war while accepting with equanimity a starvation block-
ade. American readers, therefore, should come to the book pre-
pared to see the author evidently believing that Great Britain
was breaking international law as ruthlessly as Germany was;
that the German government in 1914 did not desire the war but
merely wished to infuse backbone into Austria against Slavic
attempts to break her up ; and that the treaty of Versailles pun-
ishes the German people for the faults of the German govern-
ment, contrary to Mr. Wilson's promises. If he can stand such
differences of opinion, the American reader will find much to
give him not only information but satisfaction. He will find a
most conclusive condemnation of the conduct of the German
foreign office. The evidence is complete that the Government
never really wanted peace except on terms of serious gain. Even
taking the foreign office fully at its word, the most reasonable
proposal it ever considered included a strategic frontier against
Russia, strategic rectifications of the French frontier, guaran-
tees from Belgium, colonial restitution, compensation for Ger-
man losses, and freedom of the seas; in return for all of which
Germany was to give nothing except the French territory taken
in this war and the little piece of Upper Alsace occupied by her.
This determination upon a peace of victory emerges as the real
reason for Count Bernstorff's inability to induce his government
to accept Wilson's mediation. The truth is that up to the time
of Kerensky there was never a moment when any one of the
leading governments on either side would have been satisfied
with a peace without victory, although Count Bernstorff makes
an excellent case for his having himself favored that solution
steadfastly from the battle of the Marne. Unless he has kept
back documents of importance, which does not seem at all prob-
able, since his enemies in the government could have published
them against him, it will become clearer that he had a most
realistic appreciation of the forces and considerations involved
and a cool and far-seeing desire to save his country from the
deadly results of over-confidence.
There is much of popular interest in the Ambassador's ob-
servations on our press and our national characteristics. After
the manner of bureaucracies Berlin had an over-simplified con-
ception of the American character, deeming it principally com-
mercial, so that Count Bernstorff spent much effort in endeav-
oring to wake his government up to those traits of sentiment
and potential excitement that would surely bring us into the war
in the end if the German policy did not change in regard to sub-
marines, statement of war-aims, Belgian deportations, and all
matters in which an understanding of our mass characteristics
was important. He was entirely helpless, for the time had
passed in Germany when the military authorities could be kept
in their proper sphere by the civil government as they were in
the days of Bismarck, and the military authorities had no more
idea of popular psychology in a foreign country than an Amer-
ican trust magnate usually has. Count Bernstorff himself is
not a thinker like Norman Angell and Bertrand Russell, but he
is intelligent to a high degree, exact, fearless, without cheap
pride, living in a much more real atmosphere than most of the
German war statesmen. He has the prime advantage, for a time*
of such complexity, of having a good mind that functions with-
out interference from his prejudices or his passions.
A large part of the book is given up to meeting exaggerated
charges in the United States about propaganda and plots, and
to setting out in an orderly and complete manner the Lusitania,
Arabic, and Sussex incidents; it is probable that these matters
retain more interest today for German readers than for those
who will read the American translation. More important are
his estimates of our statesmen. The fact that our leading public
men, including our secretaries of state, speak nothing but Eng-
lish is a matter upon which he puts much emphasis, as he sees
clearly the decisive part it plays in affecting our conduct in
world-politics. The little sketches of Bryan and Lansing are
life-like as far as they go, and he says searching things about
Lodge and other leaders whose ultimate thought is fixed in the
money centers; but the really full-length impressions are of
President Wilson and Colonel House. Amazing objectivity,
kindness, wisdom, and unswerving determination at all times
and places to keep peace in mind as the one most important con-
sideration, are the high-lights in Colonel House ; and this tribute
from so balanced and well-informed an observer on the German
side does not differ from the impressions of highly competent
men in France and England. Morally and intellectually Colonel
House has been to America what General Smuts and Lord Robert
Cecil have been to England — in the melee yet above it.
The picture of Wilson is fairer than could reasonably be
expected from a German writing after the peace of Versailles,
but naturally enough it over-emphasizes, in Wilson's change of
tone toward the German people, the part played by politics and
personal chagrin; and it utterly fails to attach appropriate im-
portance to the President's mastering idea that the formation
and launching of a League of Nations was everything: that if
in the poker game at Versailles he could get Foch and Clemen-
ceau to give up their full material guaranties and rely for the
safety of France on an agreement to which Germany would
later become a party, he would accomplish enough to make any
concession justifiable.
Norman Hapgood
July 31, 1920]
The Nation
133
Historical Miscellanies
Studies in History and Politics. By Herbert Fisher. Oxford:
The Clarendon Press.
WHEN the Right Honorable Herbert Fisher took up the
onerous duties of a Minister of the Crown on the British
Educational Board, it might have been said that an angel had
rushed in where some fools, at least, had feared to tread. For
once a scholar had something to say about the schools. But
the heavy labors in the service of the English youth left him
little time for writing and research. The studies collected in
his latest volume are, therefore, not new, but are reprints of
various magazine articles written, for the most part, between
five and ten years ago, though here and there retouched and
supplemented. They are all amply worth reading. Three of
the eleven essays deal with French politics; three with the
history of history; two with Napoleon; one with British Im-
perial administration; one with the value of small states; and
one with the resurgence of Prussia.
The romance of Napoleon's early life is vividly impressed
upon the reader of Mr. Fisher's description of Corsica, with
its wild scenery, its warlike mountaineers, and its eternal family
feuds. When Bonaparte was a youth his spirit was fired by
the Revolution. As a Jacobin he was hated by the conservative
and separatist Corsicans, who captured him and probably would
have put him to death in 1793 but for a mysterious and melo-
dramatic escape. But the hosannas came later. As emperor,
Napoleon won his fellow-countrymen to France and is by them
worshiped today as no ruler has been worshiped since the days
of ancient Rome. When the imperial hymn is sung the Corsi-
cans go down on their knees. Mr. Fisher also points out
the main currents of Napoleonic influence in the various nations
of Europe. Napoleon is said to have saved the benefits of the
Revolution for France and to have extended it to other peoples.
Only in England, where he was consistently represented as a
charlatan and a vulgar ape of his betters, was his influence
reactionary. Elsewhere he has gone down to posterity as he
wished, "with his Code in his hand."
Quite fascinating are Mr. Fisher's judgments of other his-
torians. Ammianus Marcellinus wins his sympathy and respect
to a high degree, the first because of the melancholy task he
had to perform in narrating the story of a collapsing world,
the second because of his fairness, accuracy, and honesty. Al-
most alone in that age of religious struggle he kept a balanced
mind and an affable spirit. Very different was another his-
torian, nicely characterized by the author: Lord Acton. The
real paradox of this man's nature was not, as has often been
said, that he knew so much and produced so little, but that,
with his unrivaled knowledge of facts, he should have had so
little difficulty in dealing out, as he does, sentences of approval
or condemnation to everyone. Superlatives abound in his works :
Napoleon is "the most splendid genius that has appeared on
earth," the author of the "Imitation" is "the greatest religious
writer that ever lived," Robespierre "the most hateful charac-
ter in the forefront of history since Machiavelli," and so forth.
Acton seems to have had the assurance of Providence in as-
signing men to the election of grace or to damnation, and like
Calvin he was sure that the greater part of mankind was
doomed to the latter. Almost everyone in authority, he once
said, was extremely wicked. This is but one of the paradoxes
advanced by Acton which are sure to diminish his somewhat
artificial fame. That, as he maintained, the Reformation and
the French Revolution were both blows to the cause of liberty,
that the South was right in the American Civil War, that the
Roman Catholic Church is a progressive force — these are ideas
believed by Acton but rejected by the consensus of competent
opinion. Securus judicat orbis terrarum.
Fairness and acumen mark Mr. Fisher's treatment of modern
German historians. They were all, as he points out, engaged,
whatever period they might select as a subject, in writing the
history of their own time, if not of the future. Mommsen's
Rome was but an ancient Prussia, his Caesar the prototype of
the great German conqueror, the Moltke of 1870, or the greater
military genius to come. So with Droysen and Sybel and
Treitschke and the rest; they all had in mind the German Em-
pire as it existed and as they hoped it would exist and grow
in the future.
How Rousseau deduced history from theory and wrote con-
stitutions entirely unbiased by the facts, how he preached so
eccentric a virtue that Dr. Johnson wished to send him to the
penal colonies, and how at last his thought has attained its
rightful place in political philosophy, is wittily set forth by
Mr. Fisher. Not less interesting is his review of Ollivier's
"Memoirs" and his conclusion that France wanted war in 1870
no less than did Germany. Most valuable of all is perhaps his
chapter on French Nationalism. The leader among those who
stimulated the spirit of revenge for 1870 was Deroulede, a
man lacking in judgment and balance but abounding in en-
thusiasm and love of country. The odds against him were
heavy. "Young man," said Renan to him, "France is dying;
do not trouble her last agony." But he wrote poems and fos-
tered La Patrie, that extremely provocative jingo newspaper
cried so loudly through the streets of Paris by boys who seem
to be always on the run. Though he must often have known
of his paper what Danton said of the country — "La Patrie est
en danger" — he fought the fight to the end, and now, in the
ghastly Pyrrhic victory that France is celebrating, he has won
his reward.
Preserved Smith
What the Workers Want
What the Workers Want. By Arthur Gleason. Harcourt, Brace
and Howe.
TV/T R. GLEASON reports contemporary history as a dramatist
*•*■* might compose a pageant. The slow, obscure working of
social change, the mass movements only half conscious of their
direction and power, the petty failures and slight successes
which make up the detail of the march — these things he is con-
scious of and strives to express, but not as the historian or the
scientist. Rather he symbolizes them in the crisis and the
hero, conveying the sense of social life in personal terms. Only
the most naive supposed that the nationalization of the British
coal mines began and ended at the hearings of the Commission
under the chairmanship of Justice Sankey. Back of that Com-
mission stretched the long history of the mines and their opera-
tion, the slow organization of the men, the welding of the
unions into one great Federation, the ferment of ideas expressed
by the Fabian, by the industrial unionist, and by the guildsman,
the slow spread of labor education, the swift rush of enlighten-
ment incidental to the war and its consequences, and the indus-
trial evolution of mine operation itself. Ahead of it loom years
of breaches of faith by the government, negotiations, dicker-
ings, and strikes, political campaigns and elections, and the
sabotage of workers on one side and private capital on the
other. Yet Mr. Gleason contrives to make two chapters on the
Coal Commission give us a hint of the whole process. He shows
us the managers, statisticians, and landed peers passing in
defeat under the guns of Robert Smillie, Sidney Webb, Frank
Hodges, Sir Leo Chiozza Money, and R. H. Tawney, all of them
distinguished not only as personalities but as types also. He
gives us a keen sense of the dramatic impact of the moment.
Through a few passages quoted from the testimony and cross-
examination he reveals the breakdown of the hereditary private
ownership of an industry, the glacier-like advance of 800,000
miners, as vanguard of the nation's labor, over the inhumani-
ties and inequalities of capitalist society.
So also it is neither as a theoretician nor as a critic that Mr.
134
The Nation
[Vol. ill, No. 2874
Gleason speaks of the British unions or the Labor Party. He
goes to the congress of the one at Glasgow and the conference
of the other at Southport, and with an assessing eye pictures
them in talk and in action. Most of the important leaders
appear, from Smillie and Hodges at the left to Clynes and Tom
Shaw on the right. There is no attempt to create an artificial
uniformity out of such a large and varied group, but a sense
of unity emerges. Mr. Gleason seems to have the dramatist's
aversion to saying anything out of his own mouth. He sets
the stage, describes the dramatis personae, and juxtaposes their
significant utterances. The result gives an effect of authentic
composition. This method succeeds even with the railway strike
and with the chapters which show the quaint British method
of "gentle revolution." It reaches its climax in the valuable
section completely written by men like Frank Hodges of the
Miners, J. T. Murphy of the Shop Steward movement, and C. T.
Cramp of the Railwaymen. It is reflected in the title of the
book.
This intimate and participating vision should have a whole-
some effect upon that large group of Americans who, while
captivated by the dramatic and the external in the British
labor movement, have failed to regard its American counter-
part with more than a cold and distant sympathy. It is easy
to take the phrase for the reality, especially at a distance.
How many have not innocently assumed that the Nottingham
reconstruction program of the British Labor Party sprang like
a song from the pure heart of a Percival-like multitude while
the cautious and ungenerous sentences of Gompers represented
a contrasting ugliness of soul on the part of our unionists?
There is a gulf between the two movements, to be sure, but no
such gulf as this simple assumption implies. The British unions
have had their distressing fissures, their frailties of spirit, their
heavy-footed conservatives as well as the American. Like any
movement composed of millions of human beings, the British
was slow in coming to the issue, and it still is likely to disap-
point sorely those whose quick enthusiasm was aroused, without
sufficient understanding, by anticipation of a prompt and cer-
tain victory. It reached its present stage only through the
constant loyalty of those who were willing to meet a hundred
rebuffs, willing to be patient with many errors, willing to
study in detail and with humility as members of the intellectual
rank and file. A book of this sort was not needed to increase
the prestige of British labor. It was needed to make us feel
its reality, to warn us against too exigent expectations, and to
hint of a better use of its strength in this country.
As is usual with Mr. Gleason's books, not the least valuable
part of "What tha Workers Want" is the bulky appendix, con-
taining documents of the mining inquiry, the Whitley Coun-
cils, early British Socialism, and the like.
George Soule
Woman
Woman. By Magdeleine Marx. Introduction by Henri Bar-
busse. Translated by Adele S. Seltzer. Thomas Seltzer.
Open the Door. By Catherine Carswell. Harcourt, Brace and
Howe.
1X7HAT do these women want? A wise, rather cool Amer-
* " ican lady, herself remote enough from these ardors and
rebellions, tells us: "There is a great deal of suffering among
women, especially the women — both unmarried and married — of
the middle classes. There are lives so repressed and so poverty-
stricken or else so wrenched and maladjusted that one wonders
there is not more open revolt and violence. These women just
wither away in mind as well as in body. It is a painful and
tragic sight." Your stern moralist has his reply ready: "They
must resign themselves and do their duty." The trouble is that
he misses a distinction. Those who can resign themselves do.
Genuine resignation means the subduing of one's desires and
one's will into harmony with one's condition in life. Most of
these women are not intellectual; they are neither rebels nor
reformers. They would ask nothing better than the ability to
be resigned and calm. But how about those — an ever increasing
number — who cannot achieve resignation? Our stern moralist
will try to meet the situation with vague phrases about the
nobility of suffering and its chastening power. Here one must
bid him halt. Suffering of that kind hardly tends to ennoble
the soul. Has he ever seen these women, with their pitiful false
graces and furtive looks and drained souls and terror of the
years to come, at teas and lectures? And chastening? Why
should one be chastened? For what fault? What sin? Why?
In some such way one could state, deliberately using terms
and a tone of moderation, the spiritual background of both
"Woman" and "Open the Door." And it is not without signifi-
cance to add that "Woman" has been welcomed with an almost
strident enthusiasm by the great liberals of Europe — Barbusse
and Rolland, Brandes and Stefan Zweig and Bertrand Russell,
and that "Open the Door" has received in Great Britain a rather
important prize reserved for first novels. Somehow these books
seem to speak out a burning and open secret and to answer to
a broad and vital need.
The protest of both Madame Marx and Miss Carswell is, as
Barbusse points out in his preface to "Woman," a protest
against the "exclusiveness of love" and also, one may add,
against the falsely idealistic assumption of its necessary con-
tinuance. The theory of exclusiveness derives in man, of course,
from the deep-rooted sense of property which ages of open or
concealed slave-holding have left in him; in woman it derives
from the anxiety, especially natural in northern or densely set-
tled countries, to secure for herself and her children the entire
labor of the bread-giver. The theory of the necessary continu-
ance of love in marriage is, contrary to the common opinion, a
romantic fiction of comparatively recent origin. Now, the origin
of neither notion invalidates it, but does raise in each case the
legitimate question: Is it, after all, conformable to human
nature today? For that is the test we must ultimately apply.
It is the test which, with whatever emotional reluctance, man
has always applied. Had he not done so, we should all, it is
clear, still be obeying the tribal taboos of our remotest ancestors,
which were all venerable in their day and seemed lovely and of
good report to comfortable middle-aged people who had adjusted
themselves and were both proud of it and loth to change.
These apparently non-literary considerations are not at all
out of place. The conservative press has already begun its
snickering and flippant campaign against both "Woman" and
"Open the Door." And it is humiliating to consider that Amer-
ica should have but a sneer or an empty moral gesture for books
that stir the best minds of Europe. To call the unnamed
heroine of Madame Marx or Miss Carswell's Joanna Bannerman
immoral is the cheapest shirking of one of the very vital issues
that confront civilization.
When we come to the actual intellectual and artistic texture of
the two books, it is a little difficult to understand the great
praise that great wits have lavished on "Woman." The story
is frank and sincere and full of isolated perceptions that are
both searching and beautiful. But it is also thin and scrappy
and disjointed, and the complete shadowiness of all the charac-
ters robs its theories of the inner energy of a human content.
We see neither the woman's husband nor her lover nor, in any
clear manner, herself. We gather that her husband understood
the necessities of her nature without feeling them, and that her
lover neither felt nor understood them. Nothing in all the book
is as vividly seen and communicated as the description of the
poor mothers at the hospital, and that is but an illustrative
incident, though, as such, most pertinent and striking. In a
word, Madame Marx has felt very deeply and reflected intensely,
and those who agreed with her passionately have taken it for
granted that she has written a great book. But that is taking
for granted far too much.
July 31, 1920]
The Nation
135
"Open the Door" is a much longer book and, as a matter of
fact, a much better one. It is far more concrete and therefore
far more philosophical, too. The Glasgow life described in it
is thick, solid, and intense at once. The quietly and yet so
admirably done full-length portrait of Juley Bannerman and
the facts of her marriage throw a steady stream of full and
mellow light on the nature and adventures of Joanna. No less
illuminating are the various incidents of Joanna's childhood
and early girlhood. These really add to the important and
hitherto unrecorded facts of our moral nature. And Joanna's
great discovery seems to us more fundamental than any made
by the heroine of Madame Marx. It is the discovery that what
"in the Christian sense" is "evil" in her contributes no less than
what is "good" to "make her alive" and an individual and a
truly human being. One may quarrel with the probability of
some of the adventures through which she vindicates the whole-
ness of her nature. She and her story remain vivid and delight-
ful and have a touch of epic breadth and richness.
Ludwig Lewisohn
Books in Brief
MEN in love, said Balzac, are like apes trying to play the
violin. But primitive men, it may be added, have more
than laughter from their fellows to instruct them in the sub-
ject which, with food-getting, is their greatest concern. They
have puberty rituals and initiations and a candid and under-
stood symbolism in their tribal arts. As with the increase of
civilization the complexity of love increases one might reason-
ably expect an accompanying advance in the science and the
craft. Instead, the instrument has come to be as intricate as
a violin while the average lover has little opportunity to know
more about it than would suffice to beat a tomtom. Doctors
in the science are urged, even compelled, to keep their learning
to themselves; laymen are left in an ignorance abominably en-
forced by the dogma that there are two loves, that of the spirit
and that of the body, and that the two have no imperative
connection. Theologically speaking, the one is therefore re-
garded as the heaven and the other the hell of the matter;
speaking socially, the one is regarded as the respectable neigh-
borhood and the other as the slums. William J. Fielding in
his valuable "Sanity in Sex" (Dodd, Mead) attacks this danger-
ous dualism at every point where its evil consequences appear.
There may be difficulties in finding suitable methods for in-
structing the young in sex, but they are as nothing in compari-
son with the disasters which result from the furtive and often
filthy misinstruction which the young are sure to obtain from
one another if they have no better sources. From such igno-
rance proceeds no small part of the hideous flood of venereal
disease, economic disability, conjugal discontent, and repres-
sions and perversions and cruelties without number. Mr. Field-
ing is not an alarmist; he strikes more than a note of hope in
his account of the work which the United States Government
did with the army during the war and which various govern-
mental and private agencies plan to carry on in peace. It was
time for some such awakening. According to reports of the
Surgeon General for the period from September 21 to December
7, 1917, the computed annual rate of admission for venereal
disease for each thousand men was 121.9, while the total rate
a thousand for pneumonia, dysentery, typhoid, paratyphoid, ma-
laria, meningitis, and scarlet fever was 25.7. Appalling as
this is, it was matched by the ignorance which everywhere pre-
vailed with regard to all sexual affairs, and which merely re-
flected the state of knowledge and opinion among the people
at large, where millions of men for lack of information believe
that all of sex is comprised in a stealthy function, and mil-
lions of women, married and unmarried, believe that frigidity
is a virtue. Specifically Mr. Fielding argues for a sane en-
lightenment carried on under public auspices; for a scientific
promotion of the practice of birth control; for a wider knowl-
edge of the light which psychoanalysis throws on the sexual
question; and of course for that economic reconstruction with-
out which nothing permanent can be accomplished. These,
however, he understands and intelligently argues, all depend
upon a change in the general conception. The tragedy will go
on until it is recognized that love is sexual love, that the milder
affections are also of the flesh, and that desire is also of the
soul.
T N a slighter work bearing upon the same theme C. Gasquoine
1 Hartley (Mrs. Walter Gallichan) discusses "Women's Wild
Oats" (Stokes). The war, she points out, in releasing and
redirecting the energies of many women in England created
a new problem for English society. Having had more freedom
than before, women are unwilling to go back to their old status ;
how, then, shall a new balance between the sexes be arrived
at? Mrs. Gallichan, who regards marriage as not a romantic
exercise but a racial duty, asks that divorce in England be
made as free as marriage, that prostitution be no more encour-
aged or winked at in the body of the state than cancer in that
of the individual, that illegitimate children be given by the
state as nearly as possible the advantages which legitimate
children are given by their parents, and that some sort of
recognition be allowed to "passionate friendships" formed out
of wedlock — a point on which she does not make quite clear the
superiority of such an acknowledged concubinage to a marriage
capable of being dissolved by mutual consent. Summed up,
her arguments are for a plain admission of the relations now
existing between men and women in England in the hope that
by admitting them the authorities may do away with the shabby
hypocrisies and sneaking license which make the existing
statutes grotesque. Undoubtedly the Parliament of Lloyd
George will do nothing half so thorough, but it is not uncon-
soling to lovers of Great Britain to see that some of its pub-
licists, at least in their proposals, are abreast of the steps
already taken by the law in Scandinavia.
T'HE bibliography of Paris is immense. For centuries the
*■ life and charms of the French capital, "fair, fantastic
Paris," have been celebrated in prose and verse. It is with a
feeling, therefore, of mild curiosity as to what more could
possibly be said that one opens "Paris Vistas" by Helen Daven-
port Gibbons (Century). After recovering from the shock of
"a bang-up dinner," "the old wop," "the old buck," "when I was
a kid," and certain intimate revelations of family life, one
becomes gradually fascinated by the good nature and warm
heart of the writer; and certain aspects of life in Paris, espe-
cially during the war, assume a vividness not easily forgotten.
The book is a story of Paris as experienced in girlhood and
later married life. Mrs. Gibbons stayed in the city with her
four children through the war while her husband was absent
for months at a time as a newspaper correspondent. She says:
"France was saved because Paris led a normal life in the midst
of the whirlwind. The Turks have a proverb that a fish begins
to corrupt at its head. If the Parisians had given up the
struggle to live tranquilly France would have been lost." The
normality of existence might have been questioned, as a matter
of fact, at a time when no coal or wood was obtainable and the
dining-room chairs and table were chopped up for fuel to warm
the room of a sick baby in order to save its life.
HP HE Oxford Junior Scientific Club heard, on November 17,
1919, a remarkably interesting lecture by Arthur Keith,
now republished under the title "Nationality and Race from
the Anthropologist's Point of View" (Oxford University Press).
Properly speaking, "race" is the only subdivision of the human
species recognized by the anthropologist; "nationality" is a
political, not a biological distinction. Regarding the first dis-
tinction as natural and the latter as artificial, the anthropologist
136
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2874
is apt to charge all the woes of mankind to a conflict of in-
herited instincts with acquired habits. Certainly there are
few problems more serious at present than those presented by
the adjustment of racial relations in America, Africa, and Aus-
tralasia. The "lesser breeds" show remarkable differences of
vitality; whereas some die away at the first touch of civilization,
others propagate "after taking" at a rate equal to that main-
tained by them before taking the white man's medicine. Thus,
extensive hybridization results; it has been carried farthest
in South America, but seems to be slowly gaining ground in
North America and South Africa. Compared to the vast prob-
lems raised by race, Dr. Keith regards those of nationality as
easy and trivial. Indeed, the point of his lecture is largely in
the application of it to the case of Ireland. He is at great pains
to show that there is no Irish race; and he therefore implies
that there should be no Irish problem. If British scientists could
only persuade the misguided Irish that when, in the past cen-
turies, the Sassanachs made their lives a hell, it was nothing
but a little family tiff, would not everything be immediately
and beautifully settled?
O TORIES of the settlement of Kentucky grow as naturally
^ as bluegrass and as tall as hemp. Most of them are mere
tales of adventure, but Mr. Archibald Henderson in "The Con-
quest of the Old Southwest . . . 1740-1790" (Century)
has brought in family piety and economic interpretation. His
piety serves to enlarge the fame of Judge Richard Henderson,
founder of Transylvania, and his economic interpretation adds
stability to the romantic motives ordinarily stressed in the elder
narratives. Writing from North Carolina and with the new
material which North Carolina has lately been assembling, Mr.
Henderson particularly exhibits the contribution of that State
to the old Southwest. He emphasizes, too, such frontier experi-
ments in government as Watauga and Transylvania and Frank-
lin— all promising commonwealths in their day — and brings the
account down, through Kings Mountain to the day when Ten-
nessee, "after a romantic and arduous struggle, finally passed
through the wide-flung portals into the domain of national state-
hood." Perhaps it is no wonder that with a theme so stirring
Mr. Henderson's style should so often swell, even in a solid and
shrewd historical monograph; but it is none the less a pity.
Though the first Kentuckians were saga-men, their epic has
always been colored with romance.
1\/fODESTLY following in the footsteps of McMaster and
*■ *■ Rhodes, who have made such excellent use of the news-
paper and pamphlet as indexes to contemporary public opin-
ion, Miss Margaret Woodbury has made a study of "Public
Opinion in Philadelphia during the Federalist period, 1789-
1801" (Smith College Studies in History, V, Nos. 1, 2), in
which she has attempted to discover what men wrote about to
the newspapers of the time. She has worked through a great
mass of literature and has arranged her material in orderly
fashion, describing the papers and their editors, and making
abundant quotations designed to show the range of the Phila-
delphia mind. She finds, as was to be expected, that most of
the questions of the day — finance, foreign relations, political
candidates, issues, parties, titles and insignia, disease and its
remedies — were debated at length, in language frequently more
acrimonious than profitable; the labor problem rarely if ever
appeared. Miss Woodbury's conclusions are not always impor-
tant, but occasionally her extracts are interesting. The fol-
lowing quotation, were it read out of its setting, would seem
to cover a present day situation. "The history of the present
administration proves that there is no measure, however odious
to you or repugnant to your constitution, which the authority'
of a President cannot accomplish." This was written of the
administration of George Washington in 1796.
ALFRED < A ' KNOPF
I'M1 1 "W 1 1 ^y 1 1 "W1 1 1 "S*?1 1 1 "S*?1 1 1 "W 1 1 BW» 1 1 B5»3" 1 1 «W Hi kS ;YiTt] r#jW i^aii
r"'~ ' -"~ • ~f r'-ni - nlln - nllrf nlln nllii iilli ii'linfattiiTU^iMVdffllllrr 'ulliil qjll
Mr. Knopfs
Fall Announcement
iio W. 42, Street,
Latest Importations
THE EVOLUTION OF AN
INTELLECTUAL
By John Middleton Murry
Editor of The Athenaeum (London)
A series of essays, covering the period
of the war, whose range is from Tolstoy
to Lloyd George, from Russia to De-
mocracy and Patriotism. $3.00
OCTOBER and Other Poems
By Robert Bridges
"A lovely and noble addition to Mr.
Bridges' work as a poet." — The West-
minster Gazette (London). $1.50
JEWISH CHILDREN
By Shalom Aleichem
Stories by the greatest of modern
Yiddish writers dealing with the life of
children in the villages of the Russian
pale. Translated by Hannah Berman.
$2.00
WORDSWORTH: AnAnthology
Edited by T.J. Cobden- Sanderson
"This beautiful book, of tall pages,
generous margins, and delightful type,
will certainly become a treasured pos-
session of many Wordsworthians, and,
given by them to others, will bring con-
verts to the faith." — London Times.
Only 250 copies for America. $3.00
is now ready and will be mailed to
any one on request. In it thirty-three
interesting books are described, among
them volumes by
Joseph Hergesheimer
Willa Cather
Max Beerbohm
H. L. Mencken
W. Somerset Maugham
W. H. Hudson
Floyd Dell
Carl Van Vechten
Sidney L. Nyburg
r.ni 1 1 7.51 1 1 ep.^ 1(17.51 11 7.51 11 1^.51 11 or . 51 icm}|
fc.'^l 1 1 Ofc<43 1 lt^'^3 1 1 Efc.'^J 1 1 Ok.'.*! 1 1 tk.'XJ 1 1 arttfi I b'dl
Economic Reprints
"Alfred Knopf has put students of social
affairs in his debt by republishing in
pocket-size volumes the autobiographies of
Robert Owen and of William Lovett. That
of Owen covers a very eventful life, and
one of first importance in the history of
Socialism, labor, and cooperation, and is the
expression of an unusual personality." —
New York Evening Post.
I. THE LIFE OF ROBERT
OWEN
By Himself. With an introduction by M.
Beer, author of "A History of British So-
cialism." ($1.50)
II-III. THE LIFE AND
STRUGGLES OF WILLIAM
LOVETT
The autobiography of a great labor leader
who organized the Chartist movement in
England. (Two vols. $3.00)
IV. THE PIONEERS OF
LAND REFORM
Essays by Thomas Paine ("Agrarian
Justice") ; William Ogilvie ("The Right of
Property in Land") ; and Thomas Spence
(Nationalization of the Land"). ($1.50)
£gll5l2llg:SIIS:2IIS:2ll^^^^
July 31, 1920]
The Nation
137
IF literature is not cosmopolitan when a Japanese-German
publishes in the United States in English a book dealing
with the life of the great Jew whose deeds and doctrines,
recounted in the Greek of the Gospels, serve as the basis of
the Christian religion, when is it? Sadakichi Hartmann's "The
Last Thirty Days of Christ" (privately printed) will sound to
the orthodox a good deal like George Moore for irreverence and
a little like Anatole France for slyness. Ostensibly the diary
of the disciple Lebbeus, also called Thaddeus, it explains the
miracles as so many quite rational affairs and ends with Jesus
dying like a mortal man in a garden at Emmaus; in the most
realistic language it shows Lebbeus asking Jesus if he is to
"swipe" the ass on which the Master entered Jerusalem, describ-
ing the shapely legs of the Samaritan woman, and recounting
with vigor and gusto the pranks of the dusty, naked apostles in
the Jordan. Bull-necked Peter, "fierce, stubborn, easily roused,
but devoted to the Master like no other"; "flamboyant Judas
Iscariot, a strangely magnetic personality"; "sturdy, straight-
forward James and sad and headachy-looking John" — John being
the Boswell of the expedition; doubting Thomas, "a lean elderly
crab-apple sort of a man"; "old 'muffled-up' Bartholomew, of
whose face at no time one could see more than a sniveling nose" ;
Mathew, "practical, shrewd, determined that something great
must be the outcome of all this personal discomfort and march-
ing about" — these and the others are keenly drawn to what may
have been the life — of course no one knows. The apostles talk
metaphysics behind the Master's back and undertake plans for
"something great." Indeed, the betrayal appears as merely
Judas's scheme for bringing matters to a head and forcing Jesus
to call on the "legion of angels" which he had said he could
command. Alas, the apostles could not comprehend their
Teacher, his humor, his paradoxes, his hyperboles, his strength
in tenderness, his nature so rich and full that he could be ascetic
without drying up. He stands in this book, wherein the argu-
ments of Renan are made flesh, as a companionable saint — not
a god at all — who is still marked off from the intensely human
group about him by a mystery and a glory which are Sadakichi
Hartmann's tribute to his power and which, in Christian art,
have been symbolized by the bright aureole round his head.
T AST year M. Louis Thomas made a visit to the Northern,
*— ' Eastern, and Southern parts of the United States with
the hope of carrying back with him suggestions as to how his
enfeebled nation might enlist American help in getting back
her vigor and prosperity. Though for the most part a dis-
passionate study oi industrial and commercial facts and figures,
his book, "Les Etats-Unis Inconnus" (Paris: Perrin), breathes
sadness. Always restrained and polite, always outspoken in ad-
miration of American skill and intelligence, M. Thomas, who
feels that there should have been some distribution of the war
debt among all the Allies, warns his countrymen that the only
considerable assistance they can now expect from the great
Western republic will take the form of loans bearing a sub-
stantial rate of interest; unless in addition — and he sees in this
possibility the brightest hope for France — American experts can
be induced to go over and become active partners in remunera-
tive reconstruction enterprises. Thus a few men with a genius"
like Henry Ford's for multiplying production would be worth
more to the French than billions of dead assets. Or, to con-
sider a particular and a very promising field for French indus-
trial activity, since the French lead the world in furniture-
designing but are backward in the machinery of manufacture
and distribution, if certain Grand Rapids makers were to aid in
the transformation of a convenient Atlantic port or two, say
La Rochelle or Saint-Nazaire, into great furniture building and
shipping centers, breaking up the formal and antiquated busi-
ness procedure of the French and introducing the straight-
forward and rapid methods of the new West, France and the
world would be greatly the gainers. M. Thomas, on the whole,
finds our republic attractive as well as efficient.
Russian Policy
vs. Russian News
Has American journalism dealt
squarely with the facts about Russia?
Or has the editorial wish that things
were different in Russia colored and
distorted the news of how things are
in Russia?
The Test of the News
by Walter Lippmann
and Charles Merz
is a 48-page Supplement to The New
Republic of August 4th which gives
the results of an unbiased analysis of
the Russian news of the New York
Times from March, 1917 to March,
1920.
On all newsstands 15 cents a copy or direct from
The New Republic
421 West 21st Street New York City
LalU
Twenty years of struggle, setback and re-
ward; the conception and birth of a new
industrial relationship, amid the fumes of
the melting-pot.
THE
NEW UNIONISM
IN THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY
by
J. M. Budish and George Soule
The dramatic story of the clothing-workers'
progress from the sweat-shop to a com-
manding position in organized labor.
With bibliography and appendix, $3.00.
Just ready
HARCOURT, BRACE & HOWE, h&47?6&
International Relations Section
Strike-Breaking in the Canal Zone
By WILLIAM DUNCAN
SILVER roll employees of the Panama Canal and the
Panama Railroad have recently, it is reported, received
increases in pay. The news may not appear of much sig-
nificance, but in view of the tactics employed during Feb-
ruary and March to break a strike of those employees, the
matter is at least of interest.
Silver roll employees are Negroes — mostly Jamaicans and
other West Indians. Many of them are capable workmen,
performing work of quite as important a character as some
of the white employees. The Negroes, however, are paid
in silver, and the whites in gold; and the difference does
not stop here, for although the white workmen are paid
wages comparing very favorably with those in the United
States — in many instances being even higher — the colored
men are fortunate to get as much as $52.50 a month.
A strike of the silver employees had threatened before
February 16, when the men presented their demands to
Governor Chester Harding. In a statement three days
later they presented a tabulation of the needs of a single
man for actual subsistence which, they showed, required
an expenditure of $38.07 a month. For a family, they con-
tended, twice as much should be available — $76.15 — yet
they asked only a wage of $57.11 a month, or 27 cents an
hour. The men received no satisfaction nor even attention
from Governor Harding, and on February 24 they walked
out. Hospital employees and workers at military posts
were exempted from the strike order, but some 15,000 to
17,000 silver employees threw down tools.
The Governor's reply was an order that all silver em-
ployees who were not back at work by February 26 would
be considered as having resigned, and would "be deprived of
canal quarters after that date. Rents will be reimbursed
corresponding to the unexpired portion of the month."
The "fourteen points" of the workers were made known
on the same day. The most important of these called for
an increase in pay of 7 cents an hour; equal pay for men
and women doing the same kind of work; an eight-hour
day; time and a half for overtime; five days' notice on
leaving work, or of discharge; no discharges "on account
of reduction of force," with replacement by other workers.
The Governor answered that he would not enter into any
agreement, written or otherwise, with a committee of em-
ployees concerning rates of pay or conditions of employment.
"These matters can be fixed only by administrative order,
subject to change by the same authority." He said, how-
ever, that adjustments of wages to living costs would be
made, "in accordance with the policy adopted," four times
during the year.
Evictions of the strikers began promptly on schedule
time, but certain landlords in San Miguel and elsewhere
decided to rent vacant houses and rooms only to dispossessed
silver employees, and to collect no rents until the strike
was settled. The gold employees of the canal — the whites
— showed little sympathy with the efforts of the silver work-
ers to obtain a living wage, however, as is illustrated by
the following statement from the Panama Star and
Herald:
The night service of the canal telephone department was not
interfered with in the least by the failure of the silver opera-
tives to report for duty. The shifts were so arranged by the
officials of the department to work the girls twenty-four hours
a day instead of under the old day and night shifts. The girls
who volunteered for the work found it quite a novelty and no
complaints have been made by them.
The Hon. A. Percy Bennett, the British Minister, offered
to mediate. The strikers still remained out practically in
a body; but R. J. Alvaro and E. Hazera, two officials of
the Republic of Panama, made it known that the republic
wanted nothing to do with the evicted strikers on the
ground that they might become public charges. When the
strikers endeavored to go from the Canal Zone into Panama,
their goods were held at the border for payment of duty.
The canal government then offered them transportation to
Los Cascades camp until repatriation to Jamaica or else-
where could be arranged for them. The strikers were even
allowed to leave their goods in the zone, provided they
marked them plainly. As a result of the British Minister's
well-meaning attempts in behalf of the King's Jamaican
subjects, Governor Harding relented sufficiently to say that
the silver roll workers might go back to work on the old
terms, if they went at once. The Panama Star's issue of
March 1 asserted that 98 per cent of the strikers actually
preferred repatriation to returning to work at the old wage
rate. Meanwhile, the gold employees waited on Governor
Harding to urge that "many jobs formerly filled by aliens'
. . . should belong to American citizens."
The strike theoretically ended at midnight, March ' 3,
although most of the men were still out. William P. Stoute,
the leader of the strikers, asked naturalization in Panama,
but the Sub-Secretary of Foreign Affairs — the same Mr.
Hazera who had aided in breaking the strike by his efforts
to keep the evicted families out of Panama — advised against
it. The strikers were not only beaten but disillusioned, for
they had confidently counted on help from their union in
the United States, to which, they said, they had sent $100,-
000 gold ; but their appeals for assistance were unanswered.
The following official statements by the Governor illus-
trate the advantages of a military administration in pre-
venting labor disorders:
To Employees on the Silver Roll.
(1) I am informed that a strike of certain of our silver
employees belonging to the U. B. of M. W. E. and R. S. L. has
been decided upon by officers of that organization in the United
States in conjunction with a strike of certain railroad employees
which may possibly occur in the United States.
(2) I feel that I would be neglecting my plain duty to the
men employed under my direction, in whose welfare I have a
real interest, if I failed to counsel them to think over carefully
before deciding to quit the service by striking.
(3) The wages of silver roll employees have always been
based in a general way on the wages paid in the islands and
countries near the Canal Zone. It has been the constant en-
deavor of the canal government to maintain for its employees
a decent standard of living, with care for their housing, sani-
tary surroundings, and care in time of sickness.
(4) Wages have been increased from time to time to main-
tain the standard of decency and comfort, the latest adjustment
having been made this month. With these adjustments, taking
as a basis the actual increases in the prices of standard articles
used, our employees will be able to live at the standard to
which they have been accustomed, which is believed to be higher
July 31, 1920]
The Nation
139
than the standard for any community of the same class of labor
elsewhere.
Remember what the facts are, and do not let them be distorted
by false advisers who have no interest in you except to receive
your contributions of money.
(5) There is no logical connection between the railroad em-
ployees in the United States and the silver employees on the
isthmus. Their class of work is wholly dissimilar; local con-
ditions there and here are in no way comparable; and it must
be apparent to our silver men that it is unreasonable to call a
strike here because of the troubles of railroad employees in the
United States. There is no wisdom but much folly in such a
proposition. I understand that you have paid your money to the
organization in the United States. Will that organization
finance a strike here? Will you share in the benefits they gain
for themselves?
(6) Each man must make his own choice, without compulsion
on the part of this Administration. If a strike occurs, those
who remain at work will receive cards daily entitling them to
all the privileges accorded them regularly as employees. Those
who do not report for work will receive the usual clearance slip
showing that they voluntarily quit, and their places will be
filled as soon as practicable by men who appreciate the advan-
tages of being in the service of the Panama Canal and Panama
Railroad Company.
Chester Harding, Governor.
Balboa Heights, C. Z., February 1U, 1920
The Panama Canal,
Executive Department,
Balboa Heights, C. Z., March 1, 1920.
All concerned: In order to avoid misunderstanding and con-
fusion regarding the status of silver employees who are being
reemployed the following instructions should be borne in mind:
Men who reported for duty on or before the usual hour for
reporting for work after noon of February 27 and who have
not been absent without proper excuse since then will not suffer
any change in status and will receive the increase authorized
to be effective February 1.
Those who have been or may be reemployed after the hour
above specified will be reemployed strictly in accordance with
the rules contained in Circulars 666-12 and 666-13. Their em-
ployment in February up to the time they voluntarily quit will
be at the rates authorized including the February 1 increase,
and their reemployment will be at a lower rate than the rate
so received.
Clearances should be issued to the men who went on strike
showing termination of service as "voluntarily quit," and con-
duct and workmanship ratings should take into account their
record up to the time of quitting only. In other words, ignore
the motive for quitting and rate each individual on his merits.
Men will be reemployed to the extent necessary to fill the
positions not filled during the continuance of the strike, and
discretion as to the men who will be refused employment is
vested in the general foremen and officials of similar grade.
These officials will decide whether the action of foremen or
others under their supervision, in reemploying or deelining to
reemploy men who were on strike, is proper. It is desired that
a spirit of tolerance be shown toward the men selected for
reemployment, as they have been the victims of false advice and
irresponsible leadership.
Chester Harding, Governor.
The Panama Canal Executive Office,
Balboa Heights, C. Z., March 8, 1920.
All concerned: I wish to express my heartfelt appreciation
of the spirit of loyalty and patriotism exhibited by American
citizens and others on the isthmus in their successful efforts to
continue the essential functions of the canal and railroad during
the recent strike of silver employees. The gratifying feature
of this action rests not only in the defeat of the attempt of a
large majority of the silver employees to impede the operation
of the canal and railroad as a means to force compliance with
the demands of irresponsible leaders, but also, and in large
measure, on the spirit of pride and patriotism splendidly mani-
fested in the determination to vindicate American efficiency
and to uphold the spirit of Americanism in this great enterprise,
through which the government of the United States serves the
whole world.
The "esprit de corps" of the canal organization has been
often manifested in the past, and it is gratifying to know that
it continues to exist as an active and dependable force for the
good of the canal.
Chester Harding,
Governor, The Panama Canal.
President, Panama Railroad Company.
In Governor Harding's recent report on canal operations,
the following interesting passages occur:
As a result of my refusal to grant the demands of the organ-
ized silver laborers for an increase in pay of 7 cents an hour
and certain other conditions of employment, there was an
organized strike of approximately 15,000 of 17,000 laborers on
February 23. An investigation of the cost of living of these
laborers and their rates of pay resulted in granting them an
increase of 2 cents an hour, or $5 a month to monthly employees,
effective February 1. This increase was granted after it had
been determined that the increase in cost of the essentials of
food and clothing had over-reached increases in pay. No further
increases were justified.
Realizing that the mass of these men had been misled and
misinformed, I announced that all who were not back at work
on February 26 would be considered as having voluntarily left
the service without due notice. Rules of long standing provide
that in such cases reemployment may be only at a lower rate of
pay than that received at the time of quitting. Meanwhile steps
were taken to clear the canal quarters of persons not employed,
and to fill the places of the men who had quit work. On
March 2, the strike leaders officially advised the men to return
to work; and a few days later the force was at its normal
strength.
Except for about 2,000 West Indians and native laborers who
remained loyal to the work, the strike of silver roll employees
was complete. Thanks to the readiness of the American em-
ployees to turn to whatever work was given them to do, it was
possible to keep the canal in operation, to feed and provide the
force with water and light.
The Taboga Island Incident
THE Taboga Island controversy in which the United
States and Panama have become involved is a matter
to which three articles of the Canal Treaty appear to be
applicable. The first of these, Article II, relates in part to
the acquisition of the Canal Zone itself, and then continues :
The Republic of Panama further grants to the United States
in perpetuity the use, occupation, and control of any other
lands and waters outside of the zone above described which
may be necessary and convenient for the construction, main-
tenance, operation, sanitation, and protection of the said canal
or any auxiliary canals or any other works necessary and con-
venient for the construction, maintenance, operation, sanitation,
and protection of said enterprise. The Republic of Panama
further grants in like manner to the United States in per-
petuity all islands within the limits of the zone above described,
and in addition thereto the group of small islands in the Bay of
Panama, named Perico, Naos, Culebra, and Flamenco.
The language of this article is rather vague, but does not
by any means, according to the contention of Panama, give
the United States blanket authority to seize any part of the
Republic of Panama. Rather, it is held, the article grants
140
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2874
the right of eminent domain, and the United States is obli-
gated to prove to the satisfaction of Panama that its de-
mands are "necessary and convenient" for the utilization
of the canal. A further qualification appears in Article
XXV.
For the better performance of the engagements of this con-
vention and to the end of the efficient protection of the canal
and the preservation of its neutrality, the government of the
Republic of Panama will sell or lease to the United States lands
adequate and necessary for naval or coaling stations on the
Pacific Coast and on the Caribbean coast of the Republic, at
certain points to be agreed upon with the President of the
United States.
This provision, it is held, is inconsistent with any theory
of blanket authority on the part of the United States, since
it specifies, as does the clause in Article II referring to the
small islands in the Bay of Panama, certain matters which
would not need to be specified if the quoted part of that
article were as inclusive as it appears apart from the
context.
Moreover, Panama asserts that the United States has
not complied with Article XVIII of the treaty, and that
the American public is not informed as to the nature of
this article. It reads:
The canal when constructed and the entrances thereto shall
be neutral in perpetuity and shall be opened upon the terms
provided for by Section 1 of Article III of, and in conformity
with all the stipulations of, the treaty entered into by the gov-
ernments of the United States and Great Britain on November
18, 1901.
The Taboga question arose abruptly, just after the end
of the war, when the War Department announced its inten-
tion to occupy the island within five days. This brought
the following communication (as translated from the
Spanish text) to the State Department on behalf of the
Republic of Panama, dated November 21, 1918:
. I received on the 18th of this month a cablegram
from the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of my country informing
me that the Governor of the canal had sent a communication to
the President of the Republic on Saturday, the 16th of the
same month, notifying him that the American government
would occupy next Monday, the 18th instant, almost all the
picturesque and healthful island of Taboga, which serves as a
sanitarium and health resort for the residents of the capital
and surrounding territory and is also the center of the pine-
apple industry, giving a product unrivalled in the world. In
Taboga, moreover, is an agricultural population which has
most of the island under cultivation and sustains itself in com-
fort, furnishing an example worthy of imitation, for if the rest
of the territory of the republic were in the present condition
of Taboga our country, in proportion to its size, would be one
of the richest and most productive agricultural countries in
the world.
The reason adduced by the Governor of the canal is that such
occupation is necessary or convenient for the defense of the
canal. In the same communication the President was informed
that only the part of the island comprising the town of Taboga
would remain unoccupied. This news produced natural alarm
and anxiety in the Republic of Panama for which the island
has great value, not only material but sentimental, and for many
other considerations that would be too numerous to mention here
and which Your Excellency knows.
The communication of the Governor of the canal being pre-
sented to the cabinet by the President of Panama, it was decided
to give instructions to this legation to ask Your Excellency, as
I most earnestly do now, to obtain the postponement of said
occupation until I receive a communication now being prepared
by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of my country, because that
occupation in the form proposed by the Governor of the canal to
the President of Panama is unnecessarily prejudicial to the
vital interests of the Republic of Panama, and also because in
that note my government proposes to Your Excellency's govern-
ment a solution satisfactory to the inhabitants of Panama and
of the United States.
After my conference with Your Excellency on the 19th of
this month on the grave incident with which I am dealing, I
received another cablegram in which the President of Panama
advised me that the Governor of the canal had communicated
to him yesterday, the 20th, that he was acting under instruc-
tions of the War Department, and that he could not therefore
postpone of his own accord the occupation of the island of
Taboga. I was also urged to call once more Your Excellency's
attention to the serious situation in which the people of Taboga
and La Restinga would be placed if the occupation of the lands
referred to should be carried out in such a way as to leave the
inhabitants less than one-fifth the area of the island, which is
small but densely populated. Such an area would be insufficient
for the people of Taboga to raise crops for subsistence, and
they would be obliged to emigrate, losing their homes, municipal
buildings, and parochial buildings — equivalent to their ruin.
The two villages of the island were founded in colonial times
and are closely linked with the history of the isthmus through
memories and traditions, among which I shall recall only that
the island is the birthplace of Santa Rose de Lima, the patron
saint of Latin-America and the only American woman ever
canonized by the Catholic Church— a sentimental incident to
which I refer because I consider it timely at this solemn moment
when the President of the United States is the mouthpiece and'
apostle of the highest principles of self-determination of na-
tionality, and when humanity is being moved by ideals which are'
evoked to make a better world than the one which brought the
terrible catastrophe now ending. It is timely that I should refer
to this historical tradition of a small nation, worthy, however,
under every concept, of consideration for its domestic virtues
and its industry, shown through many generations, particularly
now that it is planned to submit it to so harsh and unnecessary
an ordeal.
My government recommends me to obtain, through Your Ex-
cellency, the postponement of the occupation of Taboga pending
a satisfactory agreement as to equitable compensation; or until
there is established the clear preferability of the islands of Uraba
or Taboguilla, the latter immediately in front of Taboga, with
beaches and good water, and both without any population of
importance; or of the Cerro de Chame. All three positions are
very advantageous for the defense of the canal. The war being
practically at an end, it does not seem to me that the matter
justifies such haste as to require the elimination of the regular
channels of the Department of State and of the American lega-
tion in Panama. . . .
A cablegram from the Panaman Foreign Office received
at about this time by the legation at Washington read:
Inspector of land wants to compel the inhabitants of Taboga
to sign s(Jme forms of sale of properties. The inhabitants are
profoundly worried. The occupation of four-fifths of the island
would ruin Taboga and La Restinga. Of the fifth that remains,
20 hectares belong to the Pacific Steamship Company and 12
are occupied by the townships.
On November 24, 1918, all the inhabitants of the island
signed a memorial which they presented to the President
of Panama, in which they said that the land inspector had
threatened forcible seizure of the land, without payment,
unless they filled the forms he had left. They urged the
President to seek some means whereby they might retain
their properties. For the time being expropriation was not
put into effect and on January 19, 1920, Secretary Lansing
wrote to the Panaman Minister as follows :
July 31, 1920]
The Nation
141
With reference to previous correspondence between yourself
and the department relative to the acquisition of a part of
Taboga Island, Republic of Panama, by the United States for
fortification purposes, I desire to make known to you, at the
request of the Secretary of War, that it will be necessary for
the safety and protection of the canal for the United States to
acquire a part of the island in the near future to place forti-
fications thereon.
In order, however, to allay as much as possible any anxiety
on the part of the inhabitants of the island whose land must
be appropriated I desire to assure you that no step will be
taken in the expropriation of the inhabitants of the island with-
out every consideration possible for their interest and conven-
ience. In view of the improbability of initiating the construc-
tion of defensive works on a large scale on Taboga Island in
the year 1920 the United States Government is anxious to
adopt a liberal policy in regard to the removal of the inhabi-
tants of that portion of the island transferred to its jurisdiction.
Robert Lansing
Nevertheless, while negotiations were under way at Wash-
ington, a War Department representative — so the Panaman
Government asserts — appeared before the Alcalde of
Taboga, announced the impending seizure and declared that
he had come to make preliminary arrangements for expro-
priation. Vigorous protests were made to the Department
of State, but probably the people of the United States would
never have learned of the matter except through the demon-
stration which took place when General Pershing visited
Panama — a demonstration directed not against the General,
but against what was considered unwarranted action by
this country. It succeeded in bringing the matter into the
realm of discussion, not only in the United States, but even
in Great Britain, where the question of Taboga was recently
brought up in the House of Commons.
The present attitude of Panama is set forth in the fol-
lowing communication addressed by the Panaman Legation
to the Department of State on May 7. The translation is
made from the Spanish text.
As a supplement to my note D-No. 208, of April 30 last, in
regard to the project of occupying part of Taboga Island in
order to erect fortifications for the better defense of the Panama
Canal, I have the honor of submitting to Your Excellency that
the concrete desires of my government in this delicate matter
are the following:
1. Reduction to a minimum of the area which it may be
necessary to occupy, as was mentioned in my official note of
April 30. My government estimates that 250 hectares will be
sufficient for the purpose; otherwise the people of Taboga will
be compelled to emigrate and abandon their homes.
2. The expropriation of these lands should be effected only
to the extent that may be necessary for the execution of this
project, and this should be brought about, with the intervention
of the Panaman government, through the medium of the mixed
commissions which established the canal treaty.
3. The people of Taboga should not be deprived of the ele-
ments indispensable for their subsistence and their hygiene, as
it has been proposed to deprive them of their drinking water
and the graveyard.
Permit me very respectfully to call Your Excellency's atten-
tion to the fact that the military authorities can solve the
question of the water supply by artesian wells, for which they
have machinery, without great expense to the government. To
deprive the people of Taboga of water would cause them much
hardship.
The Department of State on May 19 sent the following
note in reply:
I have the pleasure of acknowledging the receipt of your
communications of April 30 and May 7, relative to the acquisi-
tion of land required for defensive purposes on Taboga Island.
In reply I have the pleasure of informing you that the sev-
eral points to which you allude in these two communications
are receiving the department's serious consideration, in view
of the desire of this government to conciliate the best interests
of the residents of Taboga Island with the strategic require-
ments of the Canal Zone.
For the Secretary of State,
Frank L. Polk
The Petrograd Unions to the British
Proletariat
IN connection with the recent report of the British Labor
Delegation to Russia, published in the issue of July 10
of the International Relations Section, the following com-
bined appeal of the Petrograd Soviet of Trade Unions and
of the Petrograd Factory Committee, translated from the
Krasnaya Gazetta of May 14, is of interest.
Having heard the speeches of the representatives of the
British Trade Unions and of Comrades Lozovsky, Tsyperovich,
Ben Turner, and Allen, the general meeting resolved to ask the
delegation of British Trade Unions to bring to the attention of
all proletarians of Great Britain the following facts:
Surrounded by enemies on all sides Soviet Russia struggles,
sending her best sons to the front. Her revolutionary energy
and creative ability cannot be applied because of the constant
dangers threatening the Russian proletariat. Transportation is
disorganized, factories and mills are unable to work at their
full rate, all this because of the aims of the ruling classes of
Europe and America.
We, the workmen of the city of Petrograd, who have given
hundreds of thousands of our brothers to all the fronts of Soviet
Russia, who have been subjected these two and a half years to
unbelievable tortures of hunger, who have many times driven
off attacks from the side of the Russian counter-revolution, we
appeal to you, English workmen!
We ask you how long will you continue to be patient, allow-
ing the blood of Russian workmen to be shed in the name of
England, and therefore in your name? How long, before you
put the bridle on your rampant imperialists?
What tribute of sacrifice must the Russian proletariat still
give; for how many weeks, months, and years must our children
die of hunger, so that the bankers and financial vultures of
Paris, London, and New York may fill their pockets, while the
workmen of these countries could have long ago, by a single
friendly effort, lifted the burden of suffering that the Russian
proletariat has had to endure?
How much more time do you need to understand that the
destruction of the Russian revolution is also your destruction,
that our defeat is also your defeat?
When will you, tens of millions of British proletarians, cease
to believe the false reports about us in the corrupt bourgeois
press, and have done with the exploiters of your land and their
hired scribes?
The Petrograd proletariat asks you to give answer to these
questions. Standing at the advance posts of world revolution,
it has the right to demand an answer. In sending to you revo-
lutionary fraternal greetings, the Petrograd workmen hope that
their English brothers of the toiling classes will abandon the
traditions of peaceful struggle, and sweep away their exploiter-
imperialists by an iron revolutionary will. This is the help
which the Russian proletariat is asking of you. Your revolu-
tionary effort will bring aid to the Russian proletariat, but first
and above all to the toiling masses of England itself.
Long live the international struggle against imperialism!
Long live the British Soviet Republic!
Long live the International Soviet of Workmen's Delegates!
142
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2874
ALICE KAUSER
DRAMATISTS' AGENT— PLAYS
ESTABLISHED ISffI
1402 BROADWAY Motion Picture Department
R. L. GIFFEN, Associate Manager
NEW YORK
Story Writing Properly Taught
Expert instruction in Short-story Writing will be given by
the staff of Pearson's Magazine, under the personal super-
vision of Frank Harris. Persons whose experience with other
"courses" has been unsatisfactory, will find here a service of
superior worth. Careful criticism and revision of single
manuscripts also made by professional writers. Fees for
either service moderate. For information address,
PEARSON'S LITERARY SERVICE, 57 Fifth Ave., New York
Just Published
No. 68. Illustrated Catalogue of
Rare Books in Beautiful Old Bindings
The DR. R. T. JUPP COLLECTION of
MSS., AUTOGRAPHS, BOOKS, etc., etc., by or relating to
CHARLES DICKENS
The Collection ef Relics of the Original Dora of DAVID COPPERFIELD
BOOKS ON THE FINE ARTS, SPORT
and an extensive collection of BOOKS ON SHORTHAND
Fine Setj of First Editions of CHARLES LEVER, GEORGE MEREDITH
and CAPTAIN MARRYAT, GOULDS BIRDS of AUSTRALIA, etc.
Post free from
HENRY SOTHERAN & CO.
Booksellers to the King
43, Piccadilly, W. 1,
or, 140 Strand, W. C. 2.
Cable Address; Bookmen, Landon London, England.
Hugo's Masterpiece, 25c.
In "The Last Days of a Condemned Man," Victor Hugo takes you
inside the cell of a condemned man and depicts for you his inmost
thoughts. A most smashing indictment of capital punishment.
APPEAL TO REASON, GIRARD, KANSAS.
A Cooperative
Print Shop
offers the best assurance that work
will have prompt, intelligent han-
dling, and that costs will be lower
than in other shops giving an equal
service and equal quality.
The Nation Press is a complete co-
operative democracy where each
worker, from the skilled journeyman
to the messenger boy, is interested
in pleasing the customer.
THE NATION PRESS, Inc.
Telephone 9092 Barclay
20 VESEY STREET NEW YORK
NEWS FROM NOWHERE \J ™^™ 2SSS
Utopia ever written, picturing a society in which everybody does
pleasant work, and profiteers and politicians are extinct. New edition,
cloth, $1.25 by mail or at bookstores. Catalog free. Charles H. Kerr
& Company, 347 East Ohio Street, Chicago.
TYfE have just compiled a booklet containing the
latest information and statistics about the
SAAR VALLEY
its wealth, resources and industries. Of valuable
interest to investors Free on request.
We own and offer for spot delivery, 4 <£ Bonds of the
City of Saarbruecken. 4 <=£ Community Bonds of the
Mortgage Bank, Saarbruecken.
VON POLENZ & CO., Inc.
60 Broadway New York
Telephone Bowling Green 4320
Boston Philadelphia Milwaukee
Cincinnati Chicago Denver
Berlin
INDEX for
VOLUME 110
(January—June 1920)
has been delayed, but it will
be ready for distribution in a
few weeks.
One copy will be sent to each
library on our subscription
list, but to other subscribers
only upon request.
If you want this index let us
know at once.
SUBSCRIPTION DEPARTMENT
The Nation
20 Vesey St. New York, N. Y.
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 7, 1920
No. 2875
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 143
EDITORIALS :
No More Race Discrimination 146
America and the Polish Question 147
The Times, Associated Press, and New York Times 148
The Spy • • • ■ • 149
SOVIET RUSSIA— 1920. By Bertrand Russell 152
STARKWEATHER WRITES A HAPPY ENDING. By James Rorty 154
WILLIAM MARION REEDY. By Zoe Akins 155
THE FARMER-LABOR PARTY. By Robert M. Buck 156
WOMEN'S INTERNATIONALISM. By Marie Tudor Garland 157
IN THE DRIFTWAY 153
CORRESPONDENCE 158
HUMORESQUE. By Ernest H. Hunt 153
BOOKS:
With the Wits. By Augustine Birrell 150
A Study in Propaganda. By Preserved Smith 160
Satires and Sketches. By Ludwig Lewisohn 160
Books in Brief 161
Notes and News 163
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION 165
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER LEWIS S. GANNETT
LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Adress: Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising: Swathmore Press, Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
WHAT is the great issue between the major political
parties in the coming Presidential campaign? The
League of Nations, of course. Dissenters of influence, near-
bolters, pause for the pronouncements of the platform
and the candidates on this overshadowing issue. Newspaper
editorial comment thereon, if laid end to end, would reach
to — perhaps only an Einstein can answer. Yet here is the
New York Tribune, inherently and dyed-in-the-wool Repub-
lican, unqualified supporter of the Grand Old Party, affirm-
ing editorially that
the truth is, disregarding rhetorical surplusages, the two plat-
forms are much alike touching the League matter. The Repub-
lican platform is for an association of nations within the limits
of the Constitution, such as our associates will agree to. The
San Francisco platform is for a league within the limits of the
Constitution, and with such reservations as our allies will accept.
The difference, as has been repeatedly noted in these columns, is
but microscopic.
Issue? Well, then, the personality of the candidates.
Forgetting those 1912 anti-Roosevelt invectives of the
Marion Star, Harding is "at least the kind of a man who will
surround himself with ." Yes, clearly, the difference in
the character of the candidates is what counts. And lo ! One
turns to a full-page cartoon by Jay N. Darling — "Ding," be-
loved cartoonist of the Tribune and moulder of opinion in
not less than seventy-nine other newspapers throughout the
land — which depicts Harding and Cox as two peas in a pod,
with text so proclaiming them.
TO the public at large the advance of 20 per cent in pas-
senger rates, 25 to 40 per cent in freight tariffs, and
50 per cent in Pullman charges, granted to the railways by
the Interstate Commerce Commission, will seem an unneces-
sarily large increase, entailing new and staggering burdens
upon the already harassed consumer. Without question the
railways are entitled to some increases; the public will be
the ultimate loser if equipment and service are allowed to
deteriorate to the point where the country can no longer
move its crops or distribute its coal. But the people have
not been put in possession of information to show what the
needed rate advances ought to be, much less to justify the
increases just announced. Counting war taxes and other
items, passenger travel will be at least twice as expensive
under the new dispensation as it was when America went
to war three years ago, while living costs have not risen
that much in the same period. But, although the public will
feel the increased passenger rates most directly, the greatest
burden will result from the swollen freight charges, passed
on to the consumer in the form of higher prices just when
there was a ray of hope that the cost of living, for the
present at least, might have reached its peak. Of course
the original sin lies in the Esch-Cummins law, with its
virtual guaranty of dividends. The public, already bitter
at the profiteers, will see the prospect of more secret and un-
justifiable raids on its pocketbook in the new railway rates.
Nor will its temper be improved by reflecting that whereas
the railway employees received only 60 per cent of the ad-
vance they asked for, the owners realized their demands
practically in full.
WHILE a species of civil war continues to be waged in
Ireland — rather one-sidedly, it must be said, since
the British troops seem to have little stomach for fighting —
talk of compromise has again been revived. Sir Horace
Plunkett, whose intentions are of the best but who in reality
has little political influence in Ireland, has urged agreement
upon a Dominion status as the best solution. Mr. De Valera
suggests that the relation which subsists between the
United States and Cuba is a good example of the relation
which might be established between Great Britain and
Ireland, but indignantly rejects the notion of a Dominion
status. Mr. Arthur Griffith, acting head of Sinn Fein in
Ireland during the absence of Mr. De Valera, issues state-
ments which imply a possibility of Great Britain and Ire-
land getting together, but only on the basis of recognizing
the Irish Republic. On the other hand Mr. Lloyd George,
who breathes threatenings and slaughter at one moment
and walks softly the next, is definite upon only one point,
namely, that under no circumstances will the independence
of Ireland be recognized; while Sir Edward Carson, still
swaggering about as the consecrated spokesman of Irish
Unionism, points to the Irish agitation as a part of anti-
British propaganda throughout the world and, of course,
charges the Germans with having a hand in it. All this is
hardly a hopeful outlook for compromise. The outlook will
not improve until the British Government realizes that it is
144
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2875
not the Germans, or the Bolsheviki, or even the Americans,
but its own bad conduct, which is responsible for the odium
which is being heaped upon the name of Britain in Ireland
and throughout the world. One wonders how long the
British people will go on thinking that the Irish question
will ever be settled so long as men like Mr. Lloyd George,
Sir Edward Carson, or Sir Hamar Greenwood pull the
strings of government.
FRENCH statesmen have never relinquished their de-
termination to split the German Empire. The attempt
to fan Rhenish resentment of Prussian domination into an
active separatist movement having failed, M. Millerand
now turns his eyes to Bavaria. The new German Constitu-
tion represents a tendency toward administrative centrali-
zation. Bavaria has lost its separate army and its separate
postal system, and the central government acquires certain
rights over taxation which were formerly vested in the con-
stituent States. Naturally there are Bavarians who resent
the change. Now, at the very time when Bavaria is losing
all independence in foreign policy, M. Millerand announces
that he will revive the French Legation at Munich. There
will, of course, be no proper diplomatic business for a French
official at Munich; his task obviously will be political, an
attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of Germany.
The announcement, however, seems to have had an effect
contrary to what was intended. It led to the announcement
by Dr. Heim, leader of the Bavarian People's Party — the
party which has shown most concern for Bavarian inde-
pendence^— that he and his party had no desire to interfere
in foreign politics, and that the separation of Bavaria from
the empire would be a calamity to Bavaria and to all Ger-
many. It is impossible to avoid the suspicion that the agita-
tion reported from Salzburg for the annexation of Tyrol to
Bavaria, Tyrol meanwhile remaining outside the German
Empire, is of French inspiration. And it is not unchar-
acteristic of the perversity of present-day French foreign
policy that it finds itself most sympathetic with the German
State in which the monarchist movement is strongest.
STREAMS of munitions, generals, colonels, food, supplies,
all pouring into Poland — that is the picture which the
papers give us of the Polish situation. And out of the other
end of the funnel crawl five motor-cars bearing the Polish
petitioners for peace across a half-burnt bridge into the mist
beyond sight of the correspondents — to the other side of the
Bolshevik lines, where newspapermen do not penetrate. We
wonder whether the consciousness of the stream of steel
flowing into the country behind them will stiffen the peti-
tioners into refusal of the Russian terms, or whether they
may be granted the grace to accept defeat and bring peace
to Europe. There are dangerous shallows in the stream
which is their only hope. The Allied diplomats have money
and cannon and ammunition, but they have lost the essential
power to win the hearts of men. They have not peisuaded
the workmen of Trieste or of Danzig to violate their sense
of decency by moving ammunition intended to prolong war
and kill their Russian fellow-workers. If, at Danzig, the
Allied chiefs have replaced the striking dockers by British
soldiers, some at least of those soldiers have seen the same
strange light and have been clapped into jail for refusing to
betray their own consciences. The Allies' war to prolong
war is no longer merely a war against the Russians: it bids
fair to become a war against the workers of Europe.
THE French Foreign Office announces that Emir Feisal
is no longer King of Syria. Despite the pledge by
Great Britain and France of an independent Arabia under
his rule, despite the fact that he appears to have been the
unanimous choice of his people, he is not only deposed but
by command of General Gouraud is ordered into exile. The
French commander-in-chief has also levied a fine of ten
million francs upon the city of Damascus. "Hun" methods
these, even in a declared state of war, and fully established
as such by public opinion in France and in the United
States from 1914 to 1918. What shall we call them in time
of peace in the year 1920? Whatever they may be termed
from the point of view of international morality, politically
they are folly. The sparks are already flying into the Near-
Eastern tinderbox. The French, untaught by their Polish
fiasco, are now applying a torch which may set all Asia
aflame.
BRITISH labor, by an overwhelming vote, has decided
against joining the Third Internationale. What got on
its nerves was dictation by an outsider and the restriction
of personal liberty in Russia. As Lenin writes of England,
"even a small communistic party is not existent." The
Workers Socialist Federation is Miss Sylvia Pankhurst.
She is a Communist. The Socialist Labor Party is J. T.
Murphy and Arthur MacManus. It has split. The British
Socialist Party is three-sevenths communist, with Gallagher
and McLean leading the militant handful. A section in the "
Independent Labor Party is flirting with communism. A .
small group of shop stewards are communistic. All told, the
Communists of Britain number a few thousand. They are
a hardly perceptible influence in British labor. The Com-
munist creed demands acceptance of the soviet system and
the dictatorship of the proletariat, and adhesion to the
Third Internationale. British trade unionists refuse to
swallow these assorted doctrines, rigid program, and intel-
lectualistic vocabulary. So the international situation is left
in a muddle. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald suggests a way out:
"Geneva [the Second Internationale] will really become a
consultation ; its character as a great authoritative assembly
has gone. All the important Socialist parties in Europe
have left. They will modify Moscow or they will form a
new body. I doubt if Moscow can be modified. I think that
the Socialist on the one hand and the Communist on the
other must proceed to build their own international house."
Yet on the continent at least Moscow seems to have far
greater driving force than Geneva.
THE ordinary consumer looks at the high cost of living
and the present industrial system as two phenomena
quite detached and unrelated. The radical is likely to look
upon the former as the inevitable result of the latter. An at-
tempt to show which view is right will presently be made on
a small scale by the International Ladies Garment Workers'
Union, which has announced the completion of plans for
setting up factories and stores for the cooperative manu-
facture and sale of women's clothing. The union is raising
$500,000 by tax and by appropriation to start the new
venture, and two factories will soon be opened in New York
to supply stores in half a dozen cities. An article in the
New York Times quotes Mr. Schlesinger, president of the
union, as urging the need, for the workers as well as for
the public, of a reduction in prices. Present prices and the
slump in buying are resulting in shorter seasons and un-
August 7, 1920]
The Nation
145
employment. "In fact," said Mr. Schlesinger, "our workers
suffer through this situation in a double way ; they have less
work and in addition have to face the terrible cost of living."
This is the opportunist view of the matter: more funda-
mental reasons were put forward by the special committee
which presented to the recent convention of the union the
proposal for union-owned factories and stores:
Practical knowledge of operating factories in our industries
will help us considerably in our disputes with manufacturers in
the various contentions with regard to wages, hours, etc., based
on practical experience attained through the operation of such
shops. . . . Union-owned shops will supply the market with
merchandise required in time of strikes against arbitrary em-
ployers, and will give employment to a great number of our
workers in times of lock-outs. . . . The union-owned shop will
be the first step toward collective ownership. Union-owned
shops will enable the workers to take part in the management
of such shops. . . . The union shop will demonstrate to the
working class and the entire world that the producers themselves
can, and logically should, take the place of the present so-called
captains of industry in our system.
THE mind of the returned soldier is a different mind
from that of the civilian. It prefers facts to opinions,
demands investigations instead of pious resolutions. It is
challenging, realistic, irreverent. It was illustrated in Eng-
land by the presence of R. H. Tawney on the Coal Industry
Commission. This young soldier helped to force the civilian
coal owners to reveal their profits in war time. He was
proud of their patriotism, their resolute words of advice for
the boys at the front, but he insisted on knowing what great
business men had been doing. One feels a little of the same
gentle insistence in the Steel Report summaries of Captain
Heber Blankenhorn. He came to the making of the report
from service in France. He knew hundreds of the A. E. F.
by daily contact. He saw conditions in northern France
at first hand. He studied the labor movements of two Euro-
pean countries. He returned home with certain questions.
The men who have sought to silence his questions — the ques-
tions of a returned soldier — are honestly representative of
the one hundred per cent civilian mind. To men like Judge
Gary, Ralph Easley, the manufacturers, the business execu-
tives, there is something wrong with the returned soldier.
The Steel Corporation has already found that some of the
impulse of revolt against the twelve-hour day came from
this group of men. The British soldier was a fine figure of a
man in France. When he returned to England, he no longer
walked humbly before his masters. Instead, he began to
challenge intrenched wrongs. Apparently the returned
soldier of America is going to nag the lords of steel into
answering a few unanswered questions.
TUBERCULOUS ex-soldiers, patients at Saranac Lake,
New York, are on strike. They are refusing to obey the
government order which would move them from their "Home
Sanatorium" in the Adirondacks to government hospitals
elsewhere. They believe — and the consensus of medical
opinion is with them — that the Adirondacks are better for
tuberculosis than any other place in the East. But, even so,
there would probably not have been such a whole-souled
opposition if the men had not already been tried past endur-
ance by government neglect, indifference, and inefficiency.
The maintenance money which should have come to them
through the Public Health Service has not been paid since
March. This money is sent direct to the boarding houses
where the single men live; and as it has not come, the board-
ing-house keepers have had to borrow in order to keep their
houses open, with the result that food has become poorer in
quality and living conditions are unfit. In the case of the
married men the non-arrival of the maintenance allowance
is a very real hardship. They have broken up their homes
in other parts of the country, and have taken cottages or
apartments at Saranac Lake in the expectation of being able
to live on their allowance plus their war risk insurance.
This maintenance money includes, also, a small sum for
medical supplies. If a patient buys a $1.25 thermometer —
which he may charge against the Public Health Service —
the drug store keeper charges seventy-five cents additional
as interest for carrying the government account on his books
for three or four months. It was, then, the final straw for
the government to order the men away to what they are
convinced are less healthful places.
IT is to be noted that this is a strike against the govern-
ment by men on the government pay-roll. Further, it is
backed by the American Legion. -What is more, the Amer-
ican Legion Committee on Benefits for Disabled Men has
been called in and is using its influence in behalf of the
strikers. One would think that that influence must be great,
since the chairman of the committee is Colonel Cornelius
W. Wickersham, "of Wall Street," as they like to call him at
the Legion headquarters. That anyone "of Wall Street"
should back up a strike is encouraging; that the American
Legion should do so is exhilarating. This rabid, red propa-
ganda about the right to strike — the right even of govern-
ment employees to strike — seems to be bearing strange fruit.
We are not disposed to question the human emotions
which lie back of this strike, but we wonder if they would
have been as intense if the strike — we use the word advis-
edly and with the authority of the New York Times — were
an industrial one. Be that as it may, the American Legion
has rushed in where the reddest might have feared to tread,
and is putting its back into the fight to win a strike against
the government.
THE absence of any report from Warsaw during the past
three weeks denying the death of Dr. Israel Fried-
laender and Dr. Bernard Cantor is profoundly regrettable.
The two Americans had been engaged since January in
carrying food and medicine to destitute sections of the
Jews in Poland and the Ukraine under the auspices of the
American Joint Distribution Committee for all Jewish re-
lief funds, and had succeeded in distributing something like
a million marks' worth of material when, on July 7, their
automobile was held up by three bandits near Yarmolince,
in the Ukraine, and they were murdered. Their workf
which had necessarily been done without support from the
United States Government, was of a particularly heroic
kind, and their loss will be distinctly felt, both abroad by the
populations which they would have been able to relieve and
at home by the world of scholars. Dr. Friedlaender was
professor of Biblical literature at the Jewish Theological
Seminary and an eminent author and translator. The
Nation especially regrets his death since he was a frequent
and valued reviewer of Jewish books. One of the most
recent of his own books, a comprehensive anthology of
poems by and about Jews, is a successful attempt to re-
create the image of his race and to summarize its aspira-
tions over forty centuries.
146
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2875
No More Race Discrimination
THE people of California seem determined to raise once
more the question of Japanese immigration. Petitions
for a law depriving Japanese of the right to hold or lease
land in the State, and taking away from Japanese parents
the legal guardianship of minor children who have property
rights in land, are being circulated, and a referendum vote
on the proposed law will be taken at the November election.
Governor Stephens, in a letter to Secretary of State Colby
made public at the time of the Democratic convention in
San Francisco, has called attention to the fact that the
Japanese population of California, which amounted to 41,356
in 1910, is now 87,279. He alleges that the existing State
law which forbids Japanese aliens to hold land is being
evaded, partly by vesting the title in minor children born
in the United States, who under the Constitution are citi-
zens but whose legal guardianship it is now proposed the
State shall assume, and partly by the formation of dummy
corporations controlled by Japanese but with white officials.
Some 28,000 acres of land in the State, it is said, are at
present owned by Japanese and some 250,000 acres more are
leased. Senator Phelan, whose implacable opposition to
Japanese immigration on any terms is well known, is re-
ported to be planning to introduce in the next session of
Congress a resolution for a Constitutional Amendment which
would in the future deny to American-born Japanese the
right of citizenship which the Fourteenth Amendment now
gives them.
Governor Stephens, to his credit be it said, recognizes
that the question is a national and an international one.
Although his sympathies are plainly with the restrictionists,
he is frank enough to admit that the controversy is not one
which the State of California can settle for itself. Unfortu-
nately, such is not the general opinion, if indeed it be the
majority opinion, of the State. A large and powerful section
of the people of California is prepared now, as it has been
prepared whenever the question of Japanese restriction has
been raised in the past, to take the matter into its own hands
and to adopt any kind of a restriction policy it sees fit,
Constitutions, lews, treaties, or "gentlemen's agreements"
to the contrary notwithstanding. For the sake of ridding
the State of a class of persons whose presence it has ad-
judged undesirable, California is apparently once more
making ready to disregard the Federal Constitution, violate
international agreements which the United States, in the
exercise of its proper constitutional authority, has made,
force out the Japanese now in the State and prevent others
from entering, and defy the Federal Government to inter-
fere.
The constitutional issue admits of no argument. There
is no constitutional warrant for such action regarding the
Japanese as the people of California are likely to be asked
to take next November, any more than there is for much
of the action on the same subject which they have taken or
attempted on various occasions in the past. Nor is the sta-
tistical argument worthy of serious attention. A State
which imagines that a Japanese population of 87,279 in a
total population of 3,200,000 threatens the destruction of
its social order, or that the control and cultivation by
Japanese of 278,000 acres of land out of a total of 18,000,000
or more acres of arable land in the State menaces its eco-
nomic prosperity, is suffering from a bad case of "nerves."
The primary question, and in practice the only one of im-
portance, is that of race antagonism. On this subject Cali-
fornia still lives, as some other sections of the country still
live, in the dense and heated atmosphere of a bygone time.
It assumes without debate that the white race is superior
and that all other races are inferior ; that people of different
races do not mix ; that the presence of any appreciable num-
ber of aliens with different, and hence presumably lower,
standards of living inevitably tends to pull down the stand-
ards of citizens whose plane of living is higher; and that
racial intermarriage is unthinkable because it is certain to
produce a low quality of children. Hence the war-cry, rever-
berating from the anti-Chinese days of Denis Kearney and
the San Francisco sand-lots to the anti-Japanese days of
Senator Phelan, "The Japanese must go."
It is time that the American people faced squarely this
whole question of race. In the years when nations made
much of their so-called sovereignty, and arrogated to them-
selves such positions in the world as by hook or by crook
they were able successfully to assert, there was, perhaps,
justification, albeit of a specious kind, for the policies of
discrimination or exclusion which they practised in regard
to peoples of other races or of inferior strength. There is
still justification for excluding from a country aliens who
are physically or mentally defective, or who are likely for
any reason to swell the ranks of criminals or become a
public charge. There is still reason why aliens should not
be imported under contract for the clear purpose of displac-
ing citizen wage-earners who are higher paid. But as to
other restrictions and discriminations the world has
changed. Two of the professed aims of the great war which
has just been fought have been the recognition of the right
of small nations and racial groups to independence and
self-determination, and the union of all peoples in a world
league in which the nations should be equal ; and while those
principles have as yet been honored more in the breach than
in the observance, the principles themselves abide.
Now that the question of race is again on the eve of being
raised, and in a form in which it cannot well be dodged,
the American people should make their position clear. The
challenge which California is preparing to throw down
should be met as any other disloyal manifestation by a
State should be met — by a firm assertion of Federal author-
ity coupled, of course, with a frank recognition of the diffi-
culties of the California situation. With that, however,
should go also the adoption of the only rational principle
upon which a modern nation can safely stand, namely, the
entire abolition of race discrimination. Subject only to
the common-sense exceptions which we have mentioned, the
United States should throw down the bars. It should make
an end of silly and mischievous talk about white superiority,
and cease waging social war against resident aliens whose
labor is contributing to the nation's wealth. It should cease
doing homage to the notion that because the spawn of a
Japanese prostitute and an American roustabout of the
"Earbary Coast" may be of poor mental or moral quality,
all interracial marriages should be prohibited. The per-
verted sense of national importance which from time im-
memorial has plunged nations into war is the same which
still cherishes racial antagonisms ; and the sooner the whole
unworthy structure of restrictions is swept away, the better.
August 7, 1920]
The Nation
147
America and the Polish Question
THE United States should lose no time in declaring its
position with regard to Poland. Whatever may be
thought of the attitude of Great Britain and France toward
the Russo-Polish war, the policies of those two countries
have at least an element of frankness and directness of
which American policy is miserably destitute. The Mille-
rand Government is still, in terms at least, as unalterably
opposed as ever to recognition of the Soviet Government
unless that Government will agree, among other things, to
pay the Russian bonds which were issued under the old
regime and which are extensively held in France. In the
meantime it goes on giving substantial aid to the Poles and
openly champions their cause. Mr. Lloyd George, on the
other hand, is willing to go a long way toward recognizing
the Russian Government indirectly, and will probably have
small scruple about recognizing it directly if he does not
have to do so too suddenly, in order if possible to stop the
war ; for British influence in the East is gravely threatened
and Russian propaganda is working successfully everywhere.
Hence his advice to Poland to negotiate directly with Mos-
cow, and his anxious desire to bring about some kind of
a conference in which Russian representatives will sit.
Meantime the Washington discoverer of the "acid test"
for Russia maintains his accustomed silence in regard to
Poland. Indirectly, however, the United States has been
helping the Poles very much. The Administration began
aiding the Polish imperialists as far back as the days of the
Peace Conference, when it threw its influence on the side of
the Polish reactionaries headed by Roman Dmowski and
Paderewski in Europe and Mr. John F. Smulski in this
country; incidentally putting under the ban Polish news-
papers and Polish societies of opposite persuasion. Last
winter the American Red Cross, an organization popularly
supposed to exist for strictly neutral relief service only,
was credibly reported to have furnished the Polish army
with much-needed supplies of shoes, underclothing, over-
coats, and mittens. During the present war American avia-
tors, members of the Kosciuszko Flying Squadron, have been
serving with the Polish forces, and their exploits in bombing
Bolshevik troops have been duly reported in the press.
In the Treasury list of countries to which the United
States has extended financial aid in the form of loans or
credits, Poland does not appear. This does not mean, how-
ever, that tangible aid of other kinds has not been forth-
coming. According to an official statement given to the
press on July 27, the value of supplies sold to Poland by the
War Department prior to the outbreak of the present war
aggregated $71,920,111.97. Transactions with the Grain
Corporation, the Shipping Board, and the Navy Department,
the details of which are not divulged, bring the total in-
debtedness of Poland to the United States to about $100,-
000,000. ' Of the nearly $72,000,000 worth of supplies, $59,-
365,111.97 represents purchases of American supplies which
were disposed of in Europe after the armistice; while the
remainder, $12,555,000, is accounted for by sales made
directly from the War Department at Washington.
Secretary Baker is quoted as saying that, of the total
amount of sales of material abroad, "less than $5,000,000
represents purchases of materials that may be classed as
military equipment." Yet the published list shows $20,-
288,155.42 for clothing and textiles, $13,885,252.62 for sub-
sistence supplies, $13,170,143.93 for transportation equip-
ment, $3,982,340.33 for household furniture, machinery, and
metals, $2,713,267.47 for hospital and other supplies, and
$795,505.52 for air service equipment and supplies. Secre-
tary Baker would apparently have the American public be-
lieve that, aside from the trifling sum of $5,000,000, all of
these articles were strictly for civil use. One wonders if
the same hair-splitting discrimination assigns to purely civil
purposes the $8,616,000 which Poland has contracted to pay
in this country for 4,600 railway cars.
Here we have revealed, not in rhetoric but in cold statis-
tics, something of the way in which the Wilson Administra-
tion has been helping on an imperialistic war in Europe.
There are indications that further aid, moral as well as ma-
terial, is under consideration. The press dispatches make it
clear enough that M. Millerand and Mr. Lloyd George are a
good deal at loggerheads over the Polish situation. The
French Premier talks as if he were really ready to fight,
while the British Premier certainly acts as if he himself were
not. The public may rest assured that France will not break
with Great Britain, partly because a break would give im-
mense satisfaction to Germany as well as to Russia, and
partly because France, when it comes to a European war,
is too weak to act alone. For the moment, however, there
will be a good deal of manoeuvring for advantage, and the
prize to be played for is the cooperation of the United
States. The Paris Temps, virtually an official organ in
matters of foreign policy, points out that in a controversy of
this kind the sympathies of the United States ought cer-
tainly to be with France. Mr. Lloyd George, speaking at
the unveiling of a Lincoln statue, pleads with America to
do its duty and come back into the ring.
All this could be dismissed as the familiar diplomatic bun-
combe were it not for certain suggestive intimations from
Washington. Obviously inspired dispatches point out, how-
ever, that while the decision rests with Mr. Wilson, and Mr.
Wilson has not yet spoken, the fate of Poland is a matter
in which the United States may rightfully take a hand
because Poland was a creation of the Peace Conference; and
although the United States has not ratified the Treaty of
Versailles and the other treaties made in France, it still has
a vital interest in seeing that the terms agreed upon are
carried out. Hence, it is intimated, the United States may
not only properly take part in a conference on the Russo-
Polish imbroglio if it is asked to do so, but it may demand
as of right a seat in such a conference if one is held.
If the United States is to become a party to the settlement
of the Polish question, it should do so only on a certain
definite basis of policy. The first point in that policy is the
full recognition by the Allies and the United States of the
Soviet Government in Russia. Unless this is done, nothing
else that is done will long make any difference. The second
is the definite acceptance by Poland of the boundaries
tentatively laid down for it by the Peace Conference, and the
observance of those boundaries until such time as they shall
be revised. The third is the requirement of reparations
from Poland for the injuries which its armies have oc-
casioned in Russia and the Ukraine. If reparations are good
for Germany they are good also for Poland. The fourth is
the immediate ending of all military aid, direct or indirect,
to Poland, and the reduction of the Polish army to a proper
peace basis. Not until it is known that these things are to be
done will American participation in a Polish settlement be
other than a further menace to the peace of the world.
148
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2875
The Times, Associated Press, and
New York Times
THE damning report on pogroms in Poland made by the
British Government commission headed by Sir Stuart
Samuel has had a hard time finding daylight in the Ameri-
can press. The report is printed in full in this week's
International Relations Section; the strange story of its
vicissitudes in the press is as follows : The Samuel
Commission was sent to Poland by the British Government
to investigate the treatment of Jews ; its findings were with-
held for months, as debates in the House of Commons re-
vealed, and were finally made public on July 5. The Jewish-
language newspapers of New York and other cities published
extensive cables referring to it. Despite its sensational and
official character, and despite the large Jewish population in
the city of New York, the English-language papers of New
York City at first printed nothing about the report. The
Associated Press sent no dispatch regarding the report. The
secretary of the American Jewish Congress, Mr. Bernard G.
Richards, thereupon wrote to friends of his connected with
two New York City newspapers, which then printed some
of the material which he sent them. He also wrote to the
Associated Press on July 9 inquiring whether it had received
any dispatch on the subject. The superintendent of the As-
sociated Press foreign service, Mr. Charles T. Thompson,
replied on July 16 that the Associated Press had received
nothing, but that, upon hearing of the interest in the report,
he had cabled the London office of the Associated Press, and
had "received a summary of it, a copy of which I enclose
herewith." This summary, printed in the New York Times
and other papers, was as follows:
London, July 10. — The report of the mission headed by Sir
Stuart Samuel, which was sent by the British Government last
September to investigate conditions in Poland, has been pub-
lished, together with a covering letter by Sir H. Rumbold. It
deals largely with the treatment of Jews, which the report says
is being "gradually mitigated" and "will abate when peace has
been restored and the presence of foreigners in their country
will shame the Poles into more civilized treatment of their near
neighbors." The report declares that massacres of Jews in
Poland were not pogroms, or state-superintended and authorized
slaughterings, but were manifestations of popular animus on
the part of ignorant men, misled in many instances by men of
education. In many cases, the report says, the police partici-
pated in acts of aggression against Jews. Sir H. Rumbold's
covering letter says that, bad as the condition of Jews in Poland
may have been or may still be, it is far better than that in sur-
rounding countries. "Unless all the information on the point is
entirely inaccurate," he said, "the massacres of Jews by Ukrain-
ian peasant bands can find in their extent and thoroughness no
parallel except in the massacres of Armenians in Turkey."
Sir Stuart's report, as readers of the International
Relations Section may note for themselves, did not declare
that the treatment of Jews was being "gradually mitigated"
or that it would "abate when peace has been restored and
the presence of foreigners in their country will shame the
Poles into more civilized treatment of their near neighbors."
Far from declaring that the "massacres of Jews in Poland
were not pogroms," it declared that "the result of my in-
quiries brought me to the conclusion that the occurrences at
Lemberg, Lida, and Vilna come under the head of pogroms
in the sense generally understood in England" — which he
defined as meaning "excesses organized by the government
against a portion of the population, or when the authorities
took no steps to restrain those perpetrating the excesses, or
intervened at a period too late to be effective in preventing
the loss of human life." The phrase "gradually mitigated"
is not contained even in Sir Horace Rumbold's covering let-
ter deprecating criticism of the Poles, nor in the separate
report filed by one Captain Wright, the only dissenting mem-
ber of the Commission. None of the quotations in the Asso-
ciated Press dispatch are from any of these documents.
The New York office of the Associated Press was not re-
sponsible for this inaccuracy. It even went so far, on July
26, as to send out a belated but accurate five-hundred-word
summary of the Samuel report, based upon a summary given
it by a Jewish agency.
But the London correspondent of the Associated Press
cannot be excused. The cable from the New York office ask-
ing about the Samuel report may have reached him late at
night when he was tired. He did not get a copy of the
report; he merely looked over his file of the London Times.
There he found a column about the Samuel report. It was
misleading; he was even more so. The Times column was
carefully worded; it skimmed Sir Stuart Samuel's report,
then, without informing the reader that Captain Wright's
was a minority report, it dwelt upon his minimizing of the
Polish atrocities. It remarked that it was apparent from
the report that the treatment of the Jews was being "grad-
ually mitigated." The Times gave that as its editorial ex-
pression of opinion; the Associated Press correspondent
cabled it in quotation marks as the verdict of the Samuel,
report, which it was not. It was the Times which used the
phrases which the Associated Press correspondent quoted'
as those of the report. The Times stated — falsely, as we have
shown — that the report declared that the massacres of Jews
were not pogroms. The Associated Press correspondent,
without verifying the statement, passed it on.
When the full text of the Samuel report reached this coun-
try, certain Jewish agencies made it available to all the New
York newspapers ; two of them printed parts of it. All of the
papers, however, found space on July 27 for a denial by
Prince Lubomirski, the Polish Minister to this country, that
the Poles had recently committed excesses against the Jews ;
the denial was largely an attack upon the Bolsheviki. The
New York Times printed this Lubomirski statement; it did
not print the second and correct Associated Press summary
of the Samuel report sent out the same day. The publisher
of the Day, a Jewish-language newspaper printed in New
York, then offered the Times an opportunity to print the
Samuel report in full. The Times, we are informed, refused,
denying its news value. The Day thereupon paid the Times
to print the Samuel report as an advertisement.
The New York Times is being rather hardly used these
days. The New Republic has just published a forty-two
page supplement which, after describing the Times as "one
of the really great newspapers of the world," examines its
news reports upon the Russian Revolution so effectively as
to make one wonder what, in its opinion, constitutes great-
ness in newspapers. Even the New York Tribune editori-
ally exposes the Times for altering an editorial from the
Boston Transcript, apparently to suit its party purposes.
Yet we do not believe that the New York Times, or the
London Times, or the Associated Press, differ much from
the run of daily newspapers and news agencies in their
standards of accuracy and of news collection and selection.
We take all our Polish news with a grain of salt.
August 7, 1920]
The Nation
149
The Spy
ONE of the episodes in the report of the commission of
the Inter-Church on the steel industry might be called
"The Adventures of a Dirty Scrap of Paper." The full re-
port itself will shortly be published in book form by Har-
court, Brace and Howe. There is a touch of the romantic
for all Americans in the revelations that the extensive
espionage of the late Czar's government, hitherto made
familiar to us only through the novel of adventure and the
motion picture thriller, is firmly ensconced in our midst.
It is to be hoped that steel officials will challenge this sec-
tion of the report — the work of such conscientious investi-
gators as Captain Heber Blankenhorn and George Soule —
in order that the bishops may release still more of the rich
documentary proof that they hold. And for what purposes
and to what ends was this elaborate and expensive system
of espionage erected? To maintain non-unionism, to per-
petuate scarcely tolerable hours of labor and low wages, to
prevent the legitimate association of free men.
The commission found that maintaining non-unionism
entailed for the employers (1) discharging workmen for
unionism, (2) blacklists, (3) espionage and the hiring of
"labor detective agencies" operatives, (4) strike-breakers.
Maintaining non-unionism entailed, for communities, (1)
the abrogation of the right of assembly, the suppression of
free speech, and the violation of personal rights (principally
in Pennsylvania) ; (2) the use of State police, State troops,
and (in Indiana) of the United States Army; (3) such ac-
tivities on the part of constituted authorities and of the
press and the pulpit as to make the workers believe that
these forces oppose labor. In sum, the actually existent
state of the steel industry is a state of latent war over rights
of organization conceded by public opinion in other civilized
countries.
The Report states :
Espionage was of two general classes: spies directly in the
employ of the steel companies; and spies hired from profes-
sional "labor detective" agencies. The Steel Corporation plants
have their own detective forces; one case of hiring outside
agencies by a corporation subsidiary became public during the
strike. Espionage was of two general characters: spies pure
and simple who merely furnished information; and spies who
also acted as propagandist strike breakers, mingling with the
strikers and whispering that the strike was failing, that the
men in other towns had gone back, that the union leaders were
crooks, etc. The Monessen "labor file" contained some six hun-
dred daily reports by "under-cover" spies of both characters,
mere detectives and strike-breaking propagandists. These com-
pany spy-systems carry right through into the United States
Government.
Federal immigration authorities testified to the Commission
that raids and arrests, for "radicalism," etc., were made espe-
cially in the Pittsburgh district on the denunciations and secret
reports of steel company "under-cover" men, and the prisoners
turned over to the Department of Justice. The Monessen "labor
file" enabled the student to follow one such paper through to the
government. It is given here as offering light upon the ques-
tion why many working men, especially steel workers, have
come to suspect that the Government, as Government, has taken
sides in industrial warfare; has taken sides against working
men.
In this freely offered "file," among the blacklists, detective
agency contracts, "under-cover men's" reports, typed letters of
big concerns on high grade paper with luxurious letter-heads
there was a scrap of dirty paper the size of one's palm. Scrib-
bled on both sides it read exactly as follows:
Charleroi, Pa., Oct. 13, 1919
Dear Sir:
I am an employee of the Pitts Steele Proct of Allenport I
went to work last Fri and would like to work so I will give you
some names of some Belgian dogs that made it so hard for me
and my family I had to quite they are a menace to our country
so Please keep there names in mind
Yours truly
Over
Charle Ballue, 209 Shady ave., Charleroi, Pa. Arthur Ballue,
Oakland ave between 3 and 4 st Charleroi, Pa. Tony Jarruse,
208 Shady ave Charleroi, Pa. Gus Vanduzene, 312 Shady ave
Charleroi, Pa. Albert Balue, 3 st Charleroi, Pa.
Make these suffer as they are making other just now when
you start your mills.
The investigator of the file wondered what happened to spite-
ful scraps of paper in the steel industry. Beside the scrap
was a letter as follows:
Pittsburgh Steel Products Company,
Mill Office, Monessen, Pa., October 15, 1919
M. Wikstrom, Gen'l Supt.
Jas. H. Dunbar,
Ass't to Gen'l Supt.
Messrs: George A. Paff, G. J. Mogan, U. S. Smiley, W. S.
Bumbaugh, W. C. Sutherland, J. W. Connery,
Gentlemen :
We are in receipt of an anonymous communication under date
of October 13, which reads as follows:
"I am an employee of the Pittsburgh Steel Products Company
of Allenport. I went to work last Friday and would like to
work, so I will give you some names of some Belgian Dogs that
made it so hard for me and my family, I had to quit. They
are a menace to our country — so please keep these names in
mind when you start your mill.
Charles Ballue, 209 Shady Ave., Charleroi, Pa. Arthur Bal-
lue, between 3d and 4th Sts., Charleroi, Pa. Tony Jarouse,
208 Shady Ave., Charleroi, Pa. (formerly worked in our mill
under Check No. 5321). Gus Vanduzen, 312 Shady Ave., Char-
leroi, Pa. Albert Ballue, 3d St., Charleroi, Pa.
Make these men suffer as they are making me suffer just now
when you start your mill."
This is for your information and files.
Yours very truly,
Pittsburgh Steel Products Company,
(Signed) Malcolm Wikstrom, General Superintendent.
JDH/W
The list at the top of the letter represented every steel con-
cern in Monessen. The promptness with which the list of names
was speeded back and forth among the companies was illus-
trated in another letter in the file, sent out the same day the
above was received.
Pittsburgh Steel Company,
Mill Office, Monessen, Pa., October 15, 1919
C. J. Mogan, Gen'l Supt.
D. P. King, Ass't Gen'l Supt.
A. Allison, Ass't Gen'l Supt.
Messrs.,
M. Wikstrom, Pgh. Steel Products.
U. S. Smiley, American Sheet & Tin Co.
F. D. Bumbaugh, Monessen Fdry. & Mach. Co.
J. L. Hoffman, Carnegie Steel Co.
G. A. Paff, Page Steel & Wire Co.
150
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2875
Dear Sirs:
Enclosed is a list of men who are some of the leading agitators
in keeping the men from going to work by all kinds of threats.
Yours very truly,
(Signed) C. J. Mogan,
CJM/C General Superintendent
Attached to this letter was a copy of the same little list, with
one additional name. Of the mills catalogued beneath the let-
terhead as on the circuit of vital information, two were Corpo-
ration subsidiaries — American Sheet & Tin, and Carnegie Steel
— the rest "independents." The letters crossed and recrossed, so
that the Pittsburgh Steel Products Company officer who started
the list out got the same list back from the Pittsburgh Steel
Company [another "independent"] the same day. Finally in
the file was the carbon of a letter transmitting the same list
to the Department of Justice at Washington, asserting that
the men named were "leading radicals." From a scrap of
dirty paper, rising through stages of typed and embossed letter-
head dignity, to those dossiers, marked "Important — very
secret," in Government Bureaus in Washington! The circum-
stances at either end of the chain were not investigated.
The testimony of a Federal officer of long official experience,
made at a hearing of the Commission of Inquiry in November
in Pittsburgh was:
". . . ninety per cent of all the radicals arrested and taken
into custody were reported by one of the large corporations,
either of the steel or coal industry. I mean by that, that these
corporations are loaded up with what they call 'under-cover'
men who must earn their salaries, and they go around and get
into these organizations and report the cases to the detectives
for the large companies. The detectives in turn report to the
chief of police of the city. Generally, the chiefs of police in
these small cities around Pittsburgh were placed there by the
corporations.
"The corporation orders an organization raided by the police
department, the members are taken into custody, thrown into
the police station and the department of justice is notified.
They send a man to examine them to see if there are any ex-
treme radicals or anarchists among them. They usually let all
but a few go. In one instance seventy-nine were taken. The
department of justice let all go but three; of those we asked for
warrants for two, and at the hearing we made a case against
one of them.
"The Steel Corporation has been using every possible en-
deavor for the last twenty years to fill its mills with foreigners,
and to a large extent has done so; then you must see why the
foreigner is taking the front of the stage in this conflict. When
the large corporations put these foreigners in they thought
they had a class of men who wouldn't strike. Now they want to
get rid of some of them."
Two extensive labor-detective strike-breaking corporations,
with offices in a dozen cities, had a hand in fighting the steel
strike. Documents and reports from one of the concerns filled
half the Monessen "labor file." Affidavits and documents were
obtained from the other, which operated chiefly in the Chicago
district. Also in the Monessen "labor file" were the reports
furnished by two other "detective" agencies. In the file were
the forms of contracts under which these concerns were hired
and operate. Their "operatives" reports run from the illiterate*
scribblings of professional parasites to the most accurate tran-
scriptions of union locals' secret meetings. Interviews with
the officers of those strike-breaking concerns gave further in-
sight into the range of their "work" in the steel strike. A sub-
report furnishes the material for building up a day by day
story of the strike in Monessen. The other documents and the
interviews show the extent. It is all of a piece and it is the
least noble side of the war waged for the "open shop" in steel.
The manager of the detective strike-breaking corporation
whose reports and contracts appeared in the Monessen "labor
file," when interviewed spoke fairly freely of his concern's views
and activities. He had over five hundred "operatives" at work
in the steel strike. Some of his operatives had been injected
into the steel plants a year before. Many of his operatives had
become officers of labor unions. He said that there was on the
National Strike Committee a labor leader who took his money.
He denied that his concern was a mere detective or strike-
breaking concern. He used the same arguments as Mr. Gary in
explaining why he supported Mr. Gary. He said workmen had
a right to organize, but the "open shop" must be preserved.
He said that labor unions had rights, but that the unions had
fallen into the hands of radical leaders. Like Mr. Gary he
denied that he wanted to crush unions. He denied that his ope-
ratives were really strikebreakers; though the "labor file" con-
tained full details of his operatives' strike-breaking activities
and the following letter:
New York Office, 680 Hudson Terminal.
Chicago Office, 1051 Peoples' Gas Bldg.
Cleveland Office, 1835 Euclid Ave.
Pittsburgh Office, Wabash Bldg.
St. Louis Office, Chemical Bldg.
Cincinnati Office, Union Trust Bldg.
Detroit Office, Book Bldg.
The Corporations Auxilliary Company
Wabash Building
J. H. Smith, Pres. & Treas. October 11, 1919.
John Weber, Secy.
D. G. Ross, Gen. Mgr.
H. C. Breton, Res. Mgr.
E. C. Sattley, Gen. Mgr.
Page Steel & Wire Co.
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Dear Sir:
Confirming conversation between your Mr. George A. Paff and
the writer on yesterday, we will furnish you as quickly as pos-
sible with two Slavish speaking operatives to work along the
lines as agreed between the writer and Mr. Paff on yesterday.
This is as per the terms of our regular $225 monthly contract
with the usual wage credits of $3.00 per day allowed as per the
copy of attached contract, with the exception that it is under-
stood that this service will terminate at the end of 30 days
from commencement of same unless otherwise extended.
We wish to thank you very much for this business and will
endeavor to make same as valuable to you as possible and trust
that it will be instrumental in having the morale of your foreign
strikers broken.
We will thank you very much for your cooperation in the
handling of this service and will appreciate your calling upon
us at any time we can be of special service to you.
Yours very truly,
The Corporation Auxiliary Company,
By (Signed) S. Dewson,
B-W: P-ll Resident Manager.
No other country in the world has such large wide-spread,
well-financed, strike-breaking corporations, making money out
of "labor trouble" as America. Nor was it the custom of certain
strike-breaking concerns to wait for "labor trouble." When busi-
ness was slack they made "trouble." The sub-report details,
from affidavits of former operatives, how certain concerns pro-
voked strikes in peaceful shops in the past to create "business,"
set union to fighting union, organized unions in order to be called
in to break the unions. They bled both sides; and the Federal
Government files contained their patriotic reports. In the
Chicago-Gary district one such great strike-breaking concern
became so active in the steel strike that its offices were raided
and one of its officers was indicted for "intent to create riots"
and for intent to "kill and murder divers large numbers of
persons." This officer after five months had still not been
brought to trial. ' A sample of the riot-inciting instructions
August 7, 1920]
The Nation
151
given to this concern's operatives in the South Chicago steel
mills follows:
A 563-D
Rep.
October 2, 1919.
Dear Sir:
We have talked to you and instructed you. We want you to
stir up as much bad feeling as you possibly can between the
Serbians and Italians. Spread data among the Serbians that
the Italians are going back to work. Call up every question you
can in reference to racial hatred between these two nationalities ;
make them realize to the fullest extent that far better results
would be accomplished if they will go back to work. Urge them
to go back to work or the Italians will get their jobs.
Daily Maxima — Sent to every representative today:
Conserve your forces on a set point — begin before the other
fellow starts. Remail.
This operative's duties, according to The New Majority
(November 11, 1919), were as follows:
"He was assigned to the client whose code was A 536 D, the
number appearing at the top of the Italian-Serbian letter. This
code means the South Chicago plant of the Illinois Steel Com-
pany. Then he received the regular course of instruction given
"representatives." He was told to move around among the
strikers and get them to go back to work. He was told to go
to Indiana Harbor, Ind., and get strikers from the Inland Steel
Company plant there to go to South Chicago and go to work as
strike-breakers for the Illinois Steel Company. He was told
to go to the vicinity of employment agencies and get strike-
breakers and to take them into the plant by automobile or
otherwise, at night. He was also instructed to move around
among the strikers for the purpose of reporting what conversa-
tions he heard, as well as urging them to go to work. He was
given a union card in a local of one of the international unions
affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, and told to
use it to pass himself off as a union man."
The Illinois Steel Company is the Steel Corporation's biggest
Western subsidiary. Its president, Mr. Buffington, declared to
the Commission of Inquiry that the first he had heard of the
matter was when he saw it in the Chicago papers; that the
Illinois Steel Co. did not hire this strike-breaking concern; that
he was "confident that at the trial no evidence involving the
Illinois Steel Co. would be brought out." The manager of the
strike-breaking concern, with offices in the same building as Mr.
Buffington, declared to Commission investigators that their
operatives were hired by the Illinois Steel Co.
Meanwhile the raided concern was defending itself in page
advertisements in papers in many cities as follows:
WHY IS SHERMAN SERVICE BEING ATTACKED?
Sherman Service is a national institution composed of men
and women who have made Industrial Relationship their life
work. . . .
They cause the employer (their client) to recognize and
practice the basic principles of "square dealing" in his relations
with his employees. A spirit of sympathetic understanding fol-
lows— the result is harmony, cooperation, maximum production,
high quality, and lessened waste.
The community, which comprises both employee and employer
and invested capital, is able, through such harmonious and pro-
ductive relationship, to provide the greatest opportunities
afforded under our free form of government, to the advantage
of all agreeably concerned. Amerizanization, in its fullest sense,
is made possible and does follow; our national structure is pre-
served and enforced, and we are all better off for it.
SHERMAN SERVICE, INC.
John Francis Sherman, Chairman Executive Board New York
City, Boston, St. Louis, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland, New
Haven, Providence, Detroit, Toronto.
Postscript: Sherman Service is not a detective agency. It
renders no detective service of any description whatsoever.
Concerning the last line, investigators noted that the Sherman
Service Co. was elsewhere carrying on suit in court to protect
its "rights as a detective agency." According to the private
"house organ" of this concern it also serves the government;
for this purpose its operatives become "apparent reds."
"Wherever such organizations exist in the community and try
to influence the workers it becomes the duty of the Sherman
representatives to pretend sympathy and join so as to learn
who the leaders are. Such information is then supplied to the
government."
The reach of the industrial spy system and the reliance placed
on it were brought home to the Commission of Inquiry by the
spy report on the Commission which was sent to Mr. Gary. It
has been referred to before; the Commission in November read
the report, knew that it was being distributed in the territory
of the Steel Corporation's plants, and disregarded so amusingly
false a document; in December when the Commission made its
effort to settle the strike, Mr. Gary exhibited it and cross-
examined the Commissioners on its charges. Some one had set
a spy on the Commission and on the Interchurch World Move-
ment. The anonymous "special report" was dated November 12.
The Commission's first interview with Mr. Gary had been on
November 10. The "special report" names (mispelling the
names) some of the Commission's investigators, names others as
investigators who were not, and calls all named "radicals,"
"members of the I. W. W.," "Reds," and "active in the organiza-
tion known as the People's Print . . . formerly known as the
People's Peace Council, better known as the National Civil
Liberties League." No statement made about the investigators
was true. The capacity of the spy and the purposes of the
persons who hired him are indicated in the following excerpt:
"In fact none of these people that are now here in Pittsburgh
investigating for this Church movement should be told anything
at all, nor should they be allowed to get any information , from
the Mills in any manner. After paying a visit to their offices in
New York and talking to a large number of the officials there
I find that this organization should be used to a very good
advantage if handled by the right parties. This organization
could become a power in both the Industrial Field and the
Church Field. There are a large number of the men and women
connected with this organization that are known as Pink Tea
Socialists and Parlor Reds, and are not considered dangerous. I
would suggest that these kind of people be weeded out of the
organization. These are the worst kind of Reds to be connected
with as they are to a certain extent high up in circles that are
hard to reaeh and they can spread propaganda that hurts the
work of others. I found that this organization is now making
a canvass for money among the rich and the Corporation in the
East, and that they have already had a Committee see Judge
Gary, asking for money to carry on their work with. A Mr.
Blacenhorn will arrive in Pittsburgh on Thursday morning to
assist the ones that are already here on the Steel Strike in-
vestigation. No money should be given or any assistance
granted this organization until they recall all of the ones that
they have in the Pittsburgh district, and further more if there
is any way at all of forcing them to get rid of the ones that I
have mentioned they should be let go."
The literary qualities of this report can be profitably studied
by comparison with the reports in the Monessen "labor file."
The maintenance of the non-unionism alternative, therefore,
entailed for the steel companies activities running from spies
in church offices in New York to sealed carloads of Negroes
shipped into Pittsburgh plant yards at night. For communities
and for states the alternative entailed activities of greater im-
port and greater menace. These affected civil liberties in whole
communities, local legislative bodies, police authorities, judges,
state police troops, Federal government departments, and the
U. S. Army.
152
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2875
Soviet Russia — 1920
By BERTRAND RUSSELL
V. THE INTERNATIONAL SITUATION
IN the course of these articles, I have had occasion to men-
tion disagreeable features of the Bolshevist regime.
But it must always be remembered that these are chiefly
due to the fact that the industrial life of Russia has been
paralyzed except as ministering to the wants of the army,
and that the Government has had to wage a bitter and doubt-
ful civil and external war, involving the constant menace of
domestic enemies. Harshness, espionage, and a curtailment
of liberty result unavoidably from these difficulties. I have
no doubt whatever that the sole cure for the evils from
which Russia is suffering is peace and trade. Peace and
trade would put an end to the hostility of the peasants, and
would at once enable the Government to depend upon popu-
larity rather than force. The character of the Government
would alter rapidly under such conditions. Industrial con-
scription, which is now rigidly enforced, would become un-
necessary. Those who desire a more liberal spirit would be
able to make their voices heard without the feeling that they
were assisting reaction and the national enemies. The food
difficulties would cease, and with them the need for an auto-
cratic system in the towns.
It must not be assumed, as is common with opponents of
bolshevism, that any other government could easily be estab-
lished in Russia. I think everyone who has been in Russia
recently is convinced that the existing Government is stable.
It may undergo internal developments, and might easily,
but for Lenin, become a Bonapartist military autocracy. But
this would be a change from within — not perhaps a very
great change — and would probably do little to alter the
economic system. From what I saw of the Russian charac-
ter and of the opposition parties, I became persuaded that
Russia is not ready for any form of democracy, and needs
a strong government. The Bolsheviki represent themselves
as the allies of western advanced socialism, and from this
point of view they are open to grave criticism. For their
international program there is, to my mind, nothing to be
said. But as a national government, stripped of their cam-
ouflage, regarded as the successors of Peter the Great, they
are performing a necessary though unamiable task. They
are introducing, as far as they can, American efficiency
among a lazy and undisciplined population. They are pre-
paring to develop the natural resources of their country by
the methods of state socialism, for which, in Russia, there
is much to be said. In the army they are abolishing illiter-
acy, and if they had peace they would do great things for
education everywhere.
But if we continue to refuse peace and trade, I do not
think the Bolsheviki will go under. Russia will endure great
hardships in the years to come as before. But the Russians
are inured to misery as no Western nation is; they can live
and work under conditions which we should find intolerable.
The Government will be driven more and more, from mere
self-preservation, into a policy of imperialism. The Entente
has been doing everything to expose Germany to a Russian
invasion of arms and leaflets, by allowing Poland to engage
in a disastrous war and compelling Germany to disarm. All
Asia lies open to Bolshevist ambitions. Almost the whole of
the former Russian Empire in Asia is quite firmly in their
grasp. Trains are running at a reasonable speed to Turke-
stan, and I saw cotton from there being loaded on to Volga
steamers. In Persia and Turkey powerful revolts are taking
place with Bolshevist support. It is only a question of a few
years before India will be in touch with the Red Army. If
we continue to antagonize the Bolsheviki, I do not see what
force exists that can prevent them from acquiring the whole
of Asia within ten years.
The Russian Government is not imperialistic in spirit,
and would prefer peace to conquest. The country is weary
of war and denuded of goods. But if the Western Powers
insist upon war, another spirit, which is already beginning
to show itself, will become dominant. Conquest will be the
only alternative tov submission. Asiatic conquest will not be
difficult. But for us, from the imperialist standpoint, it will
mean utter ruin. And for the continent it will mean revolu-
tions, civil wars, economic cataclysms. The policy of crush-
ing bolshevism by force was always foolish and criminal ; it
has now become impossible and fraught with disaster. Our
own Government, it would seem, has begun to realize the
dangers; let us hope it realizes them sufficiently to enforce
its view against opposition. If not, the Great War (as we
still call it) will have been only the prelude to a conflagration
compared with which it will seem to have been a mere fron-
tier skirmish.
Convinced Bolsheviki and their supporters in Western
Europe will face this prospect calmly, since they believe* that
in the end the communist system will be established, and will
bring a cure for all the evils from which the world is suffer-
ing. I do not find it possible to believe this comforting doc-
trine. I share the belief in communism, but not in the sort
which concentrates immense power in the hands of a few
men. A just distribution of power seems to me just as im-
portant as a just distribution of material goods. All experi-
ence shows that very few men can be long trusted with great
power. If Russia wins peace, the liberal ideas of freedom
and popular government which the war has put into the
background will again become prominent, and it may be pos-
sible to restore to the workers some of that control over
industry which they had in the early days of bolshevism.
But if continued war necessitates continued dictatorship it
must happen, sooner or later, that the rulers will use their
privileged political position to secure for themselves a priv-
ileged economic position. This has already happened to a
certain extent; the highly -placed Communists have consid-
erably more comfort than the mass of the population. But
what has happened hitherto in this way is, on the whole,
justifiable as being necessary for the health and efficiency
of members of the Government, who certainly work much
longer hours and at much higher pressure than the Govern-
ments of the Western Powers.
This, however, is hardly likely to be a permanent state of
affairs. As yet, the men in high places in Russia are mostly
very ardent Communists, who in former times showed a
readiness to sacrifice everything for their beliefs. These
men will obviously in time give place to others less devoted,
more opportunist, who will regard the situation, as most
practical politicians do, from the standpoint of practical ad-
vantage. Such men, if they could find means of carrying the
August 7, 1920]
The Nation
153
army with them, would have little difficulty in decreeing
large salaries and special privileges for the governing aris-
tocracy. With success would come increased opportunities
of corruption, and of exploitation of undeveloped countries.
I cannot believe that these temptations would be per-
manently resisted.
The Bolsheviki have a complete theory, embodied in the
Third Internationale, according to which communism is to be
established everywhere, as it has been in Russia, by the dic-
tatorship of an energetic minority. The theory is recom-
mended by the impossibility of converting a majority while
all the great weapons of propaganda — especially education
and the press — are in the hands of the capitalists. This
argument is a powerful one, and it certainly shows the ex-
treme difficulty of bringing about a communist state by
peaceful means. Where it fails is in the attempt to show
that communism, in any stable or desirable form, can be
brought about by the dictatorship of a minority. In polit-
ical theory it is necessary to take account of what may be
called psychological dynamics ; I mean the changes in men's
aims and beliefs that are brought about by changed circum-
stances. Almost all men, when they have acquired the habit
of wielding great power, find it so delightful that they can-
not voluntarily abandon it. If they are men who were orig-
inally disinterested, they will persuade themselves that their
power is still necessary in the public interest; but, whether
with or without self-deception, they will cling to power until
they are dispossessed by force. This is bound to happen to
the communist minority when, as in Russia, it acquires a
military dictatorship originally intended to be temporary.
Given a few energetic and able men who have a great empire
and a great army to play with, it is psychologically all but
certain that they will find some excuse for not sharing their
power more than they can help. And those who have most
power always can, if they choose, also have most wealth.
Sooner or later they will so choose, and the expected gains
of communism will be lost.
For these reasons, as well as for reasons of pacifism,
I cannot accept the bolshevist philosophy or believe in
abandoning the slower methods of democracy and popular
agitation.
Russia is a backward country, not yet ready for the
methods of equal cooperation which the West is seeking to
substitute for arbitrary power in politics and industry. In
Russia, the methods of the Bolsheviki are probably more or
less unavoidable; at any rate, I am not prepared to criticize
them in their broad lines. But they are not the methods
appropriate to more advanced countries, and our socialists
will be unnecessarily retrograde if they allow the prestige
of the Bolsheviki to lead them into slavish imitation. It will
be a far less excusable error in our reactionaries if, by their
unteachableness, they compel the adoption of violent meth-
ods. We have a heritage of civilization and mutual toler-
ance which is important to ourselves and to the world. Life
in Russia has always been fierce and cruel to a far greater
degree than with us, and out of the war has come a danger
that this fierceness and cruelty may become universal. I
have hopes that in England this may be avoided through the
moderation of both sides. But it is essential to a happy
issue that melodrama should no longer determine our views
of the Bolsheviki; they are neither angels to be worshiped
nor devils to be exterminated, but merely bold and able men
attempting, with great skill what is an almost impossible
task.
VI. TOWN AND COUNTRY
The problem of inducing the peasants to feed the towns
is one which Russia shares with Central Europe, and
from what one hears Russia has been less unsuccessful than
some other countries in dealing with this problem. For the
Soviet Government the problem is mainly concentrated in
Moscow and Petrograd ; the other towns are not very large,
and are mostly in the center of rich agricultural districts.
It is true that in the north even the rural population nor-
mally depends upon food from more southerly districts; but
the northern population is small. It is commonly said that
the problem of feeding Moscow and Petrograd is a transport
problem, but I think this is only partially true. There is, of
course, a grave deficiency of rolling-stock, especially of loco-
motives in good repair. But Moscow is surrounded by very
good land. In the course of a day's motoring in the neigh-
borhood I saw enough cows to supply milk to the whole child
population of Moscow, although what I had come to see was
children's sanatoria, not farms. All kinds of food can be
bought in the market at high prices. I traveled over a con-
siderable extent of Russian railways, and saw a fair number
of goods trains. For all these reasons I feel convinced that
the share of the transport problem in the food difficulties has
been exaggerated. Of course transport plays a larger part
in the shortage in Petrograd than in Moscow, because food
comes mainly from south of Moscow. In Petrograd, most
of the people one sees in the streets show obvious signs of
underfeeding. In Moscow the visible signs are much less
frequent, but there is no doubt that underfeeding, though
not actual starvation, is nearly universal.
The Government supplies rations to every one who works
in the towns at a very low fixed price. The official theory is
that the Government has a monopoly of the food and that
the rations are sufficient to sustain life. The fact is that the
rations are not sufficient, and that they are only a portion of
the food supply of Moscow. Moreover, people complain, I
do not know how truly, that the rations are delivered irregu-
larly; some say, about every other day. Under these cir-
cumstances, almost everybody, rich or poor, buys food in the
market, where it costs about fifty times the fixed Govern-
ment price. A pound of butter costs about a month's wages.
In order to be able to afford extra food, people adopt various
expedients. Some do additional work at extra rates after
their official day's work is over. For, though there is sup-
posed to be, by law, an eight-hour day, the wage paid for it
is not a living wage, and there is nothing to prevent a man
from undertaking other work in his spare time. But the
usual resource is what is called "speculation," i.e., buying
and selling. Some person formerly rich sells clothes or fur-
niture or jewelry in return for food; the buyer sells again
at an enhanced price, and so on through perhaps twenty
hands, until a final purchaser is found in some well-to-do
peasant or nouveau riche speculator. Again, most people
have relations in the country whom they visit from time to
time, bringing back with them great bags of flour. It is
illegal for private persons to bring food into Moscow, and
the trains are searched ; but by corruption or cunning experi-
enced people can elude the search. The food market is ille-
gal and is raided occasionally, but as a rule it is winked at.
Thus the attempt to suppress private commerce has resulted
in an amount of buying and selling which far exceeds what
happens in capitalist countries. It takes up a great deal of
time that might be more profitably employed; and, being
illegal, it places practically the whole population of Moscow
154
The Nation
[Vol. ill, No. 2875
at the mercy of the police. Moreover, it depends largely
upon the stores of goods belonging to those who were for-
merly rich, and when these are expended the whole system
must collapse unless industry has meanwhile been reestab-
lished on a sound basis.
It is clear that the state of affairs is unsatisfactory, but,
from the Government's point of view, it is not easy to see
what ought to be done. The urban and industrial population
is mainly concerned in carrying on the work of government
and supplying munitions to the army. These are very neces-
sary tasks, the cost of which ought to be defrayed out of
taxation. A moderate tax in kind on the peasants would
easily feed Moscow and Petrograd. But the peasants take
no interest in war or government. Russia is so vast that
invasion of one part does not touch another part; and the
peasants are too ignorant to have any national consciousness
such as one takes for granted in England or France or Ger-
many. The peasants will not willingly part with a portion
of their produce merely for purposes of national defense
but only for the goods they need — clothes, agricultural im-
plements, etc. — which the Government, owing to the war
and the blockade, is not in a position to supply.
When the food shortage was at its worst, the Govern-
ment antagonized the peasants by forced requisitions, car-
ried out with great harshness by the Red Army. This
method has been abandoned; but the peasants still part un-
willingly with their food, as is natural in view of the use-
lessness of paper and the enormously higher prices offered
by private buyers.
The food problem is the main cause of popular opposition
to the Bolsheviki, yet I cannot see how any popular policy
could have been adopted. The Bolsheviki are disliked by the
peasants because they take so much food; they are disliked
'in the towns because they take so little. What the peasants
want is what is called free trade,. i.e., de-control of agricul-
tural produce. If this policy were adopted the towns would
be faced by utter starvation, not merely by hunger and hard-
ship. It is an entire misconception to suppose that the peas-
ants cherish any hostility to the Entente. The Daily News
of July 13, in an otherwise excellent leading article, speaks
of "the growing hatred of the Russian peasant, who is
neither a Communist nor a Bolshevist, for the Allies gen-
erally and this country is particular." The typical Russian
peasant has never hea^d of the Allies or of this country; he
does not know that there is a blockade ; all he knows is that
he used to have six cows but the Government reduced him
to one for the sake of poorer peasants, and that it takes his
corn (except what is needed for his own family) at a very
low price. The reasons for these actions do not interest him,
since his horizon is bounded by his own village. To a re-
markable extent each village is an independent unit. So
long as the Government obtains the food and soldiers that it
requires it does not interefere, and leaves untouched the old
village communism, which is extraordinarily unlike bol-
shevism and entirely dependent upon a very primitive stage
of culture.
The Government represents the interests of the urban and
industrial population, and is, as it were, encamped amid a
peasant nation with whom its relations are rather diplomatic
and military than governmental in the ordinary sense. The
economic situation, as in Central Europe, is favorable to the
country and unfavorable to the towns. If Russia were gov-
erned democratically, according to the will of the majority,
the inhabitants of Moscow and Petrograd would die of
starvation. As it is, Moscow and Petrograd just manage to
live by having the whole civil and military power of the
state devoted to their needs. Russia affords the curious
spectacle of a vast and powerful Empire, prosperous at the
periphery but faced with dire want at the center. Those
who have least prosperity have most power; and it is
only through their excess of power that they are enabled to
live at all. The situation is due at bottom to two facts : that
almost the whole industrial energy of the population has had
to be devoted to war, and that the peasants do not appreciate
the importance of the war or the fact of the blockade.
It is futile to blame the Bolsheviki for an unpleasant and
difficult situation which it has been impossible for them to
avoid. Their problem is only soluble in one of two ways:
by the cessation of the war and the blockade, which would
enable them to supply the peasants with the goods they
need in exchange for food; or by the gradual development
of an independent Russian industry. This latter method
would be slow and would involve terrible hardships, but
some of the ablest men in the Government believe it to be
possible if peace cannot be achieved. If we force this
method upon Russia by the refusal of peace and trade, we
shall forfeit the only inducement we can hold out for
friendly relations ; we shall render the Soviet State unassail-
able and completely free to pursue the policy of promoting
revolution everywhere.
Starkweather Writes a Happy
Ending
By JAMES RORTY
MY name is Starkweather. I am a proud Anglo-Saxon,
but my business is writing novels and stories after
the Russian manner. What I set down here, must, I fear,
be considered as the record of a business failure.
Yesterday the sun turned itself into a molten ooze and
filtered into the room where I sat poking out of a type-
writer a long screed about a young man who leapt lightly
out of the twentieth story window of a skyscraper rather
than be a business man.
I said: "What is it clogs the keys? Why am I suddenly
weak? There's my young man poised, ready to jump — needs
just one more push. Can't you help him through one little
page of dying?"
I couldn't. I was too hot. "Let him fall off by himself,"
I sulked. "0 death, do your own dirty work. Let him even
live, no matter how raggedly."
The air darkened. It became so hot that I panted and
thought I should stifle. Leaving the half-written page in
the machine I stripped to my undershirt and lay down on
my couch. "Perhaps I, too, am a victim in a tale," I
reflected. "Perhaps on the other side of the hill whence
come these faint rumblings, there sits the pessimistic
genius of the world, who puffs at a pipe and debates whether
or not it would make a fitting climax to his story if he
converted the earth into an oven and baked to death me and
a million other wretched humans."
The thought was scarcely edifying. Resolving that at
least I should not die decently in my bed, I got up and re-
turned to the typewriter. But it was impossible for me to
work. The disaster which I had planned for my hero must
August 7, 1920]
The Nation
155
be postponed. Nature herself had donned the tragic
masque. I went out into the garden. "If this is judgment
day," I said to myself, "and if I must make a choice of
attitudes, I had on the whole rather that the Angel of the
Lord found me in my garden hoeing my beans."
It grew hotter. The haze thickened, and premonitory
mutterings came from behind the hill where that laboring
genius plotted blood and thunder for the world. "I know,
I know," I murmured sympathetically, as I sweated at the
hoe. A drop of water spattered on my hand. I looked up,
and saw, far up the mountain, an isolated pine tree bend
far over sharply, although the air in the valley was yet
heavy and lifeless. Then, suddenly, the whole side of the
hill vanished in a swirl of rain. It was as if the cloud which
had hung over the mountain had liquefied in an instant and
flung itself upon the landscape. I got indoors just in time.
A sheet of driven water was tearing through my studio
window, and I had to fight to close it. The rickety struc-
ture rocked and groaned. What if it should go? I had a
momentary vision of myself cowering homeless in the midst
of a rain-beaten, rioting wilderness, my manuscripts career-
ing in the wind, my feeble typewriter silent in the ruins.
But the house did not go. It even seemed as if there were
something positive and challenging about its steadfastness.
And outside, too, one saw that the storm was by no means
having its own way altogether. Decidedly, it was to be not
a massacre but a battle. I almost clapped my hands as I
saw the lithe energy with which the slim young maple at
my back door wrestled with the gale.
This morning the weather has cleared. That capricious
Genius who lives on the other side of the mountain has
puffed a fleecy white cloud into the sky, and the sun is
temperate. The landscape has a cleansed and guileless
aspect like the Old Homestead. I sit at breakfast on my
porch and survey the havoc wrought by the storm. My
valiant young maple has not even shed a branch. Two
roadside trees, however, have toppled over at the roots,
carrying with them a section of fence. But prostrate as
they are, they are not without dignity. One feels that
they fought a good fight, were beaten down fairly, and did
not limply flop. The hail has flayed the meadow until grass
and daisies and buttercups and iris lie in fallen windrows
of drenched and tangled luxuriance. But I know that even
now the grass is stretching its roots deep in the oozing soil
and sucking up the strength which will bring forth a taller
harvest. My beans, too, I reflect confidently, will repair
some of their broken stalks and bear with sufficient plenty.
This morning I must finish that story. The young man
has been standing on the ledge of that skyscraper quite
long enough. It is time he did something about it. He is
an interesting young man, a morbid young man, a despair-
ing young man, and according to my usual formula he
ought to be half way to the street by this time, rotating
slowly and spilling Stygian introspection at the rate of
fifty words a second. But after all, he is a young man, and
this morning I don't feel quite like massacring him. I had
rather make him fight. Merely because his insides hurt
him, what's the use of flopping him into the street, or flop-
ping him back into business? Let's see — he is a very com-
fortable young man, and he's got to do something — aha!
I have it! I shall make him seduce his stenographer. That
will be sunnier, more like life this morning, and yet retain
something of my characteristic manner. On the whole,
that story is not a complete failure after all.
William Marion Reedy
By ZOE AKINS
MR. REEDY of Reedy's Mirror of St. Louis, who died
last week, had a genius that he loved to employ for
fingering, with the touch of a magician, at a poor literary
thing that he could make — with a pass here and a pass
there — his own. But I am not of those who regard his
attitude toward young talents as one of his foremost literary
virtues. "I'm tired of the role of discoverer," he wrote
in a letter only a few months ago; and I believe he was
indeed tired in the sense that he knew that many of the
people he "made" were not in the least aware that he was
glad to be the railing beside the stream, yet not continually
the crutch for their abilities — though he found a very
human satisfaction at times in seeing the vain and the
ungrateful stumble when they tried to proceed alone.
Do not misunderstand — there never was anyone whose
generosity was more durable in spite of the many strains put
upon it, never anyone who loved to praise as he did or was
keener than he to be moved to genuine enthusiasm. But
"this country is fetid with talent," he wrote on a certain
occasion ; and I do not believe that he esteemed very greatly
his reputation for discovering it. I think he considered it
merely a part of his job to find his wares and buy them
where others were not bidding, so that the unnatural stress
put upon this aspect of his discrimination began eventually
to bore him — that and the drag of the wearisome ambitions
of many whom he had brought to the public's attention.
At any rate, in spite of his delicate solicitude for the anxious
beginner, the irony of the larger situation had pierced him.
His tongue was often in his cheek. And in saying this I
do not forget that I, too, was an anxious beginner — one who
went to him with a first sonnet. I find myself resenting
the fact that much of the regret which finds its voice to-
day for the departure of William Marion Reedy is for the
very things that after all, in comparison with his greater
gifts, seem trivial. To say only that he was helpfui, that
he was kind, that he was the best companion and the most
engaging talker in the world, is as though one grieved be-
cause he could no longer give his gifts. Those particularly
human qualities that had made him something of a sinner's
saint had also exhausted to a mood of high-thinking pessi-
mism, or, as he himself put it, to a "death-damp of cyni-
cism," a spirit too rarely equipped for treasure-seeking in
eerie corners of the world to be a burden-bearer on the roads
that lead in and out of humanity's market-place.
Born at a time and in a place where the life that crowded
about him was the weed-like growth of an unkept garden,
this child of Kerry Patch grew strangely into a huge
creature of exquisite sensibilities, romantic curiosities, and
heroic ardors, a soul so sizable and so true that where there
was any benevolence or any beauty he was drawn to it.
That he recorded himself, sometimes magnificently, some-
times wearily, but always with something of the valuable
vision of a far-seeing and far-seeking intelligence is an
achievement that has yet to be truly estimated by the finely
critical and mentally eager minds of those who will see
the crowded works of this crowded day in the perspective
of time. Even now we can say that the far-spoken, pictur-
esque Westerner who died the other day had something of
the sheer intellectual size of Queen Elizabeth's stirring age.
156
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2875
The Farmer-Labor Party
By ROBERT M. BUCK
THE Farmer-Labor Party recognizes its mission to be
an attempt to end class politics, class parties, and
class government in the United States. There is no longer a
middle class in this country, despite assertions of any who
may wish to organize a middle class party. There are two
classes — the exploiters and the exploited. At present the
exploiters control the two old parties, by financing them
equally — supporting them for the purpose of fooling the
voters with false issues and thereby keeping the exploited
divided, so that they cannot function unitedly in politics.
Thus, the Democratic and Republican Parties are class
parties, for if a party is controlled and manipulated by a
class, it is as much a class party as if all its members belong
to a single class. The effort of the Farmer-Labor Party is
to induce all exploited groups to arise in their political
might and unite to throw off the exploiters.
Who are exploited? Industrial workers in factory, mine,
and on railroad; farm workers, whether for wages, as rent-
ers, or as "owners" of land; office workers, store workers,
school teachers, scientific workers, actors, small merchants,
and that large body of workers whose tools are the frying
pan, the broom, and the baby carriage. All of these are ex-
ploited. These are not all of the exploited groups, but they
serve as typical. People talk loosely about the public. Who
are the public? These exploited groups form nine-tenths of
the public. Are we not too prone in America to think of the
public as consumers? But the same individuals who are con-
sumers are also producers — that is, those of them who serve
their fellowmen. Even some of the exploiters are pro-
ducers, and such of these as are unwilling exploiters belong
in the Farmer-Labor Party. To those who complain that
the workers also exploit the public, we answer that a man
cannot exploit himself. The workers are nine-tenths of the
public, and in a country where the majority rules that
amounts to saying that, for practical purposes, the
workers are the public. Who, then, are the workers — the
labor to whom the Farmer-Labor Party makes its appeal?
In the official language of the party, they are "those who
perform useful work by hand and brain." In other words,
they are the exploited plus the few exploiters who are
unwillingly such.
Realizing that the principal reason why the old parties fool
instead of serve the voters is because they are financed
equally by the exploiters, the Farmer-Labor Party de-
pends upon its members to finance it. Therefore, it has
been organized as a dues-paying party, much along the lines
of the Nonpartisan League in the Northwest. The effort
is to marshal into a unified political effort the exploited that
they may manage and finance their own politics. If this
effort is even reasonably successful, the exploited will, by
peaceful political action, be able to recapture their govern-
ment from the control of the exploiters and begin to run
it for the ninety per cent. If they can do this, the small
per cent of exploiters will be put out of business as such,
and at that point there will cease to be two classes in the
United States — exploiters and exploited. This is the manner
in which the Farmer-Labor Party is fighting class politics,
class parties, and class government in the United States.
The preamble of the platform tells what appeal is to be made
to these groups. Here are some of its important sentences:
All power to govern this nation must be restored to the people.
Political democracy is only an empty phrase without indus-
trial democracy.
Our nation stands today in danger of becoming an empire
instead of a republic.
. . . reconstruction ... to be effective must smash to
atoms the money power of the proprietors of the two old
parties.
The planks of the platform pledge restoration in full of
American rights and liberties; full equal suffrage for all
citizens regardless of sex, race, color, or creed; abolition of
imperialism at home and abroad; democratic control of in-
dustry ; public ownership and democratic operation of public
utilities and natural resources ; reduction of the growth and
evils of farm tenancy ; forcing into use idle lands ; reduction
of the burden of taxation on the exploited and placing it on
the exploiter in proportion to his ability to pay. These are
not all of the planks, but they are the typical ones. Special
planks demand fair play for farmers and for city workers.
In the anti-imperialism plank the Treaty of Versailles is
denounced, together with our treatment of American depend-
encies. Then, to make the plank direct and unequivocal,
there are flat declarations against war with Mexico and for
recognition of the elected Governments of Ireland and
Russia. So the Farmer-Labor Party has not dealt in weasel
words. It has not sacrificed principle for political expedi-
ency. It has demanded votes for Negroes, which means
simply the enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment to the
Constitution; Federal aid to education, though Federal con-
trol is not called for ; recognition of Ireland and Russia, full
financial recompense for ex-service men, and the complete
"bill of rights" of labor as outlined by the American Federa-
tion of Labor. None of these matters is urged in the Demo-
cratic and Republican platforms. The keynote of the arch is
the plank which reads: "the right of labor to an increasing
share in the responsibilities and management of industry;
application of this principle to be developed in accordance
with the experience of actual operation." This is the party's
demand for industrial freedom — freedom from exploitation
for workers in factory, field, store, and office; to release the
balked and thwarted instincts of the workers and restore
interest in their work; to put song, sunshine, adventure,
and laughter into lives now bleak.
Contributors to This Issue
Bertrand Russell is the British scholar and philosopher
whose first article on Russia was published in The
Nation of July 31.
Robert M. Buck is the editor of The New Majority.
Zoe Akins is well known as a poet and playwright, the
author of "Declassee."
Augustine Birrell is the eminent British essayist.
Marie Tudor Garland was a delegate to the recent con-
gress of International Woman's Suffrage Alliance.
August 7, 1920]
The Nation
157
Women's Internationalism
By MARIE TUDOR GARLAND
THE Eighth Congress of the International Woman Suf-
frage Alliance, held in Geneva, June 6 to 12, met after
an interval of seven years. The Congress of 1913 in Buda-
pest had voted to meet the following year. That meeting
was never held. In July, 1914, a tidal wave of war began
to form. Gaining in force, it swept the earth, gathering in
nation after nation. As this wave now recedes new groups
appear. Out of the pain of war new nations are born. The
international gathering in Geneva brought together the sur-
vivors of the old order and the offspring of the new.
To me, the Congress of 1920 seemed to hold more of hope
for the world than any international gathering in history.
Neutral to all questions that were purely national, yet open
to every nation, this Congress came together with a breadth
of vision never before attained. Irrespective of language,
race or creed, it dealt directly with questions of human life
and human liberty. Here, women of antagonistic nations
met on the one plane that can draw humanity together, the
plane that recognizes life as the vital fact in all construc-
tive policy. Here women met to secure the right of the
future race to be born into a world that shall recognize love
as a greater force than hate, hold human happiness above
human gain, and beauty of life as the first requisite of
happiness. Here women met in complete unanimity of pur-
pose, not to serve the ends of women alone, not to align
themselves against men, but to win for humanity the liberty
that shall belong to it.
The complete enfranchisement of women will place hu-
manity on a safer basis than it has yet had. Woman's voice
is as necessary to life as man's and that recognition, as the
Congress suggested by its every act, will entail far more
than the right of suffrage. Suffrage is only a beginning.
The war has brought to the women of many countries the
knowledge that they are part of the civilizing influence of
the world. As they stood behind the men, freed for action
by the necessity of conflict, they saw for the first time the
mask stripped from the face of war. They saw its grim
mouth claiming food which was their children's. They had
to starve the little ones to feed an insatiable appetite. They
starved themselves. They starved the unborn. Women
found all life, present and future, involved in a cataclysm
which they had not brought about and they were forced to
search deep for the cause. They awoke to their responsi-
bility; suffrage became inevitable. As a result of this,
twenty-one countries reported they had newly won the vote
for women.* Organized in 1902 by the efforts of Mrs. Catt,
the International Woman Suffrage Alliance first had an
affiliation of seven nations. At that time only Australasia
had the woman's vote. At the Congress of 1920 were
twenty-eight countries affiliated, and several others applying
for membership.
Most significant about the Congress was the representa-
tion present. Women worked to obtain money to attend.
Groups of women sold their jewels in order to enable one
woman to be present and represent them. Reports read
showed that about one hundred women are in parliaments
•The 21 countries are Austria, British East Africa, Canada, Crimea, Czecho-
Slorakia, Denmark, Esthonia, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Lettonia,
Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Rhodesia, Russia, Serbia,
Sweden, IFkrainia, Uruguay.
and at least five thousand holding municipal office. Since
the last Congress the woman suffrage movement has ob-
tained full recognition by the press. It has also obtained
international recognition from a new angle. Although
within the last year a letter sent to President Wilson by
the National American Woman Suffrage Association was
not acknowledged, yet to this Congress of the International
Woman Suffrage Alliance six governments and the League
of Nations sent official representatives. Small wonder that
such a movement has burst the bounds of suffrage.
Nine resolutions were passed. The gist of these is:
that the Congress call upon the women of the world to use
their power, through international education and knowledge,
to prevent future wars. That equal status with men be
granted women in legislative and administrative bodies,
both national and international; equal educational and eco-
nomic rights, equal personal rights, equal domestic rights,
equal moral rights. A resolution was sent to the League
of Nations: (1) "That the women of thirty-one nations
assembled in Congress in Geneva, convinced that in a strong
Society of Nations, based on the principles of right and
justice, lies the only hope of assuring the future peace of
the world, call upon all the women of the whole world to
direct their will, their intelligence, and their influence to-
ward the development and the consolidation of the Society
of Nations on such a basis, and to assist it in every possible
way in its work of securing peace and good will throughout
the world; (2) that a Conference of women be summoned
annually by the League of Nations for the purpose of con-
sidering questions relating to the welfare and status of
women, the Conference to be held at the seat of the League
. . .; (3) that the League 'recommend to its constituent
states the abolition of the state regulation of prostitution.' "
The several government representatives spoke, each in
turn bringing forth the various ways that women might
cooperate with men, or work singly and in bodies for the
betterment of present conditions. Mme. Schwimmer, repre-
senting Hungary, poignantly expressed the responsibility
of women. Lady Astor, speaking for Great Britain, though
American born, expressed the attitude of the younger gen-
eration impatiently brought face to face with the facts of
life.
Although not every delegate was internationally-minded,
and attempts were made to break away into a separate femi-
nist movement, dealing with women's rights as apart from
men's, Mrs. Catt was able, through her personality, to hold
the group to its course — the full democratization of the
women of the world, not primarily as women but as joint
members of the human family. The International Woman
Suffrage Alliance has before it great possibilities. It came
perilously near the point where its utility would cease —
that of separating women from men — in the demand for a
separate bureau to work through the League of Nations
dealing with matters purely feminine. There are no such
matters in life. What concerns woman also concerns man.
One complements the other, one balances the other. Femi-
nine thought will advance more intelligently once it is recog-
nized as having a place in human psychology.
In primitive man his thought and struggle was for himself
only — but now he is found offering his life for the preser-
vation of the nation, recognizing his unity with that group,
that group as one with him. His next field of effort is the
international and in that effort he has now a comrade.
158
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2875
In the Driftway
WHOSE dreadful sin, their parents' or their original
own, condemns some people to the names they wear?
The Drifter knows a hundred men and women in seven
quarters of the country who cannot reveal more than their
initials without a blush — the Azariahs and Uardas and
Eurythas, the Melchizedeks of Massachusetts and the
Catos and Lucius Quintuses of Kentucky. To name a boy,
still wriggling in his first redness, after a president is bad
enough; the need of Thomas Jeffersons and George Wash-
ington and Andrew Jacksons is always slighter than the
supply ; but the Drifter can understand such behavior, even
though he has never forgiven it, particularly in the case of
a family of his acquaintance which boasts a Grover Cleve-
land, a Benjamin Harrison, a William McKinley, and doubt-
less would have boasted a Theodore Roosevelt and heaven
knows what else if the line had not turned to girls and pro-
duced a Susan Anthony and a Frances Willard. What the
Drifter cannot understand, granted one's surname is as
unfortunate as inevitable, is why the matter should be
made worse by a given name which might be different.
Why, for instance, should one pair which the Drifter
vouches for, when their name was already Beauty, have
called an heir Constant, thus putting him in the pillory of
loud, incredulous laughter for life? Yet Constant Beauty,
a plain, honest man, actually lifts stones and talks of crops
and bullocks in New England. Better far the deft evasion
of that family in the West whose name was Mudd. When
a son was born to them they might, being of the general
rank they were, have called him Henry Clay, as the wags
suggested. But no! The mother had a classical tendency,
apparently, and wanted to do something that would impart
a pastoral touch and at the same time elevate the lowly
cognomen. The result, as the Drifter solemnly and sacredly
avers and avows, is that within three miles of a great State
university, well known to him, cows are milked and horses
sworn at by a tax-paying citizen whose name is Coridon
Mudd.
*****
THE Drifter always suspected that the most profitable
of all businesses was that of being a 100 per cent
American. Now he is sure of it. He has read Ole Han-
son's testimony at the Communist trial in Chicago as re-
ported in the New York World, July 22.
On cross-examination Ole Hanson was asked: "Why did you
resign as Mayor of Seattle?"
"Because of poverty, neuritis, and dire need," Hanson replied.
"What was your salary as Mayor?"
"Seventy-five hundred a year."
"What have you been doing since then?"
"I've been lecturing on Americanism." He added that he
got $300 each for the first twenty lectures, and that so far he
had received about $35,000.
The Drifter
Correspondence
The Boldness of a Bishop
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: I should like to draw your attention to a rather unusual
incident which occurred at one of the sectional meetings of the
recent International Congregational Council at Boston, and which
seems to have escaped the notice of most of our newspapers.
This was the remarkable address, during a discussion of The
Ethics of Liberty, by Bishop Fred B. Fisher of the Methodist
Episcopal Church.
Remarking that we in this country had in a large measure
secured religious and political freedom, he went on to discuss
the danger of economic slavery in these days. Here the boldness
of the Bishop was delightful as unexpected. To cite but one
illustration. He illustrated the meaning of economic serfdom
by an anecdote from his own observation in Russia, whon he
had happened to see a "lordly person" slash the faces of a slow-
moving crowd with his whip and they had accepted the brutality
"because it had to be so." The audience of the Bishop was ap-
propriately sympathetic. Then in vivid, dramatic language he
pictured himself on the steps of a New York hotel about a year
ago, watching the line-up of twenty-five hundred Russians for a
parade. The parade started, and at the same time there dashed
from the side streets forty mounted police who made straight
for the crowd, which dispersed in confusion. A robust defender
of the law then deliberately turned his horse around and charged
down the sidewalk. One man was knocked down, unconscious.
Sixteen affidavits were obtained by the Bishop and offered to two
leading New York dailies, but they were courteously refused.
The "facts" as published said that ten thousand Russians rioted
that day, whereas, in the words of the Bishop, "the riot was a
riot of the New York police." When bishops speak out, who
needs to keep silence? A further illuminating sentence was that
in which the Bishop, while warning his audience not to call him
a Bolshevik, said that "the Bolshevik regime had done more
for primary education in Russia in two years than the Ro-
manoffs had done in three hundred." It was a most refresh-
ing occasion. It is interesting to know that Bishop Fisher has
been assigned to work in India. The New India will surely
welcome such a lover of freedom into their midst.
West Cornwall, Connecticut, July 21 Fred Smith
A Suggested Solution
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir : I have just read Mr. Soule's article in the issue of July 3
entitled "The Transport Breakdown." Why in the name of
common sense does not the public take a hand in controlling
its business? It is a simple matter to control, but no effective
control will ever develop from conflicts between parties, or
bodies, who are actuated by their selfish interests. Legislation
fixing a minimum wage high enough to allow every unskilled
worker to maintain a family, based upon the index number of
the cost of living, and fluctuating as that index fluctuates from
time to time.
To secure efficient service on the part of employees entitled to
such minimum wage, and to properly remunerate skilled work-
ers, the law should make it obligatory upon the employers and
employed to fix two elements by agreement in the industry, (1)
A standard of product per day period; (2) To fix percentages
above unskilled taken at 100 per cent, for each degree of skill
above unskilled labor. Failing such agreement a public author-
ity should be required to fix them. The question of wages would
then be removed from the field of conflict. After its establish-
ment, a worker could apply for work at any degree of skill that
he had, or thought he had, toward producing the required standard
product. Failing to do so he would automatically drop into a
lower class, the pay being regulated by the percentage of
efficiency that he was able to maintain. On the other hand a
man having more skill than called for by the grade he was in
would naturally secure higher pay and a higher grade.
It is absurd that the community for which all service is given,
and which pays for results, should sit back and allow its ser-
vants to play cats and dogs with the business of the country.
Baltimore, July U F. Lincoln Hutchins
August 7, 1920]
The Nation
159
Humoresque
By ERNEST M. HUNT
0 that I were
A turtle!
1 could draw in my head
When these hail storms
Of propaganda
Sweep across the land.
Books
With the Wits
With the Wits. By Paul Elmer More. Houghton Mifflin Com-
pany.
Literary Studies. By Charles Whibley. The Maemillan Com-
pany.
MANY years have passed since the days when I numbered
among my friends a man much older than myself, of
pungent wit yet of delicate manners, who, though he had only
drawn his breath in the last century, lived and moved, and had
his literary being, in the eighteenth. And what a glorious span
it was — from Dryden to Johnson! He seemed to me to know
the century in all its crevices — both the great names and the
small ones. Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Prior, Parnell — they were
at his finger ends. No gossip of Walpole's was beneath his
humorous notice, no sculduddery of Tom Brown "of facetious
memory" but might occasionally serve his turn. For him not a
page of The Gentleman's Magazine was without its reminiscence,
and hardly an anecdote in the seventeen volumes of Nichols
would he readily pronounce insignificant. Johnson, from Lich-
field to St. Paul's, he had made his very own. Over David Hume
he loved to dwell at perhaps too great a length. His taste was
indeed too good to dim his eyes to the fact that there was more
poetry in Christabel than in the Epistle to Eloise, and more
wisdom in Wordsworth than in Prior's Alma; yet when I, seek-
ing to soften the blow, would point out that the early poems of
Wordsworth and Coleridge (to say nothing of Burns) were first
published within the bounds of the century he loved so well, he
moved uneasily, as if overhearing within the slender confines of
those volumes the rumble of the death-knell of a great tradition.
My friend had some prejudices, which he carefully nursed and
kept warm within his breast; and for a long time, one of the
strongest of these was against the United States, which he in-
sisted was the home of multi-millionaires, of corrupt "bosses,"
and extravagant females. Were you able to point out to him,
on any of the rare occasions when he could be persuaded to take
a turn in the park or go to the opera, some slim and beautiful
damsel wearing her clothes with grace and dignity, yet evidently
une Americaine, he would but murmur "Oh! Molly Lepel!"
So inveterate a prejudice seemed to me to be bound to follow
him to his grave.
Yet one day whilst lunching at the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet
Street, he confided to me that he was about, in his old age, to
cross the Atlantic. I stared at him with Cortez-like amazement.
But it was true. A daughter, so I learnt for the first time, had
married an American and insisted upon his coming out to visit
her; and so, said he, paraphrasing Gibbon, "I sigh as a John-
sonian, and obey as a father."
I greatly applauded the enterprise and in order to lighten the
theme, for he was somewhat moved, asked him whether he had
yet made up his mind what book he meant to take with him as a
cabin-companion during the passage. His eye flashed. "On
one," he replied, "I have already fixed — 'Spence's Anecdotes.' "
I laughed right out, saying: "Why, you must know all those
stories about Pope and Bolingbroke and the rest of them off by
heart." "Indeed I do not," was the reply (somewhat tart, as
indeed was his wont), "and no more do you. But," he went on,
"even if I did, 'Spence's Anecdotes' will so impregnate me with
their atmosphere that when I land I shall be immune against the
bacillus Americanus." In a fortnight he had sailed, and when
some weeks afterward I saw on my counterpane an envelope ad-
dressed in a well-known hand, and adorned with heads of Presi-
dents instead of Kings, I wondered what I should read within.
He relieved my anxiety at once. "I think I am happier here
than at home. I need not have troubled about 'Spence's Anec-
dotes,' for I found a copy by my bedside, and the people I meet
every day know a great deal more about Pope and Johnson and
Gray and Hume than most of the folk in England, and you have
to be very careful in repeating an anecdote even out of Nichol,
lest it should prove a chestnut."
These seemingly irrelevant memories of an old friend came
upon me almost overwhelmingly whilst reading the tenth series
of the "Shelburne Essays." In a world so full of good books, as
well as of bad ones, there is no need to apologize for the fact
that the tenth series of Mr. More's Essays is the first that has
come my way; for now that it has come, what can be pleasanter
than to learn that there are nine other volumes behind it? My
old friend, had he lived to review "With the Wits," could have
done it fuller justice than lies within my power. It is difficult
to review a bundle of essays on divers subjects. In this volume
Mr. More handles, knowingly, amongst others, Halifax "The
Trimmer," Swift, Pope, "Lady Mary," Bishop Berkeley, and the
Duke of Wharton. Familiar names, no doubt, and, after a dim
fashion, familiar scenes; yet admitting of a great variety of
treatment, and an almost infinite suggestiveness.
Mr. More seems to belong, though it is rash for me to hazard
the assertion, to the order of American conservatives. He some-
times writes in a style which were he not an American citizen
I should be disposed to call a Tory style, and one that agrees in
sentiment, though not in mode of expression, with those excellent
"Literary Studies" and "Literary Portraits" of Mr. Charles
Whibley, about whose Toryism there can be no doubt. When
read carefully Mr. More's essay on Pope has at times an almost
Jacobite ring — a not unpleasing sound to me, who though neither
a Jacobite nor a Jacobin have no more a passion for the Whigs
than Johnson had for clean linen. After telling us that the only
honest way of dealing squarely with Pope is to treat him as the
Poet of Satire, and as a foremost fighter in the battle of the
Wits, he goes on as follows:
"That battle of the Wits was no causeless or merely bookish
event, but was part of the great political war of the land. . . .
It all goes back to that terrible mischance which in the days of
the Stuarts divided the imagination and the practical sense of
England into irreconcilable camps. . . . That separation
kept its character through the following century, if it has not
continued down to this day. Bolingbroke's vision of the Patriot
King was a reassumption of the faith of the Cavaliers, and as
it was a product of the imagination divorced of practical sense
we see it working out in the follies of George III and the loss of
an empire. Walpole's policy was essentially a continuation of
the empire of Cromwell, and as it failed to make a plea for the
imagination in its practice we see the result in the gradual low-
ering of England's ideal life. At the beginning of the eighteenth
century England was the intellectual leader of Europe; at the
end she followed at a distance. I know of no more distressing
fact in her history than the situation which at the critical
moment of 1714 set all the notable men of letters on the losing
side — all of them, I should say, with the exception of Addison
and Steele, for De Foe at least served Harley and fell with
him. . . . Picture to yourself one of the dinners at Lord
Oxford's, the guests they met there, and what they stood for,
or call up one of the more intimate companies in the apart-
ments of Dr. Arbuthnot, and in comparison with these think of
what passed in the palace of George I and his son."
/■UBL'JC
160
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2875
Our essayist, and here I am with him, loves satire, and counts
the great Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot as at once the prologue and
the consummation of Pope's satires. "For myself," he writes, "I
have read the Epistle oftener, perhaps, than any other English
poem except Lycidas. . . . If it is not poetry, I do not know
where poetry is to be found."
Mr. More defends Pope's ferocious and atrocious attack on
Lord Hervey on the ground that its "real animus was the rela-
tion of Hervey and Queen Caroline and the Hanoverian Court,
and all that meant to the intellectual and imaginative life of
England. This, too, most be the palliation for the portrait of
Addison." Over this fierce warfare of the Wits against Dullness
our essayist casts a sympathetic eye and has no hesitation in
ranking himself on Pope's side. "Men in this living age are still
fighting for the rights of the mind against a dull and elusive
materialism, for the freedom of the imagination against a prosaic
tyranny, for a pure and patient ambition against the quick suc-
cesses of vanity and pliant cleverness, for the reality of human
nature against a fatuous self-complacency!"
Another of Mr. More's papers ought to be mentioned, since it
relates to an author who, though he has almost everything to
recommend him, for he wrote but little and all that little is
quotable, is yet only seldom mentioned by the critics — Halifax
the Trimmer. To write about Halifax is to quote him, for only
he can explain himself. Amongst Mr. More's quotations is one
I had never before noted: "Men must be saved in this world by
their want of faith." Sixty years ago an old Liverpool Quaker
was fond of impressing upon me his maxim, "Remember, that
whilst you are saved in the next world by faith, in this one you
are saved by lack of it." Even Quakers must have their odd
moments, and some of them may in this case have been devoted
to reading Halifax "On the World." To read "With the Wits"
19 indeed to enjoy the community of letters after an exhilarat-
ing fashion. Augustine Birrell
A Study in Propaganda
Facts and Fabrications about Soviet Russia. By Evans Clark.
The Rand School of Social Science.
IT OWEVER wrong and in the long run unwise it may be,
*■ *■ it seems to be a natural tactic, and one that has a sure
temporary effect, for men and parties to blacken the character
of and to distort the facts about their enemies. The enormous
mass of international vituperation poured from the press and
from the pulpit during the last six years was a phenomenon not
peculiar to the Great War; it has been characteristic of every
war. And now the same organs recently engaged in spouting
hatred against Germany have turned the stream against Russia.
Such a campaign of misrepresentation, prejudice, and sheer
mendacity as has been waged against the Bolsheviki can find no
parallel unless we go back to the French Revolution as mirrored
in the distorted fears of the English and Continental conserva-
tive aristocrats.
It is not to offer new facts about Russia but to expose the
calumnies of her enemies that Mr. Evans Clark has produced
a guide-book for searchers after truth "designed to enable the
reader to identify a fabrication at sight, and to know just what
truth may be found in the morass of conflicting propaganda."
The method is simple and admirably adapted to the purpose.
Many of the fabrications are so patently absurd as to need only
fair statement to be exposed; most of the others have been
proved false by the course of events, and many have been re-
tracted by their first sponsors, though the retraction, tardy and
inconspicuous, has seldom reached in full force any but a few of
those impressed by the original sensational and advertised lie.
Indeed, had readers only good memories and attentive eyes such
propaganda as that served up in most of the daily press would
be impossible because self-contradictory and self-destructive. In
the New York Times, for example, in rapid succession Lenin
and Trotzky were reported as fugitives in Spain, Sweden, and
Switzerland, as in hiding, as in asylums, as having arrested
each other, and as having frequently died. But all these reports
were grossly exaggerated, as Mark Twain said of his own demise.
The imminent crash of the "tottering" Soviet Government has
been prophesied regularly and frequently ever since it started.
Many of the most greedily devoured and widely spread legends,
such as that of the nationalization of women, proved utterly
without foundation.
Hard as was the lot of those who tried to drain a little truth
from the barren breasts of the daily newspapers, it was made
infinitely more difficult by the activity of a government that so
far forgot its high calling as to set an example for forgery and
lawlessness to all the criminals in the country. The Sisson docu-
ments, purporting to prove that the Bolsheviki were paid Ger-
man agents, were issued with an official stamp by our Publicity
Bureau after they had been rejected as too crass by the govern-
ments of England and France. The Lusk Committee, acting
under warrants of doubtful legality, raided the premises of the
Rand School and put the Russian Soviet agent and all his
friends under arrest, seized their papers, and put them through
a grilling examination. Though they failed to find any evidence
that the suspected persons had violated the law in any way,
numerous statements were given to the press by the members
of the Committee intended to damage them and prejudice their
case before the public.
The etiology of the whole thing is referred by Mr. Clark to
the class war, which he calls "the outstanding fact of today."
"Governments," he adds, "are at bottom part of the machinery
by which the dominant class in any nation maintains its su-
premacy." The same thing was noted by the best Lord
Chancellor that England ever had. "When I consider all the
commonwealths that be nowadays," wrote Sir Thomas More four
hundred years ago, "so help me God, I can see nothing but a conr
spiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the
name of the common wealth."
There must be many people in the United States, of whom the
present reviewer is one, who without being partisans of the
Soviets feel very urgently the need of getting the whole truth
and nothing but the truth about Russia. For such persons Mr.
Clark's annotated bibliography will be of great value. Possibly
his classification is a little biased, as when he maintains that all
the conservatives have been unreliable and all the liberal and
labor organs truthful. It is well known that some socialists, like
John Spargo, A. Bullard, and C. E. Russell, have turned against
the Bolsheviki; and on the other hand there have been articles
and books by men hostile to socialism who have been capable of
honorably reporting facts. But in general his criterion will
stand and his list will prove sound. Preserved Smith
Satires and Sketches
Windmills. A Book of Fables. By Gilbert Cannan. B. W.
Huebsch.
The Golden Bird and Other Sketches. By Dorothy Easton. With
a Foreword by John Galsworthy. Alfred A. Knopf.
A N essay could be written on the decay of satire. The events
-*■*■ of the last half century have given us no Dryden or Swift,
Voltaire or Heine. Mr. Shaw is a satirist, but then he is so
much more. In that so much more lies the explanation. The
world is too big and confused, society too little compact and
limited. Satire needs definite objects, sharp, clean-cut opposi-
tions, well-defined and common points of information. It requires
men rather than institutions and catastrophes. But the latter
are our portion. An Englishman might write a superb satire
on the character, or rather the characters, of Lloyd George. But
his friends will not and his enemies are too aghast at his cosmic
opportunism. To write satire you must be angry, but not too
angry, not overwhelmed and in despair of soul.
August 7, 1920]
The Nation
161
This theory receives support from the fact that Mr. Gilbert
Caiman's incisive satiric fables were, for the most part, com-
pleted before the breaking out of hostilities in 1914 and highly
approved as an accurate satiric forecast by friends of peace and
reason in both England and Germany. When war did come the
fables were condemned and suppressed in England and the pro-
jected German translation was never made. The war was at
once proclaimed a holy war in both countries and the voice of
the satirist was silenced. And that is, probably, the final reason
why satire is rare among us. Modern governments, more care-
ful than the tyrants of old, will not endure it. After all, the
peoples are awake and must on no account hear the challenge
of reason. Sinister oligarchs, secure in their persons and prop-
erties, may get a grim amusement out of a satiric attack on their
ways and ideas. But common men might refuse slavery and
death if they were shown the wickedness and folly of warlike
and imperialistic enterprise. So Mr. Cannan tells us that "in a
certain division of the British army it was declared to be a court
martial offense for any officer to have the book in his possession."
At all events, for the duration of the war the book's existence
was dim and underground and its circulation therefore very lim-
ited. For the tragedy of censorship, as well as of kindred pro-
hibitive measures, is not, as the innocent fancy, that it does not
prohibit, but that it does.
Mr. Cannan's satiric machinery is not new. His Ultimus is
born on an island; his parents die; he has as master and guide
the disillusioned, purely intellectual Siebenhaar. He makes his
first acquaintance with the world while the world is at war, and,
from the vantage ground of his isolation amid contending inter-
ests and his freshness of vision, is able to detect its crimes and
follies. Fate, moreover, places in his hands so powerful an
engine of destruction that he is able to compel the belligerents
to make peace. His manifesto to them is admirable as both
prophecy and satire. It contains all the pretended principles of
a liberal peace stripped of sentimentality and cant and dishonest
reservations. Equally excellent are the discourses of Siebenhaar
in which he foretells both atrocities as natural to war and
atrocity-mongering as belonging to human hysteria and terror.
And indeed, when the time and circumstances of the book's com-
position are remembered, one's admiration for Mr. Cannan's
clear and trenchant perspicacity is of the highest. At that
point, however, one's admiration ends. Here, as in all his recent
books, there is, on the side of art, a total lack of modulation, of
warmth, of felicity. Mr. Cannan has qualities of mind and
temper that should make him a writer of the first importance.
And an unconquerable lack of inner grace will not let him be-
come what he might be. A close investigation of what is wrong
with his books should reveal some of the ultimate secrets of
literary art.
The sketch has decayed like the satire, but for different
reasons. It demands the meditative mood in both author and
reader. To write or to enjoy it, you must not be in a hurry or
eager either to produce or to enjoy the immediately striking and
effective. You must have a little leisure, a little patience, and
much detached curiosity about life for its own sake as well as
for the beautiful or characteristic appearances of things. Miss
Dorothy Easton possesses all these tastes and qualities in a very
high degree. She has both the sensitiveness and the strength of
a finely disciplined nature; she has glow and detachment, patience
and also swiftness of vision. With a remarkable economy of
means she renders the rather drowsy sweetness of her South
of England scenes. And occasionally, as in the sketch called
Laughing Down, her tenderness for her landscape makes her
sentimental and callous — the two are never far apart — about
people. But her best sketches, of which there are many, have
their brief moments of irony and tragedy and so combine beauty
and wisdom in uncommon measure. Read her Impossible, For the
Red Cross, Adversity, The Shepherd, Our Men. These are nota-
ble bits of writing, spare yet rich, grim in substance yet beauti-
fullv mellow in their art. Or, for another and even finer mood,
read Transformation and It is Forbidden to Touch the Flowers.
Here, as in not a little of the post-war literature of the younger
English writers, we find a grave and lovely tenderness for human
nature as it really is, life as it has always and must always be
lived, for the poignant, solitary romance of simple souls. The
French sketches are as authentic as the English ones, and Mr.
Galsworthy was quite right to "beat the drum" for Miss Easton.
Yet we doubt whether many of the people whom his drum sum-
mons will linger very long to hear Miss Easton's flute. It is
not a popular instrument and the noise of brass bands fills the
air.
Ludwig Lewisohn
Books in Brief
■p EGARDING Europe as an intricate republic with all its
Ft
interests close-knit and its equilibrium exquisitely sensitive,
Francois de Callieres in 1716 published at Paris a vade-mecum
for diplomats which has been translated and issued in a hand-
some edition by A. F. Whyte as "On the Manner of Negotiating
with Princes" (Houghton Mifflin). "Secrecy," says Callieres, "is
the very soul of diplomacy"; and his manner of expounding the
manners of negotiation might almost be that of some accomp-
lished mole long employed by his monarch in listening for
ground-tremors in all parts of the garden, learning where traps
were set and plows expected and where the roots grew sweetest
and lushest, and finding out the shortest way to them and back
to safety. Discretion, however, not deceit is the method Callieres
urges. The ideal diplomatist must be "a man of probity and one
who loves truth." "It is true that this probity is not often found
joined to that capacity for taking wide views which is so neces-
sary to a diplomatist." He should have learning, experience,
penetration, eloquence, as well as the most equable temper, the
most easy gallantry, the quickest repartee, the most tireless
patience; he must be courageous without being rash, dignified
without being mysterious, wealthy without being too proud of
his purse, well-bred without being haughty. He must dispense
gifts generously, though he should rarely take them, and he
should do his bribing like a gentleman, in the due fashion of
the court to which he is accredited. In a democratic state he
should flatter the Diet — and feed it, for good cheer is an admir-
able road to influence. He should have a flair for nosing out
secrets as well as a genius for hiding them; his use of spies is
the test, almost the measure, of his excellence. "The wise and
enlightened negotiator must of course be a good Christian."
Machiavelli explained princely policy and Chesterfield worldly
polish no more lucidly than Callieres, who was private secretary
to the Most Christian King Louis XIV and ambassador and
plenipotentiary entrusted with the Treaty of Ryswick, explained
the devices and virtues of his craft. He had high standards
for diplomatists; he wanted them to be better trained, better
valued, and better rewarded than they were. He thought they
should be men of letters and men of peace. He would not have
held himself to blame for assuming that the relation between
even friendly princes was that of ceaseless rivalry and that the
first interest of each was to take something from the others.
Those were the assumptions of the age. Callieres was merely
pointing out, with tact and charm, how the members of the
diplomatic corps might best observe all the punctilios that go
with honor among the most precious thieves.
T T ARCOURT, BRACE, AND HOWE have made so brilliant a
■*• -*■ record in their brief career as publishers that it is sur-
prising that they should reprint Helen Zimmern's and Antonio
Agresti's "New Italy" as it were a new production. The book was
brought out in England in 1917 to meet the requirements of
wartime propaganda. There is nothing Italian which the au-
thors do not praise — unless it be the Italian Socialists and the
Catholic Party. They defend Italy's claim to the entire Dalma-
162
The Nation
[Vol. ill, No. 2875
tian coast and to "compensations" in Turkey; they glorify the
military genius of General Cadorna, laud d'Annunzio, and kneel
to the King — "a noble man, a modern democratic ruler as well
as a soldier of the old Savoy stock." For their chapter on
"Notable Men of New Italy" they select Cadorna, Sonnino,
Bissolati, Salandra, and the King! As to the Catholics and
Socialists, they maintain that these two parties, which between
them won a majority in the Italian Chamber at the first post-
war election, have no popular support. Yet they know and love
the old Italy, and they have packed much valuable information
into their book, despite haphazard statistics and recurrent belli-
cose homilies on the war. There is need of an authoritative book
on New Italy; this is not it.
RB. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM in "A Brazilian Mystic"
• (Dodd, Mead) reports a millennial experiment in Brazil
which in the nineties of the last century threatened the authority
of the government and led to a little civil war and a fearful
massacre. Antonio Conselheiro (the Councillor), a village saint
and thaumaturgist, gathered about him an increasing band of
followers — in the end perhaps as many as twenty thousand —
and established them at the town of Canudos in the Sertao, or
highlands, lying between the provinces of Bahia and Pernam-
buco. There his fierce Jaguncos, leather-clad Centaurs before
the Lord, as hard and dry as cowboys and as dogmatic as
Covenanters, attracted the finest flower of backwoods rascaldom
and lived in untrammeled habits of faith, fornication, and homi-
cide. At the same time they were not so much demoralized by
their expectations of the speedy end of the world as to grow idle,
but attended steadily to their own business, for the most part
desiring only to be let alone. The sum of their offense againt
Brazil was probably that they expected the mythical Don Se-
bastian to come back to rule the land in the interval before the
Last Judgment; but as they refused to transfer their allegiance
from Don Pedro II to the Republic when it was proclaimed in
.1889, they looked to officialdom like traitors. Moreover, Antonio,
at first a patient martyr, was becoming militant with the assur-
ance that he was the true viceregent of God. Against such
heresies the government sent a peaceful, prayerful mission
which was laughed down, then three warlike expeditions, each
stronger than the one before it and each ignominiously defeated.
There was nothing to do but to use a force of more than ten
thousand soldiers, who after a midsummer of extermination in
1897 overcame the sectaries. This story Mr. Cunninghame Gra-
ham tells vividly, with rather too many nagging philosophical
comments, but with a richly colored background of strange,
wild customs.
T T is impossible to visualize the recipient of Mr. H. J. Massing-
* ham's "Letters to X" (Dutton). The title is an unfortunate
one, for it leads one to expect ease and familiarity, whereas
Mr. Massingham's essays are delivered ex cathedra and in a
style both heavy and dense. He is a lover of dust covered books
— that is, books which are not only old but also seldom dis-
turbed even by literati — and this much is to be attributed to him
for righteousness. But he seems widely read rather than dis-
criminating, and though he ranges all the way from Richard de
Bury's Philobiblon to John Gould Fletcher, he hardly does much
to illuminate the names which he mentions. He declares many
enthusiasms but lacks the gift of differentiation, and tells us
that Lucian and Swift were great satirists (which is hardly
news) without helping us to an understanding of their spirits.
It is unkind, but hardly unfair, to say that Mr. Massingham's
book reminds one of the experience of a young lion at a literary
tea where the conversation ran after this fashion: "I'll tell you
who was a great writer." "Who?" "Milton!"
/CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL'S "The Story of the Non-
^ partisan League" (Harpers) gives an extended account of
the business grievances that have led to the present remarkable
BRENTANO'S
Retail Book Department
Fifth Avenue and 27th Street, New York City
Reference Books for the Banker,
Lawyer, Editor, Writer, etc.
Who's Who, 1920, in England
(Now ready) Cloth, $15.00
An Annual Biographical Dictionary with which is
incorporated "Men and Women of the Time."
Who's Who in America, 1920-21
(Ready early in July) Probable price, $7.50
A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Living Men
and Women of the United States.
Who's Who and Why in Canada, 1917-18
(Latest edition available) Cloth, $6.00
A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Canadians.
The American Year Book
Cloth, $5.00
A Record of Events and Progress for 1919. Here, in
one volume, is a complete digest of the events of
interest to Americans that have taken place in busi-
ness, politics, science, art, education, literature and
every other field of human endeavor during the past
year.
The China Year Book, 1919
Cloth, $9.00
A mine of information on all that appertains to that
country.
The Japan Year Book, 1919-20
$5.00
Complete Cyclopaedia of Information and Statistics
on Japan.
Exporters' Gazetteer of Foreign Markets,
1920-21
Edited by Lloyd R. Morris Cloth, $10.00
The sort of analysis of the world's trade which every
manufacturer, exporter, shipping man, economist, and
banker should have.
Postage Additional
BRENTANOS
Retail Book Department
Fifth Avenue and 27tn Street
New York City
August 7, 1920]
The Nation
1(53
political movement among the farmers of the Northwest. More
than half of Mr. Russell's pages, in fact, are occupied by the
story of short weights, false grading, and other marketing
abuses, of high interest charges exacted by money lenders, and
of political and business life dominated by railroads, banks, and
chambers of commerce in distant market centers. The actual
sketch of the rise and growth of the League is therefore boiled
down to less than 140 pages. Within this compass, Mr. Russell
has compressed the main events in the stormy history of the
organization, up to and including the notorious Fargo bank case,
in which enemies of the League sought to wreck it by wrecking
its bank. As those who know the author would expect, he gives
a sympathetic account of the work of Townley and his associates.
In his discussion of the war years, however, Mr. Russell blames
the leaders of the League for failing earlier to appreciate the
issues of the war as he sees them, though he defends leaders and
followers alike against the unwarranted charge of disloyalty.
While this book is not to be compared with the more intimate
and comprehensive work by Mr. Gaston, it is none the less a
valuable account of a movement that has been much misrep-
resented in the public press.
'T^HE Book of Revelation has fallen on evil days. Between
*• the literal millennialists and the micro-analytical scholars
it is placed between the devil and the deep sea, or, to use its own
terms, between the dragon and the abyss. It is therefore a real
service to religion and sanity when a scholar equipped with
common sense as well as with knowledge provides a good com-
mentary en it. This has been done by Professor Isbon T. Beck-
with in "The Apocalypse of John" (Macmillan), a bulky volume
adapted not only for scholars but for laymen, who will find the
Greek words translated. More than half of the nearly eight
hundred pages are devoted to general discussions of the literary
and historical problems connected with the book. For with
other scholars Mr. Beckwith finds in explaining the book that
most light comes from the special literary type of apocalypse
to which the book belongs, and from the historical circumstances
of the first century in Asia Minor. He accepts the traditional
date, he discusses fairly the identity of the author, and he in-
clines to the sensible view of unity of authorship. Of course
he does not propose to know all mysteries, but he explains every-
thing that can claim a probable solution. Since a volume on
Revelation has been lacking in the most recent series of com-
mentaries both English and German, the book fills a real need.
Notes and News
T F you aren't strong enough to read novels all summer, travel;
*■ if you aren't rich enough to travel, read books of travel into
the distant past or present. There are ways and ways of doing
it, even though you stay patriotically at home and see America
first and last. There is the beguiling way of Clifton Johnson,
whose "What to See in America" (Macmillan) compacts in one
volume, with five hundred illustrations, the quintessence of all
the numerous highways and byways which that indefatigable
photographer and topographer has trod. He has a chapter for
each State, with another each for New York city and Washing-
ton. The pictures are better than the history, and the history
CAPITAL TODAY
A Study of Recent Economic Development
By HERMAN CAHN
proves why REVOLUTION is INEVITABLE, not because
of the desires or aims of any class, but because, owing to
the failure of the credit system, Capitalism is becoming
unable to produce the necessities of life.
If you need to be convinced, read this book and compare Mr. Cahn's
analysis with the events in the financial and industrial world today.
Cloth, $2.00, by insured mail or at the book stores.
CHARLES H. KERR & CO., 347 E. Ohio St., Chicago
What
Does Russia
Plan?
Is a Bolshevist peace with Poland to be
a stepping stone to communist world
conquest ?
Henry G. Alsberg, writing from Mos-
cow after two months of investigation
and close contact with the men now
controlling Russia's destinies, gives
facts concerning the Bolshevist regime
that throw interesting light on the pres-
ent situation.
Read his new series of articles begin-
ning with the current issue of The
Nation.
If you do not see The Nation regularly,
let us send it to you for the next six
months and we will include a copy of
Upton Sinclair's "The Brass Check"
free. Just fill out the attached blank
and mail it to us at once.
The Nation,
20 Vesey Street, New York.
Inclosed herewith you will find remittance for
$2.50 for which please send me THE NATION for
six months, together with a copy of "The Brass
Check."
Name
Address
City State
Foreign postage, 50c; Canadian postage, 25c.
8-7
164
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2875
is better than the opinions, but there are few opinions and only
enough history to add the right tincture of romance. Taken
as a whole, the book expands the American imagination like a
dream and thrills it like a bugle at dawn. To have glanced
through it, even, and not to have honed to see the Woolworth
Building and the Mesa Encantada is to have made a failure of
a day. A different way is to follow, in C. Henry Smith's "The
Mennonites" (Mennonite Book Concern), the trail of the Ana-
baptists from all their ancestral nooks in Europe to America
and all their nooks here — a strange, at times dusty, and yet
always moving tale of Christian fidelity. The persecutions of
the sixteenth century and those which the pacifist Mennonites
endured during the World War are bound together by a strain,
shall we say, of natural piety on the part of the persecutors.
Agnes Edwards's "The Old Coast Road from Boston to Ply-
mouth" (Houghton Mifflin) is agreeably though thinly written
and has graceful drawings by Louis H. Ruyl. A stranger
byway, interestingly interpreted, appears in William Way's
"History of the New England Society of Charleston, South Caro-
lina. . . . 1819-1919" (Published by the Society), a significant
chapter in the record of that loom which is weaving a nation out
of disparate elements. Warren Upham's "Minnesota Geographic
Names: Their Origin and Historic Significance" (Minnesota
Historical Society), apparently the minutest kind of study and
minutely executed, is actually a vivid commentary on the way
of the European languages in America, where in one State the
townships of Blooming Prairie and Bogus Brook, for example,
lie down with the townships of Saint Olaf and Breitung and
Buyck and the river Pomme de Terre, and Minnesota and Missis-
sippi lead them. In "On the Trail of the Pioneers" (Doran)
John T. Faris offers a mosaic, somewhat sketchily assembled, of
pioneer adventure chosen from the accounts of the pioneers
themselves who dared the West. Even were the text a dozen
times more sketchy, the book would be justified by the quaint
pictures reproduced from early sources. Most picturesque, or at
least best advertised, of scouts, William F. Cody has now two
volumes added to his legend, an "Autobiography" (Cosmopolitan
Book Corporation) and Louisa Frederici Cody's "Memories of
Buffalo Bill" (Appleton). Who wrote them? Courtney Ryley
Cooper admittedly collaborated with Mrs. Cody and probably
helped out with the sentimental and theatrical elements which
do what they can to spoil a rattling story; Cody's own helper is
not named. If only Snorre Sturlason and not Fenimore Cooper
had set the fashion for tales of Western daring! Essentially
the most novel of all the group of books now under review is
"The Autobiography of a Winnebago Indian" (University of
California Press), edited with explanatory notes by Paul Radin,
in which a middle-aged Winnebago called "S. B.," who belongs to
a prominent family of the tribe and has had typical experiences,
relates them in considerable detail and with great candor. He
tells of his youthful amusements and fasts, of his courting and
his many affairs with women, of his various travels, of his time
spent with shows and circuses, of his term in prison charged
with murder, of his conversion to the peyote rite, and of his
subsequent visions of Earthmaker (God). The narrative extraor-
dinarily adumbrates customs and sentiments which have almost
always been studied from the outside but which here have the
most intimate ring of actuality. As ethnology the account is
of great value, and merely as general reading it is highly delec-
table. The stuff of good literature, though not in any final form,
appears in Frank B. Linderman's "On a Passing Frontier;
Sketches from the Northwest" (Scribners), short stories with-
out too much art, but also without too much decoration, which
bring the Little Rockies very near home. The clever surface
views regarding Mexico which that amusing man Vicente
Blasco Ibanez recently published in certain New York and Chi-
cago newspapers have now been issued in a volume as "Mexico
in Revolution" (Dutton). They do not look less like diurnal
reporting now than they did then.
Studies in History and Politics
By Rt. Hon. Herbert Fisher
$5-65
An interesting collection of essays dealing largely with
European history and politics. Several are reprinted from
various periodicals but others are now first published. Mr.
Fisher's pleasing style makes the book one of great interest
to the cultured 'reader as well as to the historical student.
The Freedom of the Seas
Historically Treated
By Sir Francis Piggott
Net $2.50
An indispensable preliminary to the understanding of what
is called the Freedom of the Seas is a definition of the
term itself. The present volume treats historically the
story of the different periods when England's action at sea
was challenged by combinations of neutral powers and
serves both to explain and define what is meant from
the British point of view, the controversial aspects
of the matter being so far as possible avoided.
At all booksellers or
from the publishers
Oxford University Press
■American 'Branch.
35 West 32nd Street
NewVbrk
THE Russian Soviet Government
Bureau has issued a series of pam-
phlet reprints of important Soviet
documents. The following are the
first three of these pamphlets:
(1 ) The Labor Laws of Soviet Russia. Of-
ficial text, with introduction, by the Bureau
and an answer to a criticism by Mr. W. C.
Redfield, 52 pages, stiff paper cover, price 10
cents.
(2) The Laws on Marriage and Domestic
Relations. To be ready about September 1st.
Price 15 cents.
(3) Two Years of Foreign Policy, by
George Chicherin. The relations of the Rus-
sian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic with
foreign nations, from November 7, 1917, to
November 7, 1919. 36 pages, stiff paper cover,
price 10 cents. Other pamphlets will follow.
Special rates for quantities
Address: "SOVIET RUSSIA"
110 West 40th Street, Room 304, N. Y. City
Are you reading our weekly, "Soviet Russia" the offi-
cial organ of the Russian Soviet Government Bureau?
International Relations Section
The Facts About the Polish Pogroms
THE report of Sir Stuart Samuel, commissioned by the
British Government to investigate the massacres and
ill-treatment of Jews in Poland, is here printed in full as
transmitted to Earl Curzon on June 2 by Sir H. Rumbold,
British Minister to Poland.
Sir: I was intrusted by His Majesty's Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs with a mission to Poland on behalf of His
Majesty's Government, the primary object of which was to ex-
amine the specific charges that have been brought against the
Poles of having ill treated the Jewish population of their coun-
try, including any fresh cases of ill-treatment that might be
brought to my notice while my mission lasted. I was, in par-
ticular, instructed to use my best endeavors to ascertain in each
case where massacres or outrages of Jews had taken place,
where and to what extent the different grades of Polish authori-
ties were to blame either for encouraging or culpably failing
to prevent them, or whether they had taken all steps in their
power to suppress outbreaks and punish the offenders. The
aim of my mission was to dissipate any misunderstandings that
might have arisen and thus to promote mutual goodwill between
Poland and Great Britain. I was therefore instructed to
make such recommendations to His Majesty's Government as
might occur to me with the object of establishing greater har-
mony between Jewish and other elements of the population, as a
satisfactory solution of that problem would obviously go far to
promote the national prosperity. The mission left London early
in September and remained in Poland about three months.
I took excesses against the Jewish population which occurred
in Cracow, Lodz, Vilna, Lida, Pinsk, and Lemberg as typical,
and visited those places from Warsaw. Traveling conditions
in Poland at the period of the visits of the mission presented
such difficulty, owing to heavy falls of snow and to the fact that
a large number of passenger trains had ceased running in
consequence of their accommodation being required for the
transport of food, that the mission was unable to visit further
towns.
My instructions directed my particular attention to the neces-
sity of inquiring into the statements respecting occurrences of
excesses or pogroms in Poland. In Poland a pogrom is under-
stood to be an excess against a certain section of the popula-
tion, but in England, owing to the experience of previous out-
breaks in Russia, the word pogrom has become associated with
excesses organized by the government against a portion of the
population, or when the authorities took no steps to restrain
those perpetrating the excesses, or intervened at a period too
late to be effective in preventing the loss of human life. The
result of my inquiries brought me to the conclusion that the
occurrences at Lemberg, Lida, and Vilna come under the head
of pogroms in the sense generally understood in England.
The awful massacre at Pinsk partook more of the character
of a military murder. During the outbreaks which took place
in the two other towns a certain number of Jews were assaulted
and plundered, but the military authorities endeavored to re-
strict the action of the soldiers as much as possible. Speaking
generally, as the civil authority has been able to make its power
effective, so the position in the rear of the troops has become
more and more satisfactory.
The Polish government has been confronted with the problem
of maintaining order in those portions of the German, Rus-
sian, and Austrian Empires which have been incorporated
within the present Republic of Poland. The establishment of
order was intrusted to a semi-military force known as the field
gendarmerie, corresponding somewhat to a military police force.
This body was recruited from a not very desirable class, and is
practically independent of any but the highest civil authority.
The gendarmerie has almost unlimited powers, and is in the
habit of entering the houses, chiefly of the Jews, at any time
of the day or night upon the pretext of searching for arms,
and robs and beats the Jews. This is done quite openly, and
the Jews may be said to have no means of redress. Proceed-
ings, when taken, are allowed to drift for an interminable
period and usually result in the implicated men being released.
There is thus really no security for the Jewish population.
Besides the gendarmerie there is a police force, but the remarks
applied to the former can be taken as on the whole true with
regard to the latter also. The Polish government recognizes
the inadequacy of this body, and, I understand, is taking steps
to reorganize it.
In addition, the junior authorities of justice and of civil ad-
ministration also are of inferior standing and morale, taking
advantage of their position not only to persecute the Jews, but
also to exact bribes upon an astonishing scale.
The foregoing remarks apply in a less degree to Galicia,
which has been brought under the administration of the Polish
government during the past year. Many former Austrian
officials have been retained, who, having been trained under
the Austrian Empire, maintain certain traditions which make
for a better condition of law and order. These remarks
equally apply to the districts of German Poland, but in the re-
maining portion of Poland, the officials being new and inex-
perienced, the deplorable result I have mentioned has ensued.
The higher officials both of the government and of justice, in
my opinion, are not subject to these unfortunate failings, and
whenever it is possible to obtain the attention of these authori-
ties a rough form of justice is achieved.
The contention of the Polish government that it was not
strong enough to keep pogroms under control in the past may
perhaps have some cogency, but I should like to draw attention
to the fact that, with the exception of events at Minsk, no
pogroms have occurred during the stay of either the American
Mission or the British Mission to Poland. It would therefore
appear reasonable to deduce that if the government is suffi-
ciently strong to restrain wrongdoers for this period, namely,
about five months, it should be competent to do so in future.
The Jews in Poland and Galicia number about three millions.
As in other countries the large majority of them are very poor,
suffering severely from hunger and privation. Want of em-
ployment is prevalent, although a large proportion of them are
artisans and laborers. They are divided broadly into three
classes, namely:
1. What are known as the Assimilators;
2. The Zionists; and
3. The Orthodox;
though doubtless there are many Orthodox among the Zionists.
They speak a jargon known as Yiddish, which is to be found
wherever Jews congregate, but of recent years there is a ten-
dency to employ Hebrew as a living language, though it is sel-
dom used as the colloquial language of the home circle. The
fact of their language being akin to German often led to their
being employed during the German occupation in preference
to other Poles. This circumstance caused the Jews to be ac-
cused of having had business relations with the Germans.
Almost as soon as the Polish government was established, ill-
feeling became manifest against the Jews. Public opinion had
been aroused against them by the institution of a virulent boy-
cott. This boycott dates from shortly after the by-election for
the Duma, which took place in Warsaw in 1912. Amongst the
166
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2875
candidates was M. Dmowski, one of the leaders of the National
Democratic Party. When the names of the electors came to
be scrutinized, it was found that the Jewish electors possessed
the controlling influence in the election. They considered, how-
ever, that the capital of Poland should not be represented by a
member of a minority in the country, and therefore did not
present a Jewish candidate, but patriotically offered to support
any candidate who would abstain from an anti-Semitic policy.
The only candidate willing to accede to this condition was M.
Jagiello, a Roman Catholic Pole, who was accordingly re-
turned. M. Dmowski, who was defeated at the poll, thereupon
set out on a campaign to break the Jewish influence, and from
that time to this has pursued a policy with the object of driv-
ing the Jews from Poland, a step which can only be fraught
with disaster to the country. During the war, owing to the
scarcity of almost everything, the boycott diminished, but with
the armistice it revived with much of its original intensity.
A charge has been made against the government of participation
in this boycott. The government publicly declared its disap-
proval of boycotting, but a certain discrimination seems to have
been made in the reemployment of those who served under the
German occupation. I find that many Jews who thus served
have been relieved of their offices and not reinstated, whereas
I can find no evidence of similar procedure in regard to other
Poles. Jewish doctors are unable to obtain positions in the hos-
pitals. Other qualified Jews cannot secure appointments as
post-office officials, on the railway staff, or as teachers in the
public schools and colleges, with the exception of Professor
Askenazy, recently appointed to a chair in the University of
Warsaw. There is also a limitation of the number of students
professing the Jewish religion permitted to enter certain uni-
versities. With the exception of doctors and a few officials in
the administrative offices, there are few officers in the army.
That this is merely a matter of religious prejudice is shown by
the fact that all these posts are open to those Jews who are
willing to change their religion.
In time of scarcity essential articles of food such as bread,
potatoes, and sugar are distributed to the population by minor
officials. I received many complaints that the Christian popu-
lation were supplied first, and that in numerous cases the stock
was exhausted before all the Jews had received their share.
The complaint that Jews and Christians were divided into sepa-
rate queues, and also that the Jews were discriminated against
to their disadvantage in the markets, could not be substantiated.
Without doubt a systematic attempt, more especially by pro-
vincial authorities, is being made to oust Jews from their
trades, and it is only where these authorities are as a result
confronted by peculation and incompetency that they realize
the futility of their action. The government itself is not
without some experience of this kind. I had my attention
drawn to cases of discrimination against Jews dealing in hides,
petroleum, salt, bread, and other articles, which in my opinion
could only have been based upon religious prejudice. I do not
find, however, any ground for the complaint that the govern-
ment is putting Jewish merchants at a disadvantage in com-
parison with non-Jews with regard to permission to import
goods from abroad. In fact, the club of Jewish merchants at
Warsaw, consisting of several thousand members, assured me
that the arrangements made were quite satisfactory. I have
also received facts and figures from M. Szczeniowski, Minister
of Commerce, fully bearing out this point.
A severe private, social, and commercial boycott of Jews,
however, exists among the people generally, largely fostered
by the Polish press. In Lemberg I found that there was a
so-called social court presided over by M. Przyluski, a former
Austrian vice-president of the Court of Appeal, which goes so
far as to summon persons having trade relations with Jews to
give an explanation of their conduct. Below will be found a
copy of a typical cutting from a Polish newspaper giving the
name of a Polish countess who sold property to Jews. This
was surrounded by a mourning border, such as is usual in
Poland in making announcements of death.
"Countess Anna Jablonowska, resident in Galicia, has sold
her two houses, Stryjska Street, Nos. 18 and 20, to the Jews,
Dogilewski, Hiibner, and Erbsen.
"The attorney of the Countess was Dr. Dziedzic; her ad-
ministrator, M. Naszkowski.
"Will the Polish public forever remain indifferent and pas-
sive in such cases?"
There can be no doubt that the government could greatly re-
strain the virulency of this movement if the powers usually
resident in a government were effectually used to prohibit such
agitation. Although the government declares against boycot-
ting, the Polish press is allowed openly to advocate it, while
the Yiddish press is suspended for quite trivial offenses. It is
a well-known fact that the ill results of boycotting cannot be
limited to the class aimed at, for this weapon has a tendency
to affect others and eventually to react upon those who make
use of it. The idea widely prevails that the so-called Litvaks,
Russian Jews driven to Poland by the former Russian govern-
ment, should be induced to return, and I am of opinion that
should a suitable government and peaceful conditions be re-
established in Russia there would be a general emigration to
that country, not only of Jews but also of other Poles. The
ardent hope was frequently expressed to me that Russia would
soon be open for immigration, for although the late Russian
government fomented pogroms and massacres of the Jews, the
Russian himself is of a kindly nature and friendly disposed to
his neighbor. Business relations between Poland and Russia
were very considerable in the past, and were generally in the
hands of Jews, not only in the handling of the goods exported,
but also of their manufacture. Warsaw, the Polish capital,
formed a meeting-place for the merchants of Russia and the
western states, and was also a depot for goods eventually
destined for Russia. All these trading agencies are now at a '
standstill, and Poland is feeling the economic result of this
stoppage. Other inducements for an industrial population,
subjected to a boycott, to leave the country are to be found in
the absence of raw materials and in the scarcity of food and
fuel, as well as in the hardships consequent upon rising prices
arising from the unfavorable conditions of foreign exchange.
Initiative in business matters is almost entirely the preroga-
tive of the Jewish population. In Lodz the cotton industry and
the development of the town has been effected mostly through
the instrumentality of the Jews. Manufactures and business
generally have, owing to the circumstances prevailing before
and during the war, fallen largely into the hands of Jews. It
is impossible to replace such a valuable section of the com-
munity by a fresh body of merchants untrained and unaccus-
tomed to handle the important mercantile interests which should,
in view of the advantages accruing to Poland under the peace
treaty, largely increase in the near future.
The fallacious idea, however, is prevalent in Poland that
it is possible to transfer a large percentage of the business car-
ried on by the Jews to other hands. If a Jewish Pole is driven
from his factory or business the act does not provide more
work for the Christian Pole, but diminishes it. When the
question of external trade comes to be considered it is impos-
sible to displace without grave results firms who have built
up a business over a long series of years, who are acquainted
with, and know the requirements of, their customers in remote
countries and have gradually acquired confidence and credit.
No new combination, whether Jewish or Christian, could con-
duct such a business successfully except after long experience.
Moreover, I found it to be a fact that the Jewish Pole com-
mands greater trust than his neighbors. To such an extent is
this the case in Poland that nearly the whole of the estate
agents who act for the Polish nobility are of Jewish race. The
real interest of the Polish state would seem to be rather in the
direction of developing and encouraging the export business
August 7, 1920]
The Nation
167
hitherto carried on by Jews; in this way lies almost the sole
hope of the economic regeneration of Poland and of the rehabili-
tation of its depreciated currency. In this connection it should
be remembered that depreciation of currency as expressed in
terms of external values does not arise solely from an adverse
trade balance, but that a normal rate of exchange demonstrates
also the healthy functioning of stable government and the con-
sequent safety of life and property.
Polish statesmen frequently assert that the proportion of
Jewish small tradesmen to the general population is too great.
If the complaint were limited to this alone it might safely be
left to find its own remedy, for I found that the children of this
class were not satisfied to follow the parents' vocation but were
endeavoring, by means of attending technical and other schools,
to attain a higher educational and social level. This class, how-
ever, little above the pauper, ever finds itself driven back upon
itself by the economic restraints which it encounters, until at
last, in desperation, it is forced to emigrate. I found but few
families that had not one member at least in America or Can-
ada. Experience has shown, as in the case of Ireland, that it
is always a disadvantage to a country to have an emigration
of despairing people, as these sow the seed of their discontent
in other lands. A further remedy for this congestion of occu-
pation would be to introduce into Poland new industries, for
which Jews in other countries have evinced special aptitude.
The difficulty of securing raw material limits the occupations
available at the present time, but it would appear quite feasible
to start factories for the manufacture of waterproofing, ga-
loshes, furniture, boots, and clothing. Doubtless western Jews
would be prepared to assist their brethren to reach a higher
plane of industrial development, but unfortunately the Christian
Poles, although not undertaking such enterprises to any extent
themselves, exhibited distinct hostility to any such suggestion
which would benefit both the Jews and the state alike. Many
Poles, however, enlarge the demand for a reduction of the num-
ber of small Jewish tradesmen to one for the reduction of the
Jewish population as a whole. This proposition is fraught with
a danger not confined to the Jews; it is a danger to the state.
To render the conditions of life so intolerable to the Jew as
to force him to leave his native country has ever been followed
by disastrous consequences to the country where this form
of persecution has been essayed; whereas in every country
where the Jew has been granted an effective citizenship he has
proved himself a mainstay of law and order. The Jew has
usually so much to lose through the consequences of disorder
that he ranges himself instinctively on the side of good govern-
ment. It is for the Poles to choose whether they will follow
the example of Great Britain, the United States of America,
France, Holland, Italy, and the other liberal-minded states
which have treated the Jew equitably, or link their fate with
ancient Egypt, medieval Spain, and modern Russia. It must
further be considered that when the Jew is driven out his capital
is driven out with him. In fact, in most cases it precedes him,
for the poor and helpless Jew is not the first to leave in face
of economic persecution such as a boycott or the fear of per-
sonal safety, but rather he who possesses the means to seek
happier conditions of livelihood elsewhere. Thus, at the very
time when it is vital to the interest of Poland to import capi-
tal, were the suggested policy carried into action it would
have for its result the export of capital. In addition, there is
the danger that the better minds among non-Jews would not be
willing to remain in a country wherein truth and justice are
absent.
Another policy appears to have as its object the identification
of Jews as Bolsheviki in order to distract public attention from
the government. The real danger of bolshevism, however, is to
be sought in other directions, although it should not be matter
for surprise if some of the younger generation of educated
Jews, finding all avenues of advancement and fair play barred,
should be found ready to listen to proposals for freedom and
equality of opportunity. It is a fair retort that the government
policy is making potential revolutionaries of these people. If
the Polish government would grant the Jews a genuine and not
a masked equality they would secure the support of the most
conservative, law-abiding, and loyal section of the population.
All the Jews ask is to be allowed to live in peace and safety. By
grinding them down by economic differentiation a certain num-
ber of these people may be induced to emigrate, but the danger
will always remain that a certain residuum will be forced into
the ranks of the disaffected and disloyal. The Jew may be robbed,
plundered, have his beard cut, and be otherwise insulted for a
time, but who can be surprised if a point be reached when men
will not tolerate such treatment longer and will be prepared to
make the utmost sacrifices to achieve the honor of their man-
hood?
Under this hard and continued pressure many Jews have
been constrained to change their religion, and it is mostly these
"Jews" who are meant when Jews are mentioned as being in
government employ.
I made careful inquiries in various parts of Poland as to the
extent to which bolshevist principles had permeated the Jew-
ish population, and the highest estimate which I encountered
was ten per cent of their number, a considerably less propor-
tion, according to my informants, than characterizes the popu-
lation as a whole. In investigating the truth of the statement
that Jews in Poland sympathize with bolshevism, attention must
be paid to the fact that Jews form the middle class almost in
its entirety. Above are the aristocracy and below are the peas-
ants. Their relations with the peasants are not unsatisfactory.
The young peasants cannot read the newspapers and are there-
fore but slightly contaminated by anti-Semitism until they
enter the army. I was informed that it is not at all unusual
for Polish peasants to avail themselves of the arbitrament of
the Jewish rabbi's courts. Another point to be borne in mind
is that a very considerable proportion of the Jews belong to
the orthodox form of the religion. If I understand aright,
bolshevism stands against both religion and the bourgeoisie;
it must therefore be clear from the above statements that by the
acceptance of these tenets most of the Polish Jews would but
compass their own destruction.
In conclusion, I desire to point out that if the social boycott
were successful in securing a large emigration of Jews it would
result in a very large decrease in the productive powers of
Poland. As the future of the republic depends largely upon
its exports exceeding its imports the future of the state itself
might be imperiled. The Polish government would be well
advised in its own interests that to take immediate and active
measures to bring this unsatisfactory condition of affairs to a
speedy end would be acting in the best interests of the people
committed to its charge.
I now propose to report upon the result of my investigations
into the excesses perpetrated in the towns I visited in the order
they occurred. Before doing so I would like to remark that as
statements that the Jews were enemies of the rest of the popu-
lation and that all misfortunes were to be ascribed to their
influence were constantly circulated, and the Jews formed an
easy prey for robbery and plunder, attacks upon them were to
be expected. It was, however, the evil example of the military
as they entered captured towns which as a rule incited the civil
population to join in the pogroms. If the military commanders
had but performed their duty to humanity and their office, the
loss of life would have been considerably less. Poland, too,
would not be burdened with these still unpunished crimes.
Lemberg. With regard to the events in Lemberg on the 21st,
22nd, and 23rd November, 1918, consideration has to be given
to the very remarkable position that was to be found in that
city at that period, and it is noteworthy upon what a small scale
were the operations. Previous to the date mentioned the
Ukrainian army consisted of about 10,000 men in occupation
of that portion of East Galicia, but General Monczynski raised
168
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2875
a Polish army, about 1,500 in number, consisting of men, women,
boys, some of them criminals, and after a severe struggle suc-
ceeded in capturing half the city, the other half of which re-
mained in the occupation of the Ukrainians. The Jewish part
of the population of Lemberg declared itself to be neutral.
After street fighting of a severe character the Polish forces
succeeded in driving the Ukrainians entirely out of the city.
This result was achieved through the advent of a considerable
body of Polish troops brought under General Roja from Posen.
It has been proved to my satisfaction that these troops were
promised three days free looting of the Jewish quarter, and I
had it in evidence that Jews were warned by Christian friends
of the certainty of a pogrom on the days mentioned. The Polish
soldiers and population were somewhat incensed by the attitude
of the Jews in not having assisted them in their struggle, but
nothing can excuse the work of robbery and murder which took
place on the days mentioned (21st, 22nd, and 23rd November).
Helena Schine deposed that a body of soldiers came to her
house, shot her father, her brother, and her brother-in-law,
and would have shot her, but she gave them 3,000 crowns and
they went away. The soldiers came again at about 12 o'clock
in the day and shot her brother, who was still living, though
previously wounded, dead. They broke open the safe and stole
the silver plate. Another body of soldiers came to the house
about 5 o'clock. She had by then taken refuge on the third
floor with a Polish woman, who when the soldiers came the
third time sent them away.
Various other witnesses deposed that many buildings were
set on fire with petroleum obtained from a store; as the occu-
pants ran out to escape the flames, they were shot down in the
street in cold blood by Polish soldiers. The synagogue was
burned, the safe being opened by means of machine-gun fire,
and the scrolls of the law were burned and everything of value
removed. The result of the three days' looting was that fifty-
two Jews were killed, 463 wounded, and a large amount of
property stolen.
It should be stated that proceedings were taken against Gen-
eral Roja, who was in command of the Posen troops, but he
was declared to be suffering from a nervous breakdown.
The Poles alleged that the Jews, while calling themselves
neutrals, had shown active sympathy with the Ukrainians, but
the evidence given did not, in my opinion, support that con-
tention.
The charge brought against the Jewish militia — a body con-
sisting of 200 men of Jewish race enrolled to defend and keep
order in the Jewish quarter — of having fired at the Polish troops
has been recently the subject of proceedings in the Polish
courts; the charge was dismissed.
In the result none of the military commanders responsible
for these events has been punished, and no compensation has
been paid for the damage done.
Pinsk. The events at Pinsk on the 5th April, 1919, when
thirty-five Jews were shot, took place about ten days after the
t wn had been taken from the Bolsheviki by the Polish army.
The Polish command had, a day or two before, suffered a re-
verse at the hands of the Bolsheviki and were in a state of
nervousness as to an attack on the town. It seems that two
Polish soldiers, one named Kosak, who is now in prison for
robbery, and another soldier, since reported as killed in action,
informed the military authorities that they had information
that the Jews intended to hold a bolshevist meeting on Saturday
in what is known as the People's House, being the headquarters
of the Zionists.
The events that followed appear to be so incredible that I
think it best to give the evidence of the witnesses. Abraham
Feinstein, president of the Zionist Cooperative Society, deposed
that about the 28th March he received a letter from the govern-
ment organizer of cooperative societies, M. Trofimowicz (a non-
Jew) , stating that it was desirable that all cooperative societies
in the town should combine, and giving them up to the 7th
April to make their decision. He inclosed the government
permission for the meeting to take place. Notices were posted
in the streets and in the large synagogues. The meeting took
place on Saturday, the 5th April, and there were about 150
persons present, consisting of men and women. The meeting
commenced at 5. M. Eisenberg was in the chair. M. Trofimo-
wicz was present at the opening of the meeting and explained
its purpose and left at 5.30. It was decided unanimously to
combine. A discussion then took place as to how many dele-
gates were to be sent to the combination. That matter was
adjourned, and most of the cooperators went home. Mr. Zuker-
man, an American, had brought 50,000 marks to be distributed
for the holy days. Many of those present went into another
room to discuss this, and how the money was to be distributed.
While this was going on some boys came in and said soldiers
were there to take Jews for forced labor. They all went into
the large hall. Soldiers were shouting and others were stealing
food from the refreshment room. The house consisted of two
floors — shops on the ground floor and the club on the first floor.
Feinstein went into a friend's shop on the ground floor to take
shelter, and later found the whole building surrounded by
soldiers, including Kosak. Kosak stopped people and took bribes
from them not to take them for forced labor. Feinstein then
hid in Gottleib's store on the ground floor, but was discovered
and a soldier was left to guard him. He heard a shot upstairs.
Gottleib went out to get some water, and came back and said
a dead man was lying in the yard. At 10 an under-officer came
and said that about fifty arrested people had been shot dead
and that his turn would come at 5 o'clock the next morning.
At 1.30 a.m. an under-officer and two soldiers came and sent
the guarding soldier away. They robbed him and said: "You
must go to the Kommandatur, and you will be shot, as all the
meeting were Bolsheviki." One soldier, a Polish under-officer,
said he could speak Yiddish, and that he was in the synagogue
and heard the Jews arrange to act against the Poles, and that
he heard a young man say: "We will have a meeting in thtf
People's House at 5." Feinstein stated it was untrue, then the
soldier said he would take 150 rubles to let them go, there
being six of them in Gottleib's room, and eventually he con-
sented to take 50 rubles. He then found two pocket-books and
took 500 rubles and 600 rubles respectively from them. He then
said: "You are free." He accompanied Feinstein along the
street and he arrived home at 4 a.m.
Saloman Gittelman, a teacher, deposed that he was arrested
at the People's House at about 5 o'clock. He was a member of
the Cooperative Society and attended the meeting. He heard
a shot. Soldiers then came in and said "Why have you shot at
us?" and ordered all to stand with hands up. They were all
searched and beaten. No arms were found. The soldiers
ordered all out, surrounded them, and took them to the Kom-
mandatur. They were severely beaten on the way. An army
doctor named Bakraba stopped them on the way and inquired
what it all meant, and the soldiers replied that the Jews had
shot at soldiers. A soldier stepped up and said that they had
shot at him and wounded him in the head. The doctor replied:
"All these Jews ought to be shot." They arrived at the Kom-
mandatur, were stood out in the street, and were all robbed.
There were several officers present. There was no trial. Sol-
diers came back from the Kommandatur and they were taken
to the market-place. They murdered about sixty. Each was
placed against the wall. It was extremely dark, and soldiers
came with a motor bearing a searchlight. An officer came
and looked into everyone's face, and some were removed, in-
cluding the women. The remainder were then informed that
their last moment had come, and they could say their prayers.
They then, with the lead of the teacher, uttered in a loud voice
their last prayers for the dying (I may mention that these so-
called Bolsheviki, who profess a negation of religion, uttered
their last prayers in such a loud voice that they could be heard
right across the market-place). The officer then commanded
the soldiers to shoot. The figures against the wall fell, after
which the soldiers came and shot those who moved on the
August 7, 1920]
The Nation
169
ground. The remainder, who had been put on one side, were
then taken to prison at 10 o'clock. There had been no trial and
no word whatever said to them previous to the shooting. Noth-
ing to eat was given. Seventeen men were placed in one room,
and at 11.30 three men were brought in. They said that the
man Glauberman had been shot, but not at the wall. I have
arrived at the conclusion that the shot heard by those in the
club was one fired at random by a soldier outside to give color
to the charge that the soldiers had been fired upon, and un-
fortunately it killed Glauberman, who was hiding in a shed
underneath the stairs leading up to the club. I was shown the
hole made by the bullet. No arms were found in the possession
of these alleged Bolsheviki.
Next morning an under-officer came and took their names,
and said: "We will show you what has become of your friends."
Nineteen of them were taken to the cemetery by a gendarme and
some soldiers. They were shown a freshly filled-in grave. They
were given shovels and told to reopen the grave. This done,
they were placed together in a row. Soldiers arrived and were
placed in front of them with rifles leveled at them. The
gendarme said to the soldiers: "Are you ready?" One of the
prisoners, an elderly teacher, then prayed in a loud voice as
follows: "0 Lord, forgive thy servants. Thou art powerful to
save even now." The words were no sooner out of his mouth
than an elderly gendarme came to the gendarme in command
and whispered something to him. He ordered the prisoners to
fill up the grave again, and they were taken to the prison, and
eventually Gittelman was sent home. Two of those shot were
teachers, colleagues of his for twenty years. It appears that
Miss Rabinovitch, who gave evidence later, had intervened on
their behalf.
Aaron Rubin, an elderly manager of a match factory, deposed
that he was present at the cooperative meeting. He stated that
the soldiers in the large room searched the people and beat
them. One man had 11,500 rubles in his possession, which was
stolen from him. He shouted that he had been robbed of this
amount. A soldier then went downstairs, and shortly came back
and said: "Who has shot?" Rubin generally confirmed the
previous witness's evidence. He was one of those taken from
the wall and taken to the cemetery. In the cemetery the
soldiers loaded their rifles and said their last moment had come.
After they had returned to the prison, a gendarme interviewed
them and endeavored to get a confession from them. Each
one was taken separately in a separate room, stripped, and
beaten with straps and ramrods. They were then all put to-
gether in one room half dead from flogging. This included six
women. They were told to put on their clothes and return to
their cells. On Tuesday a gendarme came and said that if
there were an inquiry they must say that they had not been
beaten. On Wednesday he was released by doctor's orders.
A young lady who desired her name not published, aged
about 25, deposed that she went to the People's House to inquire
as to whether she was to participate in the American money.
Soldiers came in and began to eat food they found in a cup-
board. They were seeking young Jews for forced labor. An
elderly officer came and said they were all to go into the large
room. They searched the people, and the first man searched
had over 10,000 rubles. In her opinion all that followed was to
cover the robbery. She confirmed the statement that they were
all taken outside the Kommandatur. She confirmed the inter-
view with Dr. Bakraba, but added that Dr. Bakraba himself
beat a girl named Eisenberg. No question was put to them.
They remained in the street. They expected they would be
brought into the Kommandatur but were not, and remained in
the street. A passer-by named Krasalstchik, who was walking
on the pavement with a Miss Polak, was taken by the soldiers
and included with the prisoners, and eventually shot. They
were then all taken to the market-place and put against the
wall of the church. All was dark. She saw some of the
women led away a short distance, so she walked out of the line
too. All those remaining at the wall were given time to say
their last words. A teacher chanted the last Jewish prayers
for the dying, and the others repeated them after him. They
were then shot dead. The survivors were told their time would
come on the morrow, and that they would be hanged. From
the wall they were led to the prison. The women were in a
separate room. The Polish guard treated them very badly, but
the governor of the prison treated them kindly. The warders
said they would be shot. A gendarme came later and they
were all led to a room, stripped naked, revolvers put to their
heads, and flogged. They were then turned out of the room
naked with their clothes in their hands into a corridor full
of soldiers, who kicked and struck them. They were then sent
into another room where they dressed and were allowed to go
free.
M. Abrahamovitch gave evidence that he heard a noise, was
frightened, and hid in the roof of the synagogue on the other
side of the market-place. At a quarter to 9 in the evening of
Saturday he heard firing and groans that lasted all night, and
soldiers laughing. One of the men, Palatzny, was shot and
only slightly wounded; at 5.30 on the morning of the 6th April
he got up and ran away. He was observed by the soldiers and
shot dead.
Sonia Rabinovitch, a girl student from Kiev, was staying at
'Pinsk with her father. Polish officers lived at her father's
house, and she was able to intervene to save the people at the
cemetery. (I have no doubt that the eventual release of these
people was the direct consequence of the arrival of an American
officer who began to make inquiries.)
An official statement relative to these events issued on the
7th April by General Listovski, commander of the group, I
find devoid of all credence.
The treatment meted out to these so-called Jewish Bolsheviki
is in contrast to the treatment of avowedly bolshevist Poles.
M. Gabryl Kiewicz was commissary for the town, a post corre-
sponding to mayor, during the Bolshevist occupation, and he is
now a paid official in the election office. M. Melech, who was
administrator of the Food Department for the Bolsheviki, is
now employed in the municipal administration.
In conversation with local Christian Poles the mission was
informed that the town was heartily ashamed of this dreadful
tragedy, and believed that the people massacred were quite
innocent.
In conclusion, I may state that Major Luczynski and Lieu-
tenant Landsberg, who were in command on the occasion men-
tioned, in no way have been punished. They have simply been
removed to other posts. I have endeavored unsuccessfully to
see Major Luczynski.
Under the present local administration Pinsk is once more
peaceful, and the relations between the Christian and the non-
Christian inhabitants have become normal.
Lida. On the 16th April, 1919, the Poles attacked the Bolshe-
vist troops occupying Lida, this being the second day of the
Jewish Passover. The Jews were frightened and there were
only ten Jews in the synagogue, the rest remaining in their
houses. It was proved to my satisfaction that on the 16th the
Bolsheviki ordered all their soldiers to leave their billets and
return to barracks. This they refused to do, and when the
Polish troops entered the town, they shot at them from the
windows of the houses. This was in the poorer Jewish quarter,
because most of the best houses were taken possession of by
officers, leaving the less desirable houses to be occupied by their
men. Consequently when the Polish troops eventually entered
the town on the morning of the 17th they attacked the Jewish
quarter, killing on the two days, the 16th and the 17th, thirty-
five Jews. The case of the man Poukoff and his son, who were
first robbed of 150,000 rubles and then taken out into the street
and shot without trial, was a particularly bad case. In fact, the
bulk of the people killed were either murdered in their houses
or shot outside them. On the 19th only there was a court-
martial, when six Jews and two Christians were sentenced to be
shot. On the 17th 200 Jews were arrested in the Jewish quarter,
170
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2875
but were released without any trial after five days. The rabbi
of the place, Rabbi Rabbinovich, was arrested, robbed, and
beaten, together with many other Jews. On the 18th a body
of a soldier was found mutilated, and the Jews were accused of
having murdered him ; this caused great excitement in the town.
It was said that a Catholic priest intervened, and asked in
church that anyone who knew anything of the case should in-
form him. Later the excitement died down, and the rumor was
spread that the priest had interfered to say that the murderer
was not a Jew. The priest referred to had left Lida, and I
was unable to obtain confirmation of this story, but believe it
to be true.
Vilna was taken from the Bolsheviki on the 19th April, 1919,
by Polish troops. The rumor was spread that the Jews had shot
at the Polish soldiers, whereupon soldiers and civilians com-
menced a massacre and robbery of the Jews which lasted three
days. Fifty-five Jews were killed, including two well-known
authors, MM. Weiter and Ivianski, a large number were
wounded, and 2,000 arrested as sympathizers with the Bolshe-
viki. Of these 1,000 were released upon guaranties being given,
and the remainder were removed to internment camps under
conditions of the greatest hardship. Most of these poor people
have been kept in these unsanitary and loathsome camps, suffer-
ing hunger and frequent beatings, without trial, and had not
been released at the time of the mission's visit in November.
Among those arrested for having shot at the Polish soldiers
were the Rev. I. Rubinstein, one of the principal rabbis, and
Dr. Shabad, the head of the community. I may add that the
19th April was a Saturday, when, being the Jewish Sabbath, a
rabbi would be most unlikely to carry or use firearms. Never-
theless, these gentlemen were marched by soldiers through the
streets, beaten and spat upon not only by the mob, but also
by well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, till they reached a garden
where they were informed that they were about to be shot.
After a detention during which they expected every minute to
be their last, these gentlemen eventually were released through
the intervention of an officer and sent home. The killing and
plundering lasted for three days, many houses being completely
looted and the synagogue desecrated, in spite of the presence in
the city of General Joseph Pilsudski, the chief of the state. Officers
stated publicly that they regarded all the Vilna Jews as enemies
and sympathizers with Bolsheviki. A certain number of Jews,
owing to their better education, undoubtedly acted as officials
during the Bolshevist regime. But the fact of Christian Poles
acting in a similar manner does not seem to have aroused
resentment. My attention was called to several instances where
former Bolshevist officials still occupied public offices. M.
Solimani was on the Economic Council of the Bolsheviki, and
at the time of the mission's visit was in the Agricultural De-
partment; but is now a Polish railway official. M. Jachimoricz,
of the Bolshevist Economic Department, is now secretary to
the municipality of Vilna. The Jews do not appear, however,
to have supported the Bolsheviki in a military sense. The
Bolsheviki publicly complained that only 1 per cent of
their army were Jews. With regard to the alleged shooting
by Jews upon Polish troops, M. Zmaczynski, president of the
court of the province, and M. Buyko, vice-president of the
court, both gentlemen of high character, informed the mission
that they had seen Jewish men and women (civilians) firing for
two hours in Populanki and Alexandrovska Boulevard.
Further, there was submitted for my inspection an official
copy of a declaration purporting to be signed by four members
of the Danish Legation, Section B, at Petrograd, to the effect
that on the 19th April at the Vilna railway station, they had
been witnesses of a fusilade directed by the Jewish civil popula-
tion against the Polish troops. With regard to this statement,
the Danish Legation at Warsaw was kind enough to make
some inquiry at the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The
Danish Government in reply communicated to His Majesty's
Government the following declaration by the former Danish
Minister at Petrograd:
"I have the honor to state that two of the signatories of the
document in question, Sachsenburg and Ernst, both Austrian?,
were at one time employed in Section B at the Danish Legation,
the former in the Passport Office, the latter as a copying clerk.
Dr. Klein I do not recall. As stated in this Legation's report
No. 221 of the 6th December last, there has never been any
Danish Mission at Vilna or Warsaw, and when the individuals
concerned state, in a document dated Warsaw, the 25th April,
1919, that they are members of the Royal Danish Legation, this
allegation must be regarded as entirely unjustifiable and de-
serves to be repudiated. It would lead very far if all persons
who at any time have been employed in Section B were to be
entitled for the rest of their lives to describe themselves as
'members of the Royal Danish Legation.' The declaration is, as
far as I can judge, perfectly authentic."
If Jewish civilians actually did fire upon Polish soldiers —
and I found it impossible to distinguish between the type of
Jew prevailing in the Vilna-Pinsk district and that of the
ordinary Russian or Tartar inhabitants — the fact cannot justify
the whole civilian population being handed over defenceless to
massacre and rapine. I regret to state that no official investi-
gation has been made into these outrages and no one punished.
The excesses reported from Cracow and Lodz took the form
of local riots arising from transient causes. Though consider-
able property was destroyed and plundered and many Jews
seriously assaulted both by soldiers and civilians, there was no
actual loss of life except that of one man — although that is one
too many — at the latter place. I am of opinion that the affair
at Lodz might have attained considerably less proportions if,
when the police proved unequal to quell the disturbance, the
military authorities had acted with greater promptitude.
A young man, Selig Lipman, a survivor of an attack on a
farm at Slobodka Lesna, made the following declaration before
me at Warsaw:
"In peace time the farm was an agricultural college, and
there were between sixty and seventy students. It is an estate
belonging to the Jewish Colonial Association situated near the
village of Lesna. The students were being prepared for agri-
cultural work in Palestine. There are two houses on the farm;
one the house of the director and the other where the pupils
were housed. At the time of the following events there were
at the college thirteen boy and four girl students.
"On the 6th June, 1919, the army of General Zeligowsky was
marching from Russia through Rumania to Poland.
"The farm is situated near the main road, and the students
were engaged at their usual occupations when some of the
artillery of this army and about 200 cavalry halted not far
from the farm. Pickets were placed at the two entrances to
the farm.
"An officer, a corporal, and some soldiers came to the direc-
tor's house. A cart was in front of the house loaded with
grain. The soldiers took five sacks. A portion of the picket
meanwhile surrounded the students' house. They proceeded
to whip the students. I myself was not in the house, as I was
engaged in getting some cows out of the stable. I understand
the soldiers asked the students if they were Polish. They re-
plied: No, they were Jews. Whereupon the soldiers began to
beat them with swords. One of the boys, while being beaten,
put up his hand to protect himself, and had his hand badly
wounded by a sword. He then attempted to escape, but was
unable to do so as he was followed by mounted soldiers. So
he threw himself flat on the ground and they rode over him.
He then sought refuge in a distillery.
"The rest of the boys were driven into the blacksmith's
foundry. The soldiers then shot dead three of them. Samuel
Presser, aged 19, was killed instantaneously. Joseph Ball, aged
18, and Zevi Rothenburg, aged 18, died shortly after.
"Subsequently the soldiers went to the distillery where the
boy, Jacob Wilf, had taken refuge and shot him three times.
He was not mortally wounded and has since recovered.
"Ball, who was still living, was removed by two girl students
August 7, 1920]
The Nation
171
to their room. This was discovered by the soldiers, who went
there and shot him dead through the head. Rothenburg, already
dead, had his throat cut by the soldiers.
"The girls then hid themselves, and not being discovered were
not molested.
"The whole of the proceedings only lasted half-an-hour.
When I returned from the stables the whole business had fin-
ished. As soon as the soldiers came to the house I was ordered
by the director to get the cows into the meadow, and so was
not present when the above events took place.
"The soldiers asked the director if he was a Jew, and he
stated that he was a Czech, and was therefore not molested.
"On the previous night these same soldiers killed a Jewish
family of six people; a Ruthenian peasant (non-Jewish) was
taken into a forest and shot, and another Ruthenian peasant
flogged and beaten.
"(Signed) Selig Lipman."
Having dealt with these excesses in detail, I will now proceed
to consider them as a whole.
It is very difficult to ascertain the number of lives lost through
these painful occurrences, but, taking the lowest figure in cases
of doubt, the total cannot be less than 348. These figures,
terrible though they be, fail to convey an impression of the
terrible condition of apprehension and anxiety under which
the Jews labor. The military authorities, under the pretext of
military necessity, arbitrarily took Jews, but rarely Christians,
for forced labor. There was seldom any necessary labor to be
performed, and on most occasions upon payment of a bribe
these men were released. In one town, Bobrojuisk, Jews were
taken from the synagogue on the Day of Atonement and forced
to remove dung from the military stables and streets. Even
old men were forced to do this work. At Lemberg Jews were
taken for forced labor at any time of the night. In order to
avoid this the Jewish Relief Committee undertook to provide
laborers. They paid nearly three million crowns in bribery,
but Jews were still taken and sent back, as there was no work
for them to do, though at that same time still more Jews were
being taken in the streets for forced labor.
Unfortunately their distinctive dress and mien, and their
practice of not cutting the beard, in accordance with the Biblical
precept, render them easy butts for hooligan humor. My atten-
tion was directed to numerous cases of Jews being assaulted
and robbed in railway trains, and their beards cut at railway
stations, nearly all these outrages being perpetrated by soldiers
traveling on the railway. The railway authorities appear to
have been both unwilling and unable to restrain these excesses.
In no instance was I able to ascertain that any punishment
followed the offense.
I noticed in several towns, more especially in Warsaw, that
the streets in the Jewish quarter were left uncleaned and were
in a state of worse repair than other parts of the city. It does
not appear to be recognized that a sanitary danger to a portion
of the community involves sanitary danger to the whole.
On several occasions the resentment of the soldiery and civil
population was aroused by the Zionists' claim to Jewish nation-
ality as opposed to Polish nationality. The same claim was
declared to me by government officials to be the reason for the
non-admission of Jews into the post-office and other government
offices, but no evidence was adduced to me that Jews not so
declaring themselves of separate nationality were able to secure
appointments.
A serious feature of the situation is the fact that it is very
difficult for the Jews to obtain redress and restitution. Al-
though nominally every citizen is free to approach the govern-
ment, actually representations produce no result.
At present the Jews are considerably under-represented in
the Polish parliament (Sejm), having only 11 out of 390 seats.
This is largely owing to the manner in which the boundaries
of the present constituencies are drawn. Until they secure a
representation of about forty members, which is about their
proportion of the general population, it will be difficult for them
to make any appreciable impression upon public opinion. Most
of the requests made, to the Polish government appear to be
met with the reply that the Jews have their privileges in
accordance with their numerical proportion to the rest of the
population. While this rejoinder is apparently frank and just,
it is nevertheless specious; the Jews, as in most other parts of
the world, have specialized in definite occupations. To answer
their complaints, when their own representative industries are
attacked, to the effect that they have their proper proportion of
privileges, appears to be a refinement of casuistry. I feel, how-
ever, that the government eventually will be able to make its
sobering influence more directly felt by the general population;
meanwhile the Jews must have patience in order to give time
for this to become effective. . . .
I consider that the bare recital of these terrible events is
enough to reveal how insecure are Jewish life and property in
Poland, and how easily — if the evil causes at work be not
speedily removed — excesses may break out again, possibly upon
a far more serious scale.
Many countries have been affected by temporary waves of
anti-Semitism. The movement has been somewhat accentuated
in Poland at the present time owing to war, famine, and the
difficult political position. Poles generally are of a generous
nature, and if the present incitements of the press were re-
pressed by a strong official hand Jews would be able to live,
as they have done for the past 800 years, on good terms with
their fellow citizens in Poland.
In the hope of assisting this desirable consummation I have
the honor to submit the following recommendations for the
consideration of His Majesty's Government. I would draw your
attention to the fact that I have not embodied in this report
any matters which I was not able to investigate personally dur-
ing the stay of the mission in Poland:
Recommendations.
1. That the Polish government be urged to carry out the
clauses of the Minority Treaty of June 28, 1919, in a spirit of
sympathy with its Jewish subjects. A state can only be strong
when all sections of its inhabitants are working unitedly and in
mutual confidence for its welfare.
2. That a genuine and not a "masked" equality be accorded
to the Jewish population of Poland.
3. That all outrages against the person or property of the
subject, irrespective of religion or race, should be promptly
punished and the names of the delinquents published. This
latter action is especially necessary, inasmuch as the state does
not punish out of revenge but as a deterrent to others.
4. That Jews in East Galicia be restored to their official posi-
tions in the same manner as non-Jews have been.
5. That Jewish railway officials and employees be restored to
their posts in the same manner as non-Jews have been.
6. That no restrictions should be placed upon the number of
Jews admitted to the universities.
7. That a decree be published declaring boycotts illegal, and
ordering all publications advocating boycott to be suspended.
8. That all prisoners in internment camps be brought to im-
mediate trial, and that humane treatment be assured to all
interned prisoners.
9. That facilities be afforded for the introduction of new
industries into Poland with a view to converting a larger pro-
portion of the Jewish population into producers.
10. That the British government should assist Jews wishing
to emigrate from Poland by providing facilities to proceed to
countries such as Palestine, Canada, South Africa, Algeria, and
South America, or any other country desiring to receive them.
11. That banks be established possessing the confidence of
the Jewish public, so that money might be deposited therein
instead of being carried on the person or concealed in dwellings.
12. That the desirability of a secretary who understands and
speaks Yiddish being added to the staff of His Majesty's Lega-
tion at Warsaw be considered. . . .
Stuart M. Samuel.
172
The Nation
[Vol. ill, No. 2875
Literary Agencies
ana Exchange
Authors, Playwrights, Dramatists, Teachers
'THE FISK TEACHERS' AGENCY
A Everett O. Pibk & Co., Proprietors.
Boston. 2a Park Street. Chicago, 814 Steger Bids.
New York. 225 Fifth Are. Denver, 317 Masonic Bide.
Syracuse, 402 Dillaye Bid. Portland, 509 Jonrnal Bldg.
Pittsburg, 549 Un. Arcade. Berkeley, 2161 Shatruck Av.
Birmingham, 809 Title Bid. Los Angeles, 510 Spring St.
Send to any address above for registration form.
Hablan P. Febnch, Pres. W. W. Andbbws, Sec.
ALBANY TEACHERS' AGENCY, Inc.
Supplies Schools and Colleges with Competent Teach-
ers. Assists Teachers in obtaining positions. Send
for Bulletin. 81 Chape! Street, Albany, N. T.
DpTTpD PYC^iriJT A monthly magazinedevoled to the
DC I I L J\ L I L jillll 1 prevention and cure of imperfect
sight by treatment WITHOUT 6LASSES. W. H. BaUs, M.D., Editor
Published by the CENTRAL FIXATION PUBLISHING COMPANY
342 West 42nd St., New York Tel. Bryant 3904
Trice $2.00 a year Sample copies FREE
If you want to eat, sleep
and play, come out to the
RED HEN FARM
Write to Edith Summers Kelley
Newton, N. J. R. R. 5.
BACK NUMBERS OF MAGAZINES TO BE HAD
at ABRAHAMS BOOK STORE, 145 4th Avenue
Bind your copies of
The Nation
in a strongly made, cloth covered binder.
A convenient and orderly way in which
to keep each volume of The Nation as
completed.
Sent postpaid for $1.00
20 Vesey Street New York City
THE
RUSSIAN LIE
Catalogued Up - to - Date
By EVANS CLARK
Facts and Fabrications
about
SOVIET RUSSIA
Complete data of the sordid inter-
national conspiracy
A Valuable Reference Book
Price 50c Paper, Postage 5c extra
Published by
The Rand School of Social Science
7 East 15th Street, New York
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE LUSK COMMITTEE
25 Cents a Copy
The Nation 20 Vesey St.. New York
3Q0 Commonwealth Avenue,
Boston
5Uji> BtBiutrtttie Maetan House
and one of the most homelike and
attractive hotels in the world.
Near Massachusetts Ave. Subway Sta.
Send for our booklet with its guide
to Boston and its historical vicinity.
N. A. COSTELLO, Manager
ISIS
International Quarterly Devoted to (he History
of Science and Civilization
Edited by
George Sarton and Charles Singer
Each number contains an editorial,
original contributions, shorter notes,
reviews of the most important books
and chiefly a Critical Bibliography of
the publications relating to the His-
tory and Philosophy of Science and the
History of Civilization.
Books and papers on the medical
and biological sciences should be sent
to Charles Singer, Westbury Lodge,
Oxford, England; all others to George
Sarton, Harvard University, Cam-
bridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Vol. I., 50 Belgian francs; Vols. II. and III.,
each 30 francs. Ed. de luxe from Vol. II. on,
each Vol. SO francs. The subscription to Vol.
III. (about 500 pages) is open.
Those who believe in the New Humanism
should subscribe to "Isis."
PUBLISHER:
Weissenbruch, Imprimeur du roi
49 rue du Poincon Brussels, Belgium
f
Spanish Books
i ?
wholesale ALL SUBJECTS retail
Spanish Dailies and Periodicals
COMPANIA HISPANO-AMERICANA
158 West 14th St., cor. 7th Ave., N. Y.
When you write to an advertiser, please say that
you saw his advertisement in The Nation. It will
help you. him, and The Nation.
BOOKS Everybody
At 30 Church Street
All the new bootks, fiction
and non-fiction. Seta, fina
bindings, rare books.
At 55 Vesey Street-
A big stock of new and
second-hand books to suit
every purse.
** HONOR US WITH A VISIT
McDEVTTT - WILSON'S, Inc.,
Booksellers Publishers Importers
30 Church St. New York 55 Vesey St.
Cortlandt 1779 Phones Cortlandt 498
Just Published
No. 68. Illustrated Catalogue of
Rare Books in Beautiful Old Bindings
Th« DR. R. T. JUPP COLLECTION of
MSS., AUTOGRAPHS, BOOKS, etc., etc., by or relating to
CHARLES DICKENS
The Collection of Relics of the Original Dora of DAVID COPPERFIELD
BOOKS ON THE FINE ARTS, SPORT
and an extensive collection of BOOKS ON SHORTHAND
Fine Sets of First Editions of CHARLES LEVER, GEORGE MEREDITH
and CAPTAIN MARRYAT, GOULDS BIRDS of AUSTRALIA, etc.
Post free from
HENRY SOTHERAN & CO.
Booksellers to the King
43, Piccadilly, W. 1,
or, 140 Strand. W. C. 2.
Cable Address; Bookmen, London London, England.
The Case for Birth Control, 25c.
"The Case for Birth Control," with answers to questions, by Mary Ware
Dennett. Also contains The Secret of Love, by Henry Ford. This is a
subject that goes to the heart of many overburdened homes. Quite frankly
the case for limitation of offspring is argued.
APPEAL TO REASON, GIRARD, KANSAS.
ALICE KAUSER
1402 BROADWAY
NEW YORK
DRAMATISTS' AGENT— PLAYS
ESTABLISHED 1SII
Motion Picture Department
R. L. GIFFEN, Associate Manager
Story Writing Properly Taught
Expert instruction in Short-story Writing will be given by
the staff of Pearson's Magazine, under the personal super-
vision of Frank Harris. Persons whose experience with other
"courses" has been unsatisfactory, will find here a service of
superior worth. Careful criticism and revision of single
manuscripts also made by professional writers. Fees for
either service moderate. For information address,
PEARSON'S LITERARY SERVICE, 57 Fifth Ave., New York
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 1920
No. 2876
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 173
EDITORIALS :
The Railroad Rate Increase 17<>
The End of Versailles 177
Who Wouldn't Desert — for Paris ? 177
The Critic and His Uses r • • 178
WILL RUSSIA DRIVE THE BRITISH FROM ASIA? By Henry G. Alsberg 179
THE GREAT WOOLEN STRIKE. By George Soule 181
WHEN FARMERS TURN POLITICIANS. By Arthur Warner 183
C ANTU IN BAJA CALIFORNIA. By Mary Austin 184
THE TRIAL OF THE COMMUNISTS. By Robert Morss Lovett 185
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter .' 186
CORRESPONDENCE 187
BOOKS :
The Fruits of the Frontier. By C. V. D 189
One More Mr. Wilson. By J. A. Hobson 189
Far Away and Long Ago. By Ludwig Lewisohn 190
Books in Brief 191
Notes and News 193
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION 194
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER LEWIS S. GANNETT
LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Veaey Street, New York City. Cable Adress : Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising : Swathmore Press, Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
WILL Italy go to war or threaten war with the United
States as the result of the murderous assault on its
citizens in West Frankfort, Illinois? Presumably not. And
yet it is apparent that an Italian's life and property are not
safe in that region of the United States, that armed mobs
— bandits we would call them in Mexico, Nicaragua, or
Haiti — are slaughtering and torturing foreigners and de-
fying or wholly wiping out the local civil government. Italy
may protest and even demand an explanation and some
recompense; the United States may, if it chooses, pay at-
tention to such action. Italy has no power to protect its
citizens in this country, nor has any nation that dares not
provoke us. If the laws and the authorities and the decent
impulses of the United States fail to protect aliens they
will die as they have died in Illinois. Thus breaks down
the theory that the flag of a nation affords some mystical
protection for its citizens in foreign lands. It is a theory
seldom if ever effective to protect life, but rather to secure
subsequent redress — and even then it is not always invoked.
The flag of the United States was not invoked to protect
countless Americans in Mexico, because the idiosyncratic
Wilsonian diplomacy ran counter to the accepted rules of
the game. Nor did "Old Glory" save the life or seek recom-
pense for the death of Paul DeMotte, the Socialist, killed
by the German Reichswehr after the armistice; nor indeed
for the other victims of German frightfulness before our
entry into the war. But while the practice is as often as
not abandoned, the principle persists, convenient instru-
ment of imperialism the world over. Its formal relinquish-
ment in favor of reliance on the administrations and laws
of the several nations of this earth will mark a great for-
ward step in their better relationship.
MISS HARRIET MAY MILLS is the first woman to be
put up by either of the major parties for a State
office in New York. It appears, however, that her recent
designation as the "unofficial" nominee of the Democratic
Party for Secretary of State was not the act of open-
handed gallantry or of even-handed justice that it might
seem. Two years ago the women were invited to agree upon
a candidate to be placed upon the State ticket, but, as they
were unable to do so, the nominations all went to men.
According to the New York Tribune, a committee of five
women was this year asked to make a unanimous recom-
mendation, many of the men hoping that history would
repeat itself. When a unanimous verdict was reached, some
disappointed men were for ignoring it, until Governor Smith
sent this ultimatum: "I am running for Governor and not
any of you. And I want a woman on the ticket." O Man !
THE virtually complete breakdown of British civil gov-
ernment in Ireland, and the lengths to which Mr. Lloyd
George and his associates are willing to go when British
control is jeopardized, are clearly shown in the provisions
of the new coercion bill which has just been framed. The
bill virtually revives for Ireland the Defense of the Realm
Act of 1914, most of whose provisions have been repealed so
far as the rest of Great Britain is concerned, and empowers
the Government to place the execution of the act and of the
supplementary coercion bill in the hands of Dublin Castle.
Under the coercion bill jury trial will be abolished, and trial
by courts martial or other courts of summary jurisdiction
will be substituted. Both civil and criminal cases are in-
cluded within the scope of the bill, and the new system is to
extend to offenses committed in the past as well as to any
that may be committed in the future. The only saving
features of the measure are the requirements that punish-
ments inflicted by the courts martial in criminal cases are
to be the same as are now provided by statute or by common
law for such offenses; and that in trials of capital offenses
one member of the eourt shall be a person who may be
nominated by the Lord Chief Justice of England instead of
by Dublin Castle. The imprisonment of convicted persons
in any part of the United Kingdom is also authorized. In
terms the bill applies to the whole of Ireland, but, of course,
it will not be extended to Protestant Ulster. One may safely
predict that this new application of the iron hand will merely
make the name of Britain still more odious in Ireland and
strengthen the resistance of Sinn Fein. We suggest that
the only thing necessary to complete the program is for
the British Government to request the extradition of Sinn
Fein sympathizers in this country to be tried by courts
martial in Ireland, and to send over more British secret
service men to help Washington round them up.
174
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2876
THE recognition by the United States of Julio de Costa
as President of Costa Rica ends a disgraceful chapter
in Wilsonian diplomacy. In 1917, the Costa Ricans, tired of
the pro-German machinations of President Alfredo Gonza-
lez, demanded his resignation. For thirty-five years the po-
litical tranquillity of Costa Rica, most stable of Central
American republics, had been undisturbed in its regular suc-
cession of duly elected chief executives. Nor was the revolt
against Gonzalez the typical Latin-American revolution.
Not a shot was fired, not a blow struck. A presidential
election, promptly held, resulted in the choice, by a majority
of twelve to one, of Federico Tinoco, minister of war and
leader of the insurrection. Gonzalez, meantime, had reached
Washington and obtained President Wilson's ear. A newly
established principle was invoked, that of non-recognition
of a government coming into power through revolution — a
strange doctrine for the United States — which with Wil-
sonian consistency has not applied in the subsequent similar
case of Peru. Non-recognition proving insufficient to carry
out the proscription of Tinoco, our Administration went out
of its way to isolate and bankrupt the tiny republic by
forbidding recognition by the Allied nations as well as
financial assistance which British interests were eager to
give. By the same token, Costa Rica, though a declared
enemy of the Central Powers, was excluded from the Peace
Conference and the League. For two years Tinoco, the
choice of his people, heroically withstood this outward
pressure and other intrigues of our State Department.
When Costa Rica neared bankruptcy his regime fell — not
without bloodshed, however — and De Costa, leader in the
new revolution, was elected. His recognition, while adding
nothing to the principle of self-determination of small na-
tions, further establishes that inconsistency is no hobgoblin
of the single-track mind.
OUR neighbor, the New Republic, deserves great credit
for the publication of its 42-page supplement, "A Test
of the News," a painstaking analysis of the news reports on
Russia published in the New York Times from March, 1917,
to March, 1920. The authors' scrupulous fairness and their
insistence that they impute no discreditable motives to the
Times merely strengthens the indictment, the implications
of which are far-reaching. As a scientific contribution to
the current and increasing discussion of the trustworthi-
ness of our news, it should be highly valuable in further
drawing attention to the relation between "the raw mate-
rial of thought" and the maintenance of democratic insti-
tutions.
THE most significant aspect of the trial in Chicago that
has just resulted in the conviction under the State
sedition law of William Bross Lloyd and a score of other
members of the Communist Labor Party was the admission
as evidence of speeches made prior to the passage of the
statute. The Constitution of the United States forbids
the passage of any ex post facto law, which in effect means
that no person may be prosecuted for an act which was not
a crime at the time it was committed, even though it may
become such under some subsequent law. It is hard, there-
fore, to understand the conception of justice or legality that
led Judge Oscar Hebel to admit in evidence speeches or
writings made previous to the enactment of the law, without
which the prosecution would probably have failed. The
admission of such evidence was an unequivocal confession
on the part of the judge and the prosecution that they were
trying the defendants for a state of mind. One is reminded
of the story of the German father who was going upstairs
with his son, when the boy stubbed his toe. Promptly the
father cuffed the boy on the head. "What for you do that?"
cried the boy. "I don't say nothings." "No," replied the
father, "but you think 'Damn.' " A new trial ought to be
granted without question on the basis of Judge Hebel's
extraordinary ruling.
THE agents of Satan having failed to organize the steel
industry, the angels will now take a hand. The Ameri-
can Federation of Labor will cooperate in the work of
smashing Mr. Gary's open shop with the Amalgamated As-
sociation of Steel and Iron Workers, "providing that William
Foster is not included in the board of strategy." The drive
will be on "vastly broader lines than the Foster failure."
While the Federation thus outlines its plan and the press
makes it clear that it is to be a safe, American, anti-Fos-
terian campaign, it would be interesting to know what Mr.
Gary thinks about it. Would he prefer unionization at
the hands of respectable circles of the Federation to union-
ization through a person with an improper past — economi-
cally speaking — like Mr. Foster? Will Mr. Gary, remem-
bering the war record and unassailable respectability of Mr.
Gompers, call off his Cossacks and allow freedom of meet-
ing and speaking in his steel towns? Will he order the
embargo lifted that at present in the sacred name of the
"open shop" prevents the sale of structural steel to con-"
tractors who deal with the Amalgamated Association of.
Steel and Iron Workers? The chances are that Mr. Gary
will do none of these things. To him Mr. Gompers and
Mr. Foster are as brothers. There are no good and bad
unions to Mr. Gary; there are only bad ones. But if Mr.
Gompers and his associates succeed in unionizing the great
steel barony, they will be applauded by all who are not
autocrats.
NO one who cherishes American traditions can read
without profound disgust the revelation of espionage
in industry of which the Interchurch steel report reveals a
characteristic fragment, and which was reprinted in the last
issue of The Nation. The wholesale spying practiced in
this country during the war under pretext of national peril
was rotten enough. Hearsay, rumor, suspicion, and pri-
vate grudges were elevated by ignoramuses and scalawags
to the dignity of Military Intelligence or Department of
Justice dossiers, to the detriment of decent citizens. The
recent comment of Judge Anderson who, as United States
District Attorney, found 99 per cent of the alleged pro-
German plots fictitious, that "except in time of war when
a Nathan Hale may be a spy . . . a right-minded man
refuses such employment," may be accepted as conclusive.
The men who risked their lives overseas while entering the
enemy lines are the Nathan Hales of today. Those who
from the safety of civilian concealment act as informers
upon the persons with whom they are in daily contact are,
and always will be, beneath the contempt of honorable men.
DEMOCRATIC and Republican schemes for reducing
the cost of living are equally fatuous. Attorney-Gen-
eral Palmer adopted the method last winter of standing on
the steps of the Department of Justice and reading procla-
August 14, 1920]
The Nation
175
mations in which by turn he ordered and entreated the
H. C. of L. to descend. As the H. C. of L. paid no attention,
but just went on climbing, Mr. Palmer took to prosecuting
small merchants for profiteering. One such, an insignificant
grocer of New York's East Side, has just been convicted
under the Lever law of hoarding sugar; he has been sen-
tenced to two years in Atlanta penitentiary, the extreme
penalty, although he might have been given the alternative
of a $5,000 fine. "I have had corporations before me, but
I could do nothing but impose a money fine," said Judge
Harlan B. Howe. "With Lessen, an individual, it was dif-
ferent, and I imposed the maximum sentence." That the
little fellow gets the big sentence is a truism of our anti-
profiteering technique, of which not even the converse holds.
The big fellow gets no sentence at all, unless the gentle
compulsion to return a part .of the loot in the form of a
fine may be so considered.
REPUBLICAN politicians are dissatisfied with the Dem-
ocratic Administration's method of reducing prices —
one cannot blame them for that — but what do they propose
instead? According to Representative Slemp, if Senator
Harding is elected, an extra session of Congress will be
called to legislate as follows: revise and possibly entirely
repeal the excess profits tax ; abolish the government tax on
freight and passenger traffic; increase the tariff schedules;
reduce the income taxes. Now, the promise of lower taxes
has an appealing sound, but somehow or other the money
must be found to pay our debts and enormous current ex-
penses. The Republican proposal is simply to lessen direct
and increase indirect taxes; in other words, to reduce
specific payments now called for from the well-to-do and
spread the whole sum out over rich and poor in the form of
consumption taxes. Has Senator Harding forgotten that
our last Republican President disrupted his party's national
convention and lost every State in the union except Utah
and Vermont largely because he signed a high tariff bill
when the country wanted lower duties? The Republicans
are not proposing to lower the cost of living for the ordinary
man, but to reduce the high cost of being rich.
LABOR, according to the monthly report of the Federal
Reserve Board, is becoming more efficient. It is "less
insistent in its demands," "a better spirit of cooperation is
said to exist between employer and employee." This happy
state of affairs does not go uninterpreted. With only a
few lines of explanation inserted to divide cause from effect,
the Federal Reserve Board cites as an important factor in
the change in labor conditions "the development of unem-
ployment in various parts of the country." The implications
of this sequence are interesting. Poor' transportation, re-
sulting in a curtailment of production, shutting down mills
"as a result of cancelation of orders and lack of demand,"
inability to obtain capital — these things result in unem-
ployment and the consequent encouraging increase in labor
efficiency. To the uninitiated this would appear to be a
puzzling analysis. The public gets fewer products, and
consequently pays more for what it gets; the workers get
fewer jobs. But the manufacturer is happy; his prices rise,
his costs decrease, his labor is efficient, "less insistent in
its demands," and more cooperative in spirit. How long
will it be before business realizes that its own interests are
injured by this callous and short-sighted attitude toward the
workers?
MARCUS GARVEY is a sort of Billy Sunday of the
Negro race. Within a year he has built up an organi-
zation of Negroes which claims a million members in the
world and probably has half a million in the United States
alone. His Universal Negro Improvement Association, which
has just held a "Convention of the Negro Race" in New
York city and elected a "President of Africa," has branches
throughout the West Indies, along the west coast of Africa,
and in South America as well as North. It preaches a gospel
of pride in the Negro race and its future, with a superb
and ignorant fanaticism which has the Sunday movement
as its only white parallel. Garvey's all-Negro Black Star
steamship line bids fair to be as profitable a commercial
venture as the Billy Sunday song-book and syndicated-ser-
mon business. And the dream of a vast Negro republic in
Africa may be at least as probable as some of Billy Sunday's
prophecies. The parceling of Africa among the white
powers is a matter of the last half-century, and there is
no reason to believe that so unnatural a condition will endure
forever. If such preaching as Garvey's should lead to a
bloody race revolt in Africa, we should have to blame the
white race more than the Garveys. The best of Garvey's
gospel, like the best of Billy Sunday's, is old stuff; but he
gives it an emotional color and a stage setting of flags and
costumes which appeals to Negroes untouched by more digni-
fied and better balanced leaders. The worst of Garvey is
sheer fanaticism and demagoguery. It is a pity that any
one concerned for the freedom of black Africa and the future
of the Negro race should go out of his way to attack so
fine-spirited an apostle of his race as Dr. Du Bois.
THE prediction of twenty-five or thirty cent milk for
New York City next winter may turn out to be only an
excited guess, but the serious mention of such a price calls
attention sharply to a situation which cannot much longer
be neglected. Every large city in the country, as well as
innumerable smaller ones, is threatened with a price schedule
which can have no other effect than to remove milk in the
near future from the class of necessaries of life, certainly
from the list of foods ordinarily consumed, and to transfer
it to the already swollen list of luxuries. Even at present
prices only the cheaper grades of milk, necessarily deficient
in nutritive value, can be afforded by persons of moderate
means ; while for the poor, milk has all but disappeared from
the list of daily foods save for infants and the sick. With
the growth of population, grazing land, especially near cities,
is decreasing in quantity and increasing in value ; less winter
feed is raised at home and more is brought from a dis-
tance ; while the demands of the community in the shape of
taxes on the one hand and sanitary requirements on the
other, not to speak of advancing wages and mounting trans-
portation rates, show no diminution. Under such circum-
stances the regulation of the production and the price of
milk ought no longer to be left to the discretion of the
farmer or to bargaining between producers and distributors.
If the children of the very near future are to have milk at
prices which persons who are not millionaires can afford to
pay, the state will have to take over the milk industry and
run it as a public enterprise, as Governor Smith of New
York has recommended. Even a material reduction, which
certainly ought to be made, of the excessive profits which
some large distributing concerns exact will afford only
temporary relief. The trouble is in the lack of a sufficient
supply of milk under existing production and distribution.
176
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2876
The Railroad Rate Increases
THE size of the award of the Interstate Commerce Com-
mission, authorizing freight rate and passenger fare
increases sufficient to produce $1,600,000,000, is less impor-
tant in itself than in its final effects on the country. The
treatment of transportation as a private, profit-making
business, rather than a public service, and the inefficiency
and waste incident to monopoly power and reliance on a
government guarantee for profits, bid fair to impose a
crushing burden on the consuming public and to have an
injurious, possibly calamitous, effect on industry. Trans-
portation and credit control the life of a people. Cheap,
efficient, and orderly organization of the transportation
agencies lies at the basis of production, distribution, and
exchange. It is an open question if private banking, man-
agement and ineptitude on the part of Congress have not
produced a condition in which the railroads will progres-
sively impair the economic life of the nation.
Former Director-General Hines stated in a western ad-
dress that freight rate increases were cumulative. They
were an excuse for profiteering. He cited the increase of
ten cents a ton on anthracite coal, which amounted to fifty
cents when it reached the consumer. Robert W. Woolley
of the Interstate Commerce Commission has repeatedly
stated that for every dollar added to freight earnings the
consumer pays from three to five dollars in added costs. On
these estimates the final cost to the public of the rate ad-
vances will not be the $1,600,000,000 that the railroads col-
lect, but from $5,000,000,000 to $8,000,000,000 that the con-
sumers ultimately pay. If the consumer pays only what the
railroads get, there will be an increase of $75 a year in the
cost of living of every family of five in the country, and, if
the estimates of Mr. Hines and Mr. Woolley are confirmed,
the final cost may amount to five times that sum, or $375
per family. This will eat up the recent wage award to the
two million railway workers, and will be followed by another
demand from them for advanced pay.
What will be the effect of the rate increases on produc-
tion? There has already been a slackening of freight
movement due in part to high costs. The increase in freight
rates will undoubtedly reduce the amount of freight hauled
by hundreds of millions of tons annually. It will kill many
kinds of business altogether and will seriously hamper our
foreign trade. It has been estimated that motor trucks now
haul one-fourth of the freight of the country. It is mostly
short-haul traffic between the larger cities. The motor truck
may absorb so much transportation that the rate increases
will add far less than the estimated sum of $1,600,000,000
to the railroads. There is a point in transportation cost
that not only destroys traffic; it drives it to find other
means of conveyance.
The effects of the rate increases on the farmer are evi-
dent. The price of wheat is fixed in the markets of the
world. The American farmer receives the Liverpool price,
fixed by the competition of other countries, less what it
costs the American farmer to get his wheat to the Liver-
pool market. The farmers of America will pay a consider-
able part of the rate increases. They cannot shift the bur-
den to anyone else. The American farmer is being driven
from the land. His explanation is that he is so preyed on
by middlemen and speculators, by the packers and the
millers, by the railroads and the banks, by those who buy
what he produces, that he cannot make a living. He says
he raises wheat and cattle at a loss. That dairying has be-
come so unprofitable that cattle are being killed is a matter
of everyday experience. Often crops rot on the ground
because of the inability of the farmer to secure freight cars
or storage.
Under the Esch-Cummins law Congress has provided a
"cost plus" transportation system that invites waste. The
railroads are guaranteed operating costs and then six per
cent on the valuation of the property. The book cost of that
property is $20,040,572,611; the Interstate Commerce Com-
mission fixed the value at $18,900,000,000, practically 95 per
cent of the value claimed by the companies. While the rail-
road operators are denied the right to make profits in excess
of six per cent from the railroads, they are not denied the
right to make any profits they can on the side. An investi-
gation made by the Interstate Commerce Commission before
the war of the outside interests of railroad directors and
officials disclosed that the railroads bought almost every-
thing they used from corporations which the railroad direc-
tors or stockholders either owned or controlled. This was
true of coal, of rails, of cars, of locomotives, of brakes and
equipment, of supplies of all kinds. The cost of coal alone
is in excess of $500,000,000 a year. There is no obligation
on the railroad officials to buy in the open market or to
invite competition. They buy from themselves. It is to
their private interest to operate the railroads wastefully.
A year ago, under unified federal control, freight cars.
were moving 28 miles a day; now they are moving about
22. The economies of unified administration have disap-
peared. We have 2,449,000 freight cars, and need 300,000
more, we are told. To raise the average car movement from
22 to 28 miles a day would be equivalent to adding more
than 650,000 cars. Yet we give the present management its
six per cent, in order that it may spend $700,000,000 for
new equipment to be mismanaged in the same way as that
which it now has.
It is probable that the rate increases will be followed in
a short time by demands for further rate increases. That
has been the experience with local franchise corporations.
With dividends guaranteed by the public utility commis-
sions, and with waste invited by inside contracts and manip-
ulations, it is much easier to fall back on political agencies
which guarantee wastage than it is to introduce economies
and bring about efficiency.
The inherent evils of the transportation act are far
greater than the rate increases, calamitous and in large part
unnecessary as they are. For they could have been avoided
in large part, if not wholly, by a continuation of federal
control and the unification of the transportation facilities
of the country. Mr. Hines was reporting net earnings over
and above all expenses in the operation of the railways
from July to October of last year. He was paying the
standard return and was making a profit for the govern-
ment. In addition the employees were loyal; they were
protected by wage adjustment boards in which they had
confidence, and were ready to enter into collective bargain-
ing arrangements that would have called forth many econo-
mies and greater efficiency than is possible under the war-
ring, waste-inviting system of which we are just beginning
to pay the cost.
August 14, 1920]
The Nation
177
The End of Versailles
WHATEVER the outcome of the blustering hesitations
and half-hearted ultimatums of the Allies and of
the relentless advance and skilful diplomacy of the Rus-
sians, the Polish adventure has made so much clear: the
Treaty of Versailles is dead. Whether the Red armies over-
run all of present-day Poland and sovietize the entire region,
whether Soviet Russia returns to Germany Danzig and
the other German regions annexed to Poland, or whether
the Allies determine upon a desperate struggle against the
victorious Russians and hold Danzig as a base of operations,
the territorial provisions, the heart of the treaty, will be
revised. Intact the treaty was not, even before the final
disaster. The treaty was a compound of a dream of a
governed and united world, and of extremely definite
provisions to satisfy the blood lust manifested in Lloyd
George's khaki elections of 1918 and Clemenceau's bloc na-
tional triumph of 1919. The treaty was hardly a solution;
it was an emulsion of contrary policies. The League of
Mr. Wilson's dreams emerged with all central and eastern
Europe left out, and inevitably became the plaything of the
British Foreign Office. The revenge clauses have been
dropped or modified in response to the prosaic realizations
of unsentimental daily life. The Kaiser is not to be hanged ;
the German military leaders are not to be tried before Allied
courts; the German army is not yet disarmed — and, with
the greater Russian "peril" before them, the Allies are not
likely to force its disarmament; the coal and other repara-
tions clauses have been scaled down from the treaty terms
to meet the arguments of practical economists. Now even
the territorial provisions seem likely to fall.
The Treaty of Versailles was a dictated document ; it was
not a product of common counsels. Whatever succeeds it
will be the outcome of negotiations in which the Germans
and probably the Austrians and Hungarians as well will
take part on a footing of at least official equality. And it
is not likely that the Russians will play any such humiliating
role as was played by the defeated Germans at Versailles;
they are more likely to be the dictators. France has already
made a bargain with Hungary for her aid against Russia,
and whether the Hungarian army goes into the field against
Soviet Russia or not, a part of the bargain, in the shape
of rather substantial modifications of the treaty with
Hungary, will probably persist. Germany has announced
her neutrality in any conflict between the Allies and Soviet
Russia, and if she is to be budged from that attitude, it
will be only at the price of substantial concessions. The
Bolsheviki are likely to offer Germany the famous Danzig
corridor, and the Allies, if they would hold Germany to the
rest of her bond, will have to offer as favorable terms.
No such wind of idealism is blowing across Europe to-
day as when the Peace Conference opened; there are no
such exaggerated hopes of a new and better world, no such
pathetic faith in the regenerative results of war. Perhaps
it is just as well. Less attention will be paid to words,
less effort will be made to soothe with fine phrases. Thire
may be more attention given to the desires of peoples and
less to the schemes of governments. Organized labor in
western Europe may supersede the Foreign Offices as a fac-
tor in reconstruction. The tidal wave of communism will
have to be faced.
Who Wouldn 't Desert-for Paris?
IT is with a renewed appreciation of the versatility and
virtuosity of the American soldier that we "see by the
papers" that there are 1,500 deserters from the A. E. F. in
Paris, most of them practicing the profession of "bad man."
Now it takes a good man to be a "bad man" almost any-
where, but it takes a corking good man to be a "bad man"
in Paris — and get away with it. Few Americans have
proved themselves sufficiently adaptable to make a living
against the Frenchman on his own ground, and if 1,500 of
them have shown themselves able to compete with that most
inbred and clannish French product, the Paris apache, one
wonders why they have not received some mention by the
scribes who write on foreign opportunities for the govern-
ment's popular daily, Commerce Reports. This story of
1,500 army deserters who carry "guns," live in "secret un-
derground passages," and derive their income chiefly from
the illicit sale of drugs is not mere American brag; it is on
the word of the Paris police, and the gendarme is not only
without pity but also without any narrow national bigotry in
his estimate of "bad men." Before this story came over
we had almost begun to despair of the American ever under-
standing France. Most of our soldiers brought back the
ideas they took over. But the only explanation of these
1,500 American soldiers who are listed in the army records
as deserters is that they have succumbed to the charm of
Paris; they have come to appreciate France.
Doubtless one must take with a grain of salt some of the
statements about these wayward members of the American
army in Paris. The "secret underground passages" of
Montmartre, for instance, are only the embroidery of ener-
getic press correspondents. About the only underground
passages in Montmartre are those of the Metro and the
Nord-Sud, and they are public to anyone who has the fare.
But there are other means than secret underground passages
whereby one may live among the twisted streets and jumbled
houses of that hill of romance and rags beyond the boule-
vards of Clichy and Rochechouart, fairly secure from undue
familiarity on the part of the police. One must, however,
be of the people and have their language for such a life.
The Kingdom of Argot is not so powerful today as that
which Victor Hugo describes in "Notre-Dame." The
Truands have fallen on less lusty days. Yet one must know
more French than enough merely to enter a restaurant and
call "Oouffs!" in order to survive in the underworld of
Montmarte.
One suspects that these deserters are not quite such "bad
men" as the police and the Paris correspondents would have
us believe. Perhaps after all they are only getting the
education, travel, and adventure that the army recruiting
posters advertise. Perhaps they are only daring young
Americans with that passion for freedom, that zest for
struggle, that contempt for the conventional that character-
ized our pioneer days. And behind it all, we suspect, are
certain young Parisiennes. For they do say that men are
only as bad as women want them to be, and to win the
esteem of some of those of Paris one might be forgiven for
going nearly 100 per cent.
Sometimes we suspect we would desert the army of the
Angel Gabriel, encamped before the Pearly Gates, for Paris,
Montmartre, and — ah, well, probably we also belong in the
category of "bad men."
178
The Nation
[Vol. ill, No. 2876
The Critic and His Uses
THE critic's character, like the poet's, has undergone
many transformations in the course of time. During
long ages the didactic notion of the critic prevailed, and
learned and self-satisfied men cling to it still. According
to this notion, which commends itself easily to superficial
thinking, the critic is an expert in fixed rules by which art
is to be judged. He handles standards, both moral and
aesthetic, very much as a draper does his yard-stick. No
subtlety of learning or refinement of reasoning changes the
character of the didactic critic to whose gigantic futility
the history of his craft bears eloquent witness. His an-
terior assumptions always invalidated his judgments, and
his divine yard-stick turned out to be the weapon of his
angry prejudices. The scientific critic, a type that flourished
mightily but briefly, is both more amiable and less preten-
tious. But he is the victim of an analogy of deadly false-
ness. You can classify phenomena that are identical —
moons, beetles, rocks. You cannot classify phenomena that
are unique. There is no "evolution des genres" because,
closely looked upon, there are no "genres." There are only
individuals expressing their personal sense of life in art;
and there are the imitators of these individuals who do not
count.
The impressionists were fully aware of the sterility of
both the didactic and the scientific methods. They sought
to disengage the peculiar aroma of books and pictures and,
being frankly subjective, produced many pages of beautiful
creative literature. But they restricted themselves a little
narrowly to aesthetic considerations and, conscious always
of their reaction against the older schools, hesitated to
assume the critical functions which they had seen so ab-
surdly exercised. A gentle pessimism haunts all their
books, and the elegiac sense of the passing of a world from
which their own souls were not yet wholly estranged. If
Sainte-Beuve wrote "the natural history of minds," the
impressionists clung timidly to the history of their own
minds. They paid homage to the dead rules of criticism
by not daring to proceed without them beyond the autumnal
gardens of their rwn souls.
It is at this point that the modern critic parts company
with the masters whom he has loved and from whom he has
learned so much. His is a hardier and a cooler nature.
Skepticism does not wound his heart and the perception of
change leaves him quite untroubled. He has shifted his
whole point of vision and has no inner or outer need of
any comfortable absolutes. For he sees art as an integral
part of the life-process, as the life-process itself growing
articulate through chosen personalities. That it should do
so at all, that life should speak in terms of beauty — this
is to him the central and sufficient fact which satisfies the
"idealistic" cravings of his mind. Beauty exists — there is
his heartening and transcendent truth. In beauty he admits
differences of method, of growth, and degrees of intensity;
he admits no moralistic qualifications of better or worse,
higher or lower, through the choice of one sort of subject
matter rather than another or one technique of expression
rather than another. Veracity of substance and intensity
of expression are his sole tests. He may privately entertain
the opinion that certain kinds of subjects and certain tech-
nical methods have actually made for veracity and intensity
more often than others. But he is eager to have that
opinion refuted and the realm of beauty thus enlarged. He
knows nothing of a beauty that is wrong or immoral. He
knows, negatively, only the false or the feeble expression
that misses its own inherent aim through disloyalty to
experience or through failure in articulateness. Wherever
deep experience attains intense expression, there is art.
This critic, like the poet, is born and can hardly be made.
The reading of many books will help him little unless he
has the sense of life, unless its throb comes to him even
through alien speech and remote forms. No partisanship
must curb his humanity, no prejudice blunt the sensitive-
ness of his spirit. He must be himself a seeker after
beauty, after the expression that makes life luminous and
rich; he must be able to identify his own self with men
and things. And he must be sensitive to the general drift
of the many lives that make the world, and neither expect
romantic expansiveness in small and rigid societies nor the
severities of classical synthesis in an age of democratic
revolution. He must share imaginatively the life of other
periods and very practically that of his own. The passions
of its freest minds must be his also, though at the core
he may always keep a touch of coolness to save his inner
processes from hardening even in the best of causes. His
highest aim will always be to keep his perception of the
relation of literature to life firm and unclouded, lest in the
ardor of his personal seeking he fall into the old error of
condemning passions he does not share or opinions to which
he is hostile. All life must be his province. If it is, he
cannot go far wrong in his dealings with art. If he has
been, directly or vicariously, a part of all human experience,
the expression of no form of it can startle or befog his
mind.
His function in modern society is a grave and arduous
one. He must constantly reinterpret the past for the uses
of the present, in order that it may contribute to the crea-
tion of that cultural atmosphere which is his final practical
aim. Thus he will be both philosopher and historian. He
will illustrate the continuity and oneness of art as the
expression of life, and thus establish at once the validity
and use of the art of his own contemporaries. This art he
will be careful to interpret in relation to the vital forces
from which it springs, in order that by its reaction on its
audience it may serve to establish the cultural environment
within which the experience of individuals can be most free
and rich. None will be more acutely aware of this inter-
action between art and life than himself, or do more to
clarify it and make it effectual. The expression of life
in art reacts on life. Poets create new moods in love for
their hearers; dramatists have altered the structure of
society. It will be the critic's task to heighten and increase
this enrichment and liberation of life. He will seek to make
art, which expresses life, reenter life through the sharpened
senses of all capable of receiving its impressions.
The virtue of this program of the modern critic is that it
translates the severest spiritual efforts into direct social
action, and yet leaves him serene and detached. To free
souls through the ministry of art, to create an atmosphere
in which that freedom may be exercised and art itself may
thrive — these are the ends for which he will unceasingly
labor. The purely aesthetic has not lost its magic or its
glow for him. But it needs no nursing. It will appear
whenever the source of art, which is experience, is kept
untrammeled, strong, and full.
August 14, 1920]
The Nation
179
Will Russia Drive the British from Asia?
By HENRY G. ALSBERG
Moscow, June 16
BY all odds the most interesting aspect of Moscow at the
moment is the seething and boiling and bubbling of
the international situation there. Last week our hotel was
decorated with a sign to the following effect: "Long live
the Revolution; we started it; let us finish it together."
This significant motto was directed at the rather cautious
British delegation of the Independent Labor, the Labor
Party and the Trades Union Congress, which made a pil-
grimage to the socialist Mecca. Shortly after them came a
delegation of syndicalists from Germany, and a few days
later a clump of British shop stewards, who were shoveled
out of England in a coal bunker. Bulgarian communists,
French right and lefters and middle-of-the-roadsters, Marcel
Cachin and Frossard, Guilbeaux and Sadoul, and a mys-
terious French old gentleman with a motherly wife who
live down the hall two doors and borrowed my rug to cover
the matrimonial bed, and look as if they ought to be tending
a bit of a garden outside Paris, green with lettuce, radish-
tops and tropical with young artichokes, but who are, I
understand, redder than Bucharin — these are a few of the
inhabitants of our Hotel Delavoid Dvor. But today there
arrived the biggest trump card playable by the Third In-
ternationale, the Italian delegation, headed by such aces as
Serratti, with a vivacious black-eyed phalanx of delegates.
Not a bit cautious they, but decorated all over with red
badges and "Long live the Revolution." To greet them the
British sign of welcome was displaced and an Italian one
substituted reading, "II Trionfo della Dittatura del Prole-
tariate" Next week comes a Swiss delegation. Meanwhile
the Swedish crowd has gone off to inspect the Ural steel
works and mines and is arranging to take over a whole fac-
tory and fill it with expert Swedish mechanics who are to
raise production of machinery. Naturally a certain number
of Irish rebels are here also, several of whose names are as
well known in America as in Ireland. A good deal of josh-
ing between them and the British went on at meal-times on
the subject of Ireland. Yesterday I interviewed the Geor-
gian provisional diplomatic agent; tomorrow I shall inter-
view the Armenian delegation negotiating peace with the
Turks, who are represented here by Kemal himself, whom I
have met. Today Dr. Hung Hing Kwan, Ambassador of the
Provisional Korean government at Shanghai, presents his
credentials to Chicherin, and a protest against Japanese
oppression. In a very few days a great meeting of delegates
to a workingman's congress, representing Chinese working-
men, will meet here. Moscow's streets are star-scattered
with twinkling almond eyes. A former minister of the
Transbaikal Republic has arrived with news of the latest
Japanese oppressions in the Far East, of which more here-
after. In short, with the meeting of the Third Internation-
ale to be held in the beginning of July, Moscow, and not
San Remo or Spa, has become the real center of the world.
Those two towns and the Supreme Council are only side
shows to the one big show on earth. Admission free, if you
have your coupon from the Third Internationale !
If I could collect and put into one volume the adventures
of each delegate during his journey Russiawards, I think I
could, as author of romance, surpass him of the celebrated
"Dead-Eye Dick." Our English shop stewards came by
the now common, and by all really adventurous souls con-
sidered commonplace, coal bunker route. Others have wan-
dered around the Murmansk passage. A German happens
to be leader of a German sailors' syndicate and travels under
protection of his followers without passport or ticket. An
Argentinian came from Italy by underground route. It
seems, if you are a real communist, you can travel where and
how you like, without passport or without paying any fare.
There are two governmental systems spread throughout
Europe now, and the lesser of these is not the revolutionary.
If you have your passport from the latter you can thumb
your nose at the former. If you have a passport from both,
naturally, you may travel from Tibet to Timbuctoo, from
the wilds of Burmah to those of Broadway, and "no one
shall you let." You can then, as is the case with one youth
of my acquaintance, buy agricultural machinery in Great
Britain and deliver same, in the shape of machine-guns in —
well, it is better not to be too definite.
At any rate the coming session of the Third Internation-
ale promises to be the most stirring event of our time. The
last meeting, when Europe was at war and the underground
routes had not yet been properly developed, was a bit too
much facade and too little building. In those days, I
imagine, credentials of delegates were not so closely scruti-
nized. Korean and Persian and British communist dele-
gates were not very easy to find and one just had to do with
whatever representatives one had at hand. But this year
the situation has quite changed. No matter how irregular
your method of travel, you will not be admitted to this con-
vention unless the credentials committee is absolutely satis-
fied with the validity of your papers. I imagine that, in
some cases, indeed, as in our own conventions, there are and
will be rival delegations and contests. But in the end, under
the wing of the mother of the present proletarian revolu-
tion, will meet the most impressive international gathering,
in fact the only really international gathering for the dis-
cussion and settlement of the rights of the great masses of
laboring, sweating, and toiling humanity that the world has
ever seen.
But all this gathering of the proletarian clans has another
and more serious meaning for the world. The Third Inter-
nationale of this year marks a turning point in the develop-
ment of Soviet Russia. I have spoken with Chicherin,
with Radek and other notables of the government. Until
now it was hoped that Russia could obtain peace and a free
development of all her tremendous forces without first en-
gaging in an offensive against the capitalist states. I asked
Chicherin directly whether he considered it possible for a
communist state like Russia to live in peace and amicable
trade with the capitalist world. He stated emphatically
that he could see no just impediment thereto. He pointed
out that after having cleared up the civil war Russia had
begun to demobilize and beat her bayonets into pruning
hooks. He drew attention to his government's offer of
peace to Poland, to Latvia, to Finland and to Rumania. He
pointed out that despite the fact that Russia could have
180
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2876
worked to raise India, Persia and other colored dependencies
against Britain, Russia had, even during the period of the
Archangel, Denikin and Judenich interventions, refrained
from using this weapon as vigorously as it might. Another
official in the Foreign Office supplemented this statement by
asserting that immediately after the civil war's conclusion
all Russia's activities in the Near and Far East and India
hostile to Britain ceased at once, absolutely and in good
faith. I believe that both these statements of Chicherin
and other Soviet officials must be accepted as quite sincere
and true.
But now came the Polish offensive. Chicherin quite
freely admits, and so does Radek, that Great Britain is
forcing Russia into a war d Voutrance, a war never desired,
but which, once commenced, may shake the British Empire
to its foundations. At the moment of writing, after the
taking of Kiev by the Bolsheviki, it seems as if the Russian
offensive may press through to that tinder-box of Eastern
Galicia, which, once ablaze, may ignite the whole of central
Europe, but certainly will run through that heap of social,
political, and economic combustibles known as Poland. Mem-
bers of the British delegation, just returned from the front
at Bobrissof, tell me they talked with numbers of Polish
prisoners, all of whom swore they were deserters, that the
mass of the Polish army was demoralized, and that they
would never return to Poland to live.
Meanwhile Russian agents will do everything in their
power to raise the Near and Far East against Britain.
This will not be difficult. Russia and England have changed
roles. Formerly, at least part of the world, the Armenians,
for instance, looked to Britain as the liberator and Russia
as the oppressor. Now Russia has become the hope of all
down-trodden peoples, and Britain plays the part of intrigu-
ing despot. Only yesterday I had an interview with the
Georgian representatives, who had just received a telegram
from their government complaining bitterly against the
landing in Batum, by the British, of Denikin bands and
soldiery from Constantinople. Georgia had here been con-
sidered as a "White" government, and hostile to Soviet Rus-
sia. Now, naturally, the Georgians are driven into Russia's
arms. The Turkish Anatolian Republic, which represents
Turkish national aspirations against Entente acquisitive-
ness, also recognizes the fact that Russia does not mean to
encroach on Anatolia, and therefore places itself under Rus-
sian protection. Kemal's government, so Chicherin told
me, actually ceased its attack on Armenia at the Soviet gov-
ernment's request and has agreed to make peace with
Armenia, the basis of peace to be a guarantee by Turkey
against any further massacres and the reinstatement of
fugitive Armenian populations in Turkish Armenia, all such
territory to be joined with Russian and Persian Armenia
to form the Armenian republic. Turkish and Armenian
"islands" of population are to be gradually evacuated and
resettled in purely Turkish and Armenian territory. While
the Entente talked, and Armenians were being murdered,
Russia stepped into the breach with a sensible solution.
Moreover, to solve the vexed Constantinople question Russia
proposes the only equitable remedy — that the straits shall
be controlled by those powers bordering on the Black Sea,
Bulgaria, Rumania, Russia, Armenia, Georgia, and Turkey.
Here you have a bid for the friendship of the littoral states.
In Persia, owing to the fact that Britain has deliberately
persisted in pre-war policy long ago repudiated by the Soviet
government, Russia is considered the liberator and the
North Persian government has in grateful recognition cut
its dress after the soviet pattern. It is claimed here that
the Persian revolution was a case of spontaneous combustion
without even an ignition spark being struck from the North.
In India the Amritsar revelations easily explain why Russia
should be considered the savior. I have just this minute
talked with one of the Indian delegates, whom I met in the
corridor. He knows some of the people I know in New
York and has come to swear allegiance to the Third Inter-
nationale. He will talk tonight at the Central Soviet Execu-
tive Committee's public meeting in the opera house. In
China things are boiling. A Chinese delegation may be on
the way. The Korean position I have already referred to.
The Japanese situation I leave for the last.
Now, with this vast chain of good-will toward Russia and
bad-will toward England already forged, it would seem to
have been the part of madness to provoke the Soviet gov-
ernment out of a passive into an active role. I think now
the government's chiefs are quite convinced that they never
will have peace until they have thoroughly frightened their
old arch-enemy. Cynics may say that history always repeats
itself and that the only outcome of the war was to accentuate
again the old inevitable rivalry between the two greatest
world powers. He might say that the war has given
Britain Africa and Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia and Con-
stantinople, and Russia Persia and most of Asia Minor.
This statement would be true with considerable modifica-
tions. No doubt Russia will now support Kemal's Turkey,
and the other new Near Eastern states in their fight against
Britain. Russia is also sending agents to Afghanistan and
Baluchistan. She has helped Djemal Pasha to go India-
wards and make trouble. Enver is in the Caucasus. By
the time this is published these matters will no longer be
secret. Russia will use every means to bring Britain to her
senses. But at bottom her ends are defensive. She wants
to be let alone — and she will be let alone or she will rend the
man in pieces that tickles her once too often with a barbed
stick. On the other hand, she sincerely desires, I am con-
vinced, to allow all the new Near Eastern republics to exist
as free and independent nations. If they come into her
orbit, it will be freely, owing to political and economic sym-
pathies. I repeat, Britain has never faced so extraordinary
a danger as at the present moment. Russia does not need
to send huge expeditionary forces to India. The inhabitants
need only be armed and provisioned to come rolling down
from the border states to smash the British Raj — with the
help of revolting population and troops in India itself. In
Mesopotamia there are constant revolts, which, with a little
material help, may serve to turn the recent conquerors out.
Persia has already commenced to shake off her chains.
England may continue to hold isolated Ireland in bondage,
but unless she takes a quick decision to make peace with the
Soviets, Asia will begin to move. The Soviet leaders are
convinced that hitherto all their peace overtures have been
received by Europe as signs of weakness. Therefore they
feel that this time only "force, force, without stint or limit,"
to borrow Wilson's phrase, will convince. They point out,
however, that had Britain made peace a year ago her posi-
tion would have been better; she would have had Baku and
Persia. The longer she goes on delaying, the worse the
terms she will get. As for the Poles, they will now get the
boundary of Brest-Litovsk, minus the corridor to the sea
August 14, 1920]
The Nation
181
and Danzig, and minus Eastern Galicia, which, together
with other regions occupied by Poles, will be given plebi-
scites.
The situation of Russo-Japanese relations is peculiar.
The Transbaikal Republic was formed as a buffer state to
keep Japan and Russia apart. But Japan wag not satisfied
with the radical democracy of this republic and tried to
establish a second buffer state with the Pacific littoral prov-
inces, Amur and Vladivostok. But this second republic
proved really Red, and moreover joined itself promptly to
the Transbaikal Republic. Then peace negotiations opened
between the Transbaikal Republic and Japan. These
recently have been broken off because Japan demanded that
the republic agree to have no intercourse of any sort what-
soever, political, commercial, or even by travel of citizens,
with Soviet Russia. To insure performance a quarantine
zone 270 miles wide on the western border of the Trans-
baikal Republic was to be established, and also the republic
was to extend west to Irkutsk. Otherwise Japanese troops
were not to be withdrawn. Meanwhile the Transbaikal Re-
public has sent a telegram to the Japanese commander-in-
chief and to the Japanese government, stating that Japa-
nese military were sheltering bands consisting of Kolchak,
Annenkop, Kappel, and Semenov bands which were ravaging
the country and robbing and murdering the civilian popu-
lations. The turn of the Japanese will come eventually.
The Great Woolen Strike
By GEORGE SOULE
Profiteering is a crime of commission; underproduction is a
crime of omission. — Senator Warren G. Harding.
IN 1912 the I. W. W. stopped production in Lawrence. In
1919 the workers again withdrew their labor, under the
leadership of the Amalgamated Textile Workers of America.
But the strike of 1920, the strike of capital at the command
of William M. Wood, president of the American Woolen
Company, is far more widespread and sinister. At a word,
fifty-four mills throughout the Northeastern States locked
their doors, throwing out of employment over 40,000 people
and threatening about 200,000 souls with destitution. These
mills cover seven hundred acres and have ten million square
feet of floor space. They are counted on the books of the
owners as worth about forty-five million dollars. If we fig-
ure the loss on this idle investment at 7 per cent — an ab-
surdly low rate considering the recent earnings of the com-
pany— a two months' shut-down will cost about $525,000.
This, at the least, will be passed on to the public when the
mills reopen. In addition, there is the tremendous loss —
never to be made up — of needed goods.
In Lawrence one can still hear the clatter of the Pacific
and other great mills, but the four plants of the American
Woolen Company are dourly silent. Knots of Italians,
French Canadians, Lithuanians, Poles, Syrians, and Franco-
Belgians gather on the corners and loaf in the parks. Some
have found jobs in other factories, some have gone out to
the farms, there is a steady trickle back to Europe. But the
scale will be balanced, probably, by immigrants coming in.
About five thousand have lost their jobs in Lawrence. For
awhile the merchants will give them credit. Few of them
have savings. Said a young Italian: "I like dress up nice,
like anyone ; I eat once in a while beefsteak, like American.
I save nothing. Some others no care how they look, eat all
time vegetable and spaghetti— they save little, not much."
There are two workers' cooperative stores and two bakeries.
"We give credit so long we have goods," said the manager.
"Two-three weeks, goods all gone, what can do?" He ended
with an Italian shrug. "I tell you what trouble," argued
one, "we work too hard, produce too much." "Mr. Wood,"
countered a youth with superior scorn, "he got lots money,
he own mills, eat all he like. Working people make shoes,
clothes, food, all kinda things for him, no can eat. Some-
time working people own mills, make things for themselves."
It is not only among the workers that Mr. Wood is un-
popular. Nor only among the purchasers of clothing, either.
The wool growers cannot sell their clips at any price, and
are on the verge of despair. The merchants of Lawrence,
whom Mr. Wood called profiteers not so long ago when he
established his company store, are now threatened with
bankruptcy. The clothing manufacturers and piece-goods
jobbers, angry at the prices they have been paying, have
canceled their orders in thousands. His fellow textile
manufacturers are annoyed at the tactless way in which he
has called down condemnation on the industry and has con-
fused their labor policy. Even some of his stockholders are
becoming restive. Yet strikers, as a rule, are too hastily
condemned; usually they have substantial grievances. I
determined to discover, if possible, Mr. Wood's.
Perhaps the American Woolen Company had not been
making a living wage. The financial authorities show that
the firm has had, until this summer, $20,000,000 of com-
mon stock, and $40,000,000 of 7 per cent cumulative pre-
ferred. In 1917 its net profits were over fifteen and a half
million, in 1918 over twelve million, in 1919 over fifteen
and a half million again. It has charged off large sums to
depreciation, and now has a surplus of $31,754,426. Since
the war began, it has earned as much as the total par value
of its capital stock — and it is by no means undercapitalized.
After deducting the preferred dividends from its 1919
profits, it still had enough left to have paid, if it had wished,
over fifty per cent dividends on its common. That is not
exactly penury. Of course the cost of living of its idle
stockholders may now have risen so that they must receive
more. No one has yet compiled a minimum subsistence
budget for a millionaire's family. Polo ponies, yachts, and
country estates, it is true, have gone up frightfully; gaso-
line is high, and as for servants — ! Yet Mr. Wood has not
asked for larger profits. He has, however, given several
intimations that he will not accept less. On the occasion
of the last 15 per cent raise in wages, he was asked if it
would be passed on to the public. "Of course it will be
passed on to the public," he is reported to have answered.
"What did you think we are going to do with it?" The
company has just issued about twenty million dollars more
of common at par to the present holders, and the money is
not to be used for new investment, according to Mr. Wood.
It amounts to a stock dividend, in expectation of a con-
tinuation of present earnings.
Can the mills procure raw material? There is an un-
precedented glut in the raw wool market. Federal Reserve
banks are advancing loans on Montana wool at only 20
cents a pound, when, according to estimates in the New
York market, the wool should bring from 50 to 55 cents
a pound — this price being much lower than last year's.
Ohio growers are unable to dispose of their clip at any
price — even at half what they received a year ago. The
182
The Nation
[Vol. ill, No. 287G
British Government is about to raise the restrictions on
the purchase of Australian wool.
Do the mills desire to make a lower quality of goods,
then? That is hardly possible. Half a billion pounds of
shoddy were used last year — enough, according to the Na-
tional Sheep and Wool Bureau of America, to have made
more than half the "all wool" cloth produced. This, while
a billion pounds of virgin wool was filling the storehouses.
The American Woolen Company is already largely engaged
in turning out the cheaper grades of goods, and has used
much of the shoddy.
Is this normally the dull season for textiles? No, it is
normally the busy season. The fact that the mills are not
running will surely bring on acute shortage next fall.
Mr. Wood's grievances, by the time all this has come to
light, begin to seem obscure. Before pursuing them fur-
ther, we may examine some of the charges against him.
In search of these, I called on 'Mayor William P. White, of
Lawrence. "Welcome to our city," was his greeting. Mayor
White is a large Irishman with a countenance the shape of
a Bartlet pear. His professions are horse-trader and poli-
tician. In 1910 he was serving his first term, and soon
thereafter he served fourteen months in jail on a charge of
grafting. He had previously, while milk inspector, run
afoul of the law. Now he is mayor again, "vindicated," he
says, "by the sovereign will of the people." "Is it true,
Mr. Mayor," I asked, "that you said Mr. Wood is showing
ingratitude in closing his mills now, because the city spent
$100,000 in dealing with the last strike?" "Between $90,-
000 and $100,000," he corrected. "Yes, I said that. And
Mr. Wood never contributed a cent of it," he added, as if
deeply grieved. The Mayor certainly deserved Mr. Wood's
gratitude for his treatment of the strikers. They were
clubbed on the streets and in jail; they were not allowed
to stand on the sidewalks or parade or hold outdoor meet-
ings ; machine guns were ostentatiously displayed ; the Com-
missioner of Public Safety "withdrew the protection of the
law" from the strikers, and one of their leaders was im-
mediately afterwards abducted and nearly lynched by a
band of masked men. And for all this Mr. Wood had not
paid a cent! Yet what are governments for, if not to pre-
serve law and order? Lest I get the hospitable Mayor into
trouble, I must add that he confided to me that Mr. Wood
is really "all right," but that he sometimes has "bad ad-
visers." The Mayor, after consulting unnamed authority,
has just refused a permit for a meeting by the union.
The workers are tired of pretending Mr. Wood is popu-
lar. On several occasions they have been taken out of the
mills on full pay during working hours, and mobilized with
brass bands for demonstrations of welcome, or what not, for
Mr. Wood, who has entered the city with flowers strewn
in his path, for all the world like a little king greeting his
loyal subjects. Recently they have been invited to several
picnics at his summer residence. But they insist they would
rather have less cake and more bread. Mr. Wood denies
their charge that when the mills reopen it will be at lower
wages. "I've done everything possible for my employees.
They have health and sick benefits. Working mothers have
been accorded the privilege of a great, beautiful nursery
and an ideal kindergarten. ... I hire expert nurses
for the protection of my workers' health. . . . My work-
ers have the benefit of every progressive endeavor of which
1 have ever heard." Why should they expect continuous
employment, recognition of the union, freedom and power?
Base ingratitude, my lord! Mr. Wood is merely following
the example of Mr. Gary and Mr. Rockefeller and the rest.
How about the American Woolen Company as a profiteer?
The government accused it of making 35 per cent on the
cost of production, and Mr. Wood replied — in the press —
that he made only 12 y2 per cent. When he came to the
courts, he did not bring any figures, but secured the quash-
ing of the indictment on the ground that cloth is not cloth-
ing "within the meaning of the law." But what is the
moral difference, anyway, between 12 y2 and 35 per cent?
Just where does the profit-maker become the profiteer?
Shouldn't a business firm make all it can while the making
is good, and lay aside some for a rainy day? — for rainy
days, even cloudbursts, are likely to occur under private
enterprise. How can Mr. Wood help it if people were will-
ing to pay almost any price for woolens? Over half his
production, to be sure, during 1918 when he was making
the twelve-million profit, was of cloth for army and navy
uniforms. But it was the government's privilege to set the
price. It is absurd, too, for one arm of the government to
give him his profit, and then for another arm to accuse him
of crime for charging about the same rate to the public.
That brings us to Mr. Wood's real grievance. "The wil-
lingness or ability of the consuming public to keep on pur-
chasing goods at present, or even slightly lower, prices is
beginning to be doubted by some of the leading retailers
of the country," writes the Standard Daily Trade Service.
Retailers therefore are not ordering. The men's clothing
manufacturers who use the cheaper grades of woolens —
which the American Woolen Company makes — are cancel-
ing their orders without mercy, shifting their responsi-.
bility back upon the mills. Mr. Wood might, if he wished,
go on making staple goods in advance of demand, at the risk
of some loss. That is ordinarily done in such cases to
save the cost of idle plants. But in this case Mr. Wood
prefers not to accept the risks of the market. He has a big
enough cash surplus so that he can take the certain loss
of shutting down and pass it on later to the public, instead
of gambling on the uncertain loss of keeping open. "The
high cost of new construction and equipment," writes a
broker in a recent circular, "will in itself tend to restrict
textile expansion ; and with the mills having practically no
goods on hand, and making due allowance for any possible
slackening of activities, we cannot see how the mills can
fail to enjoy prosperity for several years to come." Shut-
ting down will have the effect of creating a shortage and
boosting prices when the demand rises again. That will
teach the public a lesson. "I don't see why people are kick-
ing at high prices," Mr. Wood is reported to have said not
long ago. "Aren't they getting 100 to 125 per cent higher
wages than they used to get?" The people should not stop
buying, thinks Mr. Wood. The government should stop
talking about profiteering. The manufacturers should stop
canceling their orders. He will prove to them all that it
does no good. That, in substance, is Mr. Wood's grievance.
Why should anyone expect him to take the alternative
course of lowering prices enough so that people will buy?
He doesn't have to. He is not in business to supply the
goods people need. He is not there to give jobs to workers.
He is there to make money for his stockholders. He tries
to be nice about it, but he is sensible enough to stick to the
point. We ought to stop whining about it, as long as we
allow production of necessities to be controlled entirely in
the interest of earnings.
August 14, 1920]
The Nation
183
When Farmers Turn Politicians
By ARTHUR WARNER
Bismarck, North Dakota
SINCE the organization in Chicago of the Farmer-Labor
Party, the question has naturally been raised of the
extent to which the rural population of the country would
support it. Admittedly, if such support develops, it will
center chiefly in the States of the Northwest where the
National Nonpartisan League is organized and farmers
have shown not only the desire to break away from the old
parties, but have evolved a technique for doing it.
The official statement issued by the League from Minne-
apolis during the Farmer-Labor convention, and widely
heralded as a repudiation of it, was nothing of the kind.
It was merely a reaffirmation of what had been said before
the convention. The League is not a party but a movement,
it is concerned with state, and not with national politics,
and since it works through different parties in different
States, it cannot indorse any national candidate without
changing its principles and practice. In each State where
the Nonpartisan League is organized, it goes into the
primaries of the dominant party and tries to capture them
for its candidates, except in a few States where conditions
have made it advisable to run an independent ticket. If,
for instance, the League should indorse Harding for Presi-
dent, it would create no trouble in North Dakota, where
the League controls the Republican organization, but it
would not do in Montana, where the League is trying to
capture the Democratic machine.
It is one of the possibilities of the future that the Non-
partisans will reorganize as a national political party, fus-
ing with the newly-formed Farmer-Labor group. This will
depend largely on the extent to which individual members
of the League support the Christensen ticket this year.
League members do not consider that their State affiliation
with a given party imposes any obligation upon them in-
dividually to vote that ticket for President. In North
Dakota, for instance, it is expected that Christensen and
Hayes will be placed on the ballot by a petition initiated
by League men — acting individually and unofficially. It is
also likely that the League newspapers will boost the Far-
mer-Labor ticket; it will certainly draw a large vote, and
may even carry the State.
But the essential fact to point out is, that in the regions
of its greatest membership, the Nonpartisan League is this
year engaged in State campaigns that are absorbing every
ounce of its strength, and beside which the Presidential
election is regarded as a sideshow. In North Dakota, the
one State where the Nonpartisans are in control of the
administration, the League got a jolt in the primaries, but
it proposes to make up for this by a complete victory on
Election Day. It is also expecting to win Wisconsin by
capturing the Republican primaries on September 6 — with
the aid of the La Follette forces — and hopes to get Montana
by carrying the Democratic primaries on August 24. In
Wisconsin the League will try to nominate John J. Blaine,
now attorney-general, for the governorship, and will also
push a candidate for Congress against Representative Esch,
whose connection with the railroad law has made him vul-
nerable. The League candidate for governor in Montana
is B. K. Wheeler, formerly a United States district attor-
ney, who was forced out of office because of refusal to join
in the hue and cry against radicals.
The Nonpartisan League lost the recent primaries in
Minnesota, but it gave the old parties so close a shave that
they are still rubbing their chins in bewilderment. Whereas
two years ago it was 50,000 votes behind in a total of about
350,000, this year it was only 8,000 votes short in a total
of about 258,000. Two years ago the League carried thirty
out of the State's eighty-six counties; this year it held all
of its former ground and added another twenty-four coun-
ties. Although defeated on the State ticket, the Nonparti-
sans succeeded in winning one congressional nomination.
The Rev. O. J. Kvale beat Representative Volstead, but was
later disqualified by the courts under the Corrupt Practices
Act owing to a suggestion during the campaign that his
opponent was an atheist. While in other quarters academic
discussions are going on in regard to the possibility of
harmonizing the differences between farmers and city
workers, so that they can cooperate politically, in Minne-
sota the two groups are already working together, oblivious,
apparently, of the existence of any differences. City work-
ers are organized as the Working People's Nonpartisan
Political League which acts in cooperation with the farmers.
The North Dakota campaign, however, is the one that the
Nonpartisan League regards as most vital, since here is a
practical experiment that the organization feels must be
maintained and developed. Owing partly to overconfidence
and partly to what they term their "double crosses," the
Nonpartisans nearly came a cropper in the recent State
primary. It will be recalled that in 1918 they elected all
the State officers, except the commissioner of public in-
struction, and gained control of both houses of the legisla-
ture. Subsequently, however, a number of officers turned
against the League, notably the attorney general, the
secretary of state, and the auditor. The former entered
the primary against Governor Frazier and the other two
contended for their present offices. Owing to the fact that
these "double crosses" professed to favor the League pro-
gram and to object only to its management, they won a
good many farmer votes. Excepting the secretary of state,
they were defeated, but on the unofficial count the Leaguers
also lost their candidate for treasurer, one of the railroad
commissioners, the commissioner of public instruction,
and their nominee for the supreme court; besides which
they fell two short of a majority in the lower house and
failed to renominate more than one of their three
Representatives in Congress. Governor Frazier's majority
was only about 6,000 — less than in 1918. On the other
hand, the League was notably successful in putting across
Dr. E. F. Ladd, president of the North Dakota Agricultural
College, for the upper house of Congress in place of Senator
Gronna. All the losers in the primaries will be nominated
independently, and victory is hoped for in November.
One gets the impression here that the Nonpartisan
League is 100 per cent farmer, but not one-half of one per
cent hayseed. Its leaders have not floundered in the futili-
ties that overtake so many reform parties, but have become
practical politicians of a most adept sort, beating the hacks
of the old parties at their own game.
184
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2876
Cantu in Baja California
By MARY AUSTIN
THE only item of importance in the Cantu imbroglio is
the possibility of the provisional Government not being
able to deal with it decisively. And the importance of that
particular item is for us rather than for Cantu. Baja
California was never a state, and has scarcely population
enough in all its seven hundred and fifty miles of length
to make a good-sized American town. Leaving out the
Indians, who make a good half of the total, there are per-
haps twenty-five thousand. Of these many are wastrels,
refugees, and remittance men. What Sydney was once to
Australia, Ensenada Todos Santos has been to Mexico.
Ever since the Revolution the Territory of Baja California
has been left to run itself. Cantu has been its little king,
and its army is a remnant of pre-revolutionary days, made
up of regulars, convicts, and such volunteers as can be
brought to the colors by lack of other interest.
For life in Baja California outside of the capital and the
border resort of Tia Juanna is about as exciting as solitary
confinement. Imagine a backbone of nearly naked mountain,
roadless, rainless, practically treeless, almost devoid of
tillable land or pastures, thrust up between the Pacific swells
and a windy, treacherous gulf. Its present source of wealth
is in its waters, in fisheries, lobster canneries, — the native
crayfish which sells as lobster — in pearl shell, and in baroque
pearls, and occasional pearls of high luster. There is rumor
of mineral wealth in the interior, but working conditions
are such as to render this a negligible prospect for several
generations. It is accessible from the mainland by water,
and by a trail which is called La Jornada del Muerte — The
Journey of Death.
To Mexico the Territory of Baja California is barely
self-sustaining, incapable of self-development. Its inter-
national importance is considerable. As a coaling station
and a naval base it has advantages that would appeal to
any nation doing business in Pacific waters and the Orient.
There are already some minor Japanese and Chinese con-
cessions, and enough English capital invested there to give
us thought, shoulu Cantu succeed in detaching it from
Mexico. Self-determination for small nations sounds well
when the nations are not too small and sufficiently far away.
But a nation of fifty thousand people, half of whom are
Indians, contiguous to a rich and undefended coast, might
prove a serious embarrassment to a United States bent on
living up to its political professions. De la Huerta is dis-
patching an army of three thousand for the disciplining of
Cantu. Who knows how loyal or how well equipped it is?
And in any case it is necessarily very far from any base of
supplies. Moreover, there is an elbow of the Imperial Val-
ley irrigation canal bent south into Mexico which would
be the point of attack for any group resolved upon creating
bad feeling along the American border. It is past question
that such groups exist.
Logically the peninsula of Baja California should be added
to the United States. Once it could have been bought openly
and honorably, and that only a few years ago. There was
a time when -the revolutionists saw their way to financial
rehabilitation on a basis that called for nothing more than
dignified, neighborly accommodation from us. Such a plan
had been well received at the White House, was even in the
way of consummation. Carried out as the few understood
it, as no statesman in the United States did see it clearly
enough to bring it to a happy conclusion, this should have
led to the purchase of Baja California for a sum that would
have made all the difference in the world to the Mexican
treasury, and would have been inconsiderable to us, for
what we would have been getting. There were at that time
not above two or three thousand people in the Territory who
would have been incommoded by the transfer, and those we
could have generously recompensed. All at once the plan
collapsed. Wall Street is reported to have breathed upon
it, pocket-short in its vision as Wall Street always is.
What our financiers hoped for was to have Mexico so
deeply in our debt that she would be amenable to exploita-
tion, a situation they have not yet succeeded in bringing
about. For this city sacrificed the opportunity to create a
neighborly entente and equable exchange of benefits.
The one contention upon which the Mexican people would
have had to be satisfied in such a purchase was as to
whether the holding of the peninsula by the United States
could be regarded as a menace or as a friendly bulwark.
No one who understands the Mexican people doubts that it
rested with us to present ourselves in one or the other light.
The honorable acquirement of Baja California by the United
States might with time and tact be brought within the range
of possibility again. It might be brought about to put an
end to the fear of Japanese concessions on the mainland, and
the shared water of the Gulf might become a source of
wealth to both nations. But unfortunately our jingo press
and the rabid interventionists have put us in the worst
possible position for dealing with Mexico over the Cantu
incident. Nothing could be suggested that would not cop-
firm the general Mexican and Latin American suspicion
that our designs are predatory. There is nothing we can do
that will not reverse something of our European position,
or make us appear ridiculous in our international profes-
sions. In short, we are in the position toward Mexico of
having talked too much and too soon. We should have made
a better business of it if it had not looked to us like such
good "business" to keep Mexico financially on her knees.
For the present the best that we can do is to make the
most of preventing Cantu from receiving arms from any
American port, and hope that other nations that have in-
terests there, property, and resident citizens, will be too
busy to avail themselves of the opportunity we have missed.
In the meantime, it can not be any longer overlooked that
the semi-detached position of Baja California, amid the
successive revolutions of the mainland, must be a constant
source of uneasiness to us. It would not be altogether bad
if it caused us to revise our whole attitude toward Mexico,
and to consider the political and economic pitfalls into which
we may be led by a propagandized and wholly irresponsible
press.
Contributors to This Issue
Henry G. Alsberg has been correspondent for The Nation
in Europe for over a year.
George Soule is an authority on industrial relations.
Mary Austin, author, is a resident of California, and con-
versant with events along our southwestern border.
Robert M. Lovett is dean and professor of English at
the University of Chicago.
August 14, 1920]
The Nation
185
The Trial of the Communists
By ROBERT MORSS LOVETT
THE story of the trial of the twenty members of the
Communist Labor Party in Chicago goes back to the
split in the Socialist Party in the summer of 1919. At that
time the Communist Labor Party drew up a constitution
and platform of which the outstanding features are the
recognition of the principles of the Third Internationale,
the abolition of the present capitalistic system of produc-
tion, and the dictatorship of the proletariat in an industrial
state. The means by which this program is to be realized
are primarily the education and organization of the workers.
By the term "revolutionary industrial unionism" is"meant the
organization of the workers into unions by industries with a
revolutionary aim and purpose; that is to say, a purpose not
merely to defend or strengthen the status of the workers as
wage-earners, but to gain control of industry.
The party does not have much faith in political action, ex-
cept "as a means of propaganda and of defense."
The most important means of capturing state power for the
worker is the action of the masses, proceeding from the place
where the workers are gathered together — in the shops and fac-
tories. It is impossible to accomplish this through capitalist
political machinery, but only by the exercise of their united
economic power.
"Revolutionary aim," "capture of state power," "the mass
action of the workers," are phrases that appear in the plat-
form, but not one word of violence. "A sober dragging
essay on political economy," it was characterized by the
attorney for the defense. "No man was even moved to ac-
tion by any such pamphlet. It is clear that it could have
no such purpose and no such effect."
The story of the red raids initiated in wholesale fashion
by the Department of Justice on New Year's Day, 1920,
has been told with exact documentation by the twelve law-
yers acting under the National Popular Government League
[see Report upon the Illegal Practices of the United States
Department of Justice], and with eloquent denunciation by
Judge Anderson of Boston. One phase of the matter that
has been overlooked is the example set by the Attorney Gen-
eral to State and municipal authorities throughout the coun-
try. In Cook County the State's Attorney, Mr. Maclay
Hoyne, was not satisfied to be a follower of Mr. Palmer.
In the slang of the day he "beat him to it," and there was
some jealousy on the part of federal practitioners at the
size of Mr. Hoyne's bag, and irritation at his lack of sports-
manship in opening his battue a day early. It is generally
believed— in fact it was charged at the trial — that Mr.
Hoyne's office was in receipt of a sum of $40,000 from pri-
vate sources vaguely styled "the Chamber of Commerce"
or "the State Street Stores," for the purpose of defraying
the expenses of his prosecution of "the Reds." Such un-
warrantable interference with the normal processes of jus-
tice gave impulse to a citizens' movement for fair play and
a square deal. Although bail was fixed at exorbitant
amounts, bonds were furnished generously, and when the
immediate resources of the Communist Labor Party proved
insufficient to secure adequate legal advice, the amount lack-
ing was underwritten by the American Freedom Foundation
and others. The defense was committed to Messrs. Clarence
S. Darrow, W. S. Forrest, and W. S. Cunnea. The State's
attorney's office engaged as special prosecutor Mr. Frank
Comerford who, having been in or near Russia, is regarded
locally as an expert on bolshevism. He was assisted by
Messrs. Marvin Barnhart and Lloyd Heth.
The act under which the indictments were brought is
the amendment to the treason statute, passed June 28, 1919.
It recites that it is
unlawful for a person openly to advocate the reformation or
overthrow by violence, or any other unlawful means, of the
representative form of government now secured to the citizens
of the United States. It is unlawful to organize, or aid in the
organization, or become a member of any society or association
the object of which is to advocate the reformation or overthrow
of the existing form of government by violence or other un-
lawful means;
it is unlawful to be present at a meeting of such a society,
and to "display a flag or other insignia symbolizing or in-
tended to symbolize" such change of government by vio-
lence. The whole case against the members of the Com-
munist Labor Party depended upon constructive advocacy
of "violence or other unlawful means" implied in the ac-
ceptance of the manifesto of the Third Internationale, and
the approval of mass action and the general strike, as
exemplified at Seattle and Winnipeg. Both the Third In-
ternationale and the Seattle strike were mentioned in the
platform of the party and about them the battle was waged.
The trial opened before Judge Oscar Hebel, of the Illinois
Criminal Court, on May 10. The usual sparring for a jury
followed. Nearly two months elapsed, 2,900 talesmen were
summoned, and 1,359 were examined before the impartial
twelve were discovered.
At the outset the judge ruled that the words and acts
of the accused prior to the formation of the party would
be admissible as testimony showing intent, and this let
in some wild words of Mr. William Bross Lloyd. His co-
conspirators apparently had been singularly discreet. The
prosecution waved before the jury some posters advertising
foreign journals which had been displayed in Mr. Proctor's
book-store, but their bearing on the Communist Labor con-
spiracy to reform or overthrow the government by violence
was doubtful. Another ruling by the judge practically de-
termined the terrain on which the battle was fought. He
allowed the Seattle strike to be aired at length, and this
was almost the entire strength of the State's case. They
played their trump card when the ubiquitous Ole Hanson
rehearsed the familiar hero-saga, the retelling of which, as
he testified, has brought him $35,000 in the last six months.
The chief emphasis of his testimony was upon his own ex-
ploits ; and his value to the prosecution was considerably di-
minished by James Duncan, the Seattle labor leader, who
pictured the savior of society in a different role, not hero,
but suppliant to the strike committee. "Jim, Jim, give me
my lights. I don't care a damn about the street cars, but
I need the lights." If the trial has no other result it has
perhaps given an official quietus to a silly myth that was
costing our Chambers of Commerce and Chautauquas
$60,000 a year.
186
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2876
The emphasis on the Seattle strike was a surprise to the
defence, but by good luck the conventions of the Labor
Party and the Committee of Forty-Eight had brought to
Chicago several witnesses besides Mr. Duncan. Mrs. Crane
of the Seattle Federation of Women's Club and Mr. Swen-
son, who had been a member of the Central Strike Commit-
tee, both testified to the good order of the city during the
labor troubles. The strike itself was shown to be a singu-
larly unanimous example of the sympathetic walk-out, not
an attempt to replace representative government by a local
soviet; and the prosecution was finally driven to admit the
high character of the Seattle performance.
The charge of conspiring to seek to reform or overthrow
the government by violence then fell back upon the Left
Wing Manifesto drawn up before the organization of the
Communist Labor Party, an inflammatory speech at Mil-
waukee by William Bross Lloyd, delivered while Mr. Lloyd
was still a Socialist, and the acceptance of the manifesto
of the Third Internationale, by which mass action is recog-
nized as leading "to direct armed conflict with governmental
machinery." The State contended also that mass action was
covered by the words "other unlawful means." Judge
Hebel, however, in his instructions asserted that "a general
strike conducted without violence is not unlawful if called
to bring about by the manner prescribed (i. e., constitu-
tionally) a reformation or overthrow of the representative
form of government." That the State was seeking to throw
upon the defendants the responsibility for such incidental
violence as might arise from the resistance to "reformation
or overthrow" by defenders of the existing order was shown
by Attorney Barnhart, who challenged the jury to say
whether they would accept such a social reorganization as
the defendants proposed without force and violence.
The argument for the defense made by Mr. Forrest was
mainly devoted to the discrepancy between the law and any
overt act on the part of the defendants. Mr. Darrow took
a bolder line. He justified the defendants in their purposes
and methods.
They adopted a platform which they had as much right to
adopt as the Epworth League had to adopt theirs. ... If
their platform would accomplish what they hoped it would then
speed the day of its adoption. ... Is there any reason why
the poor should not control industry if they can? Men have a
right to carry on the industrial struggle. If the other side
can't live, let them make terms. Unpractical dreamers — but we
don't send men to the penitentiary for trying to help their
fellow men — we send them to the insane asylum.
He made a bitter attack on the statute under which the
action was brought,
Twenty states passed laws similar to this shortly after the
close of the war, moved by a common purpose and influenced
by a common organization. They were passed because some
one wanted them passed. We shall repent in sackcloth and
ashes for the injustice we have done to men under these laws.
Mr. Darrow's pessimism was relieved by Mr. Comerford's
patriotism. To him "these prophets, these historians, these
martyrs, these dreamers" were merely —
brazen, ugly, cowardly liars. Prophets, forsooth! Did Christo-
pher Columbus venture across the seas to destroy government
by force and violence? Martyrs! Did Bruno seek to destroy
government by force and violence? Historians! They say the
world war was a capitalists' war; they are liars. They say
American labor was bribed to fight the war; they are liars.
There was much "your country and my country," of the red
flag and the stars and stripes in alternate exhibition, of the
Haymarket anarchists, of the assassination of McKinley, of
the hypothetical assassination of Wilson, of James Duncan's
solitary vote against Samuel Gompers in the American Fed-
eration of Labor Convention; much of Lincoln and Benedict
Arnold, of suffering Jesus and Pontius Pilate, and the new
trinity, Judas, Marx, and Lenin — of course Lenin, because,
as Mr. Comerford discovered, "everywhere the footprints
of the Russian Revolution are rampant in this conspiracy."
After short consideration the jury found all the defend-
ants guilty. Seven were sentenced to the penitentiary from
one to five years, and in the case of three a fine of $2,000
was added. The others were sentenced to one year in the
county jail, in two cases with a fine of $1,000.
The jury apparently shared Mr. Comerford's view. As
one of the jurymen stated in the Daily News,
Although no evidence of overt acts was presented in this case,
we were certain that had the defendants carried their revolu-
tionary program to its logical conclusion, or had it run its
course, a state of anarchy would have been brought about.
There would have been confusion and chaos. The defendants
would have disrupted the labor organizations.
That is to say, the verdict represented unanimous disap-
proval on the part of a typical American jury of the opin-
ions of the defendants; and inability to see anything but
social evil in their realization. To send them to jail as a
penalty for advocating their views seems to such a jury
natural and wise. Obviously, in such a state of affairs a
trial of eighty-five days is pure waste of time on the part
of everyone concerned. The only question at issue is how
strongly the jury disapproves of the opinions of the accused,
and how far the law allows it to go in marking that dis-
approval. The suggested procedure attributed to Secretary
of State Langtry of Massachusetts is far more logical. "If
I had my way I would take them (the reds) out in the yard
every morning and shoot them, and the next day would have
a trial to see whether or not they were guilty."
In the Driftway
THE Drifter hopes to stroll along the quais of the Seine
again before the riverside poplars cast another year's
catkins, but he long ago made a mighty resolve to abjure
Paris after his seventieth birthday. Unless, indeed, the
crise d 'essence drives the taxis off the boulevards. For the
Drifter is, frankly, afraid of Paris taxi-drivers. They are
the most reckless, headlong, swervy and curvy, unaccount-
able and unavoidable taxi-drivers in the world. In them or
out of them, Paris streets are unsafe. The Drifter never
saw statistics of Paris traffic accidents, but he has seen the
accidents, and he is sure the statistics must be appalling.
Even the Place de la Concorde, with its tremendous open
spaces where taxis sport about like water-striders on a mill-
pond, is guiltless of a traffic policeman. So it was with a
certain mild surprise that the Drifter read in his Times
that the Special Deputy Police Commissioner of New
York City in charge of traffic was going to Paris to study
traffic problems and methods of handling traffic in that city
of the Drifter's dreams. The only able managers of traffic
that the Drifter ever saw in Paris are the head waiters who
steer Americans through the boulevard cafes. He could not
help wondering what traffic the Special Deputy Police Com-
missioner in charge of traffic would study.
August 14, 1920]
The Nation
187
THE DRIFTER has no stomach for revolution. He likes
his leisure and his books, and he likes a slow and ample
meal with a volume of Anatole France propped against the
cruets. His was no luxurious childhood, but his parents did
endow him with tastes which, he fears, could not be gratified
in a period of upset and epochal change. He is inclined to
believe in the desirability of the revolution for his grandchil-
dren, but for himself he would prefer to live in the tropics
while the revolution shakes the temperate zones of this old
earth. The Drifter suspects that he would feel like Bertrand
Russell and Russell's intellectual friends if he went to
Russia. He too has something of philosophical aloofness,
and a distressing inability to lose himself in enthusiastic
belief that the face of the world is being altered, either by
wars or by revolutions. He also is too much the disillusioned
individualist of British tradition, and too much a pacifist, to
share in the Russian readiness for sacrifice on the altar of a
future freedom. No, the Drifter will stay in America and
relish his meals and his books, and he hopes the coal crisis
will pass. If not, he will have to buy wood.
*****
STILL, in this faithless age when prohibition seems to be
the only crusade that fires American hearts, the spec-
tacle of Communist faith does stir even the Drifter's chill
soul. He believes in religion, and the Communists are almost
the only people of his acquaintance who have it. Like
Russell, he dreads it, yet he sympathizes at least as much
with Romain Rolland who says :
These men have faith.
If they did not believe that their sacrifice would help and serve
the entire world, they would not have immolated themselves for
two years with such self-forgetfulness. This mystic revolu-
tionary feeling, this almost religious spirit, this faith, this mystic
enthusiasm, has hitherto been only too lacking in the peoples of
Western Europe, particularly in the French people, whose en-
thusiasm has been worn down for a hundred and fifty years in
all the revolutions that have been betrayed or have failed. Too
often revolutionary agitation has confined itself to a craft move-
ment for an increase in wages; but nothing great and nothing
permanent can be carried to success without an intense aspira-
tion for the common good, without the victim's passion for the
future of mankind.
The Drifter
To a Presidential Candidate
By SEYMOUR BARNARD
Tradition's proud protagonist, you sense
Insidious innovation's propaganda;
'Tis yours to view the progress of events
From your red rocker on the front veranda.
The issues which less seasoned minds perplex,
You meet with prompt negation, wise and weighty;
Can aught arise a populace to vex
Which was not solved in classic eighteen eighty?
Bring back the static, contemplative man,
The restful role, the acquiescence hearty;
Assuredly the key to nature's plan
Is but the proper choosing of a Party.
Some decades since, the Perfect State began,
And laws of evolution were suspended;
You knew at once the goal was reached by man,
And need for further mental effort ended.
Successive years (and fruitless ones, we know)
Are spread with real accomplishments but thinly,
And lighted only by the afterglow
Of Harrison and Morton, and McKinley.
Prometheus Bound
By MAXWELL ANDERSON
Here in the voting booth I stand
And clench my ballot in my hand ;
This is my weapon in distress,
This is my shield of righteousness;
Today my stature is as great
As any .Eastern potentate,
And this, my summons, proudly given,
Controls the powers of hell and heaven.
Prometheus Bound has rent his chains
And rises, looming o'er the plains;
The lightning flashes from his eyes,
Illuming all our tyrannies;
And trembling on their paper thrones
The rulers and the priestly drones
Lift arms and voices in dismay
Lest the storm wash them quite away!
So, stepping to the ballot box,
I vote for Harding or for Cox.
Correspondence
The Right to Talk Sedition
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: At present I do not want to "overthrow the government
by force and violence," but sometimes I fear that the disgusting
cant of its defenders will tempt me to the point where I shall
not be able to maintain my pacifistic convictions.
The United States Government was established "by force and
violence." It has maintained itself "by force and violence."
Not only that, it has used "force and violence" against smaller
and weaker nations, notably Haiti and the Philippines. By
"force and violence" it took from Mexico a large part of her
territory. In "the world war" it helped to destroy millions
of lives and billions worth of property. "By force and violence"
it has taken away the liberties of those who disagreed with it.
The catalogue of its crimes, done with "force and violence"
against the peace and order of protesting workers is too long
to write down.
That those who are committing these present, and defending
those past, deeds of violence and cruelty should now profess to
be horrified and wail over "destruction of life and property,"
desire to kill, banish or imprison all who talk "force and vio-
lence against the government," is enough to sicken a saint.
The foundation and structure of this government provide for
its overthrow "by force and violence," provided it does not do
the things for which it was established. The Declaration of
Independence is its foundation, the Constitution, its walls. If
those who are defending and those who are attacking "our
institutions" would give more study to these documents the
188
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2876
discussion would be more rational. The founders of this gov-
ernment based it on "certain unalienable rights" and declared
certain self-evident truths, as follows:
"To secure these rights governments are instituted among
men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the gov-
erned; whenever any form of government becomes destructive
of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it
. . . all experience hath shown, that mankind are more dis-
posed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right them-
selves by abolishing those forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing in-
variably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under
absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw
off such government, and to provide new guards for their future
security."
How was this right to be made available, this duty to be
performed? How were the people, as a whole, to decide whether
evils were any longer sufferable? How did the framer and
signers of the Declaration of Independence propose to throw
off the British government? To this latter question there can
be but one answer : They meant to do it "by force and violence"
and they did it that way. Even a Mitchel Palmer has to admit
that; and logic compels the further admission that they de-
clared the right of those coming after them, and also the "duty"
to do it in the same way, if necessary. To attempt any other
interpretation is to make those men ridiculous.
As to how the people are to make up their minds that evils
have become insufferable: certainly they cannot come to a wise
conclusion except by full and free discussion. The builders of
the Government knew that; and they knew, too, the tendency
of those in authority to suppress any effort towards change.
Therefore they wrote into the Constitution,
"Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of
speech or of the press."
Could anything be clearer, or more positive and inclusive? —
"NO law abridging freedom of speech or of the press."
The crowning absurdity of those who profess to be opposed
to "force and violence" is the denial of representative govern-
ment. In one breath they tell us that "all changes must be
made in a lawful and orderly manner, through the ballot box,"
and in the next they tell Congressman Berger and five duly
elected New York assemblymen that they cannot take their
seats, although they have been chosen therefor in the lawful,
prescribed manner, through the ballot box. If that doesn't de-
stroy the people's faith in a ballot-box remedy what would?
Please notice: I have not "advocated the overthrow of the
government by force and violence" nor in any other way. But
/ assert my right to do so, notwithstanding a lot of hysterical
statutes to the contrary. I have argued for this right because
it is the one at present most fiercely attacked; and if that may
be taken away so may all our other rights.
Denver, Colorado, July 8 Celia Baldwin
' 'Third" Party Issues
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: Mr. Allen McCurdy in his article The Forty-Eighters'
Position appearing in the issue of July 31, says: "The Com-
mittee of Forty-Eight failed to create a new party at Chicago.
This failure was inevitable; but it was a failure which revealed
more clearly than ever the need for a new party."
The "new party" to which Mr. McCurdy refers is a "liberal"
party. It is a party that avoids both "reaction" and "social-
ism." It steers a middle course between the two old parties
which represent the interests of "privilege," and the two new
parties which represent the interests of the workers. The new
party would deny absolutely the existence of classes. It is to be
a party of Americans, individual Americans, "aiming at the
welfare," as Mr. McCurdy explains it, "of all the people." Mr.
McCurdy is right when he says that "the Committee of Forty-
Eight failed to create a new party at Chicago." He is even
more in accord with the facts when he says that "this failure
was inevitable." But had Mr. McCurdy either astute political
judgment, or even an academic understanding of the social and
economic forces of the present day, he would have said in con-
clusion that "it was a failure that revealed more clearly than
ever the inherent impossibility of a liberal party in America
today."
The failure of the Committee of Forty-Eight to create a new
party "aiming at the welfare of all the people" is the most
dramatic sort of demonstration of the fact that there is no such
thing as "the welfare of all the people" — and that the American
masses begin to understand it. The welfare of Mr. Gary, Mr.
Morgan, and the Manufacturers' Association can, by no alchemy
of liberal phraseology, be converted into the welfare of the
factory hand, the farmer, the clerk, and the engineer. The
rent and the grocer's bill now vie with the pay envelop to drive
this fact home to the average man. There are two classes in
America. Their shapes become more definite with the passing
of months. Their social, economic, intellectual, and political
interests are not alike. They are diametrically opposed. It is
the workers — hand and brain — against the owners. As the op-
posing ranks take shape, the issue clears. As the issue clears,
to dodge it becomes more difficult — and, as the debacle of the
Forty-Eighters shows, more dangerous.
New York City, August 5 Evans Clark
' 'Christensen' s Convention' '
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: After an absence of several weeks I have just seen in
print my article on "Christensen's Convention" in the issue of
July 24. This article was sent by telegraph, in order to save
time, and my coeditors, with more confidence in me and the
telegraph company than the facts warranted, printed it virtually
as received. One slip ought to be corrected. I did not write
"the essential fact of policy was the victory of radicalism over
bolshevism." There was no bolshevism visible. The sentence
should have read "the essential fact of policy was the victory of
radicalism over liberalism."
New York, August U Arthur Warner
Bertrand Russell Self-Revised
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: In a footnote to one of his articles on Russia printed
in the London Nation, July 24, Mr. Bertrand Russell offers the
following correction to his remarks upon the health of Maxim
Gorky and the state of art in Russia which were contained in
the concluding paragraph of the article published in the New
York Nation, July 31:
"Inadvertantly the last sentence of my article last week gave
an impression which I did not intend, namely, that the Soviet
Government is indifferent or hostile to art. This is not the case ;
it is more friendly to art than our own Government. What I
meant to suggest was that the mental atmosphere is one in
which it is difficult for art to flourish, but I did not mean that
artists are ill-treated."
The correction is important. The passage in question cer-
tainly gave an impression quite the reverse of that which the
author now explains he intended. One wonders whether, after
further careful re-reading of his articles, Mr. Russell will not
find several other equally misleading inadvertancies which he
will desire to correct. A few more revisions of this sort would
have made these articles totally unfit for such gleeful exploita-
tion by the capitalist press of two continents.
New York City, August U Kenneth Durant
August 14, 1920]
The Nation
189
Books
The Fruits of the Frontier
The Ordeal of Mark Twain. By Van Wyck Brooks. E. P. Dut-
ton and Company.
THE American frontier used to be the hero in the national
drama: it faced the dangers and fought the battles and
endowed the settlements with the material for tales and bal-
lads. This was in the rousing days of Fenimore Cooper. Then
the frontier, under the investigations of Professor Turner, was
found out to be the nation's elder brother: being first sent out
from home to seek a fortune it acquired new qualities in the
tough school of adversity and later taught them so thoroughly
to its safer kin that the entire nation was colored with them.
Mr. Van Wyck Brooks makes the frontier the villain of the
story: it bred, he charges, careless thinking, loud talking, con-
ventional living, unconcern for truth or beauty, over-concern
for wealth and visble success, scorn for art, and worship of
laughter. Perhaps, Mr. Brooks admits, "after the disillusion-
ments of the present epoch, that myth [of America's manifest
destiny and the glory of the frontier] will prove to have a
certain beautiful residuum of truth"; but for the moment his
interest is to expose the ugly side of the frontier as it is re-
flected in one of its most brilliant and tragic products. Mark
Twain, by Mr. Brooks's record, grew up in the deadest and
driest of all the frontier regions— the Middle West of the for-
ties and fifties; he was further shaped by the noisiest of them
all — the Far West of the mining- fever days; with the stigmata
of these experiences upon him, he spent his remaining years
in an environment — and in a personal and domestic atmosphere
— which never let him outgrow the frontier. He who loved the
truth had so little chance to know about it that he was always
mistaking academic platitudes in metaphysics or ethics for
terrific discoveries. He who loved beauty had so little chance
to hear about it and the part it plays in richer human lives
that he was always half afraid to do more than laugh at it,
as boys laugh at love though they may be shaken by its im-
pulses. He who might have been a great satirist contented him-
self with being a humorist, a mere fun-maker, an encourager
of national complacency, a ridiculer of idealists as well as idlers,
of poets as well as fools, of unsuccessful saints as well as un-
successful sinners. Since nature had meant him to be so much
more than he became, he could become what he did only through
the repression of instincts which of course took their revenges;
bitterness and pessimism were the natural penalties he paid,
as a thoughtful man, for the cheerful optimism which his public
expected and which he usually gave it.
This "Ordeal" is so brilliant a book and comes so near the
truth in its general outlines that it seems almost an excess of
seriousness to point out certain excesses of seriousness into
which Mr. Brooks has been carried by his ardor for the dignity
of the literary profession. But it should be pointed out that
his criticism is very far from being disinterested. Mr. Brooks
belongs with those writers of the Youngest America who fight
all the stodgy orthodoxies with a zeal not unlike that which
formerly won them their vested seats. In expounding the limi-
tations of Mark Twain his critic is here meaning to do a great
deal more than that. He means to bring an adequate indict-
ment against the sort of society which discourages and re-
presses a man of genius. What sort of man of genius? Well,
that sort whose creative urge moves with the sure march of a
god's, and whose brain conceives and whose hands execute as a
god's might do; one who is as confident of the authenticity and
authority of his vision as Joan of Arc was of her Voices; one
whom no punishment can deter and no agonies deflect. Just
how far such a man can be held responsible for his career
Mr. Brooks does not attempt to say; but he divides the respon-
sibility for Mark Twain's failure between the man and his fron-
tier environment — to Mr. Brooks all America is one frontier —
in a proportion which lays the blame overwhelmingly upon
American society. "As we can see now," he says, "a vast un-
conscious conspiracy actuated all America against the creative
spirit." Lacking order and art and intellectual seriousness or
humility in itself, the United States could not impart them to
its son. A superhuman genius might have dispensed with them
in his environment. Mark Twain was not a superhuman genius.
He therefore had to follow instead of leading his nation.
This is to say, in effect, that the United States is to blame
for not making a better leader out of Mark Twain than it did;
for not making him, in other words, in better than its own image,
so he could lead the country to something better still. But
is there not something indispensable, or at least something
very valuable, in the fact that Mark Twain was created so
nearly in the image of his age as he was? Mr. Brooks, subtle,
compact, a never-languid lover of art and the intellect, is ap-
palled at the waste of material in Mark Twain, seeing there
so much gift and apparently so little of it made up into perma-
nent form or even turned to immediate social use. A more
subtle, more compact, more beauty-loving community would
doubtless have done something very different by Mark Twain,
and in such a community he would have done something very
different with his genius. If he had been more of an artist,
however, he might not have been so magnificent a document.
If his age had disciplined him it might not so stupendously
have released him upon the world with all his uproarious if
unknit laughter, and all his great gushes of tenderness, and his
thundering rages, and his profanity and obscenity and blas-
phemy held tolerably in check but still furnishing fuel. Perhaps
it is doing an injustice to Mr. Brooks to say so, but his book
does not give the impression that he has ever read Mark Twain
with that robust gusto which is as truly a form of criticism
as more scrupulous, more acrid examinations — the gusto which
keeps Dickens alive, the mirror of a valid world, against those
rational judgments which with such good arguments express
their preference for Voltaire or Racine. This gusto is a pre-
cious tribute to vitality, and Mark Twain in at least half a
dozen out of his twenty or so volumes continues to collect it.
No larger a proportion of Voltaire has survived.
If only Mr. Brooks were willing to lay a little more stress
upon the tragedy and a little less upon the guilt of his offend-
ing author and nation! It was a tragic matter for Mark Twain
that he had no finer schooling and no wider and firmer horizon
than he had; it was for the United States a tragic matter that
it so long had to go, and, indeed, still has to go so much, with-
out the guidance of national voices speaking knowledge and
shrewdness with beauty and power. As to guilt, that is not so
easy to assess. Is it after all the prime business of a nation or
a period to beget men of letters? Is failure to do so as sure a
sign of total failure as this book contends? If the frontier is
to be judged by its influence upon Mark Twain and his develop-
ment, why not credit it with some of the qualities which made
him immense in his species as well as charge it with its inability
and unwillingness to lift him to a different species? When all
has been said about the year's most fascinating volume of Ameri-
can criticism, there is still to be said that it is polemic.
C. V. D.
One More Mr. Wilson
Woodrow Wilson and His Work. By W. E. Dodd. Doubleday,
Page and Company.
NOBODY expects a high measure of impartiality in political
biography, especially during the lifetime of the subject.
Even a professor of history, writing of a great party leader in
an election atmosphere, cannot expect to be taken in any other
light than that of an expert partisan. Mr. Wilson's career is
certainly a tempting challenge to this order of expertism, and
190
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2876
it is fair to admit that Mr. Dodd does his work with knowledge,
skill, and an independent judgment in details, sufficient to per-
suade readers that his wholehearted defense of the President's
war and peace conduct proceeds from a genuine conviction of its
high principles. In a series of informing chapters dealing with
the austere upbringing, the struggle for knowledge, and the
difficult career of an academic reformer, he brings out the stub-
bornness of will, the large vision, and the passionate certainty
which are the essentials of a practical idealist.
But all this factual information only serves to deepen our
sense of mystery at the critical moments when the idealism is
tested. And there are several such moments during these years
of trial. Mr. Wilson is delineated as a great liberal. Now lib-
eralism means in the first place freedom to know and to say,
with the tongue or pen, not what is popular or convenient, or
even what is patriotic, but what one holds to be true. A liberal
will always believe that this practice is for the good of his coun-
try. But Mr. Dodd, admitting that Mr. Wilson in his repressive
legislation violated the Constitution and ignored "the spirit of
the older American ideals" (p. 224), condones the action, adduc-
ing first, state-necessity (the Prussian plea for invading Bel-
gium!), and second, the evil precedent set by Lincoln in the
Civil War. He actually commends Mr. Wilson for securing
unconstitutional laws to cover acts which Lincoln did illegally!
And then he adds that "To the end of the war with Germany
he insisted upon mild punishments." Does Mr. Dodd really count
ten or twenty years' imprisonment for the utterances of sincere
convictions a mild punishment?
Secondly, the record shows Mr. Wilson up to 1917 essentially a
pacifist, and assailed as such. There is nothing in the external
evidence to explain his swift plunge into militarism. His "too
proud to fight" maxim was repeated after the Lusitania inci-
dent. There is no evidence that the people who had elected him
in the previous fall because he had "kept us out" wanted to go
in until Mr. Wilson made them want. Why did he? What was
the rapid conversion which it is commonly supposed Mr. Wilson
underwent in the winter of 1916-1917? No light is here thrown
upon Mr. Wilson's abandonment of the sound principle, "only
a peace between equals," now so amply justified by the disas-
trous sequel of a victorious peace.
Thirdly, Mr. Wilson posed as champion of democracy, and
only fought to make the world safe for it. Over and over again
he insisted that "we are not the enemies of the German people"
— "they did not originate or desire this hideous war." Yet he
set his hand to a Peace which is fatal both to safety and democ-
racy, which treated the German people as permanent enemies,
and which violated all the essentials of his Fourteen Points.
Here we come to the most critical of all tests for our idealist.
Mr. Dodd does his best. With great skill he marshalls the hos-
tile forces which confronted the President in his own country,
evading the issue of the President's responsibility for this hos-
tility, and defending the appeal to party in the fall elections of
1918. He shows us Mr. Wilson, the lone idealist at Paris,
deserted by his countrymen and caught in the foils of an unpre-
paredness which placed him at the mercy of the superior expert-
ism of European statesmen and obliged him to discuss their
drafts not only of the Peace Terms but even of the League of
which he was the reputed father. He does not explain why Mr.
Wilson was so unprepared for 4;he end of hostilities. There was
a widespread belief at any rate in Europe that the war would
collapse in the winter of 1918.
Mr. Dodd appears more conscious of the failure of Mr. Wilson
at Paris than his hero himself. But he contends that this failure
was a yielding to force majeure and therefore inevitable and
innocent. Here is the precise issue. The authority of conscience,
of accepted ideals, recognizes no force majeure. We are shown
Mr. Wilson yielding first on "Open Covenants," next on "Free-
dom of the Seas," and then on other points of principle, until he
puts his pen to a document which has made a scrap of paper of
his Fourteen Points. How could he do it? Over this crucial
issue Mr. Dodd commits a grave error of omission. He does,
indeed, make a passing allusion to the violation of the terms of
the armistice in the terms of the peace. But he fails to bring
out the central fact of the great perfidy, a fact which not one in
a hundred of the people of England or America appears to know,
that the Fourteen Points of Mr. Wilson were formally adopted
by the Allies and offered to Germany as an inducement to sur-
render, and that this inducement succeeded in its object. How
then could Mr. Wilson bring himself to a betrayal so peculiarly
his? It was perhaps not to be expected that his biographer
should grapple closely with this moral issue. But with a curious
felicity he does set forth the course of conduct which a staunch
idealist would have taken. "Wilson had at that time three
sources of influence: he could refuse, as President of the United
States, to accept the treaty when finished ; he could cease approv-
ing the grants of hundreds of millions of credit to European
governments; and he could announce that, in his opinion, the
moral forces of the world should not approve the proposed set-
tlement." Mr. Dodd appears to regard these three courses as
alternatives, and affects to show how impossible each was.
But if our idealist had taken all three courses, the practical
force of his position might have shaken even Paris and brought
the greedy gamblers to their knees. Had it failed for the mo-
ment, it could hardly have worsened the terms of peace; and it
would have enabled Mr. Wilson to make that appeal to "the
moral forces of the world" which he can never make again.
Our author sees Mr. Wilson as a man who has made a great
sacrifice for the internationalism of a League of Nations. But
by insisting on the incorporation of the Covenant in the Peace
Terms, Mr. Wilson poisoned his offspring at its birth with the
war spirit which animates the structure and the functions of
this partial League of European Foreign Offices. Had Mr.
Wilson had the honesty and courage to recognize that he was
beaten at Paris, he would have withdrawn intact his idealist
forces and lived to fight another day. Instead of which he has"
made the very name of idealism a term of derision.
J. A. Hobson
Far Away and Long Ago
Pic The Weapon-Maker. By George Langford. Introduction by
Henry Fairfield Osborn. Boni and Liveright.
The Tour. A Story of Ancient Egypt. By Louis Couperus.
Translated from the Dutch by A. Teixeira de Mattos. Dodd,
Mead and Company.
The Outlaw. By Maurice Hewlett. Dodd, Mead and Company.
The Light Heart. By Maurice Hewlett. Henry Holt and Com-
pany.
THE art of fiction, though more rarely than at other periodSj
continues to illustrate the pageants and passions of the past.
And since both anthropology and archaeology have been busy
gathering new facts and opening new vistas, the novelist may
proceed to a new imaginative reconstruction of history. He may
begin, as Mr. Langford does, at far remoter epochs than his
predecessors and bring home to the mind the vision he has drawn
quite literally from stocks and stones. Mr. Langford tells a tale
of a Mousterian youth who meets the Neanderthal man, forms
a friendship with the Mammoth and the Woolly Rhinoceros,
smokes the Cave Lion out of his lair, rediscovers the art of
finishing flint weapons with a utensil of bone, and in the last
scene illustrates the bearing of the length of human infancy on
the process of civilization. The story is necessarily schematic,
since the ascertained facts are few and Mr. Langford could dis-
pense with none. A more troublesome fault is the author's
imaginative cocksureness. A higher degree of vagueness would
actually have yielded an impression of greater exactness here.
The estimable sentiments of the hoofed and horned beasts are
reported with a fulness that stirs the mind to resistance. But
where all is dark and chaotic, much must be forgiven to the
i
August 14, 1920]
The Nation
191
first imaginative explorers. It is certain that Mr. Langford's
book will fruitfully awaken the interest of the young in the
remote past of the race, nor will maturer minds read it without
some fresh light on dim places.
Louis Couperus has turned his attention to the Egypt of the
age of Tiberius. A dazzling commercial civilization had in-
vaded the ancient land whose gigantic shrines and temples were
slowly sinking back into the sands of the desert. To make clear
this contrast with all it involved, Couperus describes the tour of
a young Roman patrician who, strangely bereft of one he
loved, goes to the oracles and the wise men of Egypt in search
of knowledge and consolation. The Dutch novelist has woven
into his narrative all that communicates a strong sense of the
modernity of the ripe civilization of the Graeco-Roman world
as it appeared at Alexandria— the great reflectors that flashed
searchlights over the harbor, the diversorium that entertained
guests from the ends of the earth, the various guide-books
from which the wise Thrasyllus strove to gain a knowledge of
the country in which he was traveling. And then Couperus
conducts his company to Memphis, to the Pyramids, to the veiled
statue of Isis at Sais, and at last to the great shrine and oasis
of Ammon. Lucius the Roman seeks a mystic wisdom, and all
he learns even at this "ultimate outpost" and most ancient
source of human wisdom is a whispered word concerning the
tragical solitariness and necessary self-dependence of man.
The art of Couperus is extraordinarily firm and certain of
touch. His mind has a beautiful lucidity. This book, even more
perhaps than the stories that deal with his Dutch contempo-
raries, exhibits his frugal ease and grace, the strength and
delicacy of his execution, the conscious but always finely re-
strained melodic structure of his prose. It is highly to the credit
of Mr. Teixeira de Mattos that the latter quality of the art of
Couperus is still quite vivid in the English version. It is
fortunate, too, since one must desire a wide circulation for the
books of this Dutch master. We get novels of greater variety
and sharpness that by their very looseness of structure and
tentativeness of method are more satisfying to the mind as
vicarious expressions of its troubled and immediate life. To
these the grave and ordered beauty of Couperus provides an
admirable complement. Not that he lacks subtlety or, even in
this story of ancient Egypt, spiritual timeliness. But he is
always concerned with the problem of beautiful form, with
the novel as striving to achieve a harmony and perfection of
its own as a finely organized and very individual expression
of the artist's sense of the values of life.
Mr. Maurice Hewlett is rapidly continuing his series of Sagas
retold from the Origines Islandicae. These books represent a
curious change in his busy career. It is as though, within him-
self, there had taken place a reaction against the fevered
beauty of his earlier manner and the florid medievalism of the
books that made him famous. He has withdrawn to a remoter
and a colder age; he has abandoned the hot, bright meadows of
France and Italy for the gaunt cliffs and dark seas of Iceland
and the Scandinavian coasts. And this reaction in Mr. Hewlett's
mind is interesting in that it corresponds, of course, to a re-
action and a change that has taken place in the larger world of
literature. It is not ordinarily realized how far we have traveled
from the preciosity both of vision and speech that was admired
during the last decade of the nineteenth and well into the first
decade of the twentieth century. Both those "roses and raptures"
and those "lilies and languors" are gone. Style has become
spare, stripped, athletic. Even the prose of Stevenson is now
felt to be a little decorative in texture and a little too aware of
its own graces. The early manner and matter of Mr. Hewlett
would seem almost archaic today. We want naked reality or
artistic severity. We could no longer loiter with the "Forest
Lovers" or the "Madonna of the Peach Trees."
Thus Mr. Hewlett has had to seek both a new substance and a
new way of expressing himself. The substance he found ready
to his hand in the sagas. But he takes the bare and often
sterile actions recounted in them and gives them the right back-
ground of character and passion. At times one is tempted to
say to him that "it is to consider too curiously to consider so";
at other times he yields to what may be called the heroic
fallacy, as in such a sentence: "He was much too interested to
think of what was going to happen to him." This, of any
man not in the heat of conflict but in imminent danger of cold
murder, is strained and false. But generally Mr. Hewlett
makes one feel that he has, indeed, discovered and laid bare the
humanity out of which the craggy and laconic legends grew.
His style is still, despite brave efforts, a little soft in tone and
jejune in diction. It would be like the unhewn rocks of the
hills; it is only like smooth boulders brought to adorn a garden.
"The Light Heart" is fanciful and slight. "The Outlaw," on
the other hand, is a noble tale fully and in the main nobly told.
The central character of Gisli is a great thing — a sane, strong,
reasonable man, unselfish through his very reasonableness, who
comes to a wild and tragic end because all the forces of his
world favor the ruffian and the braggart. Mr. Hewlett has de-
liberately made a plain tale out of his story. But an epic or
dramatic poet will be in his debt some day.
Ludwig Lewisohn
Books in Brief
ITERARY gleanings several decades after the death of an
Lj author rarely justify themselves, but this cannot be said of
"The Function of the Poet, and Other Essays" (Houghton
Mifflin) by James Russell Lowell. Why this is so will be clear
to anyone who recalls how often Lowell in his collected prose
confuses his best and his worst, how often a commonplace
passage is followed by one memorable for extraordinary wit
or insight. The present volume is full of what Mr. Brownell
likes to call "good things." The first five essays were edited
by Charles Eliot Norton and first printed in the Century Maga-
zine. If it is a little excessive to say, with Norton, that the
initial essay, The Function of the Poet, is "not unworthy to
stand with Sidney's and with Shelley's Defence of Poesy," it
is true that the essay presents with an eagerness typical of its
period the view of poetry dominant in the first half of the
nineteenth century. The poet is the "seer" among men, pene-
trating to the ideal by virtue of his imagination ; his imagination
is opposed to his "understanding" and grounded in child-like
wonder ("Wonder is crude imagination"). The authentic
Transcendental champagne flows through the long passage in
which Lowell would remind the poet that, though the times are
materialistic, the poet will not bewail the fact but sing the
more ardently. "Shakespeare did not sit down and cry for the
water of Helicon to turn the wheels of his little private mill
at the Bankside ... To be alive now, that is the great art
and mystery." That is one of Lowell's good things, and it is true.
Yet there is also truth in the nearly opposite assertion in a
review of Wnittier: "It is all very nice to say to our poets,
'You have sky and wood and waterfall and men and women —
in short, the entire outfit of Shakespeare; Nature is the same
here as elsewhere'; and when the popular lecturer says it, the
popular audience gives a stir of approval. But it is all bosh,
nevertheless. Nature is not the same here, and perhaps never
will be, as in lands where man has mingled his being with hers
for countless generations, where every field is steeped in history,
every crag is ivied with legend, and the whole atmosphere of
thought is hazy with the Indian summer of tradition." The
volume includes reviews of Henry James, Longfellow, Howells,
Poe, Thackeray, Swift, and Plutarch's Morals. Nearly all
contain admirable, illuminating passages, such as that disposing
neatly of Thackeray's alleged cynicism, and most of the Poe
article. Throughout the book, as generally in Lowell, are para-
graphs, sometimes pages, notable for their beauty, vision, wit,
and eminently quotable.
192
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2876
I T is pathetic that Samuel Guy Inman, whose book on Mexico,
* based upon years of experience there, was so good that the
interventionists in America brought about its suppression,
should not have taken more time to check up on the tales told
him by Naval and Marine officers before he wrote "Haiti and
Santo Domingo" (Committee on Co-operation in Latin America).
"Tell it to the Marines" means something; but to let the Marines
tell it is to magnify that meaning to the last degree. Of Santo
Domingo Mr. Inman says: "Mahogany, gold, petroleum, and
many other riches exist in abundance. Yet some 95 per cent
of the people are unable to read and write; the interior of the
country is practically unknown; many country people are unable
to count above four or five; disease is widespread with practi-
cally no medical attention for the poor; and in general the
blessings of Christian civilization are lacking." Mahogany is
exported. The Spaniards sought gold there two centuries and
gave it up as a bad job. There is hardly enough native petro-
leum to run a Marine's Ford two yards. In the absence of a
census or some other proof, the statement of illiteracy is
incredible ; there are probably fewer Dominicans unable to count
"uno, dos, tres, quarto, cinco" than there are horses in Elberfeld
who can. Disease and mortality are as hard to dodge as taxa-
tion; but the blessings of Christianity cannot be generally lack-
ing, for later on Mr. Inman speaks of his courteous reception
by the Most Reverend Dr. Nouel, archbishop of Santo Domingo,
and, by the way, once provisional president of the republic.
Mr. Inman also saw the oldest Christian church in the New
World, where the bones of Columbus repose, and he discovered
a colony of American Negroes who still worship according to
the Methodist Discipline. "Santo Domingo is more than an
island or a republic," he writes. "It is a monument, an object
lesson in modern history of the ancient truth that 'Righteousness
exalteth a nation' and that 'Sin is a reproach to any people.' "
It is also a monument to the hypocrisy of the United States and
the sins of Josephus Daniels. In Haiti Mr. Inman found that
90 per cent of the rural inhabitants are little more than animal,
and that "the women seem to have no modesty," although it
is Marine gossip that the Haitian women were shocked at seeing
American women ride astride. On the roads he saw only women
and children, which he explains by saying that many of the
men have been killed off by constant revolution, and "others are
afraid to venture out because they may be forced into a fresh
military uprising of some kind." Of course this must be an
error, since the Marines pacified the country in 1916; but it
explains how old Haitians can have ten wives.
EVEN Bertrand Russell's slighting remark, that the principal
advantage of an Oxford education was the use to which it
might be put in delicately showing inferiors their crudity, admits
that there must be something fine in the university experience,
for one cannot successfully assert a superiority that is totally
non-existent. The better side of the Oxford spirit appears to ad-
vantage in Sir William Osier's discussion of "The Old Humani-
ties and the New Science" (Houghton Mifflin). In the war
raging between the Greeks and the Trojans — as they are called
on the Isis — both parties usually assume that the two alterna-
tives of a classical and a scientific education are mutually ex-
clusive. But Sir William, when asked which variety of learning
he will have, makes the same bold and plain answer that little
Jane returned when given her choice between pie and ice-cream.
Nothing less than the whole heritage of human knowledge will
satisfy this heir of all the ages. He admits that methods of
learning the classics will have to be speeded up a bit; he is con-
vinced that Greek and Latin can be taught without grammar and
with nothing but a reading-knowledge in mind — that there is a
way of making S. P. Q. R. mean Small Profits, Quick Returns.
If anything could prove the feasibility of his plan, it is his own
evident mastery of the ancient writers and of modern scientists.
Nothing human and nothing humane is alien to him. He ap-
praises the scientific value of Aristotle and Lucretius with the
same sure touch which he applies to hormones and the polyem-
bryonic hymenoptera. While he thinks that the direct value of
the classics to a scientist is great for what they teach of nature,
he believes their main use is as a prophylactic against the
dangers of over-specialization. Specialists, he observes, "lose the
sense of proportion, become hypercritical, and the smaller the
field the greater the tendency to megalocephaly." On the other
hand, science is of the greatest value to the average educated
man, for science has been defined by Plato as "the discovery of
things as they really are." The training it gives is equally ap-
plicable to the study of all problems, whether practical or ab-
struse. Sir William is right; we should teach everything to
everybody — only first we must make of everybody a universal
genius.
MENTAL tests were applied to one and three-quarters mil-
lions of American army recruits for the purpose of deter-
mining their fitness to assume degrees of responsibility ranging
from labor to command. The results convinced skeptics (includ-
ing the reviewer, who had opportunity for observation) of the
value of such a system. A brief history and a full presentation
of the method, formerly held sacrosanct under the espionage act,
is published with the authorization of the War Department in
"Army Mental Tests" (Holt). Before 1917, mental testing had
been confined almost exclusively to the individual examination
of children. To meet army needs, a group of psychologists,
including Professors Yerkes and Thorndike, devised a system
for the rapid classification of large numbers by means of group
tests, with supplemental individual tests for the subnormal.
The psychological basis of the method renders the result inde-
pendent of the educational status of the subject and was put into
operation in all cantonments. Its strength lies in its purely
empiric character, all tests having been selected on the basis o£
statistical study of the reactions of different grades of intelli-
gence. The present volume includes an interesting series of
tables and diagrams proving the value of the system by- a
comparison of mental ratings with actual efficiency.
INDUSTRY, EMOTION
AND UNREST
By Edward Thomas
A "case system" presentation of our complex
social structure, showing Industry, Business,
and the Middle Class in their functions and
environments. $1.75
JOHN ROBINSON
PASTOR OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS
A STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND TIMES
By Walter H. Burgess
A work based upon original research, telling
the story of the Pilgrims, centered about their
Pastor. A distinguished commemoration of the
Mayflower's historic voyage. Illustrated, $5.00
HARCOURT, BRACE & HOWE, l£>47%&
August 14, 1920]
The Nation
193
Notes and News
ROCK candy is made — so green youth understands — by letting
long strings down into boiling sugar, which forms about
them in delectable, tooth-threatening crystals. Of something
this same composition we may call "The Old Farmer and his
Almanac" (Harvard University Press, second impression) by
George Lyman Kittredge, if that most erudite of men can endure
the imputation, rare enough in his career, of being elaborately
sweet. The string in this case is his thread of narrative con-
cerning the early days of Robert B. Thomas's "Farmer's
Almanack," founded in 1792; the adhering substance is a vast
and curious knowledge of the customs and superstitions and wit
and wisdom and travels and talk of the older New England. The
fifteen years since the first impression of this book have been
able to find almost no errors in it, and it stands as one of the
most valuable treatises by an American antiquarian.
A LFRED A. KNOPF has issued the first four volumes of
**■ The Economic Reprints, a new Social-Economic section of
the Bohn Libraries. They include "The Life of Robert Owen
by Himself," the "Life and Struggles of William Lovett in his
Pursuit of Bread, Knowledge, and Freedom" (two volumes), and
"The Pioneers of Land Reform," including essays by Thomas
Spence, William Ogilvie and Thomas Paine — all of them valu-
able books and attractively printed and bound. That three out
of the four should be biographical leads one to wonder whether
the time is not coming when the lives of heroes like Owen and
Lovett will be studied at least as much as those of soldiers and
statesmen. Since the Renaissance artists and scholars have had
a hearing; a new age may add proletarians and proletarian
leaders.
IT is a sort of artistic event that a sixth edition of "The
* Life of James McNeill Whistler" (Lippincott) by Mr. and
Mrs. Pennell has been called for. First issued in 1908, this
remarkable work naturally needed to be revised, as the new edi-
tion has been, with material regarding pictures of Whistler
which have changed hands, with earlier statements fortified and
fresh facts added, and with new illustrations. The authors
feel that the growth of Whistlers' fame justifies their intense
and steady confidence that he was "the greatest artist and most
striking personality of the nineteenth century."
'T'HERE are too many weeklies and monthlies and periodicals
of various periods, and additions always seem intrusions.
Yet the first five numbers of the Bulletin of the League of Free
Nations Association have amply justified its existence. They
have made available to a larger public the important discus-
sions— of Maynard Keynes's book by Paul D. Cravath, Allyn
A. Young, Alvin Johnson, and David Hunter Miller, of "Free
Speech and Free Press as Factors in International Relations"
by Walter Lippmann, Zechariah Chafee, Jr., and Laurence
Housman, and of "The Awakening of China" by Paul S.
Reinsch, Dr. P. C. Chang, and Dr. Yamei Kin — which had
hitherto been available only to the limited number of people
able to attend the luncheons of the League in New York; and
they have published invaluable material on American imperial-
ism in the Caribbean. The June Bulletin printed an important
address by Jacinto Lopez on "The United States and the Na-
tions of the Caribbean," the very moderation of which made its
indictment more damning. The July Bulletin prints a reply by
Colonel George C. Thorpe, U. S. M. C, to attacks upon American
administration in Haiti and Santo Domingo, which is a revela-
tion of the inadequacy of an honest military mind to face the
problems of colonial administration.
ALFRED ' A * KNOPF
%%o W. 42 Street, NEW YORK
THE LIFE OF FRANCIS
PLACE [1771-1854]
By Graham Wallas
"Two books of our generation have at-
tained a peculiar distinction as pathfinders.
. . . The second is Mr. Graham Wallas'
The Life of Francis Place, which virtually
started the study of the enormous mass of
material still extant concerning the politi-
cal and economic history of England in
the first three decades of the last century.
The appearance of the American edition at
the present moment is very timely. The
years following the Battle of Waterloo
present quite ludicrous parallels between
that period and the present phase of Ameri-
can history — the word 'radical' . . .
secret plottings and corresponding secret
investigations . . . two ancient political
parties that had almost ceased to have any
reason for a separate existence. . . The
life of Place was lived at the very heart of
this turmoil; Place was a (if not the) lead-
ing figure." — The Nation.
"He was the most disinterested reformer
ever knew," said a contemporary of
Place ; "valuable in council, fertile in re-
source, performing great labors." An in-
tensely fascinating and romantic career,
full of example and inspiration for these
times, in the treatment of which Mr. Wal-
las' masterly and scholarly achievement has
never been disputed. 415 pages; with por-
trait frontispiece ; $3.50 net.
ly^ll^»^lltt>»<allifcvallig»iwltg^ntfrS^fig%fr
Economic Reprints
I. THE LIFE OF ROBERT
OWEN
"Alfred A. Knopf has put students of
social affairs in his debt by republishing in
pocket-size volumes the autobiographies of
Robert Owen and William Lovett. That of
Owen covers a very eventful life, and one
of the first importance in the history of
socialism, labor, and cooperation, and is the
expression of an unusual personality." —
N. Y. Evening Post. With an introduction
by M. Beer. 352 pages ; $1.50 net.
II-III. THE LIFE AND
STRUGGLES OF WILLIAM
LOVETT
The autobiography of the leader of the
Chartist movement, and author of the
"people's charter." With an introduction
by R. H. Tawney, author of "A History of
British Socialism." Two volumes; 482
pages; $3.00 net.
IV. THE PIONEERS OF
LAND REFORM
Three essays, with an introduction by M.
Beer:— "The Right of Property. in Land,"
by Thomas Spence; "The Nationalization
of the Land," by William Ogilvie;
"Agrarian Justice," by Thomas Paine; 212
pages ; $1.50 net.
HOW THE WAR CAME
By the Earl Loreburn
"... a scathing indictment of the
practical workings of secret diplomacy."
— New York Tribune.
In this noteworthy volume Earl Lore-
burn, whose constructive idealism did so
much to terminate satisfactorily the Vene-
zuelan Boundary Arbitration in 1906, has
approached the political side of the Allied-
German diplomatic exchanges much as
Maynard Keynes did the economic side,
with the result that "How the War Came"
has created somewhat of a furore on the
other side. $3.00 net. With map.
CHECK BELOW THE BOOKS YOU WISH
TO PURCHASE AND MAIL WITH REMIT-
TANCE TO THE PUBLISHER, YOUR BOOK-
SELLER, OR The Nation.
Send me
.copies THE LIFE OF FRANCIS PLACE
($3.50; 15c postage)
. " ECONOMIC REPRINTS, Vols
($1.50 each volume; 10c postage)
. " HOW THE WAR CAME
($3.00; 15c postage)
^f5lfSgtt^5HSSHS^li^ri^5HS^
International Relations Section
The Russian-British Notes
THE following four notes exchanged in June and July
by representatives of the British Government and the
Russian Soviet Government appeared as a special dispatch
from Stockholm to the London Herald of July 10. It is an
interesting fact that on July 14 Mr. Bonar Law read in the
House of Commons the texts of the notes here printed ex-
cept the. first and that they were thereupon published in
the London Times of July 15.
The text of the note addressed by M. Krassin to Mr. Lloyd
George on June 29 at their last interview follows :
In submitting the following reply to the declaration made by
the Prime Minister and other members of the British Govern-
ment at the sittings of June 7, I am constrained once more to
point out the abnormal conditions in which the representatives
of the Soviet Government have been placed in connection with
the present negotiations.
The plenipotentiary representative of the People's Commis-
sariat for Foreign Affairs, whose presence is absolutely neces-
sary at the negotiations in the course of which the British Gov-
ernment has raised purely political questions, has not been ad-
mitted, while my own telegraphic intercourse with the Soviet
Government has been very imperfect. Between 25 and 30 per
cent of outgoing and incoming telegrams have failed to reach
their destination, and numerous telegrams have been received
in a highly mutilated condition.
Nor have we succeeded up till now in organizing a courier
service with any regularity, despite the promised assistance,
owing to the difficulties and delays in the issue of visas by the
countries through which the couriers have to pass. These cir-
cumstances not only deprive me of the possibility of promptly
returning answers to questions put to me and of submitting as
promptly questions on our part, but also prevent me from fully
and precisely informing myself of the decision and intentions
of my government.
The British Government has put forward as the main con-
ditions of the renewal of commercial relations between Soviet
Russia and Great Britain the demand for a mutual pledge to
cease all propaganda and hostile acts, and for the recognition
in principle by the Soviet Government of Russia's liability to-
wards private creditors.
On the first question it is necessary to distinguish between
the propaganda of communist ideas among laboring masses of
the western European countries and the organizing of the work-
ing class of those countries for the final struggle against the
capitalist order on the one hand, and the general direction of
the foreign policy of Soviet Russia against the Entente coun-
tries, particularly Great Britain, and complicity with, or direct
participation in, hostile acts directed against Great Britain in
various countries of the Near and Middle East including India,
on the other.
So far as the communist propaganda and interference in the
political life of Great Britain are concerned, the Soviet Gov-
ernment is prepared to give a formal pledge not to carry on
such propaganda in England either openly or secretly, and not
to interfere in her internal political life, if a general agreement
is reached between the two countries concerning the renewal of
economic and commercial relations, and if the British Govern-
ment on its part undertakes not to carry on any propaganda in
Russia against the Soviet Government, provided that such un-
dertaking does not prevent the representatives of the Soviet
Government in England from issuing through the press or
some other channel denials of false or deliberately perverted
reports regarding the fundamental principles of the Soviet
regime or incidents in the life of Soviet Russia.
As regards the general foreign policy of Soviet Russia, the
Soviet Government has more than once proclaimed to the world
its readiness to begin peace negotiations which alone would put
an end to all hostile acts between the various states and bring
about the complete restoration of peace. The Soviet Govern-
ment would be perfectly willing to revise the fundamental
principles of its foreign policy, and, in particular, withdraw
from all participation in hostile acts directed against Great
Britain, if the British Government were to give a similar un-
dertaking.
The loyal fulfilment of this undertaking would have to be
properly guaranteed by a special treaty between the two gov-
ernments, to be drawn up at a special conference composed of
an equal number of representatives and experts on either side
without the right of objection to any members of such confer-
ence on either part. The Soviet Government would be prepared
on the question of place and time of such conference to
meet the wishes of the British Government in the most liberal
spirit.
A considerable difficulty in the drawing up of such treaty is
presented by the fact that Great Britain is a member of a mili-
tary coalition, some members of which are to this day directly
or indirectly in a state of war with Soviet Russia and are tak-
ing part in one way or another in hostile acts directed against
her, in consequence of which an undertaking on the part of
Great Britain to stop hostile acts would lose a good deal of its
importance, as it could easily be paralyzed by the action of Great
Britain's allies in continuing their assaults against Soviet
Russia and in supporting her enemies by any and every means.
It would seem, therefore, that a final settlement of this ques-"
tion would only be possible by the negotiations for the conclusion
of a formal and definite peace.
The British Government makes it a preliminary condition for
the restoration of commercial relations between the two coun-
tries that the Soviet Government recognize in principle the
liabilities of the Russian state toward private creditors.
Such formation of the question obviously tends to the dis-
advantage of Soviet Russia, since, in consequence of the na-
tionalization of land, factories, and works, as well as of com-
merce, the greater portion of the private claims on the Russian
side has been transformed into state claims, and Soviet Russia,
therefore, in case of an unqualified acceptance of the above
claim of the British Government, would risk losing the preferen-
tial right to put forward a large number of quite incontrovert-
ible claims of her own.
The liabilities to private persons form but a fraction of the
mutual liabilities of the two countries, and there is absolutely
no ground to put forward for accepting, in the order of priority,
this particular fraction of the mutual liabilities. The argument
that the British business world would, without such recognition,
never agree to resume trade negotiations with Russia is re-
futed by the numerous declarations of British business men
anxious to resume such relations as soon as the obstacles raised
by the British Government in their way have been removed.
Such declarations frequently emanate precisely from British
industrialists and business men who have claims on Russia, as
these business men quite justly think that, in the absence of
all possibility in the near future for ruined Russia to pay the
claims of her creditors, the immediate resumption of trade
relations will constitute the best and probably the only means
of gaining such advantage through regular intercourse with
Soviet Russia as may in the next few years more than meet
such claims.
The demand to recognize private claims has for its object to
protect in the first place the interests of those capitalist cir-
cles of Great Britain who have already taken full advantage,
with great profit to themselves, of the war of 1914-1918 and are
now trying to exploit, to perhaps still greater advantage to
August 14, 1920]
The Nation
195
themselves, the winding up of that war. The Workers' and
Peasants' Government of Soviet Russia cannot possibly recog-
nize the interests of this particular section of the population
as the most important and as deserving preferential treatment.
On the contrary, from the point of view of the Soviet Gov-
ernment, primary importance and urgency attach to the private
claims against the Entente Powers on the part of the hundreds
of thousands of widows and orphans of workers and peasants
of Soviet Russia, the Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Siberia,
whose kith and kin have perished from British and French bul-
lets and shells during the so-called intervention, that is, the
wholly uncalled-for interference of the Entente in the internal
affairs of Russia. Russian debts toward British subjects were
contracted as the result of certain agreements or undertakings
entered upon in respect of such persons by the previous Gov-
ernment of Russia. Such agreements and undertakings toward
British subjects were, however, annulled by the acts of the
British Government themselves at the moment when it began
war and intervention against Soviet Russia and proclaimed a
blockade, having for its object to compel the Russian people,
by famine and privation, to renounce the form of government
which it had chosen after having overthrown the autocratic
Czarist regime.
Hence the question at issue at the present moment cannot
possibly be the recognition of treaties and agreements abro-
gated by the war, but only their restoration — an act which is
only possible after the Soviet Government has been officially
recognized and peace relations have been restored as the result
of peace negotiations and the signing of a peace treaty.
The Soviet Government agrees to the examination of all mu-
tual claims, including those arising from liabilities toward pri-
vate British subjects, in conjunction with peace negotiations at
a conference to be held on the basis of reciprocity, and to be
composed of an equal number of delegates and experts without
the right of objection to anyone on either side.
If the British Government regards the immediate clearing
up of all misunderstandings and frictions in the domain of
foreign policy and in particular the cessation of all hostile acts
in the Middle and Near East, as well as the immediate settle-
ment of material claims on the basis of reciprocity as necessary
and urgent, the Soviet Government will be prepared to meet
such desire halfway, but does not regard, for reasons of prin-
ciple as well as on actual practical grounds, an agreement on
such points possible except as the result of formal negotiations
for the restoration of peace relations between the two countries.
Should the British Government be unwilling to enter into such
official negotiations for the restoration of peace relations be-
tween the two countries, the immediate resumption of economic
and commercial relations appears, nevertheless, possible on the
following basis:
1. All controversial questions in the domain of foreign policy,
as well as those relating to the participation of individual gov-
ernments in coalitions, alliances, and individual enterprises of
a hostile character to the other country, as well as all questions
relating to the mutually material claims of governments and
subjects, are to be postponed until such time as they may be
settled by diplomatic methods at the peace conference.
2. The two governments immediately proclaim the resump-
tion of economic and commercial relations, and announce the
temporary suspension of the material claims of the Russian
state and Russian subjects against Great Britain and the Brit-
ish Empire, and of British subjects against Russia, pending the
settlement of the question at the peace conference.
3. The fundamental principles for the resumption of trad-
ing relations are immediately established, including:
(a) Concrete measures for the removal of mines in the Baltic
and other seas, as well as other measures for the safety of
navigation.
(b) An official announcement to all neutral countries about
the renewal of commercial relations between Russia and Great
Britain and the complete freedom of navigation from and to
Russian ports.
(c) The establishment of commercial representations in the
two countries on the basis of reciprocity and immunity, with
the right of free sojourn, travel, communication with other
countries by letter, telegram, and courier and the use of cypher.
(d) An agreement by which passports, certificates of iden-
tity, powers of attorney, protocols, agreements, and such-like
documents issued or certified by the authorities of one country
are recognized as valid in the other country on the basis of
reciprocity.
With particular regard to Clause (c), I have the honor to
add that the suggestion made by the British Prime Minister
about applying to commercial representatives the principle of
prior consent to their appointment on the part of the govern-
ment of the other country is unacceptable to the Soviet Gov-
ernment, since, from the point of view of the bourgeois govern-
ments of Europe who, on principle, are opposed to the Soviet
regime, every representative of the Soviet Government might
be treated as persona non grata. . . .
The Soviet Government, being anxious as much as possible to
meet the wishes of the British Government, will not object to
the right of each government to insist upon the immediate recall
of such members of the trade delegation of the other country
with regard to whom an infringement of the laws of the country
in which they reside, or, in particular, participation in political
propaganda or interference in the internal affairs of the country,
shall have been proved.
In conclusion, on behalf of the Government of the Russian
Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, I have the honor once more to
bring to the notice of the British Government and the entire
British people, and particularly the British laboring masses,
that it is the most urgent and earnest wish of the Government of
Soviet Russia and of the entire Russian people, to conclude at
the earliest possible date a full and general peace, without reser-
vation, with all the Powers who in recent years have taken part
in hostile acts against her.
The text of the note, dated June 30, addressed by the
British Government to M. Krassin on the eve of his de-
parture for Russia is as follows:
The British Government has given careful consideration to
the memorandum produced by M. Krassin of June 29 on the
negotiations which have been proceeding since the arrival of the
Russian delegation at the end of May. The British Government
has during the course of these negotiations shown its sincere
desire to end the isolation of Russia from the western world
and to reach an agreement for the resumption of trading rela-
tions which might pave the way to a general peace.
They do not think that any useful purpose will be served at
this moment by attempting a detailed reply to the Russian
Trade Delegation memorandum or by entering into arguments
of a recriminatory character. The negotiations have now
reached a stage where it is necessary to bring them to an issue.
It is not clear from M. Krassin's memorandum whether the
Soviet Government really desires the restoration of trading
relations or not, or what are the conditions upon which it is
willing to resume them.
In order, therefore, to arrive at a definite decision, the British
Government now repeats what it has declared throughout, that
it is willing to make an agreement for the mutual cessation of
hostilities and the resumption of trading relations with Russia,
and asks for categorical replies, yes or no, as to whether Russia
is prepared to enter into a trade agreement with the British
Empire and other Powers on the following conditions :
1. That each party refrains from hostile action or under-
takings against the other and from conducting any official
propaganda, direct or indirect, against the institutions of the
other party; and, more particularly, that the Soviet Government
will refrain from any attempt by military action or propaganda
to encourage any of the peoples of Asia in any form of hostile
196
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2876
action against British interests or the British Empire. For
reasons already given, this, in the opinion of the British Govern-
ment, is the fundamental condition of any trading agreement
between Russia and any western Power.
Trade is only possible under conditions of peace or armistice.
The British Government proposes what is tantamount to a
general armistice as the condition of the resumption of trade
relations, in the hope that this armistice may lead ere long to a
general peace.
2. That all British subjects in Russia should be immediately
permitted to return home, all Russian subjects in Great Britain
or other parts of the British Empire who desire to return to
Russia being similarly released.
3. That the Soviet Government, in return for a corresponding
undertaking from the British Government, agrees to recognize in
principle that it is liable to pay compensation to private citizens
who have supplied goods or service to Russia for which they
have not been paid. The British Government asks for some
declaration of this kind at the present time because it believes
something of this nature is essential to the effective starting of
trade between the two countries.
It considers it a matter of simple justice, for instance, that
where a merchant has supplied the Russian people with a thou-
sand ploughs which have been used or are still being used by
the Russian people to their own great benefit, the Russian
people should admit that they ought to pay that merchant and
the workmen who manufactured the ploughs for the goods and
services they have rendered. Unless Soviet Russia is prepared
to admit that it must deal with those with whom it now wishes
to trade on some recognized principles of justice, trade on a
large scale such as is desired on both sides will be found to be
practically impossible. The British Government does not ask
that these debts should be settled now.
It is prepared to leave the determination of Russia's liabilities
under this head as well as all other questions relating to debts
or claims by Great Britain on Russia or by Russia on Great
Britain to be mutually settled at the negotiations of peace. But
it considers it necessary that the Soviet Government should make
a declaration on this point in order to give the necessary con-
fidence to western merchants, manufacturers, and workers to
embark upon manufacturing and trading operations.
4. The British Government agrees to the conditions laid down
by the Soviet Government in regard to commercial facilities,
communications, and so forth, provided that they are mutual
and excepting that it cannot agree to surrender the right pos-
sessed by every civilized government, and which it freely accords
to the Soviet Government also, to object to the entry as an
official agent of any government of any person who is non grata
to itself.
It asserts, however, that it has no intention of debarring any
Russian on the ground of his communist opinions, provided the
agents of the Russian Government comply with the normal con-
ditions for friendly international intercourse.
The British Government now awaits a definite statement from
the Soviet Government as to whether it will accept these prin-
ciples as the basis of an agreement to reopen trade negotiations
between Russia and the British Empire and any other Power
willing to accept the same conditions. If an answer is returned
in the affirmative the British Government will be willing to dis-
cuss details with any experts or representatives which Soviet
Russia may nominate, except such as have already been refused.
Should, however, no affirmative reply be obtained within one
week of the presentation of this note, the British Government
will regard the negotiations at an end, and in view of the de-
clared unwillingness of the Soviet Government to cease its
attacks upon the British Empire will take counsel with its allies
as to the measures required to deal with the situation.
The reply of the Soviet Government, signed by Chicherin,
was received in London by wireless on July 8.
Complying with the desire of the British Government and
with the object of arriving at an early peace between Russia
and Great Britain, the Russian Soviet Government accepts the
principles laid down in the Allied memorandum transmitted on
July 1 by the British Government to the president of the Russian
delegation, Krassin, as the basis of an agreement between Russia
and Great Britain, which agreement will be the object of
negotiations, which must begin without delay, between both
governments.
The Soviet Government agrees that the plan proposed by the
British Government will have to be considered as a state of
armistice between Russia and Great Britain, and shares the
British Government's expectation that this armistice will pave
the way to a definite peace. At the same time the Soviet Gov-
ernment protests against the affirmation, contrary to the real
facts, relative to the presumed attacks of Soviet Russia upon
the British Empire.
The Soviet Government emphasizes once more that as to Soviet
Russia in her relations with Great Britain, she desires nothing
but peace, and that the absence of the same disposition on the
other side was the only cause preventing it from being as yet
attained.
On July 11 Lord Curzon addressed a note from Spa to
M. Chicherin, demanding an armistice for the Poles.
The British Government notes the acceptance by the Russian
Soviet Government of the principles laid down in its memo-
randum of July 1, as the basis of an agreement for the re-
sumption of trade relations and the cessation of mutual hos-
tilities, and it therefore agrees to continue the negotiations for
a definite trade agreement as soon as the Russian delegates
return.
The British Government has a further proposal to make. The..
Soviet Government of Russia has repeatedly declared its anxiety
to make peace with all its neighbors; the British Government, -
which is no less anxious to restore peace throughout Europe,
therefore proposes the following arrangement with this object
in view:
(a) That an immediate armistice be signed between Poland
and Soviet Russia whereby hostilities shall be suspended. The
terms of this armistice should provide on the one hand that the
Polish army shall immediately withdraw to the line provisionally
laid down last year by the Peace Conference as the eastern
boundary within which Poland was entitled to establish a Polish
administration ; this line runs approximately as follows : Grodno,
Vapovka, Nemirov, Brest-Litovsk, Dorugusk, Ustilug, east of
Grubeshob, Krilov, and thence west of Rawa Ruska east of
Przemysl to Carpathians. North of Grodno, the line which will
be held by the Lithuanians will run along the railway running
from Grodno to Vilna and thence to Dvinsk.
On the other hand, the armistice should provide that the
armies of Soviet Russia should stand at a distance of 50 kilo-
meters to the east of this line; in Eastern Galicia each army will
stand on the line which they occupy at the date of the signature
of the armistice.
(b) That, as soon as possible thereafter, a conference sitting
under the auspices of the Peace Conference, should assemble in
London, to be attended by representatives of Soviet Russia,
Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Finland, with the object of
negotiating a final peace between Russia and its neighboring
states.
Representatives of Eastern Galicia would also be invited to
London to state their case for the purpose of this conference.
Great Britain will place no restriction on the representatives
which Russia may nominate, provided that they undertake while
in Great Britain not to interfere in the politics or the internal
affairs of the British Empire or to indulge in propaganda.
The British Government as a separate proposal suggests that
an armistice should similarly be signed between the forces of
Soviet Russia and General Wrangel, on the condition that Gen-
eral Wrangel's forces shall immediately retire to the Crimea,
and that during the armistice the Isthmus be a neutral zone,
August 14, 1920]
The Nation
197
and that General Wrangel be invited to London to discuss the
future of troops under his command and the refugees under his
protection, but not as a member of the conference.
The British Government would be glad of an immediate reply
to this telegram, for the Polish Government has asked for the
intervention of the Allies, and if time is lost a situation may-
develop which will make the conclusion of lasting peace far more
difficult in Eastern Europe; further, while the British Govern-
ment has bound itself to give no assistance to Poland for any
purpose hostile to Russia and to take no action itself hostile to
Russia, it is also bound under the Covenant of the League of
Nations to defend the integrity and independence of Poland
within its legitimate ethnographic frontiers.
If, therefore, Soviet Russia, despite its repeated declarations
accepting the independence of Poland, will not be content with
the withdrawal of the Polish armies from Russian soil on the
condition of a mutual armistice, but intends to take action
hostile to Poland in its own territory, the British Government
and its Allies would feel bound to assist the Polish nation to
defend its existence with all the means at its disposal.
The Polish Government has declared its willingness to make
peace with Soviet Russia and to initiate negotiations for an
armistice on the basis of conditions set out above directly it is in-
formed that Soviet Russia also agrees. The British Government
therefore would be glad of a definite reply within a week as to
whether Soviet Russia is prepared to accept the aforesaid pro-
posal for putting an end to further unnecessary bloodshed and
giving peace to Europe.*
The Polish Policy of Soviet Russia
THE Russian Soviet Government has published a Red
Book containing the texts of the diplomatic notes and
other documents bearing upon Russo-Polish negotiations
from 1918 to the Polish offensive of April, 1920. The collec-
tion includes a preface by George Chicherin, the Soviet
Foreign Minister. Part of this reads:
The Soviet Government publishes the record of its relations
with Poland. It hides nothing and has nothing to hide; it does
not fear the judgment of the masses; it is their expression, the
translator of their will, and the representatives of their aspira-
tions. Its diplomacy is public, emanating from the workers, and
is addressed to the workers of the other peoples. Because it
incarnates the will of the workers of Russia, the foreign policy
of the Soviet Government keeps ever in mind the workers of the
countries with which Soviet Russia has to do. Soviet diplomacy
addresses itself to the masses of the other countries not only
when the supreme organs of the republic publish a manifesto
addressed to those workers, but also when the Soviet Govern-
ment speaks to another government in documents of a purely
diplomatic character. Behind this government, its real corre-
spondent is always the working people of the state concerned. It
always considers the effect of each of its steps upon the con-
sciousness of the masses of the country with whose government
it deals. Its policy is the policy of the workers, who have ever
in mind their class brothers in other countries.
The policy of Soviet Russia, because it is the policy of workers
who live by their own toil and not of the exploiters of others, is
invariably and solely a peace policy, a policy seeking friendly
settlement of all conflicts with other peoples. Soviet Russia
does not impose its power, its form, or its principles upon any-
one; it does not carry on the tips of its bayonets revolutionary
conquests which the workers of each people must win for them-
selves and by their own efforts. It recognizes absolutely that
each people should be master of its own destiny. From the first
words on the Polish question pronounced by representatives of
Soviet Russia, an unchanging course has always and invariably
* The reply of the Soviet Government to Lord Curzon's note will be printed
in the next issue of the International Relations section. Editor — The Nation.
been followed in the political relations of the Soviet Government
with Poland, a course dictated by absolute recognition of the
right of Poland to free self-determination and by a rigorous
effort to avoid any conflict with her.
The story of Soviet Russia's relations to Poland begins
with Leon Trotzky's statement at the Conference of Brest-
Litovsk on February 3, 1918 (Russian calendar), that "we
recognize entirely and without restriction the independence
of the Polish people and of the Polish state." This state-
ment was tempered by reference to the German occupation
of Poland, then in existence, and by the statement:
We can for the present recognize as representing Poland
autonomously in the preliminary peace negotiations only repre-
sentatives sanctioned by the authentic organs of the Polish peo-
ple itself. . . . We cannot close our eyes to the fact that the
Polish state is at present occupied by foreign troops and that the
so-called Polish Government is free to act only within limits set
by outside parties.
More or less desultory negotiations regarding exchange of
prisoners, the invasion of the Polish Consulate at Moscow
by revolutionary Polish refugees, the murder of five mem-
bers of a Russian Red Cross delegation by the Polish troops
guarding them, the Polish pogroms, etc., occurred for
several months following the birth of the Polish Republic
after the German-Allied armistice. In February, 1919, a
serious effort toward peace was made. The Lithuanian and
White Russian soviet republics on February 17 addressed
a note to the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs suggesting
a joint commission to fix peacefully the eastern frontier of
Poland. On February 18, M. Chicherin, the Russian Foreign
Minister, addressed a note to the governments of the five
great Entente Powers repeating this suggestion, and pro-
testing against Entente encouragement to Polish aggression,
as for instance the Allied request to Germany to permit
the passage across Germany of Polish troops from France
destined to fight against Soviet Russia (this note was pub-
lished in The Nation for January 17, 1920). These notes
were not answered.
Despite the movement of her armies, Poland sent a special
delegate to Moscow in March, to apologize for the murder of
the Russian Red Cross delegation and to settle other details.
M. Chicherin, on March 24, addressed a note to the delegate,
M. Wienkovski, accepting a suggestion made by a com-
mittee of the Socialist Party in Poland that the frontiers
between Poland and the Soviet republics be determined by
plebiscite of the workers of the regions involved, after
evacuation of all foreign troops, and suggesting negotia-
tions to that end. On April 15, M. Chicherin again ad-
dressed M. Wienkovski, this time in behalf of M. Rakovski,
Prime Minister of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, announc-
ing that recent victories of the Soviet troops over the troops
of the Ukrainian Directory made it likely that those troops
would soon come into contact with Polish forces, and sug-
gesting negotiations for peaceful settlement of the boundary
question in the Ukraine. Apparently no answer was made to
these communications ; and on April 25 Chicherin addressed
a final note to Wienkovski, as follows:
Since you sent a courier to Warsaw with questions regarding
the agreement between our governments, Polish troops have at-
tacked Vilna, the capital of the sister Soviet Republic of Lith-
uania, an attack which shows how the present Polish Govern-
ment really regards the propositions for an agreement with the
soviet republics. This fact furthermore accords with the decla-
rations published in recent Polish newspapers, in which the
responsible representatives of the Polish Government are re-
198
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2876
ported as rejecting any agreement with soviet governments. The
disloyal character of the attack on Vilna, made by Polish troops
in uniforms of the Russian Red Army, shows how the present
Polish Government, when soviet governments are concerned,
treats the elementary principles of international relations, indis-
pensable basis of any agreement between governments. In leav-
ing to Poland all responsibility for the present impossibility of
agreement between our governments, and in emphasizing at the
same time that, animated by a persistent desire for peace, the
Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Soviet Republic is
always disposed to resume discussions with the Polish Govern-
ment upon cessation of hostilities against the soviet republics, I
have the honor to inform you that all preparations for your
departure and that of your associates who came with you will
have been completed by the evening of April 27. I consider it
my duty to add that despite what has happened, the Russian
Soviet Government still desires as soon as possible to arrange
the return of the Polish refugees still in Russia to their country,
and that messages concerning the repatriation of refugees will
be sent to the Polish Government direct by wireless, with the
request to prepare trains for the return of the refugees to the
localities agreed upon by the two governments. Receive the as-
surance of my profound respect.
George Chicherin
A note dated June 3, addressed to the Polish Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, and to the governments of the Entente,
after protesting against the pogroms committed in Vilna,
Lida, Pinsk, etc., in the wake of the advancing Polish armies,
concluded as follows :
The Soviet Government nourishes no illusions regarding the
true intentions of Messrs. Pilsudski and Paderewski. While
the Soviet note of March 24, announcing readiness to discuss
peace after mutual evacuation of the contested territories, was
not answered, and its text even was concealed in Poland, the
Polish Government and its obedient diet were frankly declaring
the necessity of extending Polish frontiers to the banks of the
Dvina and the Dnieper. The true interpretation to be made of
its reserve regarding the voluntary alliance of the Lithuanian
and White Russian peoples with Poland is illustrated by the fact
that on the morrow of the overturn of the Soviet Government
at Vilna the Polish authorities found themselves in open antag-
onism to the bourgeois Lithuanian taryba and finally found no
solution other than the establishment in Lithuania of an open
Polish dictatorship. It is perfectly clear that the leading Polish
circles aim at nothing less than genuine annexations, together
with an active strurgle against the Russian, Lithuanian, and
White Russian labor movements, buttresses of the world revolu-
tion, and in particular at the immediate and thoroughgoing
restoration of the great landed estates in Lithuania and White
Russia — an aim which even Kolchak's followers hesitate to
admit. But if the Polish Government has thus, supported by the
great Powers, decided upon war at any price against the soviet
republics, the Government of the Russian Soviet Republic, while
protesting categorically against the neglect in this war of the
elementary guaranties generally recognized and practiced by
capitalist governments, demands that the Polish authorities
finally stop their unspeakable policy of systematic massacre of
innocent people and of murder en masse of Socialists. The Gov-
ernment of the Russian Soviet Republic demands that the rights
and treatment universally granted prisoners of war be assured
to the soldiers and officers of the Soviet armies when made pris-
oners of war. Chicherin
Despite the lack of diplomatic relations, agreements re-
garding hostages and civil prisoners were reached between
representatives of Poland and of Soviet Russia at the station
of Mikachevichi in early November, 1919. On December
22 M. Chicherin formally made another peace offer in the
following note to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs :
In April of this year the Soviet Government repeatedly assured
the delegate of the Polish Republic, Citizen Wienkovski, of its
invariable desire to end the bloodshed between the peoples of
Russia and of Poland, already tried by five years of the calamity
of war, and then as always the Soviet Government considered
an agreement between Poland and Russia easily attainable.
When Citizen Wienkovski left Moscow, that assurance was re-
peated. Our peace propositions nevertheless were left unan-
swered, and in the months which followed, the Polish troops con-
tinued to advance in the territory of soviet republics friendly to
the Russian Republic. The Soviet Government was therefore
surprised to learn that on November 28 the Under-Secretary of
State Skrzynski, replying to an interpellation, told the Polish
Diet that the Russian Republic had never made any peace propo-
sition to Poland, and that it menaced Poland with invasion, and
was not at all disposed to an agreement corresponding to the
desires of the Polish people. Desiring to avoid any misunder-
standing which might hinder the prompt reestablishment of
peace and friendship between the two peoples, the Soviet Gov-
ernment again confirms its previous assurances of its firm de-
sire to end all conflict with Poland. The Soviet Government
hereby addresses to the Polish Government a formal proposal
immediately to open negotiations aiming at a firm and lasting
peace between the two countries. In thus carrying out the peace-
ful will of the workers and peasants of Russia, the Soviet Gov-
ernment also realizes that its proposal corresponds as well to the
clearly expressed desires of all the labor organizations of Poland,
of whatever party they may be, of the various democratic or-
ganizations, and of the municipalities and other Polish public
organs. Peace between Russia and Poland is a vital necessity
for the development of the welfare and economic activity of the
two countries. The Soviet Government is persuaded that every
disagreement between them can be solved by a friendly accord
which will be hailed with joy by the two peoples. It is not un-
known to us that there are certain obstacles which might em-
barrass the Polish Government in seeking such an agreement
just as similar obstacles embarrass the other neighboring govern-
ments in the same way, but these difficulties arise not from the
interests or sentiments of the Polish people, but from foreign
sources in opposition to its real interest. The Soviet Govern-
ment expresses the hope that the pacific will of the overwhelming
majority of the Polish people and comprehension of its vital
interests will win the upper hand and will make possible a cessa-
tion of hostilities which only serve foreign interests. The Rus-
sian Soviet Government therefore asks the Polish Government
to indicate the place and date of negotiations, which it proposes
to undertake with the purpose of a treaty of peace between the
two republics. Chicherin
There is no answer to this appeal in the Russian Red
Book. But on January 28, 1920, a formal declaration was
made -by the Council of the People's Commissars of the
Russian Republic to the Government and people of Poland.
It read:
Poland must decide whether or not she will take a step which
may for years have most disastrous consequences upon the lives
of the two peoples. There is every reason to believe that the
efforts of the extreme imperialists of the Entente, partisans or
agents of Churchill and of Clemenceau, are at present directed
to throwing Poland into an unjust, senseless, and criminal war
against Soviet Russia. Conscious of its responsibility to the
workers of Russia, and penetrated by a profound desire to avoid
the further immense sacrifices, sufferings, and devastation which
threaten the two peoples,
1. The Council of the People's Commissars declares that as the
policy of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic toward
Poland arises not from accidental temporary military or diplo-
matic combinations, but from the unchanging principle of the
right of each nation to self-determination, it has recognized and
will continue to recognize always and without condition or re-
serve the independence and sovereignty of the Polish Republic,
and it is upon this recognition, which dates from the first day of
August 14, 1920]
The Nation
199
the existence of the independent Polish state, that it bases all
its relations with Poland.
2. Maintaining the last peace proposal made to Poland by the
People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs on December 22, the
Council of the People's Commissars, foreign to any policy of ag-
gression, declares that the Red troops will not pass the present
lines of the front in White Russia, which passes near the follow-
ing points: Drissa, Disna, Polok, Borisov, Parich, the stations
of Ptych and Bielokorovichi ; and as regards the Ukrainian
front, the Council of the People's Commissars declares in its
name and in that of the provisional government of the Ukraine
that the Soviet troops will not conduct military operations west
of the present line, which passes near Czudnov, Piliava, Deraz-
nia, and Bar.
3. The Council of the People's Commissars declares that the
Soviet Government has concluded.no treaty or agreement with
Germany or with any other country, directed, directly or indi-
rectly, against Poland, and that the character and spirit of the
international policy of the Soviet power excludes the very possi-
bility of such treaties just as it excludes any desire to profit by
possible collisions between Poland and Germany or any other
country in order to injure Poland's independence or to violate her
territory.
4. The Council of the People's Commissars declares that there
is no question, territorial, economic, or other, affecting the real
interests of Poland and of Russia, which cannot be decided by
pacific negotiations, concessions, and mutual agreements, as is
now being done in the negotiations with Esthonia. Instructing
the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs to obtain at the
February session of the Central Pan-Russian Executive Com-
mittee solemn confirmation, on the part of the supreme organ of
the republic, of the bases here indicated for Soviet policy toward
Poland, the Council of the People's Commissars feels that its
present categorical declaration fulfils its duty to the pacific
interests of the Russian and Polish peoples, and it nourishes the
firm hope of seeing all litigious questions solved by peaceful
accords between Russia and Poland.
V. Oulianov (Lenin)
President of the Council of the People's Commissars
G. Chicherin
People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs
L. Trotzky
People's Commissar for War and Marine
The Pan-Russian Executive Committee made a long state-
ment indorsing this position on February 2. On February 4
the following communication was addressed to M. Chicherin
from Warsaw, marked "Very Urgent" :
The Government of the Polish Republic acknowledges receipt
of the wireless declaration of the Government of the Russian
Soviet Republic, dated January 29, 1920. The declaration will
be studied and the reply communicated to the Russian Soviet
Government. Stanislas Patek
Minister of Foreign Affairs
The Polish armies gave the only further reply to the
Russian note. On March 3, therefore, M. Chicherin sent
another note to M. Patek, the essential part of which read
as follows:
The Council of the People's Commissars repeated on January
30 the peace propositions previously made by the Soviet Gov-
ernment to the Polish Republic, and its action was solemnly con-
firmed by the Central Executive Committee on February 2. The
delay of the Polish Government in sending to the Soviet Govern-
ment the reply announced in your telegram of February 4 un-
fortunately retards the moment when the Russian and Polish
peoples can resume their pacific life and work. We are com-
pelled to note with regret not only that the Polish Government
has not yet decided to open the peace negotiations which we pro-
posed, but that, contrary to what we had the right to expect,
it has launched a large-scale military offensive against Ukrain-
ian territory, menacing by this new aggression the independent
Ukrainian Republic. The allied Russian and Ukrainian govern-
ments being forced by this offensive to defend that territory
against this unjustified aggression, and it being therefore im-
possible, for strategic reasons imposed by the necessities of de-
fense of the Ukrainian front, to hold to the line indicated in the
declaration of January 30, the Soviet Government calls to the
attention of the Polish Government how unfortunate a continua-
tion of the present state of war would be to the interests of the
two peoples. We repudiate as heretofore any idea of aggression
against Poland, which we do not threaten, seeking only to defend
ourselves and our ally the Ukrainian Republic. The Russian
and Ukrainian armies will cross the line mentioned only where
the necessities of defense against new aggressions of the Polish
army require it, and we will abstain as strictly as hitherto from
similar movements on the Russian front unless the Polish army
undertakes new aggressive operations, which we hope will not
be the case. The Russian Soviet Government expresses the firm
hope that the Polish Government will not further delay follow-
ing up the peace propositions made to it and that it will begin
the negotiations to which it has already given its assent.
Chicherin
To this the Polish Foreign Minister replied three weeks
later, March 27, in a dispatch marked "Very Urgent":
Following up the peace proposals of the Council of the Peo-
ple's Commissars of the Russian Soviet Republic, the Govern-
ment of the Polish Republic reports that it is ready to enter into
negotiations and to begin preliminary discussions with the Rus-
sian plenipotentiaries beginning April 10. The Polish Govern-
ment proposes Borisov as the place for the negotiations. When
the Council of the People's Commissars of the Russian Soviet
Republic shall have informed the Polish Government of its deci-
sion to send plenipotentiaries at the above-mentioned date or at
a later date the Polish Government will give orders to interrupt
hostilities in the sector of the Borisov bridgehead 24 hours
before the hour fixed for the arrival of the Russian plenipoten-
tiaries at the intersection of the Polish trenches and the Minsk-
Smolensk railway line. It will be necessary for the Council of
the People's Commissars of the Russian Soviet Republic to indi-
cate in its reply the number of members of the Russian delega-
tion and of its auxiliary personnel so that the Polish Govern-
ment may make the necessary arrangements on the spot in time.
Stanislas Patek
Chicherin's reply was dispatched the following day,
March 28 :
The Russian Soviet Government received with the greatest
satisfaction the proposition made in your radiogram yesterday,
to begin peace negotiations between the two governments on
April 10. It sees in it a step toward the establishment of defi-
nite relations of peace and friendship between the two countries
and it accepts the date of April 10 for the opening of the peace
conference. The Russian Soviet Government, however, cannot con-
ceal its astonishment that the Polish Government in its communi-
cation mentions only a temporary and local suspension of hostili-
ties in the sector where the delegation is invited to come. For
our part we see nothing to justify the continuation for a single
day of bloodshed or of further sacrifices of human lives when
the two parties have agreed to begin peace negotiations so soon.
The Russian Soviet Government considers indispensable an im-
mediate suspension of hostilities on the entire front where the
Russian and Polish armies are opposed, and it cannot under-
stand what military object is responsible for Poland's continua-
tion of hostilities after the decision to convoke a peace confe-
rence immediately had been reached. We also believe that the
work of this conference will be conducted more effectively in a
place more appropriate to the calm of deliberations, and the
Soviet Government consequently considers it necessary that the
negotiations take place in a neutral state. It considers that one
of the Esthonian cities would be the most appropriate place and
200
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2876
it is endeavoring to obtain the consent of the Esthonian Govern-
ment. The Russian Government believes that under these con-
ditions no serious obstacle can prevent the success of peace nego-
tiations between the two governments.
To this M. Patek replied on April 1 that the Soviet Gov-
ernment having asked the Polish Government on indicate the
place and date of negotiations, the latter had indicated the
place in its message of March 27 and that "it holds to the
place named."
After a profound study of the whole situation the Polish Gov-
ernment has come to the conclusion that it is impossible for it
to accept the suggestion contained in your wireless of March 28
for an armistice on the entire front. Hostilities will be sus-
pended on the Borisov bridgehead, not temporarily, as was said
in your wireless of March 27, but throughout the peace negotia-
tions at Borisov.
M. Chicherin replied on April 2 in a long note repeating
his desire for a general armistice and declaring that the
sole responsibility for further bloodshed must fall on Poland.
He declared that the Russian Government could not under-
stand why military operations should be continued ; that the
selection for the negotiations of Borisov, in the military
zone, with war continuing on both sides of it, caused sus-
picions of some strategic arriere-pensee. If Esthonia were
unsatisfactory, the Russian Government suggested Petro-
grad or Moscow, where the wireless station would be at the
service of the Polish delegation, or Warsaw, if wireless and
courier facilities would be given the Russian delegation
there. The Polish reply to this suggestion, marked "Urgent,"
was dispatched on April 7. It declared :
The Polish Government indicated Borisov as the place for the
peace conference because that region was easily accessible by
railway and could easily be provided with telegraphic and wire-
less connections. The Polish Government declined the armistice
proposition because the application of the armistice to a 1,000-
kilometer front would have taken as much time as the study of
the essential bases of the peace treaty.
Poland would offer guaranties of personal security and
immunity of couriers. The delay of the People's Commissars
in giving a definite reply to the Polish Government made
necessary the postponement of the negotiations to April 17,
and for this the People's Commissars were solely responsible.
The Polish Government awaited a final reply, considering
any further exchange of notes regarding the armistice or
place of meeting useless. M. Chicherin's reply, closing the
negotiations, was dated April 9:
The last communication from the Polish Government being in
the nature of an ultimatum declining further discussion of the
choice of Borisov, which, as you know, is inacceptable to us, we
find ourselves in the tragic position of seeing the negotiations
shattered on a question of locality, a fact unprecedented in the
history of relations. Since the Russian Government is ready to
accept any other neutral or Entente city, even London or Paris,
and rejects only a city in or near the military zone because the
Polish Government refuses a general armistice, the Russian Gov-
ernment finds only one possible way out: to turn to the Entente
Powers. It considers it its duty to transmit to the Polish Gov-
ernment the message which it has just sent to the governments
of France, Great Britain, Italy, and the United States.
This message summarized the diplomatic exchanges, and
concluded :
Russia has no reason to fear war, but she longs for peace in
order not to be diverted from her domestic activities and to end
hostilities between the peoples of Russia and of Poland and to
establish between them relations of peace, reciprocal friendship,
and neighborliness. . . . The repeated decisions of the
Entente Powers regarding the border states of Russia show suffi-
ciently that those governments consider their influence upon the
latter decisive, and if the present negotiations fail solely because
of the stubbornness of the Polish Government in insisting upon
Borisov as the only place for negotiations with Russia, it will be
impossible for the governments of the Entente to avoid respon-
sibility, since their influence evidently could have led the Polish
Government to adopt a more flexible attitude in this matter. -
This closes the record of Russo-Polish negotiations in the
Soviet Red Book. There is a protest from the Ukrainian
Prime Minister against the bombardment of Kiev by Polish
airplanes preceding the capture of that city by the Poles,
dated April 26; General Pilsudski's proclamation to the
Ukrainian people, bearing the same date; and a manifesto of
the Central Pan-Russian Executive Committee to the work-
ers, peasants, and soldiers of Poland, dated May 5, when the
tide of Polish invasion was at its height.
Just Published
No. 68. Illustrated Catalogue of
Rare Books in Beautiful Old Bindings
The DR. R. T. JUPP COLLECTION of
MSS., AUTOGRAPHS, BOOKS, etc., etc., by or relating to
CHARLES DICKENS
The Collection of Relic* of the Original Dora of DAVID COPPERFIELD
BOOKS ON THE FINE ARTS, SPORT
and an extensive collection of BOOKS ON SHORTHAND
The Original MS. of an Unpublished Story by RUDYARD KIPLING,
earlier in date than any of his published stories
Post free from
HENRY SOTHERAN & CO.
Booksellers to the King
43, Piccadilly, W. 1,
or. 140 Strand. W. C. 2.
Cable Address; Bookmen. London London, England.
THREE STORIES by JACK LONDON. The d™«? °f Deb., a story of
. — a general strike; The Apostate,
child labor story; The Strength of the' Strong, story of primitive man. The three booklets
mailed for 30c. Catalog of books on sociology, economics, etc., free.
CHARLES H. KERR & CO.. 347 East Ohio Street. Chicago
Story Writing Properly Taught
Expert instruction in Short-story Writing will be given by
the staff of Pearson's Magazine, under the personal super-
vision of Frank Harris. Persons whose experience with other
"courses" has been unsatisfactory, will find here a service of
superior worth. Careful criticism and revision of single
manuscripts also made by professional writers. Fees for
either service moderate. For information address,
PEARSON'S LITERARY SERVICE, 57 Fifth Ave., New York
ALICE KAUSER
DRAMATISTS' AGENT— PLAYS
ESTABLISHED 1896
1402 BROADWAY Motion Picture Department
R. L. GIFFEN, Associate Manager
NEW YORK
From Monkey to Man, 25c.
This book written by a high authority sets down in brief and simple
language the theory of evolution and tells how Man, in long ages of
painful progress, came up from the Monkey.
APPEAL TO REASON, GIRARD, KANSAS.
NOTICE TO FOREIGN SUBSCRIBERS
Subscribers residing in foreign countries are requested to make
remittance by international money-order, or draft, payable in
New York, so that subscriptions may be entered promptly.
Circulation Department The Nation
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 1920
No. 2877
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 201
EDITORIALS :
Our Russian Policy 204
Let Us Have Peace ! 205
Japan Invades Siberia 205
The Northwest 206
RUSSIAN IMPRESSIONS. By Henry G. Alsberg • • 207
THE NATIONAL PARKS' PERIL. By Robert Sterling Yard 208
THE FAR EAST GETS A RESPITE. By Max Zippin 210
THE NIKOLAIEVSK "MASSACRE." By Miles M. Sherower : 211
THE TEACHER'S REAL DILEMMA. By M. H. Hedges 214
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 215
CORRESPONDENCE '217
CHILD OF ADAM. By Scudder Middleton 218
BOOKS:
The Diplomatic Auction. By B. U. Burke 218
The Tenth Muse. By C. and M. V. D 219
The Case Against Violence. By R. R 220
Conscientious Objection in the British Empire. By Roderick Seiden-
berg 220
George Santayana. By Ludwig Lewisohn 221
Miniatura. By Glen Mullin 222
Books in Brief 223
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION:
Further Russian-British Notes 225
From the Socialists of Siberia 227
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER LEWIS S. GANNETT
LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Adress : Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising: Swathmore Press, Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
THERE is widespread effort in behalf of the railroads to
show that the advance in rates will not materially in-
crease prices. Statisticians of the Southern Railway, for in-
stance, point out that not more than one and two-thirds
cents a pair will be added to the cost of shipping shoes from
Boston to Atlanta, and less than a sixth of a cent to the
freight charges on a pound of sugar from New Orleans to
Greensboro, North Carolina. Mr. W. Jett Lauck is also
quoted to the effect that the new rates will not justify an
increase of as much as one cent a pound in the price of
meat or ten cents in the cost of a suit of clothes, although
he admits that there will be an added transportation charge
on coal of from seventy-five cents to $1.35. Let us hope
that these rosy predictions will be realized, but nobody has
shown so conclusively as Mr. Lauck how increases in wages
during the war were used as an excuse for the most out-
rageous profiteering in prices. Mr. Lauck proved by con-
vincing figures that an increased labor cost of fifteen cents
on a pair of shoes had been used as the primary reason for
exacting $3.50 more on the retail price, while an advance of
1,000 per cent in the wages of packing house employees
would not account for the increase in the price of meat over
pre-war rates. It may be that prices will not be so scandal-
ously juggled because of present increases in railroad rates
as they were because of earlier advances in wages, but until
we have the proof of experience we are from Missouri — or
at least from East St. Louis, Illinois.
MEANWHILE, even without the excuse of higher rail-
road rates, prices have been steadily rising. Ac-
cording to the United States Department of Labor, the cost
of twenty-two items of food increased 2 per cent from May
15 to June 15 and 9 per cent in the three months from March
15 to June 15. Among the foods the price of which advanced
between the middle of May and the middle of June may be
mentioned round steak, potatoes, rib roast, sugar, bread,
corn meal, and eggs. On the other hand, there was a drop
of one-half of 1 per cent in the price of tea and prunes.
Obviously, if the American consumer would merely abandon
meat, potatoes, bread, and eggs for a diet of tea and prunes,
he could beat the H. C. of L. and put money in the bank.
There is this consolation in it all, that the fine growing
weather of the last two months has converted a prospective
food shortage into the probability of abundance. Although
the acreage in grain is 9 per cent less than last year, the
crop is expected to be 5 per cent larger than the average for
the five years 1914-1918, while the outlook is for the largest
harvest of potatoes and of cotton since 1914. The Lord is
better to us than we deserve.
IT is announced that the Farmer-Labor Party will launch
its national campaign in South Dakota, where Parley P.
Christensen, its candidate for President, is to begin a five-
day speaking tour at Aberdeen on August 23. South Dakota
has good strategic possibilities for the new party. A con-
siderable break from the two old parties has already been
effected by the Nonpartisan League, which elected eighteen
representatives to the Legislature in 1918 and gained con-
trol of the administration of Hutchinson County. There is
the further advantage, also, that the Nonpartisan League in
South Dakota is organized as an independent political party
and does not work through the machinery of the Repub-
licans, as in North Dakota. Hence, the Nonpartisan League
organization is free to indorse such national candidates as
it chooses, and will carry Christensen and Hayes on its
ticket. In Washington a convention of the Triple Alliance
of labor has just recommended to the membership that it
constitute itself the State organization of the Farmer-Labor
Party. In six counties, also, according to recent reports,
the Nonpartisan League organizations have decided not to
attempt to capture the Republican machinery through the
primaries, but to make their campaign with the Farmer-
Labor Party.
THE Republican, the Democratic, and the Prohibition
candidates for President and Vice-President have now
been formally notified of their nominations, and each has
made the customary formal speech of acceptance. The
speeches of Mr. Harding and Mr. Cox contain a number of
liftle eccentricities in grammar and rhetoric which might
202
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2877
well be used as illustrations by high school teachers of Eng-
lish, if it were not now a crime to refer to current politics
in the schools. None of the speeches, however, affords any-
thing but dreary reading. All of them bestow unctuous
praise upon the party to which the candidate belongs, and
promise an early ending of most of our woes if the party is
successful at the polls. All, with equal fervor, denounce the
opposing party or parties as responsible for most of the ills
that now beset us. No ordinary man can tell exactly what
either the Republican or the Democratic candidates think
about the League of Nations, which all of them doubtless
fear will, and Mr. Wilson apparently fears will not, become
in some way a leading issue in the campaign; nor can any-
one feel sure what either party is likely to try to do with
the high cost of living, which is the thing the people care
most about. Mr. Wilson, it is said, plans to address the
nation from the back porch of the White House, lest we
forget; Senator Harding will address the nation from his
front porch at Marion ; Governor Cox will tour the country ;
and there will be canned speeches everywhere. All this
would be tolerable enough if only it were amusing; as it is,
it is only dull. Nobody cares what any of the candidates
thinks, nobody feels deeply that anything very important
will have been lost or won whichever way the election goes.
One wonders if Mr. Debs or Mr. Christensen, only the latter
of whom, unfortunately, is free to star the provinces, will
be able to say anything that will make the campaign seem
real.
MASTERLY, that's what we call it. A committee of
women asked Senator Harding how he stood on the
Russian blockade. The genial Senator replied in one hun-
dred ringing words as follows :
I stand upon the platform adopted by the Republican Na-
tional Convention at Chicago [which says nothing whatever
remotely concerning the blockade]. It would be unwise and
unfair in the absence of the fullest knowledge of all the facts
involved to give a specific statement on this question. There
has been under this administration so much of hidden diplo-
macy, so much suppression of knowledge concerning our inter-
national relations, that even my membership on the Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations brought no revealment, but
you can readily understand that I must secure enlightenment
before it will be proper for me to pronounce judgment specifically
or to assume a definite position.
Invaluable! For while it brings no indication that the
Marionette has not established a new nadir of intellect for
presidential candidates, it reveals when we may expect
from him on any matter "a definite position." After en-
lightenment. Here, we submit, is infinity — or is it eternity?
Boy, page Mr. Einstein!
THERE has been much talk in the United States about
cultivating the good will of Latin-America. A consid-
erable literature — magazine articles, pamphlets, brochures
under the imprimatur of large banking institutions, cham-
bers of commerce, and manufacturers' associations- — has
been devoted to informing our southward-looking country-
men how to beguile the proud Hispanic-American. Through-
out all this propaganda runs and recurs like a Wagnerian
theme the warning against past mistakes. The Latin-
American, it reiterates, has misunderstood our purposes.
All these legitimate and praiseworthy efforts become so
much scrap paper in the face of such manifestations of
American imperialism as the court martial of the three Do-
minicans by the United States military command, for writ-
ing frankly about our seizure of their native country. For
the case of Fallio, the "patriot poet," and of two fellow
journalists has resounded throughout Hispanic-America,
evoking cabled protests to President Wilson from press
clubs in Havana and Montevideo. The character of the
American censorship against which these young men have
sinned may be deduced from the fact that it forbids the use
in newspaper, magazine, pamphlet, or book of the very
phrases "freedom of thought" or "freedom of speech," or
the words "national" or "revolution." Even "liberty" is
verboten!
TO recognize that "the Soviet Government exists" v/ould
not seem to require superhuman intelligence, yet so
far Count Sforza, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, seems
to be the only Western statesman who has made that dis-
covery. His understanding of the situation has been
quickened, perhaps, by the fact that in his own country
there are large revolutionary groups who "down tools"
when they know that the fruit of their labor is to be used
against the workers' republic of Russia. Fifty-five Italian
sailors of the crew of the British Anchor liner Calabria
recently struck in New York harbor rather than man a ship
destined to carry 800 Polish reserves to Europe. En-
lightened self-interest of this kind may keep the Italian
worker at home while his comrades of Poland, Hungary,
and France engage in trying to crush the Russian Revolu-
tion. Under his pressure the Italian Government not only
realizes that the Soviet Government "exists," but has even,
sent a representative to Moscow. Count Sforza announces
further that a Russian envoy is now expected in Rome "and
we will do our best to facilitate his journey. He will enjoy
the greatest hospitality in this country." Such a policy is
in bright contrast to that of our own Government, which,
expressing a pious desire not to "interfere in the internal
affairs of Russia," at the same time views "with sympathy"
the struggle of Wrangel against the Bolsheviki, backed by
France.
JOHN H. FINLEY, Commissioner of Education of the
State of New York, is reported to have told the mem-
bers of the International Typographical Union at Albany
the other day that a school teacher is out of place in a union.
The reason is that the teacher is like the soldier, or, as Dr.
Finley is said to have put it, "an officer in the future army
of defense." State Superintendent Thomas E. Finegan of
Pennsylvania, in an opinion sustaining the refusal of the
Board of Education of Lancaster to reemploy teachers who
were members of the American Federation of Teachers, an
organization affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor, has just said the same thing. According to Mr.
Finegan, "teachers must be as free and independent in the
discharge of their public obligations and responsibilities
and in their devotion and loyalty to the public interests
which they serve as are firemen, policemen, or soldiers."
Theoretically, of course, this is fine — a winsome picture of
a free teacher in a free world. What it means in practice
is that the teacher must do what he is told, accept any salary
a school board chooses to hand out to him, work often in
crowded, ill-ventilated, and unsanitary classrooms, observe
courses of study and teaching methods prescribed for him
by his superiors, carefully refrain from expressing his opin-
August 21, 1920]
The Nation
203
ions on political or economic issues, and submit to being
kicked out whenever the powers that be elect to charge him
with partisanship or disloyalty or anything else that cer-
tain influential people do not like. The only redress, ac-
cording to Mr. Finegan, is the right of laying the case be-
fore the public without any organization of the teachers or
help from any other. It will be the fault of the teachers
themselves if they go on accepting this "new freedom," and
allow the disciplinary necessities of an army to determine
their rights and duties. We have only one counsel for the
teachers of this country : that is to unite to secure the right
of free teaching and a proper remuneration for their work.
THIRTY-NINE Hindus were seized at a factory gate in
South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on July 26. They were
taken to the police station without an opportunity to go to
their bunk-houses to get their belongings, locked up over-
night, and shipped to Ellis Island the next morning. No
warrants were shown them, and none had then been issued.
A British sea captain went to Ellis Island on July 31 — the
record does not say who told him they were there — and
invited the Hindus to ship with him at East Indian pay,
five to seven dollars a month. They refused to go with him,
but were told by Ellis Island officials that if they did not
sign they would get six months in jail, whereupon some of
them did sign. The British sea captain had told a Syrian
who makes a business of securing seamen for ships that he
would need very few men this trip because the Ellis Island
officials were sending him forty Hindus. This Syrian un-
derstood that the British Consulate in New York systemat-
ically denounced Hindus in this country to agents of the
Department of Labor, who arrested them and then, instead
of deporting them, turned them over to British sea captains
as cheap crews. Since 1917 Hindus have been excluded from
this country by the terms of the immigration act, but at
least nine of the thirty-nine Hindus arrested at South
Bethlehem had entered prior to the passage of that law, and
there was no question of their legal right to go about their
business in this country. No one, however, had so much as
inquired when they had entered or whether they had a right
to stay, until the Friends of Freedom for India heard of
their case and secured writs of habeas corpus. Only then,
indeed, were warrants issued. It is pretty business for
agents of our Department of Labor to shanghai Hindus
for British ships at the behest of representatives of a
foreign government.
THE hurried departure of Charles Huszar, ex-Premier
of Hungary, for Europe on August 12, after a sojourn
here of four weeks, marks the climax of a campaign of
"pitiless publicity," waged without funds, without deliberate
attempt at coordination, with the sheer force of truth for its
only motive power. Mr. Huszar's record was exposed in an
article published in The Nation of July 24; and the storm
of protest aroused by that article among Hungarians, Jews,
and Rumanians in various parts of the United States liter-
ally swept Mr. Huszar out of the country. It is extremely
unlikely that his deportation would ever have been ordered ;
the mere fact that it was demanded finished him, and he
left six weeks before he planned to without addressing a
single one of the mass meetings advertised in advance, or
being received by any public official. His complete and
accelerated failure deals a severe blow to the prestige of
his clique of reactionary jingoes.
THE unveiling the other day of a memorial statue to
Wilbur Wright at Le Mans reminds us how, despite
the upheaval of war and reconstruction, France continues
to be the generous foster-mother of art and invention to
all the world. Such a memorial is well; but it was a thou-
sand times better that France offered to the Wright broth-
ers, at the moment when they needed it most, the facilities
and the inspiration to perfect what is perhaps the greatest
mechanical conquest of nature that man has yet attained.
France extended the assistance that is traditional of her
genius to the two North Americans, struggling with a
heavier-than-air machine, just as she had already given it
to Santos Dumont, a South American, in developing a
dirigible lighter-than-air machine; and as still earlier she
had brought about the perfection of the automobile, with
its gas engine which made possible both dirigible and
airplane.
ALL this is characteristic of the welcome that France
invariably gives to the man of creative spirit, just as
it is characteristic of our own country that in printing a
photograph of the memorial the New York Evening Post
should have mentioned Myron T. Herrick as one of the
pooh-bahs who made a speech at the unveiling, but omitted
the name of Paul Landowski, the sculptor of the monument.
Why, we wonder, did the Evening Post lug in the name of
Wilbur Wright? We cannot blame the caption writer
unduly; he ran true to national form, which invariably
ignores the artist, who may have spent years on a work,
to center its attention on the prominent citizen in a top
hat who bores the crowd with more than a. few ill-chosen
words. Besides, it is part of the philosophy of the age that
the producer in all lines shall starve while the profits of his
effort go to the middlemen who peddle, exploit, and advertise
it. Only we would have the newspapers more consistent;
we suggest, for instance, that when next some king of
Wall Street dies, the Evening Post shall omit his name
from the obituary, mentioning only that of the undertaker
who conducts the obsequies.
THE shades of Gilbert and Sullivan must have felt some-
thing like a creative urge last week to revisit the
mirthful waters around their tight little isle and take full
charge of the Mannix case. For the case as it worked itself
out was the purest comic opera, with the Australian arch-
bishop as a smiling hero-in-the-flesh and the British Gov-
ernment as a purple-faced villain-in-the-sawdust. It was
time for excited recitative when the commander of H. M.
Destroyer Wyvern boarded the Baltic off Queenstown early
Saturday morning and laid his hand on the Sinn Fein pre-
late's shoulder. There were hours for friendly badinage
between Navy and Church, with probably good-natured
capitulation to the Church, while the destroyer ploughed
across St. George's Channel toward the Cornish coast.
There certainly was tea in the afternoon, though the maca-
roons could scarcely have been bitten by 4:15, when land-
ing was made at — Penzance! Here may have entered a
chorus of pirates to sing in celebration of the greatest sea
victory since Jutland, the Archbishop joining jovially but
winking at the audience as the curtain went down. The
Archbishop would have to wink because the victory, as any
audience must know, was really Ireland's. To suffer an
indignity is often to gain; to perpetrate one is surely to
lose — but wait for that new opera, "The Mannix Man."
204
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2877
Our Russian Policy
THE Wilson-Colby statement on Russian policy does
nothing to promote the cause of world-peace and hu-
manity. On the contrary, it serves to perpetuate strife on
earth and ill-will among men. It helps to continue starva-
tion of women and children. It may or may not materially
affect the Russian government. For three years the Soviets
have been engaged in beating off the combined military and
economic pressure of the greater part of the world. The
unctuous verbiage of the note to Baron Avezzana is there-
fore not likely to add materially to the burden of Lenin,
who will probably smile, shrug his shoulders and dismiss
it with some such word as "futile." But an American can-
not dismiss such a statement of the policy of his own Gov-
ernment with the same nonchalance. It can affect and it
does hurt America. It is another one of those revelations of
ignorance on the part of our statesmen which make Ameri-
can diplomacy a laughing-stock, comparable only to the
candid admissions of Messrs. Wilson and Lansing that they
had never heard of the secret treaties until they went to
Europe.
Entirely apart from the question of de facto recognition
of a de facto state, the note is objectionable because it is an
insult to France and England, which have recognized the
independent Baltic states of Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithua-
nia, and to the ten million people of those three countries,
which have strugglingly built up democratic governments,
which have indeed bought surplus supplies from our own
War Department, been aided by our Red Cross, traded with
American merchants, and communicated with the United
States under their own postage stamps. Now Mr. Wilson
suddenly tells them that he cannot recognize them as "sepa-
rate nations independent of Russia" until he can secure the
consent of Russia! All of these states have signed treaties
of peace with Soviet Russia, and on terms very favorable
to themselves, and live at peace with Soviet Russia as well
as with France and England, which acted as godparents
when they were first established ; but Mr. Wilson, four thou-
sand miles away, crnnot recognize them "without the con-
sent of Russia." This is an ostrich policy, a refusal to face
facts, a policy of stubborn ignorance — and, more than that,
it is out of harmony with Mr. Wilson's own previous policy.
If he justifies his recognition of Poland because a recog-
nized Russian Government, that of Kerensky, had already
acknowledged Poland's independence, he cannot say the same
for Finland, whose recognition he made conditional only
upon the election of a constituent assembly. All three of
these Baltic states long ago elected constituent assemblies.
Perhaps even more objectionable is Mr. Wilson's attempt
to dictate to the Russians what form of government they
may have. Lenin might well reply with a paraphrase of Mr.
Wilson's own words:
Upon numerous occasions the responsible spokesmen of the
American Government have declared that it is their understand-
ing that the very existence of the parliamentary form of gov-
ernment in America depends, and must continue to depend, upon
the occurrence of revolutions in all soviet states, including,
Russia, which will overthrow and destroy their governments
and set up parliamentary rule in their stead. They have made
it quite plain that they intend to use every means, including
of course, diplomatic agencies, to promote such revolutionary
movements in other countries. . . . We cannot recognize,
hold official relations with, or give friendly reception to the
agents of a government which is determined and bound to con-
spire against our institutions.
Lenin might reply to Wilson in such Wilsonian words,
and his contentions would be borne out by Mr. Wilson's
own note; but Lenin would not be silly enough to utter such
bosh. He knows that such propaganda is merely a form of
self-defense, and that Mr. Wilson, or his successors, will
abandon it when peace comes and the ordinary processes of
commercial exchange are under way. As a matter of fact,
our government, prior to Mr. Wilson's regime, did not at-
tempt to dictate to other nations the form of government
which they must adopt, nor have other governments been
accustomed to such intrusive habits. We have recognized
governments where they existed and functioned, whether
we liked their ways or not. We did not refuse to recognize
the present king of Serbia, although his accession to the
throne involved the midnight murder of the previous king,
the queen, two of the queen's brothers, two members of the
cabinet, and fifty other members of the court. And we were
right, despite our horror at the murders. If the people of
Serbia stood for Peter Karageorgevich, it was for us to do
our business with the government which actually governed
Serbia. And now when the Bolsheviki, despite all the
months of newspaper rumors of imminent downfall, have
governed Russia for nearly three years, overwhelmingly de-
feating an unexampled series of attacks upon them, it is for •
us to do business with them and to stop the moral posing
which has already done us and Russia so much harm. Mr.
Wilson's attitude is mere gesture; it is phraseology in a
vacuum; his note is as unrealistic as if it had been issued
from an Eskimo island.
One sentence in Mr. Wilson's statement might have a defi-
nite meaning outside the shadow-world of notes: he says
that this Government will employ "all available means" to
render Poland's political independence and territorial integ-
rity effectual. What he understands by "all available
means" is hard to say. Perhaps he means nothing at all;
he has already lent money and sent supplies to the Polish
army, and beyond that lies only the dispatch of troops. If
Mr. Wilson should attempt to send American youth to fight
for Poland after Poland's recent antics, he might learn
something of the changed temper of the American people.
Yet none of the three great western Powers has ac-
quitted itself in the Polish crisis with any marked
grace or skill. Mr. Lloyd George's opportunism, devoid of
principle though it be, serves England better than M. Mille-
rand serves France or Mr. Wilson America. The French
recognition of General Wrangel is consistent. The French
Government has from the beginning done everything within
its power to hinder any peace or understanding with the
Soviet Government, and has aided any man or group of men
who would fight it and acknowledge the old Russian debt to
France. Recovery of the money which France lent to the
Czar has avowedly been the controlling influence in French
policy throughout. That the policy is blind, and hurts
France, matters not. It may cost France men and money, but
in all probability the Soviet Government will crush Wrangel
-as it has crushed Kolchak, Denikin, Judenich, and the Poles,
aided as all of them have been by France or England.
August 21, 1920]
The Nation
205
Mr. Lloyd George's policy, on the contrary, deals with
Europe as a condition rather than as a theory. He does
not like the Bolsheviki and says so; yet he admits that the
Poles made an unjustified attack upon the Russians, and
he does not attempt to duck the too obvious parallel between
Soviet terms to Poland and Entente terms to Germany. He
says in effect that England will not interfere unless the
Russians attempt to enforce severer terms upon the Poles
than the Entente did upon the Germans. And when he rose
to speak in the House of Commons, he was probably already
aware that the Soviet terms to Poland — rapid demobilization
of the Polish army to 60,000 men, cessation of foreign mili-
tary support, surrender of surplus munitions and arms, a
commercial outlet to the Baltic, and distribution of Polish
land to Polish soldiers — were very much more generous and
humane terms than those which the Entente imposed upon
Germany. For the benefit of his Tory majority in the
House of Commons, of course, he had to do a certain amount
of ranting against the Bolsheviki. We cannot praise Mr.
Lloyd George's principles, for if he has any he has concealed
or violated them as often as he has upheld them, but we
are glad that there is one Entente statesman with sufficient
political adaptability to face the fact that the Bolsheviki
are the Russian government today, and must be dealt with.
Let Us Have Peace !
SIX years ago began the great war, which three years
later, when the United States entered it, had become
"the war to end war," the war "to make the world safe for
Democracy," the war "to make the world a decent place to
live in." That the war accomplished none of these things
no one will deny. And yet with peace not yet made we are
witnessing the beginning of a drive to get us into another
conflict as vast and terrible as the holocaust from which
the shattered world is still gasping. The New York Tri-
bune, which achieved the unique distinction on the day after
the armistice of regretting the end of the war, because
"America has not suffered enough," is now pointing the
way to salvation through more war. Tiring already of
Wilsonian words, it demands deeds, which, of course, means
American armies to Russia; while Mr. Frank H. Simonds,
contributor to scores of other newspapers as well, asserts
that immediate dispatch of French, British, American, and
Italian troops against the Bolshevists is necessary, "if the
victory won in the world war is to be preserved." One need
not have been a pacifist or indeed anything but a one hun-
dred per cent supporter of the war against Germany to
grasp the super-obvious truth that the great war, with its
incalculable sacrifices, settled nothing — not even the "crush-
ing of the Hun," which those who rejected the Wilsonian
idealism insisted was its sole purpose — and that the world
and civilization cannot stand another such cataclysm. If
there is one outstanding truth that has been demonstrated
by the last five years, it is the utter futility, criminality, and
damnability of war. If there is one overshadowing fact to-
day, it is that the world needs peace, peace without stint or
limit, as the fundamental and essential solution of the ills
from which it is suffering.
Other signs that the drive for a new war is on are not
lacking. On August 16, American newspapers conspicu-
ously featured an Associated Press dispatch of obviously
propagandist character. France, England, "and eventually
America" are to be conquered, "officials of the Bolshevist
regime told the Associated Press today," reads the dispatch,
dated from Kolno, Poland, which is certainly not Soviet
headquarters, while the "officials" are, of course, unidenti-
fied.
It is time for decent and intelligent people the world
over, whom five years of observation have made wise to the
machinery of war, who have nothing to gain and everything
to lose by universal bloodshed, to unite and make them-
selves felt unmistakably. Labor in England has already
put its foot down. Similar manifestations in Rumania
and Czecho-Slovakia are heartening, and labor groups in
France and Italy are also heard from. The blind old men
still trying to steer the destinies of the world cannot more
effectively spread Bolshevism than by the course they are
pursuing. Unlikely to succeed in crushing it in Russia,
they are more likely to succeed in erecting it at home.
Prussianism in a dozen countries replaced that which was
destroyed in Germany. Is this experience to be repeated?
Let us have peace!
Japan Invades Siberia
WHEN the Japanese by means of force and trickery
broke in pieces the Siberian Provisional Govern-
ment which had been set up on the remains of the Kolchak
dictatorship, the Allies and the United States, in spite of
their solicitude about the fate of democracy in remote cor-
ners of the earth, made no protest at all. They made no pro-
test, although General Graves had testified to the atrocities
of Kolchak and to the honest efforts and general popularity
of the new Government. They made no protest, although
the Siberian Provisional Government was democratically
elected — magic phrase — and although every political party
in Siberia, including the Conservatives and the Cadets, had
pledged its support. They made no protest, but allowed
Japan to strangle the young life out of the new republic, to
nullify its laws and decrees, to terrorize its people; until
finally the inevitable happened and Japanese soldiers and
civilians were killed in a Siberian town.
If the Japanese Government had itself brought about the
slaughter at Nikolaievsk — as indeed it did, in effect, through
its policy of nagging interference and repression — the re-
sults could not have better fitted the plans of the dominant
military group in Japan. Within two months the Govern-
ment had announced the seizure of the northern half of the
island of Sakhalin in order "to uphold the honor and pres-
tige" of the country.
Then suddenly the United States realized that the moment
had arrived to raise its voice in protest. Siberian democ-
racy, to be sure, was dead or barely quivering under the heel
of Japan. The provisional government was little more than
a cloak to cover Japanese aggressions. But Japan was
edging over toward the mainland — and the United States
was at last interested. The Department of State dispatched
a note to the Japanese Government stating that its action in
occupying Russian territory was contrary to the wishes of
the United States; to which Japan replied, according to the
scant reports that have been allowed to slip into the press,
that its intention to remain in possession of Sakhalin was
nevertheless unaltered.
206
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2877
Japan wants three things in Siberia. It wants to control
the Chinese Eastern Railway and as much as possible of the
Trans-Siberian Railway. It wants to carve out "buffer
states" which will enable it to exploit the body of Siberia
while pretending that its soul is free. It wants to spill its
excess population into a fertile and productive land. The
first two aims, in common with all similar policies of other
nations, are dangerous to the peace of the world and de-
structive of the integrity and independence of the Russian
people of Siberia. The third is wholly justified. If they go
unaccompanied by the threat of political control, there is
no reason why the crowded masses of Japan should not find
in the wide spaces of southern Siberia a suitable dwelling-
place. Russia has shown no tendency to follow the American
and Australian example of intolerance and exclusion. But
Japan, seeking an outlet for its hard-pressed population,
has no excuse for sending to Siberia the troops and guns
and office-holders and carpet-baggers that make up the pres-
ent invasion. The protests of the Department of State,
animated not at all by the sufferings of the Siberians, may
yet serve a useful purpose if they prevent the Japanese Gov-
ernment from following its emigrants to the mainland.
Unfortunately, the Department of State has little chance of
success. The Japanese Government knows what it wants in
Siberia; and it will not be distracted by any Wilsonian ad-
monitions against the absorption of a bit of Siberian terri-
tory here and a buffer state or two there.
The Japanese Government will, with complete assurance,
pursue its Siberian policy until it is stopped; and if it is
stopped it will be not by Woodrow Wilson but by the force
that is at work at present upsetting the calculations of the
map-makers of western Europe — the Soviet Government of
Russia.
The Northwest
IN our school geographies, and in popular acceptation, this
country has long been divided into five great regions:
New England, the Middle States, the South, the Central
West, and the Pacific Coast. Sometimes the latter has been
subdivided into the Mountain and the Pacific States. These
groupings are partly geographical, partly historical and
social.
Ten and fifteen years ago the most interesting of these
regions from the political standpoint was the Central West.
It was this region that responded most conspicuously to
the gospel of Theodore Roosevelt, that came to believe most
whole-heartedly with him that it was possible to better po-
litical and governmental conditions wherever the people
wanted to do so. From indifference toward politics the
people of the Central West turned to the improvement of
them with the energy and directness characteristic of the
region. State and municipal governments came in for an
overhauling, the good effects of which are still evident, and
experiment began with new political devices like the direct
primary, the initiative, referendum, and recall, the commis-
sion form of government, and a simplified and less partisan
ballot. The Central West became the idea-center of the
country, not in the sense that it was the home of a majority
of our greatest writers or preachers or educators or scien-
tists, but in that it was the region where the mass of the
people were most wide-awake intellectually and whence
American public sentiment, in so far as it ever finds expres-
sion, most clearly emanated.
That was ten to fifteen years ago. What do we find to-
day? As an idea-center, as the home of experiment toward
better political conditions, the old Central Western bloc has
disappeared. Twenty years ago William Allen White said
that the matter with Kansas was that it had started out to
raise hell and was suffering from over-production. Today
Kansas has ceased to raise hell and is turning out bumper
crops of corn and wheat in which her newspapers glory.
But those same newspapers are less worth reading than they
were a decade ago ; they have fewer ideas and less independ-
ence. Man does not live by corn and wheat alone. Intel-
lectually he may survive better by raising hell. As one goes
through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa today, he sees
magnificent barns and fine farm houses ; it is a fat and sleek
and prosperous country, with miles of well-headed wheat
and oats, and corn of glorious promise. But the intellectual
crops are less in evidence; they seem to be suffering from
drought, under-cultivation, and decreased acreage. People
are talking about their automobiles, their asphalted streets,
their new hotels with baths in every room. The great ideas
that are stirring Europe pass them by; they seem to have
forgotten their mission of a decade ago as the political
prophets and teachers of the nation. Is it that they have
become too prosperous? Lincoln Steffens once described
Philadelphia as corrupt and contented. Has this section of
the Central West become rich and reactionary?
In Wisconsin La Folletteism seems to have preserved the
traditions of older days, but otherwise it is not until one.
gets farther west and north that he senses the zest for
political progress which a decade ago characterized the
whole of this region. Then one discovers that the old Cen-
tral West has disintegrated as a political entity, while a
new bloc has been formed that may be roughly described
as the Northwest. Its heart is the northern tier of. States
— Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington
— from Lake Superior to Puget Sound, but it includes also
some of the States just below, say South Dakota, Colorado,
and perhaps Nebraska. This new bloc is far from a geo-
graphical entity. It embraces rolling prairies, arid plains,
precipitous mountains, and fertile valleys of the Pacific
slope. In population, however, it is perhaps as homogeneous
as any section of the country, containing a high percentage
of what we like to call the old American stock, together with
a strong admixture of the Scandinavian and Teutonic immi-
gration of fifty years ago. It is predominatingly an agri-
cultural section, but although the barns are as big as in Ohio
and Indiana, the houses are less pretentious, and upon in-
quiry one discovers that a surprisingly large number of the
farms are under mortgage; that a large part of what they
produce is going to the banks.
Roughly speaking, this new political bloc is coextensive
with the region of the greatest strength of the National
Nonpartisan League, of which it is perhaps partly the cause
and partly the result. The ideas that are stirring are
more largely economic and more fundamental than the
rather opportunistic political reform of the old Central
West, but they are highly practical and thoroughly Ameri-
can— in the legitimate sense that they are home-made and
adapted to the locality they are intended to serve. They
make the Northwest the most hopeful and fertile political
field in America today.
August 21, 1920]
The Nation
207
Russian Impressions
By HENRY G. ALSBERG
Moscow, June 27
TWO months of going up and down the Soviet Republic
have not enabled me to speak at all authoritatively
upon Russia's present situation or upon her future. Russia
today constitutes a problem similar, in my mind, to that of
immortality. I find my judgment quite fluid and pragmatic,
varying from day to day with everything I see and hear.
One moment I feel quite as if I had let down, across the
stage of my bewildered brain, a curtain of decision, put out
the lights, and retired into myself to write a critique of the
play. Then, lo and behold, the bell rings again, the foot-
lights flash on, the orchestra reawakens, and I find the cur-
tain going up once more on the play — whose last act I had
thought to have witnessed. I am writing this article during
one of the entr'actes.
Naturally enough, a foreigner like myself labors under the
language difficulty; also under his load of ignorance of Rus-
sia before the revolution. It has proved an herculean labor
to find out the simplest things, or, for instance, to call up
on the telephone. How then shall I judge the workman's
present condition when I was not acquainted with his life
before the war? How shall I make sensible comparisons?
Even people who knew Russia have come back here with
their preconceived notions of what revolutionary Russia
would be like, and now either find themselves bitterly dis-
appointed or else fail utterly to understand what has taken
place. Even the leaders, it may be said, do not compre-
hend the power of the gigantic wave which they themselves
are riding. I think it was Kamenev who said, at the first
luncheon given to the British labor delegates in Moscow,
at which I was present: "We do not make the revolution
or cause its developments, but the revolution and events
shape us. We have made mistakes" — and this statement
I have heard time and again from Russian leaders — "not
because we wanted to, but because we had to act, because to
act was vital. We shall make more mistakes. We are not
afraid of mistakes nor of admitting that we have made
them, as you will see." I venture to add that neither
Trotzky nor Lenin nor Bucharin nor Lunacharsky knows the
destination of the Russian revolution; but, to use our own
wise slang, "they are on their way."
On the other hand, I do not feel justified in writing the
usual gossip or the ordinary cut-and-dried statistics which
are easily culled from every commissariat. I have enough
material on my table now for the manufacture of twenty
very interesting, but entirely illusory, articles. One of the
troubles with Russia at the present moment is that every-
body is too busy drawing up new programs to execute those
already drawn up. Moreover, I could fill several volumes
with the usual inconsequential gossip which I have gath-
ered from interviews with commissars, with important per-
sons both within and without the Government, with men and
women in the streets, with discontented groups of Menshe-
viki, Anarchists, and Social Revolutionaries of the Right
and Left, and with the bourgeoisie. These, however, are
things neither wise nor serviceable to record at present.
The further question arises now as to whether or not it
will be useful, while war to the knife is waging between
Russian democracy and Polish imperialism, to tell the whole
truth about the situation here. Arthur Ransome told me,
when we met at Reval, that to do so would simply be put-
ting bullets into Polish rifles. On the other hand, I argue
that the Soviet Government has suffered much more from
senseless, indiscriminate praise than from stupid lies. No-
body any longer believes the lies that are told about Russia.
When a man like North goes back to London and states that
the trolley-cars are not running, when as a matter of fact
they are running day and night, such an obvious falsehood
can be nailed easily enough by eye-witnesses. But when the
Soviet Republic's well-wishers ladle out sweet syrup over
the very human and very fallible revolutionary institutions,
then, of course, the public begins to get suspicious. A nat-
ural revulsion is bound to follow the golden-age interpreta-
tion when some of the real imperfections stand revealed —
that there is starvation; that there is graft; that there is
inefficiency; that there is occasional tyranny great and
petty ; that, at present, there is no general political freedom
such as we are accustomed to — or were accustomed to be-
fore the war; that many of the Government's socialistic
institutions have broken down from a practical point of
view ; that — and God help me for mentioning a fact so care-
fully veiled — there is a considerable amount of national
chauvinism.
It should be remembered that Russia is intensely human
and fallible. It is the same Russia as before the war, filled
with the same half-oriental population. A miracle has hap-
pened to these people. They have been greatly transformed,
but not at all into angels. The Revolution, as Kropotkin
said to me, still lives despite aberrations caused chiefly by
civil and external wars. And the Revolution, together with
its spirit, must be preserved at all hazards. It will be a
great service to Russia to interpret even dimly, but with
honest eyes, the actual state of affairs in proper perspective.
And let me state at this point that it is my honest convic-
tion, as well as the conviction of every intelligent observer
with whom I have talked, that not only is the Russian Revo-
lution right in its present courses, but that it also is in-
evitable. Under the threat of internal dissolution and of
partition by outside forces, nothing else could have hap-
pened. I have also the further conviction that the spirit of
the proletarian Revolution survives, and that the leaders
are sophisticated enough to be conscious of the dangers sur-
rounding a dictatorship no longer based on necessity. They
are anxious, I believe, to relax the reign of repression the
moment peace and the end of counter-revolution are in sight.
I venture to say that Kamenev — head of the Moscow Soviet
and member of the central executive committee — expressed
the opinions of his colleagues pretty well when he said to
me quite solemnly, in answer to a formal question of mine:
"As soon as we have peace external and internal, we intend
to reestablish freedom of the press and assembly and politi-
cal life. We shall be glad to call all the opposition elements
to our help. Even the Mensheviki who sided with Denikin
have already been pardoned. But we are fighting for exist-
ence now, and that fact must be recognized by our friends."
I think also that the decrees which were enacted after the
208
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2877
liquidation of Kolchak and Denikin, abolishing the death
sentence and granting quick and open trials to political of-
fenders, would have been carried out in all sincerity had not
the Polish offensive interrupted a peaceful development. It
is cheap and easy for the opposition here to sneer at these
decrees as having been merely a hypocritical cover for a
despotic directorate, but the evidence to support such sneers
does not seem near at hand.
Perhaps the third and last inducement for me, person-
ally, to tell the whole truth about Russia in spite of my own
partiality for what has taken place here, is that I feel very
strongly that there should be a few sources from which
truth-telling may always be expected and relied upon. I
think the war has fully demonstrated the viciousness of
prevarication. Let there be a few voices crying in the
wilderness. Let there be a few men willing to be cursed
by friend and foe alike in the service of the goddess of
candor.
When I was still at Reval, fuming about my permission
to get into Russia, which permission seemed never to ar-
rive, Michael Farbman, of the Chicago Daily News, came
out of Moscow. He laid down for me then a very true prin-
ciple which I have found it fairly safe to follow everywhere
in the Soviet Republic. He said that one must never take
any program or statement at its face value. Not only is
the real situation always entirely different from what the
government program or official will tell you, but it is also
entirely different from what the official thinks is the fact.
The Russian is very much like the Englishman in this one
respect — he likes to continue calling a spade a spade long
after it has been transformed into a steam shovel. Condi-
tions are really so fluid and ever-changing that the most
ingenious official can not keep up with them.
Take, for example, the question of pyok, the ration as-
signed by the government to its citizens. I have been chas-
ing this illusive pyok, and trying to salt its tail, as it were,
ever since I have been in Russia. At first I was told that
there were four classes of pyok. The first consists usually
of a pound to a pound and a half of bread for the soldiers;
the second is a pound of bread for heavy workers ; the third
is three-quarters of a pound for other workers ; and, if any-
thing is left, a ration of indeterminate size for the rest of
the population, presumably the bourgeoisie. This all seemed
very well and in good order. Then one discovered that pyok
Number Four was no longer in existence because the people
who were not in some form of government work did not
exist. Again, well and good. But then it turned out that
in Petrograd, for instance, Class Three gets the pyok only
every third day — not always then — and that it consists of
only three-eighths of a pound. This is, of course, on ac-
count of the scarcity of food. The Petrograd workmen, I
find, get less than their pyok. Then I talked with a soldier
from Murmansk, wearing a beautiful British uniform, who
told me that his present pyok was only a pound a day, but he
also gets some meat, sugar, fish, etc. These things are al-
ways supposed to go with the first three kinds of pyok, but
usually they do not. One might point out that the govern-
ment, not being in a position to draw upon unlimited sup-
plies, naturally could not give full pyoks. But what of a
physician with whom I talked, who drew three pyoks on ac-
count of being visiting physician at three different hospi-
tals? He received sugar, meat, butter, and other things be-
sides. Similarly, in Petrograd, I have visited factories
where the workmen, owing to the enterprise of their man-
agers, get the full pound a day and a certain quantity at
any rate of meat, fish, sugar, coffee, and tobacco. Then
there is the academic pyok just instituted for professors.
This is supposed to be even larger than the military pyok;
yet in Petrograd professors at the university complained
that they received too little to live on. On the other hand,
there exists a sort of confidential pyok, called that of the
responsible workers, heads of bureaus and commissariats,
which is not talked of in public. The holders of this pyok-
card may receive the equivalent of the military pyok. Yet
I hasten to add that the commissars by no means live in the
lap of luxury. I was twice in Lunacharsky's office when
luncheon was brought in, a quite unsensational dish of
coarse maccaroni cooked in salt water.
In short, the pyok question is one of inextricable ob-
scurity. I have gone into it at such length in order to illus-
trate my point that programs never correspond to reality in
Russia. I might quite as well have instanced the matter
of hours of work or of wages. The change back to over-
time and piece-work, and the varieties of wages, are all
quite different from the standards pictured on a beautiful
chart which hangs in the central office of the Petrograd
unions. The variety of factory managements is equally
chameleon-like. Some factories have still the old commit-
tee; some are run by managers, some by the workers them-
selves quite independent of any governmental interference
— such a one is the Russo-American Instrument Factoiy,
managed by a group of returned Russian-Americans as a
sort of commonwealth; some have actually been left in pri-
vate hands — such as the factory of the American Harvester'
Company, at Moscow, and another factory in Petrograd.
The Soviet system, in short, whatever its formal program,
is broad as human nature, and as varied and complex. But
that very fact makes sight-seeing by sociological tourists
arduous and nerve-racking.
The National Parks' Peril
By ROBERT STERLING YARD
AFTER forty-eight years of practically complete con-
servation, during which twenty-four successive Con-
gresses established a national policy by refusing hundreds
of applications for irrigation and other private rights in
our national parks, suddenly a sinister, quietly organized,
and powerful campaign to seize their waters for irrigation
and power has nearly succeeded with the present Congress.
It will need the personal effort of men and women of vision
and patriotism all over this land to save for the whole
people a precious American institution from selfish economic
exploitation by a few. This campaign is two-fold — on the
one hand the irrigation wing, whose advance was stopped
temporarily just short of its objective; on the other hand,
the water power wing, which carried all its first trenches.
The irrigation attack is centered on Yellowstone Park,
but its success will furnish precedent for a score or more
of projects already organized to seize the waters of other
national parks. More than two years ago large irrigation
interests in Idaho formulated a plan for damming the
Yellowstone Lake at the sacrifice of forty thousand acres
of native forest, the breeding islands of the white pelicans,
the fishing cave, the Thum basin and other famous spec-
August 21, 1920]
The Nation
209
tacles, and carrying the waters south into Idaho through
tunnels under the continental divide; also for damming
Shoshone and Lewis Lakes, the next largest in the park,
and for locating reservoirs in the Falls River Basin, an
isolated swamp in the southwestern corner of the park.
When this crept into the local press Montana ranchmen sat
up straight, for the Yellowstone is a Montana river. Was
Idaho to be permitted to run away with Montana's property?
Vigorous opposition was organized, new plans were drawn
to dam Yellowstone Lake for the benefit of the lower valley,
and a lively fight was on between the two States. That
Yellowstone Lake was the property of the nation and not of
either state counted with nobody, not even with the local
Congressmen whose aid both sides promptly enlisted.
The inevitable followed. The contenders pooled their
strength, Divide et impera, in a new sense, being their motto.
Yellowstone Lake was yielded to Montana, Idaho contenting
herself, in view of Montana's support, with Shoshone and
Lewis Lakes and the Falls River Basin. A joint appeal
was made to irrigation interests in other States and an
attempt made to intrench the scheme in national politics.
To offset, with as little opposition as possible, the natural
policy of half a century, the innocent looking Falls River
Basin project was chosen to establish the precedent while
irrigationists at many national parks waited eagerly. Ex-
cellent strategy marked the choice of time. Crops were
short, and the Falls River Basin promised an increase of
food supply. Economy was the cry of both parties, and this
project asked no money from state or nation. Congress
was absorbed in violent partisanship on great questions,
and this bill would attract no attention. A presidential
campaign moreover was at hand in which the vote of a
single Western State might turn the scales. The Senate
passed the bill with a wave of the hand, and it was favorably
reported in the House. A bare week before becoming law
the measure was discovered by conservation associations.
A sharp fight followed before the Rules Committee, where
the sudden opposition had forced the bill's proponents to
apply for a special place on the calendar. The abrupt
closing of the session left it there, balked but not defeated.
Meantime the Montana group, under the title of the
Yellowstone Irrigation Association, had raised large capital
and carried the work of enlisting political help as far as the
Pacific. The failure of the Idaho group to secure a prece-
dent was a hard blow, followed by another when Secretary
Payne refused permission to survey Yellowstone Lake for a
dam. But the bill will appear at the next session just the
same. In Yellowstone National Park the rumble of the
spoilers' activities is audible on every side. A large dele-
gation came into the park to explain their plan, on the spot,
to the visiting House Appropriations Committee, and the
local papers, of course fully enlisted in the scheme, wero
bitter over the Committee's refusal to receive this delega-
tion at the lake. A still larger delegation plans to meet
Secretary Payne on his visit.
The people of the United States will have both these
fights on their hands next winter in Congress. It is the
second session of the same Congress. It will be a hard
fight. Among the Western representatives in whose con-
stituencies vital interests are involved political considera-
tions will dominate. Eastern Congressmen, with a few
vigorous exceptions, are only slightly interested, being dis-
posed to consider national parks mere "playgrounds," or to
dismiss them as a "Western question."
But, ominous as the irrigation situation is, the water
power situation is even more so. The Federal Power Bill,
which has knocked around Congress for ten years or more,
was revived again last winter. Senate and House disagreed
and it passed into conference. A few days before adjourn-
ment, the compromise bill emerged, was passed by both
houses as a matter of form, and sent to the President for
signature. This bill created a Federal Water Power Com-
mission consisting of the Secretaries of War, Interior, and
Agriculture with power to issue leases for the building of
dams, power houses, transmission lines, and other struc-
tures "necessary or convenient" on all public lands and
reservations. National parks and monuments were included
by name. Again public-spirited associations discovered the
danger at the last moment and sounded the alarm. Tele-
grams poured in upon the President from coast to coast
against the inclusion of the national parks. The President
gave the bill a pocket veto, but, under pressure of thou-
sands of telegrams from the west, at last signed it under
an old precedent. The fate of the national parks passed
from Congress for the first time in forty-eight years into
the hands of three men. How do these men stand? Secre-
tary Payne is the uncompromising defender of the national
parks. Secretary Meredith is outspokenly for irrigation
and power rights everywhere. Secretary Baker is non-
committal. The Federal Water Power Act must be amended
next winter so as to exclude national parks and monuments.
It will be a fight to a finish, for the power crowd is a pow-
erful crowd, and in deadly earnest to land the great prize
so nearly in its grasp.
From the great mountains, snow clad, jagged, the eternal
waters fall in sparkling cascades to the smooth bosom of
green valleys. There, set apart from the encroachments of
man's materialism, nature, primeval, pure, persists, untram-
meled and undefiled. Shall we maintain its only reserva-
tions in this country, our National Parks?
Our Fathers in a wondrous age,
Ere yet the earth was small,
Insured to us an heritage,
And doubted not at all
That we, the children of their heart,
Which then did beat so high,
In later time should play like part
For our posterity.
******
Dear-bought and clear, a thousand year
Our father's title runs.
Make we likewise their sacrifice,
Defrauding not our sons.
Contributors to This Issue
Robert Sterling Yard is an editor and author who has
written extensively on our national parks.
Max Zippin is a Philadelphia newspaper writer and corre-
spondent for several Russian papers.
Miles M. Sherower, a journalist now in the Orient, has
been a close student of Far Eastern affairs.
M. H. Hedges is Associate Professor of English at Beloit
College.
Scudder Middleton is the author of several volumes of
verse and a contributor to various magazines.
210
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2877
The Far East Gets a Respite
By MAX ZIPPIN
THE Russian Far East had enjoyed a respite of two
months and five days. On January 30 the remnants of
the Kolchak-Semionov forces either fell into the hands of
the revolutionists at Vladivostok or joined them, and the
red flag quickly displaced the green one. On April 5 the
Japanese, during the entire period of this respite, made all
the military preparations necessary, and planted their flag
wherever the red flag of the Russian revolutionists was flut-
tering in the breezes of the mild spring. But in those two
months the Russians tried in pathetic haste to show what
they would have done had the rear guard of the Allied de-
mocracies retired and left them free.
Like the two great revolutions of March and November,
1917, the revolutionary coup of Vladivostok was almost
bloodless. A regiment of chasseurs gave the signal by re-
fusing to obey orders, and Rosanov, who first represented
Kolchak and then swore allegiance to Semionov, but who
was in fact a sort of dictator for himself with independent
agreements with Japan, was about to smash the revolution-
ary forces. Luckily the American officers present insisted
upon genuine and honest neutrality and the "Partisans"
took the city. In the evening of the same day the Regional
Maritime Zemstvo declared itself a provisional government,
called upon all classes to continue work, and took under its
authority all the military detachments, arresting those of
the old officers who were pointed out as criminals and who
had not succeeded in hiding under Japanese protection.
Medviediev, the head of the Zemstvo Government, was a
Social Revolutionist who fought the Bolsheviki tooth and
nail but who also opposed foreign intervention. His right
hand man, Rusanov, a member of the Cadet Party, opposed
the Bolsheviki ever more fiercely, having represented the
Kerensky Government as the Commissar of the Far East
until he was "relieved" by the Bolsheviki. But he, too, was
a strong and outspoken opponent of foreign intervention.
In Irkutsk, where the forces of Kolchak were overthrown
a month earlier, the Social Revolutionists had relinquished
their power in favor of the Bolsheviki and had recognized
the Soviet Government. In Nikolsk the Partisans had en-
tered the city a few days before and proclaimed a soviet
form of government. In Khabarovsk the city duma, hav-
ing been elected in the Kolchak period and being composed
almost entirely of members of the "party of private owner-
ship," called a meeting and, with an imposing ceremony,
turned over the government to the Soviets. In Iman, in
Sukhan, in the whole Amur region, as well as in Kamchatka
and Sakhalin, Soviets were organized or rather revived,
while the only "Black Island," as they called it, was a nar-
row strip along the Trans-Baikal Railroad where Semionov's
heir, Voitzekhovsky, was still reigning by the help of Japa-
nese bayonets, and that strip of land along the Chinese
Eastern Railway in Northern Manchuria where Horvath was
playing at dictatorship.
In Vladivostok proper, as the elections to the city govern-
ment and Soviets later proved, at least 85 per cent of the
population were Bolsheviki or bolshevist sympathizers.
Still, the Zemstvo Government was quickly recognized by all
the classes and all the parties, the Communists giving it
their heartiest support. On its part the Government
solemnly promised to turn over its authority to the Soviets
and to recognize the central government as soon as foreign
intervention should be liquidated. There was only one ex-
ception to the general approval of the new government.
A protest signed "Businessmen" was circulated among the
populace stating that the Far East would never have order
without the help of the real friends of Russia, the Japanese.
But this was an anonymous affair and bore all the earmarks
of "Made in Japan."
A reading of the resolutions passed by the different par-
ties in connection with this coup, the speeches made, and
the articles written, disclose the secret of this remarkable
unity of all classes and parties. The two years of foreign
intervention, the indescribable privation, the bloodshed and
destruction suffered at the hands of the Allies and their
vassals, and the remarkable ability of the Soviet Govern-
ment to withstand it all and come out victorious had taught
them their lesson. A declaration signed by the leaders of
all the Socialist parties but the Communist reads:
We were divided into two opposing camps because we all
thought that we were serving best our socialist aims, "Is Russia
ready for the Social Revolution?" both asked. "Yes," said one
side, "and we shall have it." "Not quite yet," said the other,
"and we must be very careful, else we may repeat the crimes
of all Utopians." The nightmare is over. Yesterday's opponents ,
of the proletarian have perished with him on the battlefield and
rest in the same graves. . . . And together they shall now
start the new life.
The clearest expression of this feeling on the part of the
groups that were previously opposing the Bolsheviki is con-
tained in the resolution of the party of the Mensheviki at
the time of the coup at Vladivostok.
We are perfectly aware that our party has lost all semblance
of influence with the laboring masses of Russia. ... In the
present period of our revolution we cannot comprehend any
other form of government than the soviet form. . . . The
endeavor of the Russian worker to unite is due both to the de-
sire to promote the principles of international socialism and to
the aspiration to save the integrity of Russia. This last aspira-
tion rallies around the proletariat the bourgeois layers of the
peasantry, the intelligentsia, and the bourgeois democracy, so
that there is in fact a free hegemony — and not a dictatorship —
of the proletariat.
Even the conservatives — one may unmistakably call them
reactionaries — quickly affirmed their acceptance of the au-
thority of the Siberian Provisional Government, including
"Ambassador" Kudoshev, who represented the Czar in China
and insisted upon his ambassadorial rights, like our own
Bakhmeteff, to the last. The Russian Consul General,
Popov, who was the originator of the plan of Allied inter-
vention in the early days of Semionov, wholeheartedly ac-
knowledged the new government and even consented to con-
tinue in his office under the control of a committee elected
by Socialist and workers' organizations. The following in-
cident in connection with the transition of authority frem
the hands of Kolchak to that of the Soviets at Blagovesh-
chensk is illuminating. The executive committee of the local
soviet had advised the Russian Consul at Aygan, a Chinese
August 21, 1920]
The Nation
211
city across the border, of the change, and the following was
his answer:
I have telegraphically advised our Ambassador at Peking of
the change and have just received his answer urging me to
come into working agreement with the new government. In
accordance with this, and because of my personal conviction
that the Soviet Government is reestablishing our Russia, I shall
be happy to exert every possible means to help the representa-
tives of this new authority; and if any of them decide to come
to this side of the Amur he will be fully protected by me.
The attitude of the Communist Party, the party in power,
can best be seen from the resolution passed at Vladivostok.
The resolution reads:
The party remains true to its principles of soviet government,
but owing to international difficulties it is as yet impossible to
declare a government of the workers' and peasants' Soviets in
the Far East, and the party, therefore, recognizes and accepts
the authority of the Zemstvo Government, with the understand-
ing that this government fulfils its promise quickly to liquidate
foreign intervention and to reunite the Far East with Soviet
Russia.
The Communist Party also participated in the elections
to the city government, not under its own party head but
under that of the Federation of Trade Unions, "because," it
was explained in the official Krasnoe Znamia, "the workers
must send to the city duma such representatives as are
known for their integrity and their knowledge, and we must
disown politics in such instances. . . ."
Vilensky, who came to Vladivostok as the representative
of the Soviet Government, unceasingly urged the party
members to hold to this course, although the rank and file
of the party were not easily convinced. The workers of the
Sukhan region, for instance, declared —
We have not forgotten for a moment that the Soviets are
the only form of government that is representative of the labor-
ing masses, and we therefore demand of the Zemstvo that it
immediately transfer the authority to the Soviets. And if this
should lead to intervention by the Allied imperialists we will
fight them with our bare breasts as we have done throughout
these two years.
The railroad workers of the Amur adopted an identical
resolution, as did the military organizations made up of sol-
diers who had previously fought for Kolchak's "democracy."
The military revolutionary staffs of the Partisan armies of
the Khabarovsk and Nikolsk regions, the organizations that
crushed Kolchak, went so far as to declare that "no peace
shall be made with the Zemstvo leaders who are in fact
traitors to the masses, and whose hands are stained with
the blood of our brothers. . . . And we shall not lay
down our arms until all the enemies of the workers shall
have perished."
To win the support of the workers the Zemstvo Govern-
ment had to do some compromising. Careful not to identify
itself in any way with the Soviet Government, at least
officially, it decreed on March 25 that it would "recognize
as lawfully existing local governments, on a par with the
Zemstvo and city governments, the Soviets and soviet com-
mittees, admitting their authority wherever found." It also
decided, on April 2, to "establish a concentration camp for
all the active counter-revolutionists and persons manifestly
dangerous to order and peace."
The Zemstvo Government, recognized by Moscow, recog-
nized by Japan, supported by practically every element in
the war-weary population, held in it the only hope for a
peaceful development of eastern Siberia. Its honest inten-
tions were made manifest in every act. It was elected by
universal suffrage; it prosecuted profiteers and speculators,
at the same time preventing unlawful confiscations ; it went
far toward distributing food supplies. Upon coming into
power it discovered that a conspiracy was on foot to starve
the Russian masses into submission by buying up and ex-
porting all the food, clothing, and other necessities accumu-
lated by Allied and Russian speculators, who had had a free
hand during the reign of Kolchak. The Provisional Govern-
ment thereupon decreed an embargo, and the following is
the manner in which the representatives of the Allied gov-
ernments acted upon it: "It has come to our knowledge,"
reads the official communication of the Consular Corps at
Vladivostok, "that the applications of the foreign firms for
clearance papers to export goods are rejected by the new
formed committees on export and import. The declination
in prices abroad, the expenses of insurance and shortage,
the loss of interest on the capital, all this threatens the
foreign firms with losses. The Consular Corps therefore
insists upon the issuing of permits to foreign firms for
export." The communication was sent to the head of the
Provisional Government by the entire Consular Corps. The
American consul at Vladivostok is a member of this corps.
In spite of the disabilities under which it labored, the
Zemstvo Provisional Government was what the Allies had
been clamoring for since intervention began — a democratic
government supported by all classes of the population.
Since the Japanese coup of April 5 it has been only the shell
of a government, without power or dignity, a mere mask for
the invasions and depredations of the Japanese troops. The
immediate result has been the massacre of Nikolaevsk and
the seizing by Japan of Sakhalin. The eventual result will
certainly be war.
The Nikolaievsk "Massacre'
R
By MILES M. SHEROWER
EMEMBER the Alamo," "Remember the Maine," were
cries that drove the United States into wars of con-
quest. "Do not forget May 25," is the slogan that may
make the Japanese masters of Eastern Siberia. For on this
day, according to enterprising Japanese newspaper corre-
spondents and the not over-scrupulous War Office, about 200
Japanese held prisoners by the Partisans at Nikolaievsk
were put to death to prevent their rescue by the Japanese
expedition approaching the town.
To understand the background of what Japanese publicists
term the "Nikolaievsk Massacre," one must turn back a few
leaves in the history of Allied intervention in Siberia. The
Americans landed 7,000 troops there, after President Wilson
had reluctantly consented to help the Czechs and to prevent
pipe-dream offensives by phantom armies of German prison-
ers. Meantime the Japanese, who, according to the agree-
ment, were to dispatch a similar force, gradually increased
their number until, by the time the armistice was signed,
they had a fully equipped army of 70,000 men. Whereas
the original declaration of the Allies was that they would
not interfere in Russia's internal affairs [though later they
openly associated themselves with Kolchak], the Japanese
immediately made common cause with bandit leaders of the
stamp of Kalmikov and Semionov. These bandit Cossacks
and their mercenaries, though nominally fighting for Kol-
212
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2877
chak and sharing with him a bitter hatred for bolshevism,
never went anywhere near the front. It was more profitable
and less dangerous to stay behind. Semionov in the Chita
region and Kalmikov in the Amur, occupied themselves with
robbing and terrorizing the local population. These maraud-
ing bands were law unto themselves, recognized no superior,
and their ravages, cruelties, and inhumanities beggar de-
scription.
To protect themselves from the pillaging expeditions of
these butchers, the peasants of all the villages organized
themselves, after the fashion of the Minute Men of our own
Revolution, into small armed bands ready at all times to de-
fend their homes and loved ones. It must be here noted that
these peasant bands or Partisans, as they came to be called,
were not a regular fighting body, fought for no political
cause, and from their scant acquaintanceship with the Bol-
sheviki and their doctrines, had a thorough dislike for com-
munistic land ownership schemes.
The Japanese forces, operating with the Semionov out-
laws, would pursue these Partisan bands, rob and burn their
villages, and wink their eyes while the Cossacks outraged
the women who were left behind. The term "prisoners" was
unknown in this guerrilla warfare, for so bitter was the
enmity between the Partisans and the Cossacks, that to be
captured meant to be tortured or, more mercifully, to be shot.
The hatred of the peasants for the Japanese abetters of
these crimes was intense. There was a great deal of bitter-
ness toward the British, French, and Italians as well; and
even a little for the Americans, whose presence there the
Russians were completely at a loss to understand, for to
them America represented the tradition of freedom. But
when the Kolchak adventure, in spite of Allied men, muni-
tions, and money, fizzled away and the British, French, and
Americans withdrew, the pent-up hatred and antagonism of
the peasants centered about the Japanese, who not only
showed no intention of withdrawing, but, on the other hand,
increased their forces and made preparations presaging a
rather protracted stay.
A look at the map will show that Nikolaievsk is in the
northernmost part of inhabited Siberia. It is located at the
mouth of the Amur River, which flows into the Sea of
Okhotsk. An important trading center, it serves as an out-
let for the rich mineral, timber, and fur exports of a vast
hinterland. It has no railroad communication and ships can
approach it only during the five summer months. From
October to May Nikolaievsk might as well be on another
planet as far as accessibility is concerned. The port had a
Japanese civilian population of between 300 and 400. At
this remote, though economically important center, there
were stationed towards the end of 1919 about 1,000 Kolchak
soldiers and 300 Japanese troops. When the news of Kol-
chak's collapse reached this region, the Partisan bands gath-
ered together, elected a commander, and decided to liquidate
the balance of the old regime. Though these Partisans were
not Bolsheviki, they decided to cooperate with the Soviet, in
which course they felt lay the only hope for the unity of
Russia and the end of foreign intervention. The account of
what followed is taken from the report of the commander
of this "People's Army."
The Partisans approached Nikolaievsk towards the middle
of February. They surrounded the town and placed field
pieces on the hills commanding the city. They then sent an
emissary with a white flag to request the Japanese to evacu-
ate the city and the White troops to surrender under full
amnesty. The emissary was shot by the Japanese, his body
mutilated, and the corpse put into a bag and sent back to the
commander of the People's Army. A second emissary was
then dispatched, again under protection of the white flag of
truce. The ultimatum he carried was that the guns of the
Partisan forces were trained on the city and that unless the
former request were complied with by a certain hour, the
city would be bombarded. The People's commander pointed
out that he was anxious to avoid the destruction of life and
property that must result from such a course. The second
emissary was shot by the Japanese and his mutilated body
was brought back to the Partisan headquarters in exactly
the same way as the first.
The commander then issued the order to train the guns
on the Japanese barracks and shell them forthwith. The
firing had lasted only a few minutes when the Japanese offi-
cer in charge, who had in the meanwhile been in wireless
communication with his nearest superior officer at Har-
barovsk, ordered the hoisting of the white flag. The Parti-
sans entered the city, the Whites surrendered, and an armis-
tice was drawn up and duly signed between the Japanese and
the People's Army. By the terms of this truce, the Japanese
were to retire several miles from the city and agreed not to
interfere in any way with the local government. No armed
Japanese body was to come within a certain distance of the
city.
The People's commander goes on to report that every-
thing seemed to have been settled peaceably. The Japanese
strictly observed all the clauses of the armistices, and the
Japanese officers even became very friendly and obliging to
the Partisans. They then asked the People's commander for
permission to have Japanese sentries posted along the road
to the city. This request was readily granted. It seems
everything went well for a few days. Without any warning
and in direct violation of the armistice terms, the Japanese,
on the night of March 12, overpowered the Russian sentries,
secretly marched their entire force into the city, posted guns
in front of the building where the Partisan commanding
officers were lodged, and at a prearranged signal opened fire.
As the occupants tried to escape the torch was applied. The
object of this Japanese treachery was to seize control of the
town and disarm the Partisan troops. In order to accom-
plish this more easily, it was planned to kill the Partisan
officers, after which the unorganized and undisciplined troops
would be easy prey for the Japanese.
Immediately the whole town was awake. Though some
of the officers and members of their families were killed or
burned to death, a few succeeded in escaping. Gradually the
separated units of the Partisans managed to get together
and barricades appeared in different parts of the town.
Fighting continued incessantly, with the greatest ferocity.
The Japanese, fully aware that their treachery had driven
the Partisans to desperation, asked for no mercy nor ex-
pected it. The Japanese population joined their troops and
the battle increased in fury. Gradually the Japanese were
forced back until they took refuge in the Japanese Consulate
and barracks. The fighting had now lasted forty-eight hours
and the casualties had been very heavy. It was then that a
white flag appeared over the Consulate and the surviving
civilians, about 200 in number, surrendered. To the credit
of the Japanese soldiery, it must be said that they all died
fighting.
The news reached Japan on April 5, and a relief expedi-
tion was immediately organized and dispatched. It landed
August 21, 1920]
The Nation
213
at Alexanderofsk in Northern Sakhalin, seized and occupied
the entire district, and waited for the thaw to set in before
proceeding to Nikolaievsk. According to Japanese newspaper
correspondents who accompanied the expedition, the civilian
prisoners were put to death on May 25, by the Partisans,
who deserted the town and fled into the mountains a week
before the Japanese reliefs arrived. The adjuration, "Do
not forget May 25," was found on one of the prison walls by
one of the enterprising correspondents. The Japanese claim
that when they arrived they found Nikolaievsk deserted and
burned to the ground, but the Partisans say that the Japa-
nese destroyed the town by bombardment.
That the Japanese are not entirely guiltless in the matter
is conceded even by the rabid militarists who rattle the saber
and cry to the heavens for revenge. The War Office claims
that the battle of March 12-14 [it uses the word "massacre"]
was caused by the Partisan commander serving an ulti-
matum upon Major Ishikawa demanding the surrender of all
the Japanese forces by noon of the following day. The Japa-
nese admit that the next day they attacked the headquarters
of the Partisans and after having seized the enemy's ammu-
nition and some field pieces, withdrew into the Japanese Con-
sulate.
The Yomiuri, one of the yellowest of the yellow jingo
sheets of Japan, attacking the military for their negligence
in leaving so small a force at so isolated a place, confessed
that the Japanese openly provoked the Russians.
As to the contention of the Japanese that they were at-
tacked, or threatened, or even that an ultimatum had been
issued to them to surrender, it should be pointed out here
that the Japanese War Office is no stickler for truth when
it comes to cooking up a plausible case to justify some con-
templated aggression.
Though the facts and circumstances of the Nikolaievsk
affair are by no means established, nor has any impartial
investigation been held, and though the Japanese have ac-
knowledged a partial responsibility for the fracas, the junk-
ers, expansionists, and the buccaneering military cliques are
not going to let a golden opportunity like this slip by them.
In Japanese liberal circles the charge is openly made that
the whole Nikolaievsk business was a "frame-up" and that
the garrison had been deliberately sacrificed by the War
Office in order to create one of those "incidents" -from which
the Japanese have never failed to profit, and through which
the military party emerged with new honor, prestige, and
the renewed confidence of the nation. From the day the
first accounts of the so-called atrocities were published, the
newspaper mouthpieces of the military clan have been froth-
ing at the mouth and waxing into ever increasing fury.
Their efforts to arouse a mob psychology and their appeals
to the passions and martial spirit of the masses have been
unprecedented. Patriotic and chauvinistic organizations com-
bined their efforts and worked incessantly. Every method
known to propaganda and every available channel was uti-
lized. Three million leaflets, describing the "atrocities" in
blood-curdling language, were distributed during one day, in
Tokyo, by little school children who were drafted into the
patriotic work. Mass meetings were organized and addressed
by the nation's most prominent war shouters. Hysterical
flag waving and parading of the relatives of the victims
abounded. The Kokumin (daily) offered prizes to the com-
posers of war songs that would stir up the fighting spirit
of the people against the Partisans.
The cry raised on all sides, "Their death shall not be in
vain," is significant and portends the future trend of events.
For the Japanese militarists who lost their justification for
wild Siberian adventures with the fall of Kolchak, have now
a highly plausible case. Japan can now be fighting to vindi-
cate her honor, avenge the fallen, and seize what she pleases
by way of compensation. This thirst for revenge becomes
more comprehensible when we glean some excerpts from the
jingo press and publicists. General Sato, undoubtedly in-
spired by the War Office, puts the case naively :
But I should like them [the civil officials] to remember how
precious human blood is. The blood of only two men secured the
lease of Kiaochau and the blood of only thirty-seven men was
enough to give Britain the ascendancy in Shanghai. We do not
mean to make the most of the blood of 600 people who came to
a miserable end at Nikolaievsk, but something must be done that
the spirits of those victims may go to rest.
The Kokumin, a daily paper, prints this addition to the
war-shouting chorus:
. . . Let the Nikolaievsk garrison remain for ever. Never
withdraw them — until Russia and the Russians have repented
and apologized, until such compensation as will satisfy the
ghosts of our deceased compatriots has been obtained. In the
present state of Russia, the occupation of Nikolaievsk must be
semi-permanent.
And the Yorodzu, another daily, adds :
Many of our countrymen are alv/ays fearful of what other
powers may say. . . . Britain is now so fully occupied with
Irish and Central Eastern problems that she can scarcely turn
her attention elsewhere. America is engrossed in the Presi-
dential election and the Mexican problem. . . . Britain which
already owns the greater part of the world, is enlarging her
territory more and more, and America is endeavoring to place
under her administration Mexico. . . . It is at this juncture
that the great massacre at Nicolaevsk has taken place. . . .
Unless Japan takes action now, it is to be feared that there is
no hope for economic existence. No nation has ever failed to
take important action in the face of a serious massacre.
But there is a fly in the ointment of the Japanese im-
perialists. In spite of the highly organized and munificently
financed militarist propaganda, the Japanese people remain
woefully apathetic to the cries for revenge, as well as to the
grandiose bait dangled before them. This seemingly inex-
plicable lethargy on the part of the proud, high-strung, and
temperamental populace is arousing the ire of the jingos.
"How is it the public is unexpectedly quiet over the Niko-
laievsk massacre which is unprecedented in the history of
Japan?" asks the sensational Yamato (daily). "The Japa-
nese have been famous for their patriotism, but if they do
not know how to be indignant at the massacre of 700 of their
brothers and sisters, their sense of patriotism must be ex-
tinct."
The fact of the matter is that the Japanese people, the
masses, the middle classes, and a goodly majority of the
small group of business men and industrialists, are not only
disinterested in the military clique's Siberian schemes, but
have resolutely and whole-heartedly favored the complete
withdrawal of the Japanese forces from Siberia with the
rest of the Allies. They view with consternation the im-
broglio into which the War Office has already dragged them
and they are bitterly opposed to any further wild goose
chases. Nearly all the important, responsible dailies, repre-
senting a preponderating majority of public opinion, place
the responsibility for the "massacre" at the door of the War
Office and insist upon a peaceful settlement of the incident
and the withdrawal of the troops. At heart the Japanese
people are for peace.
214
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2877
The Teacher's Real Dilemma
By M. H. HEDGES
THE dilemma of the college teacher lies in the fact that
society, organized on a materialistic basis, has com-
mitted an idealistic enterprise into his hands. From the
school-room window the student looks upon the social scene,
the complex suggestions of which, running counter to the
teacher's own, are more powerful and more urgent than all
the teacher can summon from his own resources or the
resources of the past. A friend, a professor of philosophy,
not a Hegelian but a pragmatist, says that conferences with
many college students convince him that the motivation for
indifference to even pragmatic philosophy on the part of
college students lies in their conviction that philosophy —
the science of the universal — has no bearing on life's main
chance, money-getting. Students recently astounded him by
depreciating disinterested research in science of any kind.
The only scientific research which they thought of value was
industrial. Consider this and observe the college student
farther.
The undergraduate of American colleges has been pic-
tured an enthusiast; the fact is, he's a stone. An apostate
to youth, the psychology books and the general impression
notwithstanding, he is neither passionate, nor impetuously
loyal, nor exuberant, nor impatient of trammels, nor ideal-
istic. On the other hand, he is prim, correct, frigid in
respect to things of the mind; and furtive, indiscreet, bold
in reference to his instincts; and covetous and greedy in
respect to grades, credits, managerships, class distinctions,
and degrees — non-essentials. His favorite word is "pep,"
and goaded by institutional convention he will stand for
hours and shout himself hoarse for a team, but he will cal-
lously overlook the birth of the Russian republic, or the
pathetic degradation and suffering of the Armenian people.
He is intolerant of personal difference and diversity of char-
acter and yet clandestinely he will disturb a college assembly
with an inopportune alarm clock, asserting a right to per-
sonal eccentricity. He is everywhere surrounded by records
of the past's greatness, and blindly moves in a present not
realized. In the class room he daily examines theories of
government and constitutions, while his own social life upon
the campus is a specimen of primitive tribal life with
taboos, hecklings, mob-contagions, and naive sexual prefer-
ences. The fraternity is his tribe; the college his clan;
and in parties and "functions," he competes in amorous
and pugnacious exploits.
While a whirlwind of social idealism shakes the world,
the American undergraduate sits becalmed in an unreal
environment, barren of great ideas. As Philo Buck, Jr.,
has said,
The young of our colleges are only in the very slightest
degree moved by the forces that are aroused today. It is a
common phenomenon that in democratic America the young
men and women of our colleges and universities should be the
last to feel the potency of the influences that so charge our
social and political atmosphere. Though in Europe ideas that
are threatening a general revolution, that have accomplished
more than one revolution, originated with the youth of the
universities, here it is the very youth of our universities who
are practically immune to the contagion. They at least accept
life as it was, or as it is, confident and unthinking optimists
without a philosophical creed.
Carleton Parker makes much the same diagnosis.
Perhaps few fields of activity have been conventionalized as
much as university education. Here, just where a superficial
theorist would expect to find enthusiasm, emancipated minds,
and hope, is found fear, convention, a mean instinct-life, no
spirit of adventure, little curiosity, and in general no promise
of preparedness. No wonder philosophical idealism flourishes
and Darwin is forgotten.
The American undergraduate, so admirable as an indi-
vidual, is invidious as a social force. Such apathy to ideas
is ironical in youth and difficult of explanation. It is easy
to attribute this passionlessness to poor teaching. Like
master like man. And there can be little doubt that colleges
have not always attracted dynamic minds to their staffs. It
is easy to attribute it to the curriculum — misplaced emphasis
upon the classics; and here again there can be little doubt
that the undergraduate meekly listens daily to embalmed
knowledge and stereotyped opinions. As yet in the curricu-
lum there has not been much regrouping and massing of
subjects round the social idea. Yet if the students pos-
sessed curiosity, rightly theirs, magazines would furnish text-
books enough through which to pass into contact with the
reality beneath the social convention. The truth is under-
graduate apathy is not alone due to poor teaching, or dead
subjects, but to causes beyond them and greater.
Education is not, as it has been hitherto conceived, an
extra-social process by which society is constantly freshened
and transformed. Rather it lies within society and tends
to reproduce in miniature the society which has borne it.
It perpetuates the tradition which has shaped it. And edu-
cational institutions and the faculty and students which
compose them are but automata of the social complex; they
float, as it were, like atoms upon the sea of general opinion.
The educational process set aside for peculiar ends, unless
well guarded, will serve only common ends. It may become,
if constantly tended, the best of a civilization; and perhaps
this is the real meaning of "center of culture," a place
where living is cultivated, tended. Or the educational pro-
cess may grow disorderly and unproductive. It may per-
petuate the age's worse tradition.
Examination of the great intellectual traditions to which
Americans have been, and are now responsive, reveals the
subserviency of the college to the least creative. The Amer-
ican Spirit, imponderable thing though it is, means nothing
more than that Americans have expressed themselves either
in terms of the pioneer, or in terms of the utilitarian and
Puritan. Our complex national type has always been rep-
resented by a Columbus, or a Franklin, or an Edwards.
Columbus, eager to test hypothesis by experiment, and
to prove truth by experiment, is the symbol of America's
pioneer spirit. His superb adventure has been celebrated by
Lowell, Lanier, Whitman, and Miller as expressing some-
thing peculiarly universal in American life. With his char-
acteristics— impatience with precedent, lively intelligence,
bold practicality — we gladly endow our ideal Yankee. It
is for these qualities that men like Thomas Edison, John
Burroughs, and Mark Twain are said to be national. And
whatever have been the shortcomings of the American type,
no one can deny, I believe, that the pioneer spirit has ex-
August 21, 1920]
The Nation
215
pressed the best in us, and has represented our finest con-
tribution to civilization.
All the past we leave behind
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the
march
Pioneers, O Pioneers!
Now the pioneer spirit has found no place in American
colleges and universities except by chance. The innovator has
found no friendly environment there. Take literature. The
writers universally accepted as most dominantly national —
Whitman, Howells, Twain, 0. Henry, even Riley and Hamlin
Garland— were not college men. "Would the world," inquires
William Ellsworth, "have had 'Leaves of Grass' if Whitman
had been trained to accept the standards of Harvard Uni-
versity? If Mark Twain had been graduated from Yale,
would he, could he have written 'Innocents Abroad' and
thrown stones at all idols set up by George William Curtis
and Irenaeus Prime?"
The urgent cry of Emerson in the American Scholar was
but a petition for the college to espouse the pioneer tradi-
tion, the creative tradition in American life. Instead of
boldly setting forth on uncharted ways, the college, however,
encourages docility and conventional acceptance of what
passes for truth. For the college has been left to the Puri-
tan and utilitarian traditions. The mind of a Puritan like
Edwards was bi-focally centered upon two ideas: heaven
and man's depravity. All his effort was addressed toward
getting wicked man out of this world as gracefully as pos-
sible. Now this other-wordly mind when invaded by a sense
of sin, as the Puritan's mind is, is cleft in two; it lacks the
wholeness which is holiness. It is content with an economic
order which travesties Christian ethics, while at the same
moment it preaches Christian charity as a door which leads
out of this vale of tears into the other world. Unluckily
the otherworldliness of the Puritan has been the spirit
which has haunted the halls of American higher institu-
tions. Unluckily it has furnished atmosphere where trans-
cendental philosophy, speculative economics, furtive morals,
unrealistic literature thrives. Realism in thought, econom-
ics, ethics, literature or life, the Puritan detests. Art,
which always in its expression is the recorder of those
moments when a man is at one with himself, the Puritan
in his pernicious duality hates, fights, and wishes to destroy.
Out of the world of Franklin, the world of daily ledgers,
stocks and bonds, tariffs and embargoes, of sly opportun-
ism and swift expediency, the money-getting world, the
American student goes into the atmosphere of otherworldli-
ness, into the world of Edwards, and is expected to hear
voices and dream dreams, and gain technique to transform
a recalcitrant environment. Franklin, product of a frontier
world, assiduously preaching thrift, diligence, and tempe-
rance, no doubt saw the only remedy available for economic
and social ills of his own time. His stress on individual
effort was the best philosophy, perhaps, for the frontier.
But projected into the complex modern world, where every
kind of device for socialization has been invented, and
scientific knowledge of social mind and method awaits prac-
tice, the individualism of Franklin with its attendant mate-
rialism is pernicious. It is no more adapted to complex
modern needs than bowie knife and pistol.
A map of intellectual America, then, shows economic
America operating under concepts adapted to a simple,
frontier life; academic America, which should be the instru-
ment for transforming and freshening our spiritual life,
pursuing passionlessly what might be called celestial propa-
ganda; and pioneer America, our creative life, unorganized
and undirected, forced to work alone against the hindering
influences of two dominant traditions ill-adapted to social
needs. Strictly speaking, we have no indigenous culture.
Knowledge taught in schools affects life in small measure or
not at all. And it is this disparate spiritual life, a per-
nicious crossing of aims which makes the teacher's task so
anomalous, and which presents the dilemma from which the
teacher by his own powers can not find egress.
Somewhere William James remarks, "There is but one
unconditional commandment, which is that we should in-
cessantly so to vote and to act as to bring about the very
largest total universe of good which we can see." To supply
students with a sense of a "total universe of good" that is
not fictitious, and to awake in them the will to act in behalf
of that universe is, I take it, an educational formula for
this generation close to truth.
But the curriculum is clogged so that the great mass of
information concerning social good can not be set flowing
free into the student's mind, and the channels for arousing
and strengthening the creative instinct have not yet been
broken. Now as before the institution is far away from the
pioneer spirit of its founders. If anything the utilitarian
influence has drawn nearer and perhaps is replacing the all
but bloodless Puritan ideal. The chances for the colleges
to answer the need of this generation, one must reluctantly
acknowledge, are small.
"Never in the lifetime of men now living has the universal
element in the souls of men burnt so dimly." So says
Keynes. Oh, for young men and women to realize this
fact! And until they do neither endowment drives, with
their promise of higher salary, nor guarantees of restored
academic freedom, nor the pleasant laisser-faire of collegiate
life, will give back to the teacher the joy that is his pro-
fessional birthright.
In the Driftway
OBERON was in his B. V. D.'s scanning an incipient
poem when the Drifter knocked. Oberon was in a
rather light-headed mood because he had scanned verse with
no nutritive interruptions since breakfast, and he had used
the coffee grounds for the fourth time that morning. He
is an other-worldly soul who works at architecture when
his landlady insists and stops to live and dream when he has
saved enough to pay the rent of his piano and his room. He
offered the Drifter a choice of chair or bed, produced ciga-
rettes— Oberon is never without cigarettes — and inquired
as to the present cost of living in Paris. Oberon had de-
termined to leave America.
*****
IT was all on account of the Madison Square Church.
That had been Stanford White's masterpiece in Oberon's
eyes — and Oberon had passed his novitiate in White's of-
fice. It carried Rome and Renaissance on toward the ulti-
mates. It took five thousand years to achieve that church,
said Oberon, and they demolished it in a week. The great
green columns had been sold to an insurance company for
building stone. The arched dome was gone. Oberon had
strayed in when the dome was half broken, and a workman
was just chipping at the glass mosaic of the ten command-
216
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2877
ments. He had tried to dissuade him. Could not the mosaic
be saved? "'T ain't worth it" replied the workman, as he
broke the sixth commandment. [The Drifter said Oberon
was light-headed.] That, Oberon held, was the authentic
voice of America. He had another grievance — a bank on
Fifth Avenue that had been compelled to take down its
splendid columns because they intruded a foot or two onto
the legal sidewalk. In Paris the state would have bought
the building if necessary to save those columns. In Amer-
ica the orthodox number of inches for a sidewalk, or the
declining number of Presbyterians below Times Square,
was enough to scrap a thing of beauty. What were Presby-
terians and sidewalks in the scale against beauty? Had
that church been Roman, Americans would have given hun-
dreds of thousands of dollars to restore a corner of its
ruins. Being in America, most Americans never knew it
was there. The profession of architecture had no dignity
and art no permanence here: Oberon would leave.
As the Drifter rumbled homeward in the subway, he
tried in vain to recall Stanford White's masterpiece; he
had never noticed it. Oberon was light-headed anyway;
if he had had dinner, he would have been more balanced in
his judgments. Besides, Oberon is clearly a failure; he
scarcely earns enough to keep himself alive. What are his
opinions worth?
*****
| T is with mixed feelings that the Drifter regards the moon
I whenever it is at the full. The moon, at the hands
of the softer and pastier story tellers, has probably suffered
severer misrepresentation than any of the more tremendous
works of nature. And so firmly fixed in the public mind is
the tradition that moonlight is romantic that not one writer
in a thousand has been courageous enough to tell the truth
about this pale, dead disk suspended irritatingly by nothing
from nowhere in an otherwise properly lighted sky. It is as
if some one were to plunge an arc light into a room modestly
and graciously half -lighted by many candles. The moon has
nothing of the absorbing variety of the sea ; it cannot leap
like a waterfall, or sing like a bird, or even wink in-
triguingly as does a fire-fly. It has no grace, no movement,
no color, no sound, nothing at all in fact but an alleged air
of mystery — the most press-agented air of mystery since the
world began. It is high time that all this absurd nonsense
about the moon be stopped short. The Drifter is con-
templating a publicity campaign throughout the length and
breadth of the land, conducted by the king of chewing-gum
advertisements, Mr. William Wrigley, Jr., who is also to
manage Senator Harding's campaign, in which he will com-
bat moon-madness, moon-shine, and various other forms of
lunacy. No longer shall our calendars be ornamented with
tender couples on whom a round, white moon is shining,
nor with ships through whose bare rigging the same oyster-
colored dinner plate peers unblinkingly. Artemis shall be
relegated to her proper place, and the only persons who hear
of the moon at all will be the school children who with diffi-
culty master the intricacies of its phases.
*****
THE Drifter sits on the edge of a brook which, as such,
is not entirely successful, being composed of about
one inch of water and five inches of mud. It does give com-
plete satisfaction, however, by having banks that are deli-
cately blue with forget-me-nots and fragrant with mint.
Overhead there is one cloud about the size and shape of an
armadillo which the Drifter once saw in an illustrated
natural history book. In the green meadow behind him a
meditative cow regards the world with a simple and naive
stare, and, chewing a mint leaf reminiscently, the Drifter
returns her glance. All over the world, he reflects, men are
spending and have spent their lives and their treasure in
the search either for beauty or for peace, and here are
both in abundance. Why has the quest not ended long ago?
The answer is obviously that the zest is not in the finish
of the race but in the running of it. It is quite plain that
the hare had an infinitely more enjoyable afternoon than
the tortoise. Men do not want to find beauty but only to
look for it; and the search for peace will never end because
there is too much fun in the search. Man, at his best, is
the most restless of all the animals — the complete antithesis
of the cow; he must be up and doing; peace does not satisfy
him, rest pleases him only because it makes more activity
possible, he labors even harder at his play than at his work.
As nature abhors a vacuum, so man abominates a vacation,
and instead of gratefully accepting peace when it is thrust
at him he strives feverishly to fill the day with as varied
and exhausting a series of conflicts as he can concoct, so
that at the end of his "rest" period he is glad to return to
work as a blessed release from toil. Those of us who yearn
for peace are quite evidently wasting our time. The war
will never end while Mr. Lloyd George continues to have
such a good time at the Peace Conference.
*****
TO the Drifter, as his readers well know, the far corners
of the earth have rendered up their secrets freely and
frankly. East and West he has visited and has braved even
the rigors of the frozen north. This being the case, it
follows that he has seen strange things, not the least curi-
ous being the many diverse ways the human race has of
personal adornment. It remains, however, for the women
of his own, his native land to outstrip all their rivals in
quaint and esoteric costume — for they wear furs in the
summer time! Let it be never so hot; let the city streets
fairly writhe under a thick, stifling haze; the belle of New
York must wear the hide of some dead animal around her
neck, though she may prostrate by sunstroke not herself —
for she seems to be made entirely of asbestos — but all the
unfortunate persons who cannot avoid seeing her. Between
the Maori lady who wears next to nothing because it is hot
and the Eskimo lady who wears furs because it is cold, we
have somehow arrived at this strange hybrid, whose clothing
the Drifter will bet on as the most inconsistent, unreason-
able, and altogether preposterous fashion as yet invented.
•Jr ■}& •& %r "X"
npHERE is hardly a doubt that the young man recently
i. arrested on a charge of stealing fur-lined gloves from a
haberdasher's was the unhappy victim of the summer-fur
mania. Driven gradually insane by the sight of so many
female creatures thus attired, the Drifter can picture the
unfortunate youth at first refusing iced-tea for his dinner
and insisting on scalding hot soup instead; then buying an
extra pair of blankets and a down quilt to cover him at night,
and finally — but the Drifter's sanity rests on too precarious
a footing in hot weather to pursue the subject further with
either pleasure or profit. Let the wearers of summer furs
beware! Some day the poor worm with the wilted collar
will turn ; and a perpetual diet of hot tamales and red pepper
would be almost too light a punishment. The Drifter
August 21, 1920]
The Nation
217
Correspondence
The Packers' Profit
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: The Nation of July 24 reproduced a letter from Mrs.
F. L. Houston, Moores Hill, Indiana, under the heading, "Why
Be a Farmer?" This letter asks The Nation why the adver-
tisement of Swift & Company was published. Since The Nation
has not attempted to reply to this question, we take the liberty
of suggesting an answer, which we hope will reach Mrs. Hous-
ton and the other readers of The Nation.
We presume that the reasons that The Nation published these
advertisements were to obtain the revenue resulting from the
sale of advertising space, and to exhibit a spirit of fair play
in allowing a corporation that is commonly misunderstood, and
that has been unjustly attacked, to present its side of the case.
Mrs. Houston seems to think that the packer is responsible
for the great difference between the price of live animals and the
price of meats. In the first place, she is comparing the price
of live animals with the prices of individual cuts of beef and
pork at retail. Swift & Company does not operate retail stores
or have anything to do with retail prices. We sell whole
animals or large cuts at wholesale, and out of our total pro-
ceeds from meats and animal by-products last year we paid 85
per cent for the live animals. Out of the other 15 per cent we
had to pay expenses of operating our packing plants, freight
on meats to market, operation of branch houses, cost of deliv-
eries to the retailer, etc. Out of this 15 per cent we also had
to pay interest and taxes, and derive our profit, which amounted
to only 1.15 cents on each dollar of sales, or less than 7 per
cent on investment. It is conceded that the packers keep
expenses down as low as it is humanly possible; and obviously
such a minute profit can have practically no effect on prices.
The reference to 12 cents a pound for fat hogs, and 7 cents
a pound for fat cattle, last December, must be a mistake. The
average price of hogs in Chicago for that month was over
$13.00, and for cattle over $14.00. The choice grades of fat
hogs and cattle were bringing over 14 cents and over 21 cents
respectively. It must also be borne in mind that when it comes
to retail prices, the choicest cuts have to sell at extremely high
prices, because they form only a small portion of the live
animal, while the rest of the meat sells at much lower prices.
We certainly have "sympathy for the poor," just as have
La Follette's magazine, The Nation, and the Socialist papers,
but since we pay for live stock all that it is humanly possible
to pay, considering the price that we get for meat and by-
products, we shall have, to disclaim responsibility for this
situation. In fact, it is universally conceded that the difference
between live-stock and meat prices is smaller than it would be
if we were not in existence.
L. D. H. Weld, Manager,
Commercial Research Dept., Swift & Company
Chicago, August 5
Patriotism vs. Fanaticism
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: The opinion of Judge Bourquin on Patriotism or Fanati-
cism, which appears in The Supreme Court Reporter of July 1,
1920, is in keeping with the recent decision of Judge Anderson,
and will perhaps help to restore confidence in the judiciary:
"Patriotism or Fanaticism. An act of the Montana Legisla-
ture defining the crime of sedition was held valid by the United
States District Court for the District of Montana in ex parte
Starr, 263 Federal Reporter, 145, and a writ of habeas corpus
was denied. The petitioner had been convicted and sentenced
to the state penitentiary for not less than 10 years nor more
than 20 years at hard labor, and to pay a fine of $500 and costs.
In discussing the case Judge Bourquin said:
" 'In the matter of his offense and sentence, obviously the
petitioner was more sinned against than sinning. It is clear
that he was in the hands of one of those too common mobs,
bent upon vindicating its peculiar standard of patriotism and
its odd concept of respect for the flag by compelling him to
kiss the latter — a spectacle for the pity as well as the laughter
of gods and men! Its unlawful and disorderly conduct, not his
just resistance, nor the trivial and innocuous retort into which
they goaded him, was calculated to degrade the sacred banner
and to bring it into contempt. Its members, not he should have
been punished.
" 'Patriotism is the cement that binds the foundation and the
superstructure of the state. The safety of the latter depends
upon the integrity of the former. Like religion, patriotism is
a virtue so indispensable and exalted that excesses pass with
little censure. But when, as here, it descends to fanaticism, it
is of the" reprehensible quality of the religion that incited the
massacre of St. Bartholomew, the tortures of the Inquisition,
the fires of Smithfield, the scaffolds of Salem, and is equally
cruel and murderous. In its name, as in that of Liberty, what
crirres have been committed! In every age it, too, furnishes its
heresy hunters and its witch burners, and it, too, is a favorite
mask for hypocrisy, assuming a virtue which it hath not. So
the mobs mentioned were generally the chosen and last resort
of the slacker, military and civil, the profiteer, and the enemy
sympathizer, masquerading as super-patriots to divert attention
from their real character. Incidentally, it is deserving of men-
tion here that in the records of this court is a report of its
grand jury, that before it, attempts had been made to prostitute
the federal Espionage Law to wreak private vengeance and to
work private ends.
" 'As for the horrifying sentence itself, it is of those criticized
by Mr. Justice Holmes in Abrams' Case, 250 U. S. 616, 40 Sup.
Ct. 17, 63 L. Ed. 1173, in that, if it be conceded trial and con-
viction are warranted, so frivolous is the charge that a nominal
fine would serve every end of justice. And it, with too many
like, goes far to give color, if not justification, to the bitter com-
ment of George Bernard Shaw, satirist and cynic, that during
the war the courts in France, bleeding under German guns,
were very severe; the courts in England, hearing but the echoes
of those guns, were grossly unjust; but the courts of the United
States, knowing naught save censored news of those guns, were
stark, staring, raving mad. All this, however, cannot affect
habeas corpus. It can appeal to the pardoning power alone.' "
Dover, New Hampshire, July 19 Francis J. McDonald
"A Strong Man"
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: The Nation has taken such a thoroughly patriotic stand
in defense of American liberty and against the Administration,
that the writer cannot understand how the same paper could
denounce the Republican convention. The only way to defeat
Wilsonism and the party he represents is by supporting a well-
known, thoroughly organized party that stands for the Consti-
tution. No new party can win in this campaign; all votes cast
for a new party will only aid the Democrats in securing victory.
Hence the only way to bring about a return to pre-war condi-
tions and to make the Constitution the supreme law of the
land is to return the Republicans to power. For this presi-
dential election, every patriot ought to set party aside, 'ignore
minor differences in the wording of platforms and choice of
candidates [Senator Harding is a strong man and a true
American], and vote for the great party that has come out
squarely for the maintenance of the Constitution. A Republican
victory guarantees for a number of years at least the main-
tenance of the republic. This period in its history is as crucial
a period as in 1832 and 1861 ; and we need to have The Nation
and every other great force working for a Republican victory.
Detroit, July 27 Harmon Henry Jones
218
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2877
Dr. Friedlaender
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: In The Nation of August 7, in an editorial paragraph
referring to the death of Dr. Israel Friedlaender in the Ukraine,
the editorship of a "comprehensive anthology of poems by and
about Jews" is ascribed to the murdered professor. For the
sake of accuracy it should be pointed out that the compiler of
"The Standard Book of Jewish Verse" was Joseph Friedlander,
an English Rabbi who spent many years in the United States
and who died in Plainfield, N. J., in 1917, not Professor Israel
Friedlaender of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
Chicago, August 9 S. Felix Mendelsohn
Child of Adam
By SCUDDER MIDDLETON
YOU are sick, 0 child of Adam,
And there is no peace in your house of flesh
Or joy where your engines reel!
You have put your hope in the rods that rust,
You are watching the world through a turning wheel.
You search no more for eternal things
Or infinite splendors locked in your name —
Your hands must touch and your eyes must see.
The music of gold and the heart are the same.
You are sick, 0 child of Adam!
You glut your flesh but your spirit begs.
You have lost your love of the task well done.
The iron worms of an iron age
Are boring into your breast —
Go follow an unconcerning dream
And heal your soul of this deep unrest !
Give up yourself to the passionate call
Of multiple truth, become aware
Of beauty lodged in the simplest thing
And life aspiring everywhere!
Go and fall in love with a star,
Look at the blood through a tube of glass,
Watch the wedding of earth and seed,
Study the rocks and the green sea-grass,
Send your mind through time to follow
Tangent lines and fugitive numbers,
Build a race from a bit of bone
Found where the asp of Asia slumbers,
Know the motive back of the deed,
Solve the riddle of thought and brain,
Make a world for the sake of man,
Be at ease with the days again !
You are sick, indeed, 0 child of Adam !
There is only greed where you stand and work,
And hate where your banners go :
The cogs and the gears of your great machines
Are killing the things by which you grow.
Let the wheels run down and the towers crack,
Let the cannon rust and the fires die —
You must learn to wonder again at life
And see again with your inward eye !
Books
The Diplomatic Auction
Balkan Problems and European Peace. By N. Buxton and
C. L. Leese. London: George Allen and Unwin.
T N the autumn of 1914 Mr. Noel Buxton was sent to Sofia
* by the British Government to win Bulgaria's adhesion to the
Allied cause. This book contains a reprint of the memorandum
submitted to Sir Edward Grey in January, 1915, by Messrs.
N. and C. R. Buxton, summing up the general situation in the
Balkans at that time and suggesting how they judged it should
be handled in the light of fifteen years' previous acquaintance
with all the countries concerned. The advice was not followed.
"Traditional diplomacy, in fact, maintained its reputation for
following the most belated, ineffective, and undignified course."
The prime object here is to point out the paths by which a
peaceful future for the Balkan States can be best secured, and
to show that Bulgaria should not be discriminated against in
any final settlement on account of her participation on the side
of the Central Powers, since such action was not only against
the wishes of a large proportion of her population, but was
directly precipitated by the faulty diplomatic action of the
Allied Powers.
Throughout modern history the results of Balkan struggles
have been controlled by the Great Powers; and out of their
clashing policies grew the great war. "The political ambitions
of Austria and the economic designs of Germany working hand
in hand rendered the Drang nach Osten a formidable reality."
While on the other hand: "In dealing with Balkan problems the
Triple Entente suffered from the disadvantage of inadequate
definition both of its aims and of the conditions which held it
together. It may be granted that on the side of England at
least the primary object was the maintenance of peace; but
since the method adopted to that end consisted in countering
German policy by lending support to the alliance of France and
Russia, Great Britain's interests in many spheres were sub-
ordinated to those of her partners, whose aims were not always
equally pacific."
At the outbreak of war in 1914, "the Entente's sole oppor-
tunity of an early and crushing victory" lay in the Balkans. A
glance at the map "reveals that for both sides Bulgaria held
the key to the situation. If she sided with the Entente, the
Austro-German Oriental policy would be frustrated at a vital
point; Serbia's flank would be secure; and, even apart from the
advantages which would accrue from her assistance in forcing
the Straits, her adhesion would at once give the Western mem-
bers of the Entente easy access to their Russian ally." Bulgaria
could have been induced to fight for the Entente by "a revision
of the Treaties of Bucharest and Constantinople, and the sub-
stitution of a territorial settlement based on the principle of
nationality." But Russia vacillated as to Bulgarian participa-
tion, since "after the war Russian ministers did not want to
find a strong Bulgaria or Rumania barring the way to Con-
stantinople." The fear of alienating Serbia and Greece also
deterred the Allies from energetic action, though "it was the
only real method of helping Serbia immediately and effectively."
In short, definite demands were made on the Bulgarian Govern-
ment, but no definite statement of the Entente's intentions could
be obtained by them in return. The British Foreign Office,
"though warned repeatedly of the certainty that Bulgaria, if not
dealt with by the Entente, would be forced to resort to Germany
with disastrous results for Serbia, hesitated under the influence
of rival pressures, and sought safety in not committing itself
to either policy, thus irritating both sides at once."
The ramifications of the case were many, and the chapter
dealing with them is aptly called The Diplomatic Auction.
"From a military point of view the failure of the Allied diplo-
macy in the Balkans was a disaster of the first magnitude. The
August 21, 1920]
The Nation
219
defection of Bulgaria sealed the doom of the Dardanelles
Expedition and left Serbia without help from her Allies against
the great Austro-German drive in the autumn of 1915. It gave
the Central Empires control of the corridor to the East and
enabled German munitions and German officers to be dispatched
to the assistance of the Turkish forces in Palestine and Meso-
potamia. Most decisive of all, it put an end to every hope of
opening up communication between Russia and her Western
Allies. ... If Bulgaria had been gained for the Entente in
the autumn of 1915 the war could not have lasted for three
years longer."
The main bone of contention in the Balkans continues to be
Macedonia, since the sympathies of the mass of the population
there are Bulgarian. A solution of the problem by plebiscite
"would allow the frontiers of Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria in
Macedonia to be drawn with the maximum of justice to all
parties." Though the difficulties in the way of equitable settle-
ment on many other points are great, they should not prove
insuperable. "For some time, if not for ever, the struggle
between Russia and the Teutonic Powers for Balkan hegemony
is at an end. But the immediate decision which the Balkan
states themselves have to make is between the perpetuation of
the same evil by assisting or opposing French and Italian Im-
perialism and the development of cooperation one with another,
aiming ultimately perhaps at some form of federation which
will enable them to live, not merely in harmony together, but on
terms of equality with the Great Powers themselves. If terri-
torial questions are settled on the principle of nationality and
self-determination, a Balkan Federation becomes possible. The
advantages which the Balkan nations would derive from its
establishment are too obvious to need elucidation, while the
benefits which would accrue to the other European Powers from
the promulgation of a Monroe Doctrine for the Peninsula are
equally undeniable."
B. U. Burke
The Tenth Muse Today
A Modern Book of Criticism. Edited by Ludwig Lewisohn.
Boni and Liveright. (The Modern Library.)
rPHE tenth Muse today is the Muse of Criticism. Anyone
*■ indifferent to Sainte-Beuve and Hazlitt who was unaware
that the nineteenth century brought discussion of books to the
level of an exciting and difficult art needs to read this brilliant
little collection of forty-seven critical essays from twenty-five
contemporary or recent writers in France, Germany, Great Brit-
ain, and America. He will not meet all the souls here who
make expeditions these days among masterpieces, but he will
meet twenty-five souls of a distinct, important, impassioned
stamp ; and that will be a sufficient beginning.
Mr. Lewisohn's exclusions have been made on the strength
of a theory that a certain kind of criticism, represented once in
France by Ferdinand Brunetiere and now in the United States
by Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, and Stuart P. Sherman,
fails to be criticism at all by virtue of its "icy and cosmic arro-
gance" toward free-playing creative genius and its preoccupa-
tion with everlasting morals and the aesthetic status quo. That
kind of critic Mr. Lewisohn shuts out in favor of his own more
flexible, young-hearted, unmoral kind. His book is nothing less
than a libertarian manifesto against authoritarianism in the
appraisement of art; it is a manifesto because all of the critics
whom he includes are as acutely concerned as he is with the
theory and province of criticism, and because all of them are
hotly in accord with him and with one another.
To students of criticism as an art there appears less differ-
ence between the libertarians and the authoritarians than Mr.
Lewisohn supposes and insists there is. The issue really seems
to be not so much between impeccable impressionism and stone-
blind authority as between two fairly mature yet naturally
fallible schools of impressionism. Stone-blind authority died
at least as far back as Thomas Rymer, and since Sainte-Beuve
there has been little trace of it among critics whom people have
read. For virtually a century the art of criticism has been the
art of standing significantly between poet and audience, of
straining creative genius through sensitive, intelligent person-
ality; the more important the personality, of course, the more
important the criticism. Connoisseurs of critical personality as
such will miss Mr. More and Mr. Sherman in this volume, inas-
much as they are men of a particularly vivid and dramatic force.
They have invoked tradition and transcendental common sense
perhaps indefensibly, but they have invoked them powerfully;
they have carried more intelligent young men into Plato's
heaven than Wilhelm Dilthey and John Cooper Powys, to name
two nonentities in Mr. Lewisohn's volume, will ever even interest.
As critics with creative capacities they at least deserve some
such tribute from their enemies as Jules Lemaitre once paid to
Brunetiere: "What pleases me in the severest article of M.
Brunetiere is M. Brunetiere . . . I am careful not to wish
him a little indulgence, a little frivolity, a little depravity. He
could not but lose thereby."
However all that may be, the critics whom Mr. Lewisohn does
put in his collection speak for the most part superbly. France
on the whole has the best of it, with Anatole France, Jules
Lemaitre, and Remy de Gourmont on her list. The limpid
perfection, the smiling, almost grimacing superiority of the
first two is irresistible; veins of precept and anecdote run ex-
quisitely through their pages like veins in a leaf when held to
the light; while the third, more a scientist, analyzes the literary
process as only a Frenchman can — which is to say, all too com-
pletely. Germany, except in Friedrich Hebbel's arresting, arous-
ing aphorisms and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's intensely demo-
cratic and imaginative interpretation of the modern reader, has
perhaps the worst of it. Wilhelm Dilthey, Johannes Volkelt,
Richard Moritz Meyer, Richard Mueller-Freienfels, and Alfred
Kerr are sluggish and abstract. They deliver solemn platitudes
in vacuo without so much as the mention of an author or a title
to point their path. They are ponderously involved in the meta-
physics of poetry, in the maze of Memory and Imagination, in
the inner and the outer of all art. And they are heavily en-
dowed with a sense of election; they wage class war against
Philistinism. The British fall somewhere between the Germans
and the French. George Moore is feline in his grace, Bernard
Shaw is as precise as lightning, Arnold Bennett succeeds at
being casual, like the agreeable literary drummer that he is ; but
Arthur Symons delicately muddles, John Galsworthy is common-
place, and John Cooper Powys, it is enough to remark in his
own foolish words, is one of those who wait while " 'the still
small voice' of the music of the universe, sad and sweet and
terrible and tender, drifts in upon us, over the face of the
waters of the soul."
The American section is full of battle and scorn and longing —
battle against bad critics, scorn of our imperfect national cul-
ture, and longing for a day when the Philistine, to quote Mr.
Lewisohn, will "be forced, despite himself, into an uneasy aware-
ness of the poverty of his own soul." The most affecting pro-
test against our materialism and general aridness is found in
Van Wyck Brooks's beautiful, aching pages of challenge to the
best that there may be in the American imagination — though
just how fitted Mr. Brooks may be, by a wide and realistic sym-
pathy, for knowing that best as soon as it becomes also the
most characteristic, one may wonder. James Huneker, infinite
as to his acquaintances, unrolls a canvas spangled with allusion
but hardly lighted through with thought. J. E. Spingarn, with
a scholar's equipment which most of the others do not display,
ably vindicates the right of poetry to be criticized by poetical
minds, and traces historically the idea about the critic that he
should judge the poet upon what he is known to have intended
rather than upon what it is thinkable he should have intended.
H. L. Mencken goes for Puritan "gabble" in his usual burly,
hirsute manner, prodigally dropping lustrous, useful phrases by
the way. Mr. Lewisohn's two essays show him, as always, fer-
220
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2877
tilely engaged in integrating literature with life. The late Ran-
dolph Bourne is represented by a bitter survey of America's
cultural and critical shortcomings under "the terrible patronage
of bourgeois society," ending with the forecast of a new classi-
cism that will embody "power with restraint, vitality with har-
mony, a fusion of intellect and feeling, and a keen sense of the
artistic conscience."
But of course this is more or less the vision of all critics who
think. Paul Elmer More and Stuart P. Sherman could approve
it to the last syllable. Indispensable as right doctrine is to a
critic, still the test of criticism lies as truly in its various par-
ticular judgments as that of a general lies in his campaigns, not
in his programs. To have formed critical principles upon the
practice of Balzac and still to understand and appreciate Flau-
bert or Mark Twain; to have loved Virgil and Milton and
Goethe and still not be shocked by Whitman or Edgar Lee Mas-
ters ; to have been a disciple of Moliere without snubbing Ibsen
and Shaw when they appear— this is to be a critic gloriously.
And such flexibility — though indeed no moral obligation — im-
plies more than firm opinions, more than the noblest learning;
it implies a largeness of soul which has converted doctrines
into second nature, as a child has learned, by first taking
thought, to walk without thinking any further of his little de-
vices for equilibrium, so that he can walk now wherever men
walk.
C. and M. V. D.
The Case Against Violence
Is Violence the Way Out? By John Haynes Holmes. Dodd,
Mead and Company.
MR. HOLMES is nothing if not forthright. His mind works
through his topic from start to finish with a steady
momentum; there is no beating about the bush, no dallying
finesse of language, no straining after mere rhetorical or
stylistic effect. The man is out — all the time and without
letting up — for a verdict; and even if you are not convinced, you
instinctively recognize that you have been listening to the pas-
sionate and able pleading of an incorruptible mind. Here Mr.
Holmes is on his own peculiar beat. With characteristic con-
sistency the man who declined to countenance the use of force
in the settlement of international disputes now sets out to show
how futile and how disastrous the attempt to settle industrial
conflicts by opposing force to force is bound to be. He has a
hard row to hoe. Mankind is soaked in the ideology of conflict
and supposes that the proper way of solving a problem is by an
appeal to fisticuffs. After centuries of experience this absurd
fallacy appeals to be as deep-laid in human nature as ever; not
even the fiasco of Versailles and the post-war chaos seem to
have taught us wisdom. But soon or late we shall discover that
no dispute is settled which has been ended by the victory of one
party and the defeat of the other. Fighting only shelves and
never solves our problems. All this Mr. Holmes has no diffi-
culty in showing; and it is well that in this little book he should
once more have stated the case plainly and conclusively.
Now if Capital and Labor are not to fight, what is there for
them to do? Mr. Holmes says there is a "best" way which
he does not expect the rival factions to take. It asks too much
of them — more good-will, more forgiveness, more renunciation
than either side is capable of. This best way, the way that
Jesus would take, Mr. Holmes sets aside not as impracticable
but as too difficult for the combatants in their present state of
mind; he would say that in the end it is the only practicable
way. But failing the best way, there is a way still better than
fisticuffs. Under it there are three measures: the establishment
of Industrial Courts (concerning which Mr. Holmes himself is
not very sanguine) , the formation of a political Labor Party,
and the diffusion of the cooperative movement. The most hope-
ful by far is the last Even in England, where the Labor Party
is well organized and articulate, the most significant movement
at the present time is the creation of the Builders' Guilds, the
self-organization of the workers for production. The growth on
the one hand of cooperative distributing societies, retail and
wholesale, and the growth on the other of new cooperative pro-
ductive societies will do more to establish an equitable social
order than any political activity will do; for the cooperative
movement will meet the capitalistic industrial system on its own
ground, which is after all the only ground upon which it can
supersede it. Let us have our Labor Parties by all means; but
the process of social change has shifted bodily into the economic
field. In the transition from old to new, political parties cer-
tainly will play second fiddle.
But the importance of this little book lies not so much in its
advocacy of a policy as in its plea for a different temper in in-
dustrial relations. When all is said and done, there is no in-
dustrial maladjustment that will not yield to quiet reason and
unyielding good- will; and the mere facing of concrete situations
in even temper will do more to prepare for and formulate the
needed policies of change than all the fighting in the world.
R. R.
Conscientious Objection in the British
Empire
The Psychology of Conscientious Objection. By C. Egerton
Parry. London: C. W. Daniel, Limited.
Handed-Over. By J. Scott Duckers. London: C. W. Daniel,
Limited.
Armageddon or Calvary. By H. E. Holland, M.P. Wellington,
New Zealand.
/ Appeal Unto Caesar. By Mrs. Henry Hobhouse. London:
George Allen & Unwin, Limited.
T N England, conscientious objection came to mean more than
* a thorn in the side of the military. It outgrew its mere
un-orthodoxy and developed into a doctrine against conscrip-
tion. From labor organizations, in Parliament, among English
men of letters, and even from the war-hypnotized clergy the idea
eventually received a certain measure of intelligent response.
Thus the objector's position in England, unlike that in America,
had a quality of modernity which gave it a definitely construc-
tive force. Yet this note of timeliness was absent in the litera-
ture of the conscientious objector himself. His books are per-
haps more important as historical data than as interpretative
or critical contributions to the philosophy of the subject. Most
impressive is the fact that they reveal the objector as the same
being the world over. With ironic consistency he was reviled
and besmirched and mistreated in all countries alike for acting
upon the principle of international amity. It is, on the whole,
unfortunate that this literature is devoted either to a recital
of experiences or to a religious defense of conscience. No
objector has given us a book of profound searching or of scath-
ing satire — no book that is commensurate with the inspiring
quality of his actions. Conscientious objection is not ade-
quately justified by apologias for religious pacifism. Its ex-
pression needs a virile social note — a note of revolt and nausea,
of contempt and burning skepticism. And the objector, it will
be acknowledged, has the right to speak.
"Armageddon or Calvary" is a record of New Zealand's ob-
jectors. It contains some able statements by both religious and
political offenders, besides relating a number of prison experi-
ences, particularly in British detention camps in France.
"Handed-Over" is the capable account of a solicitor of Chan-
cery Lane who suffered imprisonment with good-humor and
with a keen eye for the innumerable absurdities and pettinesses
of the military when confronted by a problem for which the
guard-manual provided no ready solution. "I Appeal Unto
Caesar" was published during the war. It is a history of cer-
August 21, 1920]
The Nation
221
tain English objectors, with valuable data concerning their
numbers and classification. Some humane notes by Lord Par-
moor, Lord Hugh Cecil, the Earl of Selbourne, and Lord Henry
Bentinck leave the American reader ashamed to think that ob-
jectors are still serving long-term prison sentences at Fort
Douglas and at Alcatraz Island. Mr. Parry's book is of another
stamp. It is written in the spirit of utterly uncompromising
Christian zeal and breathes an absolute scorn. The unregene-
rate of this world have reaped what they have sown. To estab-
lish the Kingdom of God among men we need to give precise
and unalterable fidelity to the commandments of the Lord and
to Jesus Christ; to believe in love above all else and in obedi-
ence to divine. laws. It is written with shrewd logic and with
occasional telling insight into present day fatuities. The argu-
ment, despite its archaic flavor, its hopelessly antiquated ideal-
ism, holds its own by some unreal sanity. Its manner often
has an unexpected pertinency, an embarrassing appositeness.
Sheer simplicity and bitter-end unworldliness carry conviction
today if they did not six years ago.
America has thus far produced nothing like these volumes.
It is true we are not without a literature of objection; but one
needs to go back for it to Thoreau in his essay on "Civil Dis-
obedience," to passages in Whitman, or to the isolated work
of the late Randolph Bourne — unless indeed one wishes to soothe
himself with elegant bits of chamber music like this from
Woodrow Wilson: "It [the Bible] reveals every man to him-
self as a distinct moral agent responsible not to men, not even
to those men whom he has put over him in authority, but re-
sponsible to his Lord and Maker. Whenever a man sees this
vision he stands up a free man; whatever may be the govern-
ment under which he lives, he sees beyond the circumstances of
his own life." Roderick Seidenberg
George Santayana
Little Essays Drawn from the Writings of George Santayana.
By Logan Pearsall Smith. With the Collaboration of the
Author. Charles Scribner's Sons.
A MONG the spiritual adventures of our age not the least
** memorable is this: that a Spanish child was brought to the
United States, grew to manhood here without yielding by a
hair's breadth to the forces of his environment, studied and
taught philosophy for a number of years, wrote the most per-
fect English prose yet produced on this continent, and retired
to the bosom of that Latin civilization which only his body,
never his heart and mind, had left. Nor was it America alone
that had no power to touch the mind of George Santayana.
That style of bronze and ivory, those ripe and classical locu-
tions, those severe felicities, serve to express a noble and melan-
choly gesture of disdain for all the intellectual turmoil, the
eagerness, the restless striving, the inexpugnable romanticism
of the Germanic world. Protestantism is, in Mr. Santayana's
eyes, an "underlying Teutonic mood" which "is anterior to
Christianity and can survive it;" the "philosophical incohe-
rence" of Shakespeare makes this thinker "wonder whether the
Northern mind, even in him, did not remain morose and bar-
barous at its inmost core." The mental flexibility and creative
impulse that would reexamine the grounds of knowledge, re-
chart the seas of life, and build the world anew, both seem to
Mr. Santayana mere "visionary insolence." He watches the
seething barbarians as a gentleman of ancient lineage may
watch the antics of a noisy upstart.
In the world seen through his temperament philosophy is
the explication and support of one great tradition. He is a
Christian Stoic. A finely balanced blending of Pagan freedom
with Christian symbolism seems to him the note of that Latin
civilization which he holds to be the only civilization of the
Western world. Within it life has been charted and its values
long known and declared ; within it freedom of mind can be
attained by "a reasonable deference" to a perfect religion that
has "the graciousness and naturalness of an ancestral accent,"
and human existence can be wholly sweet and decorous. Be-
yond it the heathen rage. In the life of reason which flourishes
only within that great tradition there is possible "a consistent
moral attitude toward all things of this world," a "hierarchy
of goods and evils," and a religion which, since it "seizes the
essence of human life, ought to be eternal"; in that charmed
realm no one doubts the claim of traditional morality since it
"speaks for a typical human will chastened by a typical human
experience," and hence to the ripe and detached mind dwelling
there "orthodoxy must always appear right and heresy wrong;"
there, finally, men abstain from wild quests and vain yearnings,
but are content with "food, children, victory, knowledge" and
are willing to live and to die for these. It is true that even
there "religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pre-
tensions to be dealing with matters of fact." But woe to the
indecorous rationalist who would attack those doctrines for that
reason and disregard the precious "habits of thought" from
which they sprang.
This cultural vision constitutes the center of Mr. Santayana's
philosophy. Its fringes and outlying wastes tell a bleaker and
more elemental story in which all values are relative, patriot-
ism is subordinate to both happiness and truth, and the whole
need of morality is derived from the existence of pain and
danger and the consequent occasions of pity. But, like smaller
men, he can keep his cosmic vision and his unrelenting analysis
from surging into the cultural and artistic picture of life which
he desires to be the temporal dwelling of his soul. He needs
Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas, a cathedral whose paintings
bring to his eye the ancient pact of Rome and Galilee, and an
old peasant woman lighting a candle at St. Anthony's altar.
His heart is filled with the splendor of the continuity and
universality of that great tradition in which he and the peasant
woman, the life of reason and the life of faith, can be equally
contented and at home.
The heathen — Americans, English, Germans — are so in their
"moral and essential nature" because they do not acknowledge
the sufficingness of the great Roman-Christian tradition. They
are heathen because "they possess no authoritative wisdom, or
reject the authority of what wisdom they have." Their minds,
like Shelley's, are "thoroughly disinherited," and they have been
led astray by the "malicious psychology" of the group of think-
ers who, from Hume to Kant, sought to analyze the processes
and limitations of human knowledge. Thus the heathen have
become discontented with the institutions which seem to Mr.
Santayana noble with age and drenched with the savor of
living; they reject the moral allegory of Christianity and the
order and finished beauty which, since they profoundly satisfy
his sensibilities, he identifies in the terms of so sovereign an
eloquence with the life of reason.
To establish the fallacy of this sharp division of Western
mankind into Latin and heathen is, on its own philosophical
ground, not difficult. Mr. Santayana's heathen is a pure fiction
of controversial and poetic origin. No man, Latin or Germanic,
rejects "authoritative wisdom," for the plain reason that none
exists. So soon as we exclude, as Mr. Santayana unequivocally
does, the hypothesis of revelation, no wisdom can have the at-
tribute of absolute and permanent authoritativeness. It is true
that the great scriptures of mankind contain a vast fund of
human experience. It is equally true that the authors of these
scriptures constantly misinterpreted both the facts and the
character of experience through want of knowledge and through
theological inhibitions of thought. Hence it is not unreasonable
to make the first note of a civilized mind the critical impulse
to sift this funded experience and to reject partially or wholly
the chart of life derived from it. Barbarism may even be held
to reside in accepting the validity of a moral symbolism and
a cosmic poetry which arise largely and demonstrably from
the fears and the pathetic errors of primitive man and display,
222
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2877
in every active influence on human life, some trace of their
lowly and irrational origin. The life of reason, far from strain-
ing to find new grounds for old traditions, however venerable
and beautiful, might rather be thought of as residing in a re-
examination of human experience as well as of the world which
is the theater of that experience. Thus only, to avoid the ugly
word progressive, can its activity be a creative one; thus only
can it increase the harmony between man and nature and the
fitness for human habitation of the institutions of organized
society. It is not from Mr. Santayana's reason, however, but
from his temperament that these simple considerations are ex-
cluded. ''Few revolutionists would be such," he says in connec-
tion with Shelley, "if they were heirs to a baronetcy." That
moment of petulance betrays him. He loves order, antiquity,
decorum — the broken shrine, the wayside cross, the verses of
Lucretius, the rich phrases of the Roman liturgy. Despite the
magnificent and searching sagacity of a thousand isolated say-
ings, his philosophy is not a philosophy at all, but a spiritual
epic in praise of all those forms of life and beauty which early
secured his instinctive loyalty and love. It is the Divine Comedy
of a great artist forsaken in an alien age by both verse and God,
but building on the frontiers of heathendom a last rampart to
guard the ideals which he would make as imperishable as he
believes them to be excellent.
L. L.
Miniatura
Miniatura, or The Art of Limning. By Edward Norgate. Ox-
ford University Press.
~\T 0 book could have a more tantalizing recommendation to
-^ the curious than the suggestion that it would have amused
Lamb. It will appear no idle speculation to those well ac-
quainted with Lamb's love of whimsical and recondite flavors
in literature that he would have welcomed Norgate's "Minia-
tura" among his "midnight darlings," old Fuller, and Burton,
and Browne. Norgate is unquestionably of their company.
He speaks their quaint seventeenth-century syllables; he has a
turn for pedantry, checked, one feels, by his slender store of
reading; he is gossipy; he is nice; he loves God; and he has a
pious respect for his art and for the gentry of England to
whom his treatise is dedicated. It is doubtful if Lamb knew
Norgate's manuscript, though it is quite possible; but he must
have known the amusing story of Norgate which Fuller tells
with so much zest in the "Worthies." At any rate, Norgate's
cranium is stuffed with just the content that made Elia's lucu-
brations over half-forgotten authors so delightful to himself
and to us.
The "Miniatura" is now most ably edited by Mr. Martin
Hardie, who has devoted years of attention to the early history
of miniature painting, and who has exhaustively studied the
complicated problem of manuscripts closely related to Nor-
gate's. Norgate's treatise, apart from its curious personal
interest, is a valuable document in miniature portrait painting
and in much that pertains to art methods generally in the mid-
dle of the seventeenth century.
The treatise begins with a list of colors to be used in minia-
ture painting, many of them unfamiliar by name at least to
the generality of contemporary artists. Such minute and com-
plicated directions are given for the processes involved in the
preparation and working of these colors that patience would
seem to have been the chief virtue of a seventeenth-century
miniature painter. There is one costly recipe for ultramarine
to be used in the imitation of sapphires. As it calls for a
goodly quantity of lapis-lazuli, an artist, if he concocted the
recipe often, would require a purse-heavy patron indeed. After
these preliminaries, Norgate sets forth a method of miniature
painting which seems almost fool-proof in its promise of suc-
cessful results. The painting proceeds by set stages. At the
last sitting the painter must catch the likeness. He must "by
occasion of Discourse" (presumably witty or spirited) induce
his sitter to regard him "with a merry, Joviall, and frindly
aspect." In the mixing of tints, Norgate prescribes four
recipes to be used for the complexions of "young Infants, faire
Virgins, women of middle age, and old men and women of salow,
leane, and leather complexions"; as for apparel, both the Italian
and English way of "making" it is explained.
Norgate defines landscape naively as "a beautiful prospect
of Fields, Cities, Rivers, Castles, Mountaines, Trees, or what
soever delightfull view the Eye takes pleasure in." As to the
origin of pure landscape (i. e., apart from its use merely as
background) he hasn't the slightest doubt that it came about
according to the story he tells of an Antwerp painter. A trav-
eler "recountes the adventures of his long Journey, and with
all what Cities he saw, what beautifill prospects he beheld in a
country of a strange scitiation, full of Alpine rocks, old Castles,
and extraordinary buildings, etc. With which relation (grow-
ing long) the prompt and ready painter was soe delighted as,
unregarded by his walking freind, he layes by his worke, and
on a new Table begins to paint what the other spake, describ-
ing his description in a more legible and lasting character then
the others words. In short by that time the Gentleman had
ended his long discourse, the Painter had brought his worke to
that perfection, as the Gentleman at parting, by chance cast-
ing his eye that way, was astonisht with wonder to see those
places and that Countrey soe lively exprest by the Painter as
if hee had seene with his eyes or bene his Companion in the
Journey." What possibilities of glowing collaboration Turner
and Ruskin missed! Or to cavort speculatively into Futurism,
what a chance for Matisse and Gertrude Stein!
The landscapes of Rubens Norgate thought the most perfect
ever done, especially the Aurora. He knew Rubens personally,-
and mentions an interesting conversation he once had with the
Flemish master apropos of drawing the nude figure from' a
living model. This method of study was apparently unknown
in the English schools at that time, for Norgate speaks of it
as a way of designing in Italy and France, where in the middle
of the room "a hired long-sided Porter or such like is to be set,
stand, or hang naked sometimes in a posture for two or three
houres." The "hang" posture suggests a Porter not only long-
sided but long-enduring. Norgate condemns "these dull tedious
and heavy wayes" of studying drawing as presupposing "ani-
mam in digitis." Drawing should be for the service of painting
and not an end in itself. Norgate here scents a danger which
has beset academies ever since.
Art divorced from a rather literal transcript of nature was
for Norgate an unpardonable heresy. "Doe not affect the ex-
travagant humer of those our late Dutch masters that soe
powder their workes with blewish, greenish and purple shad-
owes, never to bee seene in the Life nor anywhere else for any
good or wise workman to Ymitate. Nor are our Italians free
from this affectation. Old Bassano, in this time and way an
excellant Master, yet was he soe affected to stuffe his pieces
with pots, pans, tubs, kettles, Cats and Dogs, that his great
Historye of the Deluge in the Gallery at St. James seemes
rather a confused or disordered kitchen than Noah's Flood nor
can you find water enough in all that dry Deluge to drowne his
Dog." Even in the midst of his cut-and-dried recipes for colors,
Norgate brings himself up with the reminder that he must
avoid dogmatism and counsel no absolute and general rule.
Nature must be the painter's best director.
In several passages Norgate feels constrained to defend art
from traductions which doubtless emanated from the Puritans.
Of landscape he maintains that it is "of all kinds of painting
the most innocent, and which the Divill him selfe could never
accuse of Idolotry." He says again that art, "by Ignorance
and Bestie chi Parlono, is undeservedly traduced as idolatrous,
impious, or impertinent. For all which silly and mallitious
aspersions a better vindication you cannot have than that of
August 21, 1920]
The Nation
223
St. Gregory Nazianzen, Solet enim Pictura tacenti in pariete
loqui maximque prodesse." But this probably contained little
beatitude for the bleak vision of the Puritan. Norgate himself
had no very high conception of painting as one of the supreme
creative arts, but looked upon "Painting in generall" as "Lace
and Ornament." In a quaint sentence near the end of the
treatise, he commends art as a cloistered refuge from the world,
the flesh, and the devil : "In the practize . . . [of Art] . . .
there is gotten an honest, harmles, and innocent expense of
time in a sweet and contented retirement from the Tintamara
and illecebra of this drunken, perishing, and ending world,
which, if ever, is now positus in Maligno, besides a happy pri-
vation and escape from that Diavolo meridiano or noone day
devill, ill Company, the bane and ruine of many a rare witt
and ingenious spirit, irrevocably lost in this sink of cities." Is
not this the very "0 altitudo" accent of Sir Thomas Browne?
Glen Mullin
Books in Brief
\\ WHETHER or not one agrees with the conclusions presented
* » by Mr. P. Whitwell Wilson, one must appreciate the good
temper and moderation with which he argues "The Irish Case
before the Court of Public Opinion" (Revell). Appealing as he
professedly does to Americans, he points out with much skill and
even tact that they have little right to assume an attitude of su-
perior righteousness or to point the finger of scorn at British
sinners. No nation is perfect; each one may profitably consider
its own faults before trying to pick flaws in its neighbors. Less
happy is he when he sets out to prove that, since 1834, the British
have acted like a race of disinterested philanthropists, nobly
rescuing the Irish from an ignorant, immoral, un-English
pauperism. Far from having grievances, the Western islanders
are receiving a handsome subsidy from their generous friends;
they are over-represented in Parliament, they are undertaxed —
and yet the ingrates howl for release from their gilded cage.
Every luxury that money can buy, from a Royal Constabulary
to a (slightly damaged) Home-rule Bill, has been lavished upon
them, with no result but to make them more spoiled than ever.
They still cry for the moon of independence, though they ought
to know that it is quite impossible for England to grant them
that. The Empire's vital interests demand that Erin shall be
kept in the family circle, for if she once got loose, there is no
knowing what a menace she would be. Moreover, England
has every right to keep her. But is it a question of England's
right to make her neighbors miserable, and not rather of
her interest to make them happy? Mr. Wilson admits that
the Sinn Feiners are fomenting trouble for Britain all over the
globe, in India, in Egypt, in South Africa, in America. What
more could they do were they perfectly free? Can four million
Gaels really menace the mightiest Empire in the world, a
hundred times richer and more populous, and just now flushed
with triumph and victor of a gigantic war? Mr. Wilson tries
to show that the United States gave Cuba no real independence,
but only a sort of home rule. Let England make with her neigh-
'bor a treaty modeled on the American treaty with Cuba, and
she will soon find the Irish as friendly to her as the Cubans are
to us.
THE Greys of Northumberland are one of a number of aristo-
cratic English families in which it is a tradition to serve the
state. General Sir Charles Grey of Fallodon, the first earl of the
family, was a veteran of four wars; his son Charles was Earl
Grey of Reform Bill fame; a grandson, Henry, the third earl,
was an ardent free trader and as Colonial Secretary in Lord
John Russell's ministry had much to do with the extension of
responsible government to the British colonies; a great grandson,
the fourth earl, was Governor-General of Canada; and a lineal
descendant in the next generation is the present Viscount (form-
BRENTANOS
Retail Book Department
Fifth Avenue and 27th Street, New York City
BOOKS ON PRESENT DAY TOPICS
Our Economic and Other Problems
By Otto H. Kahn $4.00
What must be done to set the world again on its feet
financially? Mr. Kahn makes a brilliant contribution
to this baffling problem. He discusses the railroads
constructively, he exposes the fallacies of an ill-
designed taxation, and he lays bare the fundamentals
of our economic structure.
The New Unionism
By J. M. Budish and George Soule $3.00
Workers in the clothing industries, largely of foreign
birth, have progressed inside of twenty years from the
worst sweatshop conditions to a leading position in
American organized labor. The story of how this was
accomplished is not only dramatic in itself, but illus-
trates the growth of a new type of unionism. This
account of its origin, its structure and methods, its
remarkable programs for adult education and its con-
tribution to modern democracy, written in collabora-
tion by a trade-union official and by the former labor
editor of the New York Evening Post, will attract
the general reader, as well as all who are interested in
the labor movement.
The Foreign Trade of the United States, Its
Character, Organization, and Methods
By Thos. F. Ford and L. Cummings Ford, with an
Introduction by William L. Saunders, President
American Manufacturers' Export Association $3.00
The principles underlying foreign commerce are ex-
cellently handled in this book — a book that will give
one valuable information whenever it is read or when-
ever it is used for reference. For the inexperienced,
the student, or the beginner, it should be invaluable.
Is Violence the Way Out of Our Industrial
Disputes?
By John Haynes Holmes $1.25
In the industrial, as in the international field, it offers
in the author's judgment the only way of escape from
the sufferings we now endure.
Looking Forward
By Charles F. Higham $2.00
"A very clear and easily read exposition of the imme-
diate future confronting our science of publicity. . . .
A constructive analysis of the means at our disposal
for harnessing the tremendous force of public opinion."
A New Robinson Crusoe
By Gilson Gardner $1.25
Robinson Crusoe with most of the classic incidents
intact. Retold in the spirit of modern industrial
society and with all the new-won lessons of modern
economic life. "Economics" is no longer a forbidden
word; this book is a fascinating introduction to the
science.
Postage Additional
BRENTANOS
Retail Book Department
Fifth Avenue ana 27th Street
New York City
224
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2877
erly Sir Edward) Grey. The career of the second earl is the
subject of Mr. George Macaulay Trevelyan's "Lord Grey of the
Reform Bill" (Longmans, Green). Apart from an inadequate
and unfinished biography, begun by his children and published
sixty years ago, this is the only life of the Reform Bill premier.
In it the author maintains his high reputation as a biographer
and historian. To an intimate knowledge of the material,
printed and manuscript, which bears upon his theme, and a
thorough grasp of the aristocratic politics of the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth century, he adds a literary craftsmanship
that enables him to diffuse the atmosphere of a bygone age. He
has not been sedueed from the path of historical virtue by that
besetting vice of biographers, hero worship. Of Grey's maiden
speech in the House of Commons, delivered in opposition to
Pitt's Commercial Treaty with France, he says: "Thus, by a
brilliant piece of invective on the wrong side of a question that
he did not understand, the young man from Northumberland at
twenty-two years of age became one of the most envied in that
most enviable of all the aristocracies of history." In his attitude
toward parliamentary reform Grey has been accused of op-
portunism and lack of conviction. It is true that after Pitt's
bitter persecution of the reformers in the closing years of the
eighteenth century, Grey, like his beloved leader Fox, ceased
from agitating what seemed a hopeless cause. But Mr.
Trevelyan shows from hitherto unpublished documents that
long before he became prime minister Grey had made up his
mind that when reform came it must be no temporizing or half-
hearted measure. To condemn him and his aristocratic col-
leagues for betraying the cause of democracy in 1832, as some
writers have done, is to give evidence of distorted historical
vision. The remarkable thing about the Reform Bill is not that
it went no farther along the road to democracy, but that it went
so far. For this Mr. Trevelyan gives the credit chiefly to Grey.
THE will to frisk is not wanting in clergymen. In "The Bad
Results of Good Habits and Other Lapses," by J. Edgar
Park (Houghton Mifflin), it takes the form of a demure skit-
tishness that, while never hazarding decorum, unmistakably
registers gaiety. The chief drawback of Mr. Park's "lapses,"
however, is that they do not genuinely lapse; their brightness
serves but to illuminate a lesson. No matter with what abandon
they begin, they inevitably reach a mood of high moral tension,
an edifying "must" or "must not" at the close. Freudians would
doubtless say that the jocose "libido," here escaping from pro-
fessional suppression, was rigidly controlled by a "censor" which
disguised each bright jest in the garb of a sermon. As lay-
sei-mons en the favorite themes of humility, sincerity, and
human kindness, Mr. Park's relaxations avoid the too facile
generalization which is the usual fault of the type. Such papers
as Unorthodox Interpretations and the Disadvantages of Being
Good show him fertile in instances and ready with anecdote.
Yet they breathe a certain serene remoteness from dust and
heat. Like one writing from the sunny side of the moon, Mr.
Park sees the surfaces of life in a silvery light reflected from
his own circle. His wit is clearly made in the study; it has
about it what Mark Twain calls "the earmarks of premedita-
tion." The incongruities on which it depends are incongruous
only to the sheltered, the over-refined, the not greatly daring.
In contrast with the good gigantic smile of Mark Twain, it lacks
what closet wit must always lack, an earthy and living contact
with men and women.
MR. AUSTIN HARRISON is unfortunate enough to live in a
between-age. Actually he belongs to the Victorian era, but
his generation and his intelligence will not leave him at peace,
and push him into a rather uncomfortable ultra-modern attitude.
A good fighter, he should have been young enough to go to the war;
an able writer, he should be old enough to be philosophical. But
neither of these things has been his lot and the result is the sug-
gestion of exasperation and dissatisfaction throughout the whole
of the collection of articles entitled "Before and Now" (Lane).
French in all his sympathies, he tilts lustily against the English
public school system, against authority and the castes, against
British lack of order and the principle of muddling through,
against the discomfort of English hotels and English railway
traveling. Here and there is a tribute to British common sense,
but on the whole Mr. Harrison despairs rather fractiously of his
nation. And so genuinely unhappy is this despair that the
despairing itself seems rather futile. Mr. Harrison sits down
by the waters of Babylon and grouses, but he hardly con-
templates a future leaving of Babylon and getting comfortably
home again. Of all his essays the musings at Fort Vaux are the
most illuminating, because they are at once the most sincere, the
least preconceived.
O WINBURNE'S dream of a vast survey of the dramatists of
^ the Tudor and Stuart period which should "render future
critical excursions in that direction useless and indeed impos-
sible" was destined to remain but partially realized. At the
time of his death, besides the separate volumes upon Shake-
speare, Jonson, and Chapman, he had published the famous
essays on Ford and on Beaumont and Fletcher and a group of
smaller studies which were collected under the title "The Age
of Shakespeare" in 1908. A second series of critical essays,
"Contemporaries of Shakespeare" (Heinemann), has now been
published under the editorship of Edmund Gosse and T. J.
Wise. The volume is made up in part of articles contributed
long since to the Fortnightly Review, in part of posthumous
and less valuable studies, and in large part of a welcome reprint
of the "Study of Chapman," long out of print. Apart from
this, authoritative essay the most noteworthy chapter in the
new collection is the article on Philip Massinger, "the most
temperate, studious, and conscientious of the successors of
Shakespeare." Swinburne seeks to place Massinger midway
between the exaggerated praise by Hartley Coleridge and the'
depreciation by Leslie Stephen. The examination of Massinger's
share in the Beaumont-Fletcher plays is in remarkable accord
with the results attained by more technical methods of inquiry
and well illustrates the almost unerring instinct for style which
was Swinburne's greatest gift as a critic and of which other
noteworthy examples might be cited from the monograph on
Chapman. A certain extravagance of commendation, which
grew upon Swinburne in his later years, renders the essay on
Brome absurd and those on Davenport and on Nabbes almost
unreadable. In a brief introduction Mr. Gosse makes the inter-
esting suggestion that in the cycle of sonnets on the dramatists
published in 1882 the scheme of Swinburne's dreamed-of "pal-
ace of Elizabethan criticism" may be traced. Mr. Gosse
strangely undervalues Swinburne's article on Beaumont and
Fletcher contributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
"IN past years," remarks Mr. J. George Frederick in the
* preface to his book on "Modern Salesmanagement" (Ap-
pleton) , "a great deal of mysterious hocus-pocus has been made
over salesmanship and salesmanagement. It has popularly been
supposed to consist mainly of personal magic — certain inborn
qualities and certain charms and powers of personality which
constitute something of an individual secret — something that
'a man either has or hasn't got.' " To supply this lamentable
deficiency in the organized knowledge of current business
practice, the author has considered at length a number of
typical problems which confront the salesman and the sales-
manager. In the course of almost 400 loosely written pages a
good many suggestions are made regarding price-making and
price protection, methods of paying salesmen, standardizing the
work of selling, and similar topics. For the business man
who is too busy to think for himself, or even to read System
or Printer's Ink, the book may possess value. But the author
demonstrates his points in strange fashion. "To illustrate: if
only three territory factors are selected, one will be rated at 49,
perhaps another at 25, and another at 35, total 100."
International Relations Section
Further Russian-British Notes
SUBSEQUENT notes in the series of communications
between Russia and Great Britain published last week
in the International Relations Section of The Nation are
printed below. The first note, dated July 17, is in reply to
the Allied ultimatum of July 11, received in Russia on July
12, and appeared as a dispatch from Moscow in the London
Herald for July 22.
The Russian Soviet Government is the more pleased to
acknowledge the declaration of the British Government of its
desire to contribute to the establishment of a general peace in
eastern Europe, as even quite recently, at the time when the
complications between Russia and Poland were developing which
led to the Polish advance against Russia and the Ukraine, the
British Government unfortunately did not manifest the same
desire to contribute to the cause of. peace in eastern Europe.
Earlier, also — namely, at the time when Soviet Russia was
trying to obtain peace with the border states — the British Gov-
ernment did not support the attainment of this aim, and again
when the Esthonian Government was preparing to conclude
peace with Soviet Russia in December of last year it received
a warning in the name of the Supreme Council.
The present change in the attitude of Great Britain on the
question of peace between Soviet Russia and other states is in
complete harmony with the wishes of Soviet Russia, whose
desire to live in peace with all other states, to which reference
is made in the last communication of the British Government,
remains firm and unalterable.
Regarding Poland, likewise, in spite of the latter's wanton
aggression against the Soviet Republic, Soviet Russia remains
as faithful as before to the principles she has proclaimed so
often, and to her earnest desire of establishing peaceful rela-
tions with all peoples.
The question, however, of the cessation of the armed struggle
between Russia and Poland will be unfavorably influenced by
the fact that on the part of the Polish Government there has
been no direct declaration to the Soviet Government regarding
its wish to conclude peace. Numerous utterances of representa-
tives of the Polish people have come to the knowledge of the
Soviet Government in which they express themselves in an
extremely bitter sense as to the British Government's political
action on this question, and information has been likewise pub-
lished in the press as to a decision of the Polish Diet to reject
the proposal of an armistice with Soviet Russia. The Soviet
Government must, therefore, consider with some caution such
proposals so far as they do not come directly from the govern-
ment concerned and as long as the danger subsists that the
attitude of the Polish Government will not correspond to the
declarations of other governments which speak in its name.
The necessity of a direct communication from the Polish Gov-
ernment to the Soviet Government in this case is the more
urgent as the past attitude of the British Government in the
conflict between Poland and Russia can hardly be considered as
a reason for assuming the role of mediator between these two
governments.
If at the time when the Polish republic was preparing its
wanton aggression against Russia and the Ukraine the British
Government not only made no attempts at hindering this aggres-
sion, but even Jeft without any answer the communication of the
Soviet Government to the Entente Governments on this ques-
tion; if at the time when the Polish offensive has had, as a
result, military disaster for Poland, the British Government
tries to assume the role of mediator in order to suspend the
hostilities that have become so disastrous for Poland, the posi-
tion which results for the British Government from this line
of action is such that it deprives it of the role of an impartial
third party which would alone render possible its mediation
between the belligerents.
It is necessary to remind the British Government, likewise,
that it has itself described the state created by the adoption by
Russia of its memorandum of July 1 as a state of armistice, and
that it has therefore described itself in this way as a belligerent
waging war against Soviet Russia — a fact that can in no way
create a normal basis for the recognition of its role of mediator
between Soviet Russia and another belligerent.
Regarding the British Government, the Russian Government
has in its answer to the memorandum of July 1 made an abso-
lutely conciliatory declaration, including the acceptance of all
the demands of the British Government. It has thus shown its
anxious desire to remove completely all conflicts and to obtain a
definite peace with Great Britain. It desires likewise to estab-
lish peace with Poland, and in the attainment of this aim it
considers direct negotiations with Poland without any "im-
mixion" from outside as necessary as direct negotiations with
Great Britain in its relations with the latter.
The Soviet Government is the less inclined to accept the
proposed mediation for the negotiations with Poland as the
reconciliation with Poland (which it earnestly desires) can only
be hampered in such a case, in view of the subordinate position
which Poland's interest and fate, in comparison with interests
foreign to Poland, are occupying in the domain of relations
between Soviet Russia and a third Power.
With a frankness which can alone completely remove all
misunderstandings between the two governments, the Soviet
Government ventures to recall to the British Government that
when one of its members defended in the House of Commons
the help given to Denikin and Kolchak he justified this line of
action of the Government by the argument that the struggle of
Denikin and Kolchak against the Soviet Government presumably
helped toward the defense of India and of British interests in
Asia; in general, against the dangers which are alleged to
threaten them.
Not long ago, when the head of the British Government was
negotiating with the head of the Russian Trade Delegation
regarding the resumption of trade relations, he referred to the
relations between Russia and the numerous other states as to
facts that can have some influence upon the commercial rela-
tions between Russia and Great Britain.
The Soviet Government is of opinion that reconciliation with
Poland can be successfully accomplished only in case the inter-
ests of both parties are taken into consideration, seeing that
these interests can easily be reconciled ; and this aim will be, on
the contrary, extremely hard to attain if these interests are
subordinated to the interests of a third Power.
The laboring masses of Russia desire full and complete recon-
ciliation with Poland, and in order to attain this aim the Soviet
Government considers it necessary to remove from the action of
reconciliation all that does not belong to the interests and desires
of the two peoples and governments.
In the matter of reconciliation with Poland the Soviet Gov-
ernment finds it necessary to consider, besides the interests and
desires of the Russian laboring masses, only the interests and
desires of the Polish laboring masses, and it finds it therefore
possible to attain peace with Poland only through direct nego-
tiations with the latter.
It must also point out that it has already obtained, without
foreign "immixion," complete reconciliation with three neighbor-
ing states, and that Esthonia has concluded peace with Russia
in spite of the warning of the Supreme Council; that the treaty
between Russia and Georgia has been, at the moment of the
negotiations between the head of the Russian Trade Delegation
and the head of the British Government, a complete surprise
for the latter; and that the British Government was deprived
of all information regarding the peace between Russia and
Lithuania when, in its ultimatum of July 12, it pointed to
226
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2877
Lithuania as to one of the border states with which Russia has
still to obtain peace. The Soviet Government thinks that it
can, with the same success, obtain peace with Poland through
direct negotiations as it did with three other neighboring states.
The Soviet Government considers still less admissible the
interference in the cause of peace between Russia and Poland of
the group of governments called the League of Nations, whose
covenant is quoted by the British Government in its ultimatum
on July 12.
The Russian Government has never received from the so-called
League of Nations any communication as to its creation and
existence, and it has never had the opportunity of adopting a
decision about the recognition or non-recognition of this asso-
ciation of states.
When acquainting itself from unofficial press sources with the
covenant of the so-called League of Nations, the Soviet Govern-
ment could not leave unnoticed the fact that, according to
Article 17, the non-members in case of a conflict with members
of the so-called League of Nations can be invited to submit to
its decision as if they were members. The Soviet Government
can in no way agree that one group of Powers should assume
the role of supreme body over all the states of the world; and
watching over the full inviolability of the sovereign rights of
the Russian laboring people the Soviet Government absolutely
rejects the pretensions of any foreign groups of Powers claim-
ing to assume the role of supreme masters of the fate of other
nations. It absolutely rejects, therefore, every "immixion" of
this association in the cause of peace between Russia and Poland.
Direct negotiations with Poland are in full harmony with
the wishes of the Soviet Government, and it declares, therefore,
that if the Polish Government addresses to Russia a proposal to
enter into peace negotiations, the Soviet Government will not
reject its proposal, and will also consider in the most friendly
spirit any subsidiary proposal as to an armistice or some other
means intended to facilitate peace negotiations.
The Soviet Government also expresses its willingness to agree
to a territorial frontier more favorable for the Polish people
than the frontiers indicated by the Supreme Council in Decem-
ber last, and proposed once more by the British Government in
its ultimatum of July 12.
The Soviet Government cannot leave without notice the fact
that this frontier was elaborated by the Supreme Council in
some parts under the pressure of counter-revolutionary Russian
elements, adherents of the Russian capitalist and landed class,
and that, for example, as to the region of Kholm, the decision
of the Supreme Council clearly reflected the influence of these
counter-revolutionary elements and followed the wishes of the
anti-Polish policy of the Czarist and Russian imperialist capi-
talist class on this question.
Soviet Russia is willing, in general, as to the peace conditions
with Poland, to meet the wishes and interests of the Polish
people the more fully, the more the Polish people in its internal
life enter upon the path creating a solid basis for really frater-
nal relations between the laboring masses of Poland, Russia,
Ukraine, White Russia, and Lithuania, and create guaranties
that Poland will cease to be an instrument of aggression and
intrigue against the workers and peasants of Soviet Russia and
other countries.
As a separate proposal, the British Government has put forth
the idea of an armistice between Russia and the mutinous ex-
General Wrangel. The Soviet Government, however, cannot
shut its eyes upon the indissoluble connection between the mili-
tary operations of Wrangel, which were supported by the
Entente Powers, and the Polish campaign against Russia and
the Ukraine. This close connection found its expression in the
negotiations and the military agreement between Wrangel and
the representatives of the Polish Government.
Wrangcl's offensive, which coincided with the advance of the
li army in the Ukraine, was only a subsidiary military
maneuver aiming at rendering more difficult the struggle of the
Russian and Ukrainian troops against the Polish aggressor, and
at facilitating the latter's task. The army and administration
of Wrangel, being almost completely deprived of sources of
revenue of their own, exist almost entirely with the financial
help received from some Entente Powers.
His military operations are carried out exclusively with the
help of the war material sent by these Powers. This war ma-
terial is brought to him on British ships or from harbors under
British occupation, and the proposal itself regarding Wrangel
in the British ultimatum of July 12, in which the British Gov-
ernment decides for Wrangel that he will come to London for
the discussion of the fate of his troops, shows with complete
evidence that he is only a subordinate agent of the British
Government and partly of its Allies.
The Soviet Government, in its wish to obtain peace with the
British Government, and wishing to meet the latter's desires,
confirms once more its willingness to guarantee personal safety
to the mutinous ex-General Wrangel, to all persons belonging
to his army, and to the refugees under his protection, on the
condition of immediate and full capitulation and of surrender to
the Soviet authorities of all the territory he occupies and of
all the war material, stores, buildings, means of communication,
and so on in his power on the same terms as was proposed
by the Soviet Government with reference to the Northern Gov-
ernment of the ex-General Miller.
The Soviet Government cannot, however, remain indifferent
to the repeated attempts of the British Government to transform
the Crimean peninsula into an inviolable permanent asylum
for the mutinous general and for other mutineers who in fact
are the British Government's subordinate agents, and thus
really to render the Crimean peninsula a British dependency.
It is impossible not to mention that, at the time when the
Archangel and the Murmansk region was in the same subordi-
nate position to Britain, the British authorities ruled there
unrestrained and acted as the Supreme Power, devastating the
whole region, wasting its natural resources, and exporting to
Britain as much as possible of its riches.
The bearer of the will and the representative of the interests
of the Russian laboring people, the Soviet Government, cannot
remain indifferent to any violation of its vital interests and
of the inviolability of its territory, and it protests most strongly
against the attempt of Great Britain to annex in fact the Cri-
mean peninsula.
It must also be pointed out that the present proposal of the
British Government is a violation of its preceding proposal,
which became an obligation, after having been adopted by the
Soviet Government, regarding the cessation of any help and
support to ex-General Wrangel. The Soviet Government is,
therefore, of opinion that the greatest possible concession on
its part — a concession which is the outcome of its anxious desire
to come to terms with the British Government — is its willing-
ness to agree to the capitulation of the ex-General Wrangel and
of his troops, with the guaranty of their personal safety.
The Soviet Government thinks that the proposal to convoke
in London a conference of representatives of Russia, Poland,
Lithuania, Latvia, and Finland is the outcome of insufficient
information of the British Government as to the relations be-
tween the Russian republic and her neighbors. The peace
treaty between Russia and Lithuania was signed on July 12,
and the negotiations between Russia and Latvia, and Russia
and Finland are being carried on independently without foreign
interference, and their further continuance on the same lines is
the best pledge of their successful result.
Being animated with the most earnest desire to put an end
to all conflicts between Russia and Great Britain and to the
struggle between them, and to obtain a definite peace with Great
Britain, the Soviet Government rests its hopes upon the delega-
tion which it sends to London, with additional members, for the
purpose of carrying on negotiations with the British Govern-
ment on the basis of the British memorandum of July 1, and
of the reply of the Soviet Government of July 7, in order to
obtain a full agreement with Great Britain. This aim will be
August 21, 1920]
The Nation
227
attained the more successfully if all new and strange elements
which can only do harm to the beginning of an improvement in
the relations between Russia and Great Britain are kept aside.
(Signed) Chicherin, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs
Lord Curzon's reply was dispatched on July 23.
His Majesty's Government have given their best consideration
to the reply by the Soviet Government of Russia to their note
of July 11. . . .
The Soviet Government has declared its readiness to consider
in the most friendly spirit an armistice with Poland as a first
step toward the establishment of a final peace. They have also
declared their readiness to concede a frontier not less favorable
to Poland than the ethnographical frontier originally suggested
by the Supreme Council.
It is true they have accompanied these declarations with an
expression of their strong objections to allowing the negotia-
tions with regard either to the armistice or the peace to be
entered upon by any governments but those representing Soviet
Russia on the one side and Poland on the other.
This, however, is not a point on which his Majesty's Govern-
ment have the least desire to insist, if the Soviet Government
adhere to their objection. They only proposed that the con-
ference should meet in London because they thought that it
would bring Russia into relations with the Peace Conference,
and so pave the way to a better understanding between Russia
and the outer world.
What they desire is that the negotiations should be carried
out in good faith, and without delay; that the frontier between
Russia and Poland should correspond, as far as possible, to the
wishes of the populations concerned; and that a permanent
peace should be established between Poland and her eastern
neighbor which would secure the cessation of hostilities and the
abstention on the part of either nation from any interference
in the internal policy of the other.
In order, therefore, to bring matters to a clear issue, the
Polish Government have been urged by the Allies immediately
to initiate negotiations for armistice and for peace.
If, however, despite a request for an armistice from the
Polish Government, the Soviet armies continue to advance, the
British Government and its Allies must necessarily assume that
it is the intention of the Soviet Government to make war on
the Polish people, and will, in conjunction with their Allies, give
to Poland the assistance and support they have promised in
that event.
Further, they must make it clear that the negotiations for
the resumption of trade between Russia and the British Empire
cannot be usefully pursued if Soviet Russia invades Poland,
and they have, therefore, telegraphed to Messrs. Kamenev and
Krassin to delay their departure from Reval until an armistice
has been agreed to.
On July 24 the Soviet Government replied as follows:
The Soviet Government expresses its willingness to meet the
desire of the British Government to convene a conference for
the purpose of establishing a definite agreement between Russia
and the Powers which participate in hostile actions against her
or support such, and is of opinion that such a conference ought
to be composed of representatives of Russia and of the leading
Powers of the Entente.
The Soviet Government agrees that this conference should be
called together in London.
It makes known at the same time to the British Government
that orders have been given to the Russian military command
to meet the Polish parliamentaires and to begin with them
pourparlers relative to an armistice and peace.
The Soviet Government cannot refrain from expressing its
astonishment at the demand of the British Government for the
suspension of trade negotiations after the adoption by the
Soviet Government of all its proposals which were the condi-
tions for the opening of these negotiations, seeing [that none of
these conditions have] been violated by the Soviet Government.
The latter thinks that the establishment of durable, peaceful,
and friendly relations will be extremely difficult if agreements,
once adopted, are violated on the following day, or left unheeded,
or if conditions already accepted are, after the adoption of
the agreement, supplemented by new and unexpected conditions
not stipulated before.
The Soviet Government expresses the hope that the British
Government will henceforth adhere immutably to the principles
laid down in the British memorandum of July 1 and in the reply
of the Soviet Government of July 7, and will abstain in future
from any violations of this agreement or from adding to the
latter new conditions not provided for therein.
The Soviet Government, for its part, strictly adhering to the
declarations laid down in its note of July 17, expects that before
the beginning of the above conference, the surrender of ex-
General Wrangel and of his military force will have been
carried through, on the conditions of securing personal safety
to him, his adherents, and the fugitives under his protection,
and of the transference to the Soviet power of all territory
under his control, as well as of all war material, stores, means
of communication, and vessels now in his hands.
From the Socialists of Siberia
THE joint conference at Vladivostok of the Socialist
parties of eastern Siberia adopted the following appeal
addressed to the workers of the world.
The toiling masses of Russia have had hard trials to go
through. In the world war the Russian people have sacrificed
more than any of the other belligerent peoples. The incapable,
mercenary Czarist government, rotten to the very core, had
brought the country to terrible ruin even before the Revolution.
Then came the evils of two years of military intervention. . . .
The civil war, made possible by the fact of intervention, has
brought our country to complete ruin. It has enveloped the
great territory of Russia in fire, has almost completely destroyed
our means of transportation, thereby thoroughly paralyzing our
industries and creating a situation very menacing not only to
us, but to all of you as well, since you are unable to obtain much
that it has to offer and which is of great necessity to you —
namely, food supplies for your peoples and raw materials for
the rebuilding of your industries.
The Allied military intervention is nearing its end. Al-
most all the countries intervening have withdrawn their troops
from Russia, declaring that they will no longer support the
reactionary troops there. Though the declarations of your gov-
ernments came rather late, since they were made after all the
reactionary forces throughout Russia had suffered complete
defeat, still it is better late than never. For now we have hopes
that our country will be able to begin peaceful, constructive work.
We are highly appreciative of the great service that you have
rendered us in this struggle. If the Russian counter-revolution
and Allied intervention failed, it was not only due to the perse-
verance and heroism of our revolutionary people, who rose to
the defense of their country, purged in the fire of revolution,
but it was also due to the support which you lent us. . . .
There is, however, a corner in Russia where the end of our
sufferings is not in sight and they threaten to assume a form
unknown even in the history of our trials. Japan, having begun
its intervention in Russia together with the other nations, is
not only not following the example of its allies by withdrawing
its troops from the territory of the Far East, but is even show-
ing no intention of doing so. On the contrary, it is continuing
to increase its forces here by landing military transports daily.
On January 31, 1920, the reactionary rule was overthrown
in the Far East and a democratic provisional government was
formed until the reunion with the rest of Russia could take
place. The new government met with the solid support not only
of all the Socialist parties and elements, but also of the bour-
228
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2877
geois groups, who have finally reconciled themselves to the idea
that there is no other road to the regeneration of this border-
land than by rejoining central Soviet Russia. The Japanese
diplomatic representatives and military authorities here have
been pretending that they wish to keep up friendly relations
with the new government.
However, on the night of April 4, a few hours after peaceful
assurances were hypocritically made by the official representa-
tives of Japan, the Japanese suddenly attacked our unsuspect-
ing military forces throughout the Province from Vladivostok
to Habarovsk. Without any declaration of war, without any
warning, they began to shoot up and batter down the army bar-
racks, murderously bayonetting the soldiers who were sleeping
there. Having disarmed some of the troops and compelling the
rest to withdraw to the hills, they began to make arrests among
the peaceful population. Many of the unfortunates who fell
into the clutches of the Japanese imperialists have had to go
through the tortures of the Middle Ages. Peaceful citizens are
being exposed to beatings and insults by Japanese soldiery.
The trade unions and workers' organizations have been crushed.
The conditions the Far East is going through at present cannot
be compared with those of the most terrible war. In a state of
war, laws, however severe, still exist; while the population of
the Far East is not protected by any laws but is left entirely
at the mercy of the Japanese military clique. Those who seem
undesirable to the Japanese are declared by them to be Bol-
sheviki or Korean revolutionaries, which is synonymous with
being outlawed. They are trying to explain away their atroci-
ties by maintaining that the Russians were the ones who
attacked them first. But this is a lie, and not only every Rus-
sian here is convinced of its being so, but every foreigner as
well. They are putting in circulation this falsehood with an
attempt to justify before the civilized world their treacherous
and barbarous methods.
Life in the Far East is dying away completely. The railroads
have not been functioning for many weeks, because the railway-
men are being terrorized, abused, and brutalized by the Japanese
soldiers. The workers quit the factories and go to the hills.
They go there to get away from the horrors that are reigning
in the places occupied by the Japanese troops, and prefer death
in an unequal fight to the affronts and insults that are awaiting
them here.
We appeal to you, workers of the world! You have assisted
us before in our struggles with the international intervention
and reaction. You must help us to end our revolutionary fight
victoriously. Japan sent her troops to Siberia together with
the other interventionists. The governments of all those coun-
tries that participated in the intervention bear responsibility for
the horrors that we are enduring here at the hands of Japan.
Demand of your governments energetically to interfere and
compel Japan to withdraw her troops, thus sparing the popula-
tion of the Far East the terrors of the Middle Ages. . . .
We do not want war. We want to live and labor peacefully.
We shall build our lives ourselves, as we see fit.
We aim to reunite with the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet
Republic and with you, workers of all countries!
The fate of the Russian Revolution shall reflect upon the fate
of the world's democracy!
We expect an active, forceful response to our fraternal call to
the workers of the world.
Bureau of all Socialist Organizations of the Far East
Vladivostok, May 9, 1920
(Srarijrrs' Agfttrirs
rHE FISK TEACHERS' AGENCY
Everett O. Fisk & Co., Proprietors.
Boston, 2a Park Street.
New York, 225 Fifth Ave.
Syracuse, 402 Dillaye Bid.
Pittsburg, 549 Un. Arcade
Birmingham, SOS Title Bid
Chicago, 814 Steger Bids.
Denver, 317 Masonic Bldp.
Portland, 509 Journal Bids.
Berkeley, 2101 Shattuck Av.
Los Anreles. 510 Spring St.
Send to any address above for registration form.
Harlan P. Frbnch, Pros.
W. W. Andrews, Sec.
ALBANY TEACHERS' AGENCY, Inc.
Supplies Schools and Colleges with Competent Teach-
ers. Assists Teachers in obtaining positions. Seud
for Bulletin. SI Chapel Street. Albany, N. Y.
Jnurntefffd Hnrntts
ONE or two attractively furnished rooms,
quiet, newly renovated private house for
select tenants— 62 E. 123 St.
The Truth About the
Lusk Committee
A Report of the Legislative
Committee of the People's
Freedom Union
In Pamphlet Form
25c
Order copies through the
Circulation Department
The Nation
20 Vesey Street, New York, N. V.
Notice to
Foreign Subscribers
Subscribers residing in foreign coun-
tries are requested to make remittance
by international money-order, or draft,
payable in New York, so that subscrip-
tions may be entered promptly.
Circulation Department
The Nation
Children's
School
For boys and girls from 2 to 11 years
The aim of the school is to pre-
pare each child for a complete
life, both as an individual and as
a member of the social group.
All-day activities make best use
of advantages of city life. Hot
lunches served. Afternoon trips
in connection with school work.
Athletic field ; swimming ; large
roof playground ; carpentry shop ;
auditorium for music and dancing ;
outdoor nature study ; art and
Indian craft work. Particular at-
tention to spoken French and
Science. Write for booklet.
Margaret Naumburg
Director
32-34 West 68th Street, New York
Studies in History, Economics and
Public Law
Edited by he Faculty of Political
Science of Columbia University
No. 205 PRISON METHODS IN NEW
YORK STATE
By PHILIP KLEIN, Ph.D. '
paper covers, $3.50
No. 207 THE INFLUENCE OF
OVERSEA EXPANSION ON ENG-
LAND TO 1700
By JAMES E. GILLESPIE, Ph.D.
paper covers, $3.00
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., Publishers
FOURTH AVE. AND 30TH STREET
NEW YORK
Spanish Books
Spanish Dailies and Periodicals
wholesale ALL SUBJECTS retail
COMPANIA HISPANO-AMERICANA
156 West 14th St., cor. 7th Ave., N. Y.
BOOKS Everybody
At 30 Church Street
AH the new books, fiction
and non-fiction. Seta, fln»
bindings, rare books.
At 55 Vesey Street
A big stock of new and
second-hand books to suit
every purse.
HONOR US WITH A VISIT
McDEVITT- WILSON'S, Inc.,
Booksellers Publishers Importers
30 Church St. New York 55 Vesey St.
Cortlandt 1779 Phones Cortlandt 498
The Nation
FOUNDED 18 66
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 1920
No. 2878
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 229
EDITORIALS :
Take Every Empty House ! 232
The New War Drive • 233
A New England Wayside 233
Catalogues for Reading 234
The Shop Committee 234
SELF-DETERMINING HAITI. I. THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION
By James Weldon Johnson 236
THE SOVIET DOMESTIC PROGRAM. By Henry G. Alsberg 238
THE FARMER BUTTS BACK. By Arthur Warner 240
IRELAND'S REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. By James Carty 241
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE FORTY-EIGHTERS. By Swinburne
Hale 243
NIGHTS AND DAYS. By James Rorty 244
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 245
CORRESPONDENCE 245
BOOKS:
Appraising the Peace Conference. By William MacDonald 246
Woman's Fine Frenzy. By M. V. D 247
Shakespeare Unidentified. By Joseph Krutch 248
Documents pour Servir. By Samuel C. Chew 249
The Far East for Chambers of Commerce. By Frederick O'Brien 250
The Place of Science. By H. A. Overstreet 250
Books in Brief 251
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION:
More Notes to Russia 253
The Proposed Convention with Haiti 253
The Haitian Counter-Project 253
The Haitian-United States Convention 254
The New Constitution of Haiti 255
The Haitian President's Proclamation 255
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER LEWIS S. GANNETT
LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Adress : Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising : Swathmore Press, Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
IT is difficult to believe that the journey of the thirty-one
anti-suffrage members of the Tennessee House to Ala-
bama, and their subsequent entertainment in that State by
means of red roses and automobile tours, is anything but
the third act of a musical comedy. However, the Tennessee
legislators doubtless mean to be taken seriously, and their
action in breaking a quorum in the House, together with the
injunction restraining Governor Roberts or any State official
from transmitting Tennessee's ratification of the suffrage
amendment to Secretary Colby, will possibly be efficacious in
postponing the operation of the amendment until after elec-
tion. The principle embodied in the objection of the "antis"
that the State Constitution prohibits the ratification of an
amendment to the Federal Constitution by the State Legisla-
ture until it has been submitted to the people has already
been raised in Ohio, and has been declared invalid by the
United States Supreme Court. But court action is notori-
ously slow, and Election Day is less than three months away.
Meanwhile the outlook for ratification in any other State is
not encouraging. Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South
Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Louisiana —
almost the solid South — have voted against the measure.
The Governors of Vermont, Connecticut, and Florida have
refused to call special sessions of their Legislatures. The
amendment has been tabled in North Carolina until 1921.
Tennessee was about the last hope for next November, and
though the indomitable suffrage leaders have not given up,
apparently Tennessee is not eager for the honor of being the
thirty-sixth and deciding State. The fight that began in
1848 with the calling of the first Woman's Rights Convention
is not over yet. The Suffragists must surely have learned
patience by this time, though in striving to establish in
America so elementary a principle of democracy as political
equality irrespective of sex, patience can no longer be re-
garded as a virtue, but as a shameful necessity.
AS usual the public is left, floundering in a welter »f con-
tradictory reports, at the mercy of war offices, news
agencies, and propaganda bureaus which will not or dare not
or cannot give the truth about Russia and Poland. The
Polish war office at Warsaw has been driving the Russians
back all along the front; the Soviet mission at London has
been driving the Poles back at every point; the military
expert attached to the Soviet Bureau at New York described
last week's withdrawal of Russian troops from Warsaw as a
"strategic retreat" calculated to draw the Polish forces out
from the defended limits of the city ; and where in all this is
the truth to be found? Is the routing of the Reds another
vision created by the will to believe that dominates the minds
of the statesmen and journalists of Europe? Or is the drive
against Warsaw really thwarted and the fear of a Red
Poland finally dispelled? ■ Only the passing of days will let
us hear the truth, but we should scrutinize the reports with
a skeptical eye. Meanwhile American policy seems to be
hanging on the tough though slender thread of Mr. Wilson's
obstinacy. If Paul Hanna is right in his statement in the
New York Call that the recent "Colby" note on American
policy was opposed by the entire staff of the Department of
State, including Mr. Colby himself, the American people are
being committed to a humiliating and shameful policy by the
unsupported decision of an irresponsible autocrat.
IT is necessary for the official propaganda of the Allies
to demonstrate that the present plight of Poland is due
to a deliberate policy of assault and conquest planned long
in advance by the Soviet Government. Thus the correspon-
dent of the Associated Press, cabling from Warsaw on
July 22, reported that "the plans of the Russian Soviet
Government for controlling Poland's population in connec-
tion with the offensive aimed at conquering the Polish Re-
public were made more than a month ago, according to
Russian newspapers reaching Warsaw dated June 11." The
correspondent quoted verbatim from the official Isvestia of
Moscow for June 11 the text of detailed instructions to
Soviet officials concerning the measures which they were
to take "against the entire Polish population . . . for
230
The Nation
[Vol. ill, No. 2878
their complete extermination as a nation." This dispatch
was printed in the New York Sun of July 23 and, no doubt,
in many other newspapers, and must have contributed pow-
erfully to confirm countless readers in their conviction of
the essential wickedness of the Bolsheviki. It was excellent
propaganda in support of the official version of the Russian
march into Poland, combining evidence of predatory intent
with an advance story of atrocities to come. It had the
uncommon merit, moreover, of quoting a document and a
date. Unfortunately for the story, however, the Isvestia
for June 11 on file at the New York Library does not contain
the document quoted in the dispatch.
ACCORDING to Representative Isaac Siegel of New
York, chairman of the Reapportionment Committee of
the House of Representatives, the Committee intends to take
up at the next session of Congress the question of reducing
the representation in the House of those States in which,
in violation of the Federal Constitution, the right of citizens
to vote is denied. The Fourteenth Amendment provides
that "when the right to vote at any election for the choice
of electors for President and Vice-President of the United
States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judi-
cial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature
thereof, is denied to any of the male members of such State,
being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United
States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in
rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein
shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such
male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens
twenty-one years of age in such State." The "basis of rep-
resentation" is the number of persons necessary, under the
decennial apportionment, to entitle a State +o a Representa-
tive. The present "Federal ratio," as it is commonly called,
based upon the census of 1910, is one member for 211,877
of population. Since, under the Fifteenth Amendment,
Negroes as such cannot be disfranchised, the Southern
States, which as a whole do not allow Negroes to vote, have
accomplished their practical disfranchisement by imposing
literacy tests which disfranchise great numbers of whites
also. The question is not, accordingly, solely one affecting
the Negro ; it involves the right of a State which is content
to allow thousands of its population to grow up illiterate to
enjoy the same representation in Congress which is accorded
to States which make a proper provision for education. What
oligarchical government means in the South is shown by the
fact that whereas one person in four votes in Indiana, the
proportion in the South as a whole is one to seventeen, and
in South Carolina and Mississippi one to thirty. Virginia,
with a population of about 2,230,000, cast only 153,990 votes
in 1916. It is to be hoped that the Reapportionment Com-
mittee will have the nerve to lay the situation wide open.
IF the London Times is right in its understanding regard-
ing British intentions in Egypt, a great triumph will
have been scored for unflinching loyalty to principle and a
brave reliance upon national unity rather than upon violence.
Throughout the war Egypt patiently endured the British
protectorate, only more oppressive than the previous thirty-
odd years of British occupation, in the firm faith that the
winning of a war for self-determination would automatically
insure the self-determination of Egypt. The armistice
brought no relief; the Peace Conference paid no attention
to the pleas of the Egyptian national delegation ; the military
methods of the British occupation took on all the aspects of
atrocity that make forcible subjection invariably a horror.
By means that could not have been put into effect without
the solid support of the population, high and low, by a boy-
cott of the Milner mission and a steady and for the most
part peaceful resistance to British measures, the Egyptian
nationalists have proved their unflinching will to be free.
The British press has habitually characterized Egyptian
nationalism as an unreal sentiment fostered and exploited
by self-seeking agitators who meant little that they said. If
the report published in the London Times is correct and
Egypt is to be granted its independence, with minor restric-
tions guarding Britain's "privileged position" in the valley
of the Nile and in the Suez Canal zone, the Government will
have vindicated the contentions of all the nationalists and
crowned the steady labor in Europe of Said Zagloul Pasha,
most persjstent and outspoken of Egyptian "agitators."
British honor, too, will have received a restorative it much
needed, and one of the most outrageous clauses of the Treaty
of Versailles will have preceded the other outrageous clauses
of the treaty into the diplomatic discard.
AS a government employee, public opinion and the head
of his department deny the postman the right to
strike. But this is not enough; Postmaster General Burle-
son decrees also that he may not even talk about his trou-
bles. Eleven postal clerks, officers of the Chicago Post Office
Clerks' Union, have been threatened with dismissal from the
service on a charge of publishing advertisements in the
newspapers appealing to the public for aid in adjusting
their grievances in regard to wages and hours, and of solicit-
ing funds for these advertisements. Resolutions were passed
by the postal employees at a mass meeting in Chicago on
August 8, protesting against such action and asking that
Congress create a Civil Service Court of Appeals to insure
a fair hearing in cases of disputes between Civil Service
employees and department executives. It seems little enough
to ask; but probably Mr. Burleson will consider it unwar-
rantable impudence.
IT would be a pure waste of time to discuss seriously Mr.
Lloyd George's latest proposal for settling, or beginning
to settle, the Irish question. * No honest person believes any
longer that Mr. Lloyd George really means anything that he
says on any subject, or, if inadvertently he does mean it,
that he may not be saying something quite the opposite a
few days later. That he does not expect anything important
to come of his recent deliverance is evident enough from
the fact that he has gone off to Switzerland for a holiday,
instead of staying at home as he should and working for
peace in Ireland with all his might and main. The only
thing the overwhelming majority of the Irish people want —
independence — he is opposed to giving them on any terms.
The only thing a very large majority of the Irish people
would probably accept — self-government within the Empire
akin to that which Canada or Australia now enjoys — he can-
not mention without besmearing it with qualifications and
exceptions and sops to Carson until no one can tell what it
is really like. Meantime the Mayor of Cork, Mr. Terence
MacSweeney, one of the most attractive personalities in the
whole Sinn Fein contingent, has been sentenced to prison
for two years for constructive treason and is on hunger
August 28, 1920]
The Nation
231
strike ; mails are being rifled of their official contents in all
parts of Ireland ; the boycott of Belfast is on ; and the Royal
Irish Constabulary are amusing themselves and helping Sinn
Fein by shooting up the towns. Everyone will hope that Mr.
Lloyd George may enjoy his vacation and come back a better
man. He may rest assured that Sinn Fein will do all it can
during his absence to plant the fear of God in his heart. '
THE voting strength of the United States in the League
of Nations is about twelve votes, not one, we are told
by Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democratic vice-presidential
candidate, who is reported by the Associated Press as de-
claring in Butte, Montana, that President Wilson "put one
over" on Premier Lloyd George because the United States
has the vote of Haiti and Santo Domingo, Panama, Cuba,
and Central American countries. "Until last week," con-
tinued Mr. Roosevelt, "I had two of them myself, and now
Secretary Daniels has them. You know I had something
to do with the running of a couple of little republics. The
fact is that I wrote Haiti's constitution myself, and if I do
say it, I think it is a pretty good constitution." In this
jaunty sally we have the first public admission by a high
administration official of the rape of Haiti and Santo Do-
mingo and of our proprietorship of the Central American
republics. The Nation's recent articles by Mr. Herbert J.
Seligmann on Haiti and by Mr. Lewis S. Gannett on Santo
Domingo revealed some of the imperialism that has been
masqued by the idealistic Wilsonian verbiage and a real-
istic naval censorship. In the current issue begins a series
of articles by Mr. James Weldon Johnson, a veteran in the
American Consular service, which bares the overthrow of
an inoffensive sister republic. So President Wilson "put
one over on Lloyd George"? Well, Mr. Wilson has not yet
"put over" his League on the American people, although he
has certainly succeeded in "putting over" the most com-
plete sabotage of our ideals and traditions that this republic
has suffered in one hundred and forty-four years of its
national existence.
THE mere recital of the known facts in the cases of Haiti
and Santo Domingo vs. the United States constitutes
a damning indictment. Every principle painstakingly es-
tablished by the makers of our history, which has given us
a just pride and thrill to call American, has after especial
elaboration and sublimation by President Wilson himself
been scrapped, making American pretensions and good faith
a mockery throughout the world. Here, at least, is an issue
which the Republicans, with a highly creditable record of
performance in Cuba, could make their own during the cam-
paign. Whether they will do it, whether their own skirts
are sufficiently clear of the financial mire to which the
Caribbean trail leads, remains to be seen. But certainly
there could be no more effective way of showing up the
hollow sham embodied in the Wilson League — with its false
promises of peace, self-determination, disarmament, univer-
sal justice — than by contrasting Wilsonian words about the
promised world with Wilsonian deeds in a small section of
it. Its inhabitants, says the President's spokesman, Mr.
Roosevelt, regard Uncle Sam as a guardian and big brother.
Dr. Dernburg used to tell how happy the Belgians were
under German rule. Lift the censorship, Mr. Roosevelt, for
transgressing which three Dominicans are now being court-
martialed, and you will find that you have caused Uncle
Sam to be regarded as a blackguard and a bully.
THE probable failure of the Republicans and Democrats
to fuse in three of the districts which sent Socialists to
the New York State Legislature last year, while in the two
remaining districts — where a fusion has been arranged —
the Socialist candidates were elected previously in spite of
a combination against them, makes the reelection of the five
ousted members almost certain. Already the Republican
majority is laying plans to exclude them from the special
session, which is only being called, they claim, to plague
them over this same little matter of unseating Socialists.
To avoid the painful necessity of a trial they hope to be able
merely to ratify the action of the previous session and un-
seat the Socialists by resolution. The up-State districts,
according to the solemn pronouncement of Senator Walters,
majority leader, have been stirred to an even stronger oppo-
sition to the presence of the Socialists in the Assembly by
the Polish-Russian War. Thus have world events swept
aside provincialism in State politics! The whole country
should keep its eyes on the proceedings in New York. The
issue at stake is not the mere question of allowing five men
to perform the duties of the office to which they have been
elected. The issue goes even beyond the right of the people
to be represented in the Legislature. It involves the very
right of a political party to exist, and it must finally be
fought out on that ground. If the Socialist Party is abol-
ished as a political organization in New York State; if the
people of those districts which elect Socialists are left,
against their will, unrepresented; if the vote is no longer a
valid weapon, what is to be the result? Let us admit frankly
that the result will be direct action. With complete reliance
on the most cherished traditions of American history, the
disfranchised inhabitants of the unrepresented districts in
New York can act on the theory that "taxation without rep-
resentation is tyranny," and can decline to pay any further
State taxes until the free use of the ballot is restored to
them.
WHETHER the fusion against radicalism as repre-
sented by Socialists and Nonpartisan Leaguers is
carried out on the wide scale that the major parties have
threatened is a matter of small importance. The interesting
fact is the smooth and perfect amalgam made when such
fusion takes place. Those persons who are guileless enough
to be lured by brazen headlines into reading the utterances
of the Democratic and Republican candidates for the presi-
dency are probably also guileless enough to be deceived by
the stern denunciation of the opposing party which each of
these candidates emits. It must hurt and shock such per-
sons when the two parties, theoretically straining at each
other's throats from opposite poles of principle and opinion,
drown their boasted differences with such obvious ease in
the face of threatened danger. The fact is, of course, that
the Republican and Democratic parties have no differences
to sink except in choice of candidates; and when fusion is
not accomplished it is because of this one real stumbling
block. If Socialists or Nonpartisan candidates win in the
face of a coalition against them, they have won twice over,
while if they barely lose they will be held in the minds of
the public to have won the election if not the office. By
their fusion the major parties admit two things : the empti-
ness of their protestations of hostility and difference, and
the strength and popularity and vigorous difference of the
party they seek to defeat.
232
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2878
Take Every Empty House !
THE Tenement House Commissioner of New York City,
Mr. Frank Mann, was quoted some two weeks ago as
saying that the shortage of residence apartments in the
city aggregated 40,000. Mayor Hylan was reported to
have said that the figure was too low and should be nearer
100,000; while Mr. Edward P. Doyle, secretary of the
Mayor's Housing Conference Committee, put the shortage
at 160,000. Chicago real estate men reported in June that
50,000 families in that city could not find proper living
quarters, that stores and tumbledown barracks were being
converted into residences, and that the situation was grow-
ing steadily worse. There are 61,000 more families in
Detroit than there were three years ago, but accommoda-
tions for only 28,196 families have been built in that time.
Philadelphia reports a housing shortage of 30,000. Atlanta
in May had less than a dozen habitable houses to meet the
demands of about one thousand families who were seeking
homes, while hundreds of houseless families in Fort Worth
were living in tents or portable cottages. Similar condi-
tions are reported from Washington, Pittsburgh, Denver,
Kansas City, and Los Angeles.
Everybody knows why this startling state of things has
arisen and why it continues. There was practically no build-
ing for residential purposes during the war, save for a cer-
tain amount of temporary construction near munition fac-
tories and a few other war industries, and there is very
little building now. New York City, which needs 28,000
new apartments annually in order to house its normal
increase of population, built only about 90 houses, with
2,171 apartments, in the first seven months of the present
year. In the same period 1,964 apartments were converted
to non-residence uses, leaving an actual gain of only 207
apartments for the largest city in the country. According
to the New York Times, plans for one apartment house and
one dwelling were filed in the Borough of Manhattan in
July, as against plans for five theaters, 115 garages, and 3
loft buildings.
Everybody knows not only that there is no building, but
why there is no building. High prices of land, labor, and
material in the cities have made it impossible to build at a
profit unless the owner can be assured of a high rental;
and rentals, thanks in part to scarcity, in part to the high
cost of building, and in part to atrocious profiteering by
landlords, have about reached the limit of human endurance.
It is wellnigh impossible to obtain building material, for the
producing industries have not revived, reserve stocks are
small, and the demoralization of the railways has thrown
freight transportation into chaos. The railways which can-
not move coal fast enough to prevent the danger of an
appalling fuel famine next winter, or which cannot get their
coal cars unloaded at tidewater because barges or other
vessels are not available, are in no position to handle bulky
building material, and in any case could not give it priority.
To all this have been added widespread disputes between
contractors and labor unions as a part of the policy of the
steel producers to force a nation-wide acceptance of the open
shop ; with the result that contracts have been canceled and
would-be builders are waiting for "better times."
This, in brief, is the situation. What does it mean for the
people? For one thing, it means that some hundreds of
thousands of families are threatened with the loss of the
apartments or houses which they now occupy, and with not
even a remote prospect of finding any others. In Pittsburgh
and Allegheny County, which "move" about the middle of
May, from 50,000 to 75,000 persons were reported as under
the necessity of leaving their existing quarters, with prac-
tically no houses awaiting occupants. Many were moving
because the houses which they occupied had been sold, others
because they could hot stand an increase of from 40 to 50
per cent in rents. New York City, which has some 4,000,000
people living in apartments, moves on October 1. Of the
3,000 moving-truck concerns in the city, 1,500, it is an-
nounced, will do no family moving on moving day : they can-
not be assured that apartments to which they carry goods
' will be vacant, they are liable to damage suits if they leave
goods on the sidewalk or otherwise unprotected, and storage
warehouses are packed to the roofs. Meanwhile the press
reports that city marshals in the Boroughs of Brooklyn and
Queens are making from $100 to $500 a day for serving
dispossess warrants, which are being issued by the courts
at the rate of from 500 to 1,000 per day.
All this spells calamity. A population without homes
means not only inconvenience; it means sickness and ex-
posure and suffering for men, women, and children; and it
may mean death. Without greater forbearance and self-
restraint than a houseless population has ever yet exhibited,
it also means riot, disorder, and crime. What is the govern-
ment doing about it? Nothing whatever as yet that can
have any appreciable effect for many months to come. Gov-
ernor Smith of New York has called a special session of
the Legislature. Mayor Hylan of New York City has ap-
pointed a Housing Commission. There are innumerable
commissions and committees elsewhere that are considering
the problem. All this is admirable and praiseworthy, but it
will be winter before any remedial legislation can possibly
be enacted, and it will be spring and summer and next fall
before the houses which are being talked about will be ready
for occupancy. Meantime, the country is short a million
houses or apartments, and the day of crisis is at hand.
There is one thing that should be done at once in every
large city in which the housing problem is acute. That is
to take possession of every unoccupied house, or building, or
apartment that is fit or that can be made fit for human
habitation, and make it available for the people who need
homes. There are hundreds of houses in every large city
that are unoccupied. Some of them have been unoccupied
for years, as their boarded doors and windows testify. Some
are the superfluous houses of the superfluous rich ; some are
the town houses of well-to-do owners who pass all of the
year in the country or abroad. There are stores and shops
and lofts which are vacant, in which families could be
housed. In a crisis such as now confronts us, no man has
a moral right to close the doors of a building which he does
not use ; and if he will not rent at a fair rate, the municipal
government should not hesitate to take possession, fix a fair
rental, and let the people in. There are, in addition, houses
which are unoccupied because they no longer meet the re-
quirements of the tenement house laws — from 21,000 to
33,000 of them, it is reported, in New York City alone. Be-
yond question, many of these could be made habitable at
August 28, 1920]
The Nation
233
small expense, and that expense the city should assume for
the time being. It will need a robust Mayor and city gov-
ernment thus to take the law into their own hands ; but the
people would support them. The crisis is too acute and too
near to wait for slow and formal processes. The emergency
is as great, and calls for as prompt and energetic action, as
any that could arise out of a war. Let every empty house
be opened for the people who will have no homes.
The New War Drive
THE drive for a new war is on. Let no American who
believes in peace or loves humanity underestimate the
intention or the strength of the forces that have been
loosed by the Wilson-Colby note to the Italian Ambassador,
announcing the Administration's purpose not merely to
harass but, if possible, to destroy the Russian Government.
The note was precisely what a powerful element of sordid,
selfish, and relentless interests in this country had been
waiting for, and a pack of editors, special writers, and
opinion-makers have already begun to bay noisily for Ameri-
can participation in a new international holocaust. We
mentioned last week the assertion of a military critic
that our war with Germany would be fruitless unless fol-
lowed by another against Russia. Now comes Dr. Frank
Crane, who ought to know better, and declares in regard
to the Russian Government: "Sooner or later, unless it
falls to pieces from its own rottenness, it must be faced and
fought by the civilized nations. We can keep out of this
row no more than we could keep out of the war with Ger-
many."
Now it may be said that this is mere rhetoric; that the
public is disillusioned in regard to European conditions
and will not give, either of money or men, for another burnt
offering on the altar of big business, special privilege, and
world imperialism. But, after our experience in 1917-
1918 with a censorship and a gigantic government-directed
propaganda, nobody knows what can be done. For three
years the seed has been planted through systematic sup-
pression and misrepresentation of the facts in regard to the
most interesting political experiment of modern times. The
cartoonists have already distorted our late allies into hairy
cave men and apes, and hundreds of editors are ready to
prove them ten-fold more dangerous and inhuman than the
Germans. The last was a holy war; the next would be a
holy of holies.
Nor must it be forgotten that we are still in a state of
war and Mr. Wilson can of his own volition revive the old
machinery in so far as funds permit. "To the full extent
of the constitutional power confided in the Executive every
measure that can be legally taken will be adopted to render
effectual the position of this country," said Secretary Colby
to a Polish-American delegation. But Mr. Wilson did not
let his "constitutional power" limit him unduly in his last
war, and there is no reason to believe that he would in
another. "The attitude of this Government can only be the
attitude of its people," Mr. Colby continued, "and you, as
American citizens, have the power to determine the trend
and the weight of American public opinion." Perhaps so,
now ; but public opinion is easily superseded by government-
made thought and national hysteria.
While there is still time, therefore, let every American
who loves his country and humanity make his opposition
as plain to Mr. Wilson as British labor has made its atti-
tude to Mr. Lloyd George, which action Mr. Christensen,
the Farmer-Labor Party's candidate for President, has
well described as "the foundation for a real World League
of Labor by setting the glorious example of labor's power
to veto war." Let us refuse to make or move a pound of
war supplies or give a cent of money. Let us rather fill
the jails from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, until
their doors burst from overcrowding. For concurrence in
Mr. Wilson's latest madness would not merely loose the dogs
of war; it would unchain the jackals that would devour
mankind.
A New England Wayside
THE mind disturbed by a world in change and tumult
should seek these roads. They wind gently among the
hills and are very quiet. Once in an hour you meet a team
or a harmless, necessary Ford, and, now and then, you pass
a farmhouse hidden among maples and apple trees. But if
your soul is wounded by the search for an absolute that does
not exist, turn your eyes to the roadside itself and con-
sider the frail, indomitable flowers. The yarrow is every-
where. Its golden centers are faint among the tiny, white
petals and, closely regarded, this tough weed is a thing of
beauty. The shy bluebells tremble on their feathery stems;
the buttercups sway and flash. Nearer the ground the heal-
all has something of the hieratic, like a small, winged col-
umn, and puts to shame the lazy pertness of the black-eyed
Susan. Here and there, as the road grows remoter, you
meet the slim and fiery wood-lily and the reserved and
delicate blue vervain. Clusters of waxy immortelles show
their silvery leaves, and, lifting your eyes, you see the
great, velvety flowers of the sumac. There are purple asters
and innumerable ferns; the fierce thistle has a crown-like,
lilac flower and already, as all these fade and even the
daisies begin to look a little ragged, the golden-rod is lift-
ing the glow of its widespread splendor.
The fading of these wayside flowers has in it nothing
mournful. Nor does it pain the heart to see the plow pass
over some bank which they once crowded with their many-
colored heads. Summer will bring them back here or a
little farther on. The place of their growing, the order of
their grouping — these are but negligible and passing things.
The flowers remain; the flowers return. There is a loyalty
and steadfastness in life itself that triumphs over chance
and change. Some of the flowers are, like ourselves, but
immigrants from other continents. Yet, like ourselves, they
are undaunted by that great transition and have estab-
lished here their enduring home. Space irks and dimin-
ishes them as little as time. Within the framework of
nature as seen by man they are eternal. It is they that
might easily have given Plato his notion of archetypal ideas
in an intelligible world, even as they gave Wordsworth the
thoughts that lie too deep for tears. The lily may with-
draw a little deeper into the woods or the bluebells in this
meadow appear more thickly than in one higher up the
slopes. Both may thrive better in their new abodes. Or,
failing that, they may return and the bluebell quiver once
more among the oats. These things are trivial while the
flowers remain.
234
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2878
If we could use this attitude of natural faith and piety
higher in the scale of existence, we should be less troubled
and far less absurd. So long as life remains, beautiful,
multiform, steadfast, enduring — why are we so angry and
bloodthirsty over its temporal adjustments and transforma-
tions? The lilies and the vervain are aristocrats. They
love seclusion and aloofness. But the yarrow and the daisies
are innumerable and their equal groups look quite like com-
munistic settlements. Yet these habits do not make the
petals of the vervain less blue or the leaves of the yarrow
less aromatic. The essential qualities of both remain. And
it is these essential qualities, which we accept exactly as
they are, that make the flowers lovely and the sight of them
healing to the mind. We do not chide the thistle for its
thorns nor the snapdragon for the quaintness of its blos-
soms. Only when we come to forms of life far more beau-
tiful, intricate, and venerable do we argue hotly and perse-
cute because they will not conform to ideals which we have
made up, as children say, out of our own heads. We need
more piety toward life itself, whose beauty and whose mean-
ing transcend both decay and change.
Catalogues for Reading
NOT all the romance of trade lies in selling. It must be
fun enough, of course, to make a fortune out of stocks
that rise on the Exchange ; the annals of small business are
rarely short or simple; peddlers are proverbially fascinat-
ing; and the dispatching of cargoes to distant coasts is
supreme adventure. Selling is well enough. But there is
the fun of buying, too — and, more particularly, there is the
fun of looking at pictures of things which may be bought.
There is the customers' catalogue, with its cuts and specifi-
cations and prices. Man's imagination being what it is,
merchants suffer no disadvantage when the people whom
they address live continents away. Indeed, they had better
address a distant audience, if they can do so with pictures.
It is a rare and wantless man who can resist the image of a
commodity once it is zinc-etched or steel-engraved or wood-
cut. For all we know, the Phoenicians, those earnest traders
of a long-gone day, may have circularized the shores of the
Mediterranean weeks or months before their sails flashed
signal from the dark horizon that they themselves were
coming.
Who can calculate the importance of that thick, thumbed,
biblically-printed volume, the mail-order catalogue, in Amer-
ica's culture? If the books we read passionately are the
books that control us, then we must acknowledge our de-
pendence on Chicago, miscellaneous genie and magical dis-
tributor on the plains. Her catalogues have kept no one
knows how many farmer's families in conversation between
supper and bedtime, have whiled away no one can guess how
many Sunday afternoons for boys and girls or lonely men in
shirt sleeves after the Sunday paper. In the bosom of the
family, around the lamp, there have been big things to look
at — buggies, with shafts detached and pointing towards the
top of the page, harness for noble white teams, motorcycles,
tractors, brass beds, hall-trees, front gates, mail boxes,
washing machines, fleece-lined overcoats, horizontal engines
— and small things to order: screw drivers, can openers,
underwear, overshoes, writing paper, baking powder, and
toothpicks. There have been hitches in the correspondence,
but then eventually the box has come, and the buyers'
province of fun has at last been properly and fully entered.
Or consider those other unconscious wonder-workers —
auction lists of foreign fruits received in port and an-
nounced for sale. The buyer whose business sends him to
wharf or salesroom with such a compendium in hand is
truly enviable, for his business is all with pictures, and
momentarily he is a child again. Trade takes on undeniable
romance ; quaint, ingenuous symbols make the world at once
larger and smaller, at once closer and farther away. A
whiff of Italy came magically along the other day, for in-
stance, in a tall, gray "Catalogue of Maiori and Sorrento
Lemons, Ex Steamship Canopic, Landing at Pier 61, North
River, to be sold at auction." Inside was no discussion of
anything — only a hundred or so reproductions of trade
marks that told old-fashioned tales. The "Salvatore" lemon
bore a lamb and a hare on its wrapper, the "Rosina di Cres-
zenzo" a small, smart donkey, the "Dandy Owl" a bird in
waistcoat and top hat, the "Poodle Dog" a poodle with pipe
in mouth, cane in hand, and a basket of lemons on his back.
There were fine ladies, of course, in impossible skirts and
hats; there were Paul and Virginia; there was Pan; there
were lovers in the rye ; there were priests, and soldiers, and
saints, and Virgins; there was Harlequin crossing his legs
and standing on tiptoe; there was an ordinary kind of kiss
called "Amore Moderno"; and there was a short, plump,
gesturing Uncle Sam. Who says that trade has not its
glories, too?
The Shop Committee
ONE of the first developments in the United States in-
volving the principle of employee representation was
that called the "Rockefeller Plan," adopted by the Colorado
Fuel and Iron Company, after the unsuccessful strike of
miners in 1913. This strike was a bitter and bloody one,
but the company was not ready to prevent the recurrence of
such trouble by recognizing organized labor and seeking its
assistance in curbing the rule of local managers. It there-
fore installed what came to be known as a "company union,"
that is, a system of grievance and adjustment committees
elected by and from among its own employees alone, without
regard to their union affiliation. The leaders of the unions
thought they recognized in the plan a design to forestall the
growth of organized labor, and have been indefatigable in
pointing out its defects. To them any new "employee rep-
resentation" scheme savors of oil, and automatically arouses
their resistance.
For some time the matter rested there, but during the
war a new quarter was heard from. In England workmen
could not negotiate in the ordinary way, because the
national officials had tied their hands by understandings
with the Government, and the Munitions act forbade strikes.
Furthermore, the workers in any one shop found it difficult
to exert a unified pressure, because they were likely to
belong to half a dozen separate craft or occupational unions,
each with a highly centralized system of negotiation.
Nevertheless, each of these unions was represented in
the shop by a "shop steward" — sometimes elected by the
local men, sometimes appointed from above. His duties had
been largely nominal — for instance, to see that every mem-
ber of his union in the shop had paid his dues. Now, how-
ever, the shop stewards stepped in to fill the breach. They
August 28, 1920]
The Nation
235
formed shop committees representing the various crafts, and
began to negotiate directly with individual employers, and
to call strikes. Unofficial shop stewards were elected for
this purpose in many localities. The practice spread and
developed into a "movement" with a nebulous philosophy.
Among the ideas of its adherents were the old ones of in-
dustrial unionism and direct action in the form of general
strikes, coupled with the new ones of participating in the
management of the shop and workers' control in the in-
dustry as advocated by the National Guildsmen. Here was
a development of the shop committee which, though it was
as vehemently condemned by the officials of the unions as
the Rockefeller plan, arose from the left of the labor move-
ment rather than from the right of the employers.
Progressive employers and industrial engineers saw in
this new movement something which might be molded to
their special purposes. They were interested, not in con-
tending with unions, but in increasing productivity. Ex-
perience had shown that the rock upon which many attempts
at improved management had foundered was the indiffer-
ence or active opposition of the worker. If they could
interest him in production, even at the cost of granting him
some share in management, so much the better. Further-
more, they preferred dealing with the representatives of
their own workmen about practical problems to allowing
discontent to simmer until they were forced to deal with
representatives of a national union about issues which
easily became converted into abstract principles.
It was in this form that the shop committee movement
came back to our shores during the war. The National War
Labor Board and the United States Shipbuilding Labor Ad-
justment Board both installed, in accordance with their own
models, shop committees to localize disputes and deal with
questions that normally arise between employer and em-
ployee from day to day. In some cases these committees
were bodies to establish piece rates by joint negotiation. In
all, however, they were created with the consent of the
unions, and had no jurisdiction which would interfere with
that of the national union officials. During the war shop
committees, each representing a number of crafts with
separate national organizations, were installed in some of
the arsenals and navy yards, in ship yards, and in many
munition plants. Here the movement came neither from
radical workers nor conservative employers, but from ex-
perts sincerely interested in increased production and in
the best methods of labor adjustment.
Each of these plans, however, had results not anticipated
by its founders. The company union as a substitute for na-
tional unions has been adopted by a number of large cor-
porations during the last two years — notably by the Mid-
vale Steel and Ordnance Company, the Youngstown Sheet
and Tube Company, the Inland Steel Company, and the
International Harvester Company. In many of these cases,
when the employer had no dealings with a powerful na-
tional union, the objections urged against the Rockefeller
plan by labor officials proved to be well founded. The com-
mittees were not really representative of the wishes of the
men, but were packed with petty bosses and foremen. They
lacked the courage or the independence to demand major
concessions such as a shortening of the workday or a gen-
eral increase in pay. The superiority of an independent
union organization became so obvious that the agitation
for it was carried on more efficiently by the company union
itself than it could have been by a dozen walking delegates.
The steel strike was actually strongest in many of the plants
which had installed employee representation.
The British shop steward movement, because it was at
odds with the national labor organizations, did not become
effective except as a protest against extraordinary condi-
tions. Its larger ambitions are obliged to await the further
trend toward industrial unionism, to be accomplished by
the slow process of amalgamation and federation in the
"regular" trade union movement.
In America, many of the unauthorized strikes have arisen
from shop committees organized merely as instruments of
local adjustment by the Government or by employers. Here
the British conditions which gave rise to the shop steward
movement were in effect duplicated. The national union
officers were incapable, for one reason or another, of secur-
ing relief to offset the rapidly rising cost of living; so the
rank and file took matters in their own hands, regardless
of agreements, and naturally turned for leaders to the shop
representatives. The inferences to be drawn from these
facts seem to be:
1. Both employers and employees will be disappointed in
the results of shop committees adopted as a substitute for,
or unconnected with, national unions. The labor movement
as a whole, however, has little to fear from them in the long
run.
2. The simultaneous existence in any establishment of
the shop committee and the conservative, national craft
union creates an unstable equilibrium, which is likely to
result in the shelving of one or the other.
This leads to a question: what is the status of the shop
committee connected with an industrial union rather than
with a number of craft unions? We may find one answer
in the clothing industry. Here the shop form of organiza-
tion was natural, because there were an extraordinary num-
ber of employers averaging only a few employees apiece.
And the successful unions have been industrial in form
from the first — that is, they included all crafts and all shops
of the main clothing trades. Here the shop committee, in-
stead of an element of weakness to the national union, is
one of its main sources of strength. The shop chairman,
who is a union official, for years has been the first point
at which adjustments of grievances are sought, and he is
a recognized part of the conciliation machinery which
reaches above him, through various agencies, to the "impar-
tial chairman."
The final conclusion may well be, therefore, that the
proper environment for the shop committee is an intimate
connection with a national industrial union. There it ex-
ercises the function of expressing the workers' will and
aspirations and at the same time creates the possibility of
satisfying the engineer's desire for better organization of
production. But those used to labor negotiation and man-
agement in the ordinary sense must, in dealing with a
union of this sort, revise some of their practices. They
must abandon the fixed, long-term trade agreement and
accept instead a continuous machinery of adjustment, flex-
ible in the extreme. They must be prepared really to enter-
tain a substantial and growing share of control over pro-
duction on the part of labor. They must, in other words,
admit to industry a vital force which substitutes for the
unorganized and restless employee, or for the conservative
union protecting him in a negative manner, a powerful in-
strument for making effective his normal tendency to as-
sume control of the industrial system.
236
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2878
Self-Determining Haiti
I. THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION
By JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
TO know the reasons for the present political situation
in Haiti, to understand why the United States landed
and has for five years maintained military forces in that
country, why some three thousand Haitian men, women, and
children have been shot down by American rifles and ma-
chine guns, it is necessary, among other things, to know
that the National City Bank of New York is very much
interested in Haiti. It is necessary to know that the Na-
tional City Bank controls the National Bank of Haiti and
is the depository for all of the Haitian national funds that
are being collected by American officials, and that Mr. R. L.
Farnham, vice-president of the National City Bank, is vir-
tually the representative of the State Department in matters
relating to the island republic. Most Americans have the
opinion — if they have any opinion at all on the subject —
that the United States was forced, on purely humane
grounds, to intervene in the black republic because of the
tragic coup d'etat which resulted in the overthrow and death
of President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam and the execution of
the political prisoners confined at Port-au-Prince, July 27-
28, 1915; and that this government has been compelled to
keep a military force in Haiti since that time to pacify the
country and maintain order.
The fact is that for nearly a year before forcible inter-
vention on the part of the United States this government
was seeking to compel Haiti to submit to "peaceable" inter-
vention. Toward the close of 1914 the United States noti-
fied the government of Haiti that it was disposed to recog-
nize the newly-elected president, Theodore Davilmar, as soon
as a Haitian commission would sign at Washington "satis-
factory protocols" relative to a convention with the United
States on the model of the Dominican-American Convention.
On December 15, 1914, the Haitian government, through
its Secretary of Foreign Affairs, replied : "The Government
of the Republic of Haiti would consider itself lax in its duty
to the United States and to itself if it allowed the least
doubt to exist of its irrevocable intention not to accept any
control of the administration of Haitian affairs by a foreign
Power." On December 19, the United States, through its le-
gation at Port-au-Prince, replied, that in expressing its
willingness to do in Haiti what had been done in Santo
Domingo it "was actuated entirely by a disinterested desire
to give assistance."
Two months later, the Theodore government was over-
thrown by a revolution and Vilbrun Guillaume was elected
president. Immediately afterwards there arrived at Port-
au-Prince an American commission from Washington — the
Ford mission. The commissioners were received at the
National Palace and attempted to take up the discussion of
the convention that had been broken off in December, 1914.
However, they lacked full powers and no negotiations were
entered into. After several days, the Ford mission sailed
for the United States. But soon after, in May, the United
States sent to Haiti Mr. Paul Fuller, Jr., with the title
Envoy Extraordinary, on a special mission to apprise the
Haitian government that the Guillaume administration
would not be recognized by the American government unless
Haiti accepted and signed the project of a convention which
he was authorized to present. After examining the pro-
ject the Haitian government submitted to the American
commission a counter-project, formulating the conditions
under which it would be possible to accept the assistance of
the United States. To this counter-project Mr. Fuller pro-
posed certain modifications, some of which were accepted by
the Haitian government. On June 5, 1915, Mr. Fuller ac-
knowledged the receipt of the Haitian communication re-
garding these modifications, and sailed from Port-au-Prince.
Before any further discussion of the Fuller project be-
tween the two governments, political incidents in Haiti led
rapidly to the events of July 27 and 28. On July 27 Presi-
dent Guillaume fled to the French Legation, and on the same
day took place a massacre of the political prisoners in the
prison at Port-au-Prince. On the morning of July 28 Presi-
dent Guillaume was forcibly taken from French Legation
and killed. On the afternoon of July 28 an American man-
of-war dropped anchor in the harbor of Port-au-Prince and
landed American forces. It should be borne in mind that
through all of this the life of not a single American citizen '
had been taken or jeopardized.
The overthrow of Guillaume and its attending conse-
quences did not constitute the cause of American interven-
tion in Haiti, but merely furnished the awaited opportunity.
Since July 28, 1915, American military forces have been in
control of Haiti. These forces have been increased until
there are now somewhere near three thousand Americans
under arms in the republic. From the very first, the atti-
tude of the Occupation has been that it was dealing with a
conquered territory. Haitian forces were disarmed, mili-
tary posts and barracks were occupied, and the National
Palace was taken as headquarters for the Occupation. After
selecting a new and acceptable president for the country,
steps were at once taken to compel the Haitian government
to sign a convention in which it virtually foreswore its inde-
pendence. This was accomplished by September 16, 1915;
and although the terms of this convention provided for the
administration of the Haitian customs by American civilian
officials, all the principal custom houses of the country had
been seized by military force and placed in charge of Ameri-
can Marine officers before the end of August. The disposi-
tion of the funds collected in duties from the time of the
military seizure of the custom houses to the time of their
administration by civilian officials is still a question concern-
ing which the established censorship in Haiti allows no dis-
cussion.
It is interesting to note the wide difference between the
convention which Haiti was forced to sign and the con-
vention which was in course of diplomatic negotiation at
the moment of intervention. The Fuller convention asked
little of Haiti and gave something, the Occupation conven-
tion demands everything of Haiti and gives nothing. The
Occupation convention is really the same convention which
the Haitian government peremptorily refused to discuss in
August 28, 1920]
The Nation
237
December, 1914, except that in addition to American control
of Haitian finances it also provides for American control of
the Haitian military forces. The Fuller convention con-
tained neither of these provisions. When the United States
found itself in a position to take what it had not even dared
to ask, it used brute force and took it. But even a conven-
tion which practically deprived Haiti of its independence
was found not wholly adequate for the accomplishment of
all that was contemplated. The Haitian constitution still
offered some embarrassments, so it was decided that Haiti
must have a new constitution. It was drafted and presented
to the Haitian assembly for adoption. The assembly balked
— chiefly at the article in the proposed document removing
the constitutional disability which prevented aliens from
owning land in Haiti. Haiti had long considered the denial
of this right to aliens as her main bulwark against over-
whelming economic exploitation; and it must be admitted
that she had better reasons than the several states of the
United States that have similar provisions.
The balking of the assembly resulted in its being dis-
solved by actual military force and the locking of doors of
the Chamber. There has been no Haitian legislative body
since. The desired constitution was submitted to a plebi-
scite by a decree of the President, although such a method
of constitutional revision was clearly unconstitutional. Un-
der the circumstances of the Occupation the plebiscite was,
of course, almost unanimous for the desired change, and the
new constitution was promulgated on June 18, 1918. Thus
Haiti was given a new constitution by a flagrantly unconsti-
tutional method. The new document contains several funda-
mental changes and includes a "Special Article" which de-
clares :
All the acts of the Government of the United States during
its military Occupation in Haiti are ratified and confirmed.
No Haitian shall be liable to civil or criminal prosecution for
any act done by order of the Occupation or under its authority.
The acts of the courts martial of the Occupation, without,
however, infringing on the right to pardon, shall not be subject
to revision.
The acts of the Executive Power (the President) up to the
promulgation of the present constitution are likewise ratified
and confirmed.
The above is the chronological order of the principal steps
by which the independence of a neighboring republic has
been taken away, the people placed under foreign military
domination from which they have no appeal, and exposed to
foreign economic exploitation against which they are de-
fenseless. All of this has been done in the name of the
Government of the United States ; however, without any act
by Congress and without any knowledge of the American
people.
The law by which Haiti is ruled today is martial law dis-
pensed by Americans. There is a form of Haitian civil gov-
ernment, but it is entirely dominated by the military Occu-
pation. President Dartiguenave, bitterly rebellious at heart
as is every good Haitian, confessed to me the power-
lessness of himself and his cabinet. He told me that the
American authorities give no heed to recommendations made
by him or his officers ; that they would not even discuss mat-
ters about which the Haitian officials have superior knowl-
edge. The provisions of both the old and the new consti-
tutions are ignored in that there is no Haitian legislative
body, and there has been none since the dissolution of the
assembly in April, 1916. In its stead there is a Council of
State composed of twenty-one members appointed by the
president, which functions effectively only when carrying
out the will of the Occupation. Indeed the Occupation often
overrides the civil courts. A prisoner brought before the
proper court, exonerated, and discharged, is, nevertheless,
frequently held by the military. All government funds are
collected by the Occupation and are dispensed at its will and
pleasure. The greater part of these funds is expended for
the maintenance of the military forces. There is the strict-
est censorship of the press. No Haitian newspaper is al-
lowed to publish anything in criticism of the Occupation or
the Haitian government. Each newspaper in Haiti received
an order to that effect from the Occupation, and the same
order carried the injunction not to print the order. Nothing
that might reflect upon the Occupation administration in
Haiti is allowed to reach the newspapers of the United
States.
The Haitian people justly complain that not only is the
convention inimical to the best interests of their country,
but that the convention, such as it is, is not being carried
out in accordance with the letter, nor in accordance with
the spirit in which they were led to believe it would be car-
ried out. Except one, all of the obligations in the conven-
tion which the United States undertakes in favor of Haiti
are contained in the first article of that document, the other
fourteen articles being made up substantially of obligations
to the United States assumed by Haiti. But nowhere in
those fourteen articles is there anything to indicate that
Haiti would be subjected to military domination. In Article
I the United States promises to "aid the Haitian govern-
ment in the proper and efficient development of its agricul-
tural, mineral, and commercial resources and in the estab-
lishment of the finances of Haiti on a firm and solid basis."
And the whole convention and, especially, the protestations
of the United States before the signing of the instrument
can be construed only to mean that that aid would be ex-
tended through the supervision of civilian officials.
The one promise of the United States to Haiti not con-
tained in the first article of the convention is that clause of
Article XIV which says, "and, should the necessity occur,
the United States will lend an efficient aid for the preserva-
tion of Haitian independence and the maintenance of a gov-
ernment adequate for the protection of life, property, and
individual liberty." It is the extreme of irony that this
clause which the Haitians had a right to interpret as a
guarantee to them against foreign invasion should first of
all be invoked against the Haitian people themselves, and
offer the only peg on which any pretense to a right of mili-
tary domination can be hung.
There are several distinct forces — financial, military,
bureaucratic — at work in Haiti which, tending to aggravate
the conditions they themselves have created, are largely
self-perpetuating. The most sinister of these, the financial
engulfment of Haiti by the National City Bank of New
York, already alluded to, will be discussed in detail in a
subsequent article. The military Occupation has made and
continues to make military Occupation necessary. The jus-
tification given is that it is necessary for the pacification of
the country. Pacification would never have been necessary
had not American policies been filled with so many stupid
and brutal blunders; and it will never be effective so long
as "pacification" means merely the hunting of ragged
Haitians in the hills with machine guns.
Then there is the force which the several hundred Ameri-
238
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2878
can civilian place-holders constitute. They have found in
Haiti the veritable promised land of "jobs for deserving
democrats" and naturally do not wish to see the present
status discontinued. Most of these deserving democrats
are Southerners. The head of the customs service of Haiti
was a clerk of one of the parishes of Louisiana.. Second
in charge of the customs service of Haiti is a man who was
Deputy Collector of Customs at Pascagoula, Mississippi
[population, 3,379, 1910 Census]. The Superintendent of
Public Instruction was a school teacher in Louisiana — a
State which has not good schools even for white children;
the financial advisor, Mr. Mcllhenny, is also from Louisiana.
Many of the Occupation officers are in the same category
with the civilian place-holders. These men have taken their
wives and families to Haiti. Those at Port-au-Prince live
in beautiful villas. Families that could not keep a hired girl
in the United States have a half-dozen servants. They ride
in automobiles — not their own. Every American head of a
department in Haiti has an automobile furnished at the
expense of the Haitian Government, whereas members of
the Haitian cabinet, who are theoretically above them, have
no "such convenience or luxury. While I was there, the
President himself was obliged to borrow an automobile from
the Occupation for a trip through the interior. The
Louisiana school-teacher Superintendent of Instruction has
an automobile furnished at government expense, whereas
the Haitian Minister of Public Instruction, his supposed su-
perior officer, has none. These automobiles seem to be
chiefly employed in giving the women and children an airing
each afternoon. It must be amusing, when it is not madden-
ing to the Haitians, to see with what disdainful air these
people look upon them as they ride by.
The platform adopted by the Democratic party at San
Francisco said of the Wilson policy in Mexico :
The Administration, remembering always that Mexico is an
independent nation and that permanent stability in her govern-
ment and her institutions could come only from the consent of
her own people to a government of her own making, has been
unwilling either to profit by the misfortunes of the people of
Mexico or to enfeeble their future by imposing from the outside
a rule upon their temporarily distracted councils.
Haiti has never been so distracted in its councils as
Mexico. And even in its moments of greatest distraction it
never slaughtered an American citizen, it never molested an
American woman, it never injured a dollar's worth of
American property. And yet, the Administration whose
lofty purpose was proclaimed as above — with less justifica-
tion than Austria's invasion of Serbia, or Germany's rape
of Belgium, without warrant other than the- doctrine that
"might makes right," has conquered Haiti. It has done this
through the very period when, in the words of its chief
spokesman, our sons were laying down their lives overseas
"for democracy, for the rights of those who submit to au-
thority to have a voice in their own government, for the
rights and liberties of small nations." By command of the
author of "pitiless publicity" and originator of "open
covenants openly arrived at," it has enforced by the bayonet
a covenant whose secret has been well guarded by a rigid
censorship from the American nation, and kept a people
enslaved by the military tyranny which it was his avowed
purpose to destroy throughout the world.
The second article of the series by James Weldon Johnson,
What the United States Has Accomplished in Haiti, will
appear in the next issue, dated September 4-
The Soviet Domestic Program
By HENRY G. ALSBERG
Moscow, July 7
WHAT part of the soviet program has then been
carried out? Despite the pressure of war, I should
say on the whole, that the greater part of its socialist pro-
gram has been at any rate sketched in. And remember,
in this connection, that the marvel remains for all of us
that even this "blocking in" has been accomplished with
civil war and several foreign wars and a deadly blockade
to occupy public attention. The middle class has been pretty
well abolished — at least the old middle and upper classes.
A true democracy of material condition, even if it is one of
poverty, has been enforced. There are no great differences
in dress or standards of living. Everybody is always more
or less shabby; everybody always more or less hungry.
Chicherin wears a baggy old suit, mercifully of a neutral
snuff color; but some of the clerks in the Foreign Office far
outshine their chief in their appearance. As to the de-
mocracy of food, that strikes me a bit nearer the belt-line.
But if commissars can survive on a mess of soggy macaroni,
we visitors, who get a much better pyok, should manage
to do likewise. I think this matter of a common standard
of living is not to be exaggerated. It makes for true
brotherhood. And there exists here a real contempt for
those who lay such a terrific emphasis on externals.
One hears, of course, everywhere of the establishment
of a new middle class — that of the soviet officials. There
are said to be more than 400,000 of them in the country.
Some of them may be seen, truly, going off to the country
over Sunday, or riding about in rather shabby cabs drawn
by soviet horses. On the other hand, as far as wealth and
luxury go among the higher officials, I can honestly say
that I have as yet seen none of it, and I have visited in the
homes of some of them. Naturally, with ability and wil-
lingness to accomplish things, comes authority in the com-
munity. That kind of a bourgeoisie is gradually being
formed. How any state is to escape such a governing class,
based on hard work, I find it difficult to see.
In the matter of nationalization, the revolutionary gov-
ernment has been fairly successful. Practically all the
factories, transportation systems, food-getting, and food-
producing systems, the health protection and educational
systems have been taken over by the state. It does not
change the fact to say that most of these systems at the
present time are functioning inadequately, and that the
food-distributing system is being supplemented by "bag-
men," or Mishoshchnik, and petty speculators. I think these
things will only be temporary, and will be improved as the
government machinery is perfected when the pressure of
war is over. Certainly in some directions, especially in
the matter of health protection for mothers, infants, and
children, and in the matter of education, the Soviet Govern-
ment has gone far beyond all possible expectations.
Extreme centralization may account for a good deal of
inefficiency. At any rate one hears that complaint on all
sides, from the anarchists, the social-revolutionaries, both
left and right, and the Mensheviks and bourgeois. Doubt-
less the tendency has been fostered by circumstance rather
than by conscious will. During 1917 and the beginning of
1918 the great drop in the productivity of Russian factories
August 28, 1920]
The Nation
239
occurred, and gradual disintegration of all industry was
threatened. Only a strong central power has been able or
could have been able to pull Russia's economic life together
once more. Unity of management, government by single
men as heads of great departments, was the outcome of
necessity. Sverdlov, Vice-Commissar of transport, inti-
mated as much to me when I spoke to him on the trip we
made down the Volga. Perhaps the present government
has gone too far in the subordination of collateral and semi-
independent institutions, the trade unions and the co-
operatives, to the central authority. Also it must be ad-
mitted that the soviet system, whatever it may appear to
be formally, is not nearly so democratic in the manner of
its election as our Congress — although I far prefer the
present Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, how-
ever procured, to our conglomeration of right honorables
in Washington. But again, the answer must be the same.
Necessity, danger to the very existence of the state, have
forced the Russians to create this dictatorship.
To sum up, I believe that with the destruction of classes
and of capital, with the creation of a democratic and almost
universal standard of living, with the formation of a real
"serving" bureaucracy and the nationalization of industry,
a practical beginning at "socialization" has been made.
Perhaps the one great failure in that regard has been
the peasant. I have spent about a week in the country,
travelling down the Volga River, and have had consid-
erable opportunity to speak with the country people. The
peasant has not as yet been brought into the socialist scheme
of things. He has received land, and in so far as he has
received land, and in some cases the implements to work
it with, he supports the government. But whatever Mos-
cow may say about the ownership of the land, the peasant
believes that it belongs to him. With the exception of a few
experimental farms, no real attempt at communal agricul-
ture has been made. The peasant is better off than he ever
was before; he eats better and enjoys his local soviet. He
wails horribly because the government comes down on him
and levies for the benefit of the cities. The Russian peasant,
as does the peasant everywhere throughout Europe, feels
the city man to be his enemy, an enemy who takes but does
not give anything in return. If he could get manufactured
articles, ploughs, shoes, clothes, he says he would gladly
give to the city folk. As things are now, he goes to town
and has to trot from bureau to bureau to get a nail for
which he must give a speculator price, while he himself only
gets fixed rates of payment for his produce. He says he
wants a "serious" government, one which can supply his
needs. Meanwhile, the government takes little heed of his
plaints, sends officials to his village and takes a goodly share
of his surplus. Sometimes these officials come at inconven-
ient seasons, or take more than they should ; and sometimes
they meet with resistance, whereupon bloodshed ensues.
But on the whole the Russian peasant in the districts I
visited is doing very well. There seem to be some gubier-
nias, especially in the North, where not enough wheat is
produced. Here perhaps the situation is less favorable.
But in a village of 5,000, such as I saw in the Samara
gubiernia, where there were seven thousand head of cattle,
besides horses and goats, and where each family had about
fifteen dessiatines of land, to speak of hardship would be a
bit ludicrous. I must say that Russia is the only country
in Europe just now where the city man has the whip hand
over the peasant — where the peasant is taxed to keep the
city man alive until the latter can commence to produce
again in a normal manner.
The fact remains, however, that no real attempt to social-
ize the land has as yet been made. In certain directions,
by means of its power to monopolize peasant-manufactured
supplies, the government can force the peasant to work in
a more communal manner. But if farms were to be worked
by great labor-saving machines in the western manner, the
enormous population that now finds occupation on the land
would be displaced. Until industrial work for this surplus
can be found, it is quite useless to talk of introducing more
socialistic methods of agriculture. In the meantime the
Russian socialistic state must be considered as having been
imposed on a small-bourgeois farming class. And in pass-
ing, it may as well be said that the wedge which Lenin
tried to drive into the solid rural community by his dis-
tinction between the rich, and middle, and poor peasants
has rather failed of its objective. I was in several com-
munities where the middle peasant seemed to be the pre-
vailing type, and the Kulak was still tolerated. At any
rate, the destruction of the Kulak and middle peasant would
only create a more numerous, homogeneous class of small
peasants.
Much more to the point is the Soviet Government's policy
of drawing the farmers closer to the city by giving them
what manufactured articles are available — very little to be
sure — by improving health conditions, by awakening the
cultural life with theatres, music, education, and so forth.
I have seen towns where they had put in electric light,
where they had a moving picture theatre, reading rooms,
a library, adult schools. My friend Buxton was in another
village where there was a theatre and a theatrical com-
pany consisting of villagers, but stimulated by teachers
sent from the city. Again the cursed war interferes with
all advances in this direction. The war is a hideous blank
wall against which, at the present moment, everything in
Russia that is precious dashes itself to bits.
I hear all the reactionary "I told you so's" reechoing in
America. But here one is quite frank in this matter. It
is a question of life and death for the advanced proletariat
of the cities to keep control of Russia's economic life. The
peasants have their due, in perhaps greater proportion
than the city folk, as far as creature comforts are concerned.
But they shall not kill the social revolution, nor be the
means by which Russia will relapse into capitalism so that
the long and painful struggle upward to socialism will have
to be gone through with again. The leaders intend to keep,
for the industrial life of Russia that is to be developed in
the next fifty years, the heights already won. Until the
peasant becomes socialized voluntarily, he will remain a
sort of neutral outsider, while the city man works out the
destiny of the world.
Contributors to This Issue
James Weldon Johnson has been United States Consul
in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and the Azores.
James Carty is a nineteen-year-old student at the School
of Economics in the Dublin College of the National
University.
Swinburne Hale is one of the twelve lawyers who issued
the pamphlet on The Illegal Practices of the United
States Department of Justice.
240
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2878
The Farmer Butts Back
By ARTHUR WARNER
Bismarck, North Dakota
IN the States of the Northwest one sees buttons in coat
lapel* and danglers on watch chains which bear the
figure of a tired, abused, and rebellious goat. Beside the
animal is the inscription: "The Goat That Can't Be Got."
It is the unofficial emblem of the National Nonpartisan
League. "A goat is an animal that works with his head
when attacked," Governor Frazier of North Dakota is re-
puted to have said in explanation of the device. "That's
why the Nonpartisan League adopted this animal as its
emblem."
For a long time the American farmer has been a goat —
at last he is beginning to butt back. In North Dakota he
has perfected a butting technique that has dislodged the two
old political parties and installed a farmer administration
in the capital at Bismarck. The farmer's problems vary in
different States, but in North Dakota he has suffered in the
past particularly from the elevator companies that have
underpaid him for his wheat and from the banks that have
charged him from eight to nine per cent when he needed
money — and that in a day when other business men could
borrow at six per cent. Farmer delegations went to Bis-
marck repeatedly to ask for relief but got only promises,
if that. On one occasion a former Governor said to a group
of them: "You go home and slop the hogs, and let us run
the government." "We'll go home and slop the hogs all
right," answered one of the farmers, "but when we get
through you won't be here."
The reply was prophetic. Organization of the Nonparti-
san League was begun in 1915, in 1916 it elected its candi-
date for Governor, and in 1918 it came into control also of
the State Legislature. Whatever the leaders may have had
in mind, it is doubtful if any considerable percentage of the
membership of the Nonpartisan League had state socialism
as their goal in the early days. The movement had grown
in part out of the oMer American Society of Equity, and
probably the idea uppermost was a development of farmer
cooperation, protected and facilitated by the powers of the
State. It appeared fairly soon, however, that North Dakota
had too scattered a population and too scanty resources for
such a development. The farmers turned inevitably to
their State government as the only machinery sufficiently
powerful and comprehensive to secure results.
But although state socialism has developed in North Da-
kota as a working method rather than as a political theory,
it is a fact that the early leaders of the Nonpartisan League
came out of the Socialist Party. Townley, for instance, had
been State organizer for the Socialist Party in North Da-
kota. Partly because of this, and partly because the new
movement was seen to strike definitely against economic
privilege, opposition has gone to extreme lengths and
aroused a bitterness manifested against few other political
movements in recent years. "Bolshevist," "I. W. W.," and
"Free Lover" are among the descriptive terms applied. The
League, moreover, has made a definite social cleavage as
well as a political division. Members of the new movement
are generally ostracized by the "society" of the cities. In
Bismarck the Nonpartisan League has one hotel — the best,
fortunately — while the opposition has another. Feeling runs
so high that the newsstand in the League hotel does not sell
the only daily paper printed in Bismarck because it is a
supporter of what Leaguers call the Poison Ivas — the Inde-
pendent Voters' Association, which is fighting the Nonparti-
sans for the control of the Republican machinery. Indeed,
this social war on League members is thought to be one
reason why several men elected to office by the farmers in
1918 later turned against them. The case is cited of one in
particular who married an Eastern girl after his selection
for office. Her natural surprise and mortification at finding
herself snubbed by Bismarck "society" is thought to have
been an influence in turning her husband against the
League.
Of course this very bitterness against the League has
developed among those that stick by it a genuinely religious
fervor. No other political organization in the world, it is
safe to say, has a membership of 200,000 persons the regu-
lar dues of whom are $18 apiece per year; while at a recent
meeting to raise campaign funds 200 out of 1,000 farmers
present pledged $100 each. It is not surprising that a
movement that means so much to its adherents has in five
years permeated twelve States, having a powerful organiza-
tion in the two Dakotas and Minnesota; a substantial mem-
bership in Nebraska, Wisconsin, Colorado, Montana, Wash-
ington, and Idaho; and a good start in Kansas, Texas, and'
Oklahoma. It oontrols the State administration of North
Dakota, and, according to recent figures, had a total of 221
representatives in the legislatures of the two Dakotas, Min-
nesota, Montana, and Idaho.
It is not to be denied that the Nonpartisan League is a
class movement, since its membership is limited to persons
who make their living by farming. It has raised a direct
issue between town and country, and it is not surprising
that the urban population, finding itself excluded from the
League, should generally oppose the organization on the sup-
position, right or wrong, that the Nonpartisans will use po-
litical power, where acquired, to benefit the farmer at the
expense of the city dweller. This aspect is one of the great-
est weaknesses of the League, as it appears to an outsider,
and there is, at this moment, a plan under discussion for
taking sympathetic townsmen into the organization. The
difficulties surrounding the inception of the League doubt-
less led rightly to limiting the movement at that time to
farmers, but such restriction seems now to be a source of
weakness rather than strength.
This issue between town and country has created a pe-
culiar situation in respect to woman suffrage. The League,
as one would expect of a progressive organization, has en-
dorsed woman suffrage, but it has not yet admitted the
farmer's wife to its membership. Moreover, in North
Dakota, at least, it has not been keen to see the arrival of
equal suffrage, not because of disbelief in the principle but
because of fear that a large feminine vote will be cast in
the towns, where opposition to the farmers' program is
strong, whereas the women of the country will be too busy,
or find it too inconvenient, to go to the polls in anything
like relative strength.
So far as organized labor is concerned, a working arrange-
August 28, 1920]
The Nation
241
ment that brings town and country together has already
been devised in the States where trade unionism is strongest.
In Minnesota, for instance, trade unionists of Minneapolis,
St. Paul, and other industrial centers have organized politi-
cally in a body that is working in alliance with the Non-
partisan League. This question of the relation of the or-
ganized farmers to other organized workers has recently
become acute because of the formation of the Farmer-Labor
Party. There is a feeling in many parts of the country that
farmers will with difficulty be induced to unite with organ-
ized labor because farmers' interest as employers run coun-
ter so often to those of organized employees. One does not
get that impression in the Nonpartisan League strongholds
of the Northwest. On the contrary one finds farmers eager
to unife with organized labor; persuaded that the common
interests in good transportation, in fair banking facilities,
and in eliminating unnecessary middlemen's profits are more
important than any actual or imaginary differences.
"Maybe some of you fellows think there's a lot of differ-
ence between you and us because we own our land," said a
farmer at the Labor Party convention in Chicago. "Well,
you pay your money as rent to the landlords; we pay ours
as interest to the banks that hold the mortgages on our
farms; the only difference between us is that you work
eight hours a day for somebody else and we have the privi-
lege of working sixteen for ourselves."
The farmers of the Nonpartisan League, at least, have a
conception of economic realities and a discipline from or-
ganization that makes them ready to "go through" with
labor. The hitch is in their organization. The Nonpartisan
League is not a party but a movement, and it concerns
itself with State and not with national politics. Its phi-
losophy has been that it is easier to win votes by capturing
the machinery of one of the old parties — it uses the Republi-
cans in one State and the Democrats in another — than by
winning voters to a new party. The idea has worked, so
far as State campaigns go, but it makes a national cam-
paign in behalf of a third party — or indeed any one party —
impossible.
The Nonpartisan League must face in the immediate fu-
ture the question of reorganizing so as to take part in
national campaigns and make possible a federation or alli-
ance with the Farmer-Labor Party, or in some way with
organized labor. Townley is understood to be indifferent
toward or opposed to such a change. But in talking with
Nonpartisan Leaguers in Minnesota and North Dakota one
gets definite intimation that Townley is no longer the force
that he has been. There is a feeling that the League has
grown to a point where control can no longer be so central-
ized as now. The stirrings of rank and file democracy are
evident in the Nonpartisan League as elsewhere. Townley
is undeniably an organizing genius, but his sagacity in de-
termining political policies is less certain. He gives one the
impression of a man of one idea: that of putting over the
Nonpartisan League. And one may add that this seems to
have become such an obsession that he cares more about
doing it for the sake of winning than for the good results
that victory may achieve.
Without much doubt the Nonpartisan League will reor-
ganize so as to make possible direct cooperation with organ-
ized labor; either that or it will begin to break apart.
Townley's position will probably affect him more than it will
the League. His decision will determine whether he will
lead the League further or drop behind.
Ireland's Republican Government
M
By JAMES CARTY
Wexford, Ireland
R. MACNEILL," said Arthur Henderson enviously,
when the British labor delegation visited Ireland
six months ago, "Can you tell me what is the secret of your
organization?" The delegation had seen and admired the
mobility and sentiency of the machinery of Irish Republican
Government, and they sought for some arcane talisman that
might help to speed up the slow-moving British worker in
his advance to power. Our Minister of State for Foreign
Affairs answered him in two words, "The people." The
government suggests, initiates, coordinates, fulfils each func-
tion that a civilized government ought to fulfil, but the peo-
ple rule. It is a fact, due to circumstances, that the legisla-
ture does not, and cannot, legislate in any direction against
the popular will. It will be a fact when these merely tem-
porary circumstances have disappeared. That is hundred-
per-cent democracy.
At the time of writing, Dail Eireann exercises adminis-
trative powers over the greater part of Ireland. So far as
these powers are incomplete is due, not to lack of sanction
and encouragement from the people, but to the military con-
trol by England. For instance, it was discovered by the
Republican Government on June 15, that a secret circular
had been sent by Dublin Castle to the British police ordering
them to discover "in what areas there had been a decrease
in the number of cases brought before the British courts
and in what areas Sinn Fein courts had been established."
Three days later British cavalry commenced to scour the
counties of Cork, Kerry, Sligo, Wexford, Mayo, and Clare,
where Republican courts were believed to be in most fre-
quent session. A vigorous "law and order" drive com-
menced. Fourteen officials of justice were seized and taken
to jail. Republican police were conveying two sentenced
prisoners to confinement in an automobile at Youghal, Coun-
ty Cork, when a patrol of British cavalry opened fire on
them, rescuing the prisoners. There was a similar incident
at Charleville in the same county, where a criminal was lib-
erated by the foreign troops and a Republican officer killed.
But these are the little difficulties we have to surmount, and
we are surmounting them. While the British Judge Wakely
was sitting in the empty courthouse at Boyle, County Ros-
common, the Republican magistrates held a session outside
the courthouse and gave judgment on many cases which had
previously been listed for hearing before the British courts.
It is a favorite device of Ireland's enemies to represent
the Republican Government as a mere front view, a futile
gesture of defiance at a powerful and tolerant enemy.
They say, those superior persons who always write Irish
Republic between inverted commas: You tell us you are
suffering from a desperate military tyranny which contin-
ually hampers your progress toward free institutions, and,
in the same breath, you tell us that you have set up an almost
sovereign administration. Can both statements be true?
They are. The armed young men of Ireland, the Republican
army, make it possible for them both to be true. On one
hand the military occupation is probably the most stringent
in the history of any nation; on the other An Dail, the de
jure government of the country since January, 1919, has
become in the subsequent eighteen months the de facto gov
242
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2878
ernment. "Sinn Fein is effectively taking over the executive
and judicial functions of government," says Sir Horace
Plunket. "It has become the de facto government in three-
quarters of Ireland and virtually possesses treaty powers."
The task that faced our administrators in January, 1919,
was as stiff a task as anything in politics can be. There
were no precedents to work on. Many Republicans seriously
doubted if anything really constructive could be done, beyond
affirming Ireland's independence and sending diplomatic
envoys abroad. The dislocating and destructive elements
seemed too strong for normal government. Important min-
isters and officials, whose personal direction was essential to
the successful development of schemes, were continually
being arrested on trivial pretexts. Barton, Director of Agri-
culture, and originator of the Land Bank, was put to stone-
breaking in Portland ; Blythe, Director of Trade and Indus-
tries, is under lock and key; Cosgrave, Minister for Local
Government, has just emerged from Wormwood Scrubbs ; the
Army of Occupation have orders to shoot at sight Michael
Collins, Minister of Finance. Can you have a national bond
drive when twenty newspapers are suppressed for booming
it and persons found with prospectuses or receipts are forth-
with jailed?* Can you run a bank when troops enter
casually and pocket the deposits?
Yet this uncolored narrative of "the more important re-
cent actions of the Irish government" (from the Bulletin,
propaganda organ of An Dail) does indicate much construc-
tive achievement under enormous difficulties :
A commission of experts has been established to inquire into
all the industrial resources of Ireland and to report to the Dail
the best means of undertaking immediately the development of
these resources. This commission held public session in several
Irish cities and was then forcibly suppressed by the armed
forces of the British Government. It has, however, continued
to meet and, with the ready assistance of the people, is carrying
out its investigations and the examination of expert witness suc-
cessfully. . . .
A commission was appointed to provide land for agriculturists
and to allocate disputed lands. It has operated with complete
success and full popular sanction in many Irish counties.
For the first time there is an Irish legislature to tackle this
most typical of Irish problems — the pre-republican tendency
of landless men to drift into socially useless occupations or
to leave Ireland altogether. Over $1,500,000 has already
been loaned to buy land, either by Dail Eireann or by the
National Land Bank.
Cooperative fishing industries have been formed under the
direction of the Department of Fisheries, and the rich fishing
resources of Ireland are being systematically exploited.
Up to the present about $350,000 has been spent on the fish-
eries. Motor-boats have been purchased and selected men
are studying the methods employed in the fields of Scotland
and Norway.
Courts have been established which operate in twenty Irish
counties. These courts have been resorted to by the vast ma-
jority of Irish litigants. The decisions promulgated are obeyed
and are adequately enforced.
Unionist lawyers plead in the Republican courts. Former
army men, former R. I. C. men, and English residents in this
country come to them for justice, and get it. There is no
discrimination of persons and no prejudice, no expensive and
useless paraphernalia, no wigs and red tape to confuse and
mystify the plain man. The prevention of crime is the one
• The loan was for $1,250,000 and has been over-subscribed by $300,000.
object of our system of justice, strange as that may seem to
those who know what the objects of the British system are.
Two brothers have equal rights to a piece of land, but can-
not agree on the division. What is more just than to make
one divide it and the other choose from his division? Who
can find fault with the system that sentences a race-course
welcher to six months' hard labor on a farm?
An immense scheme of reforestation has been successfully
launched by the Department of Land and Agriculture. This
department is also engaged in establishing a cooperative farm-
ing committee.
Under the Minister for Trade and Industries direct foreign
trade with Ireland has been organized and projects are on foot
to develop certain home industries and to coordinate home trade.
About $100,000 has been allocated to the consular service.
Accredited consular agents are already at work in France,
Italy, Germany, the United States, and the Argentine.
Under the Ministry for Local Government the Irish municipal,
county, borough, and district councils are about to put into
operation a scheme of local services which will meet the many
needs of Irish citizens now unattended to and insure local devel-
opment.
It is the young men of Ireland who have wrought these in-
credible changes, incredible to anyone who knew Ireland six
years ago. It is they who have built up the framework of a
state under the shadow of the Terror. Nowhere in the world
do men so young hold such responsible positions and nowhere
is such courage and creativeness put into government. They
are as careless of tradition when they have struck on a right
trail as Jefferson and Patrick Henry. They study Russian
regional administration, American municipal management,
Danish agriculture, English consumers' cooperatives. They
are imitative where it is good to be imitative, and they are
intensely modern and practical. Yet they remember Ire-
land's former statehood, and, with toreutic touch, they are
grafting the idealism of the Gaels upon Irish State polity of
today. They are of a different mould than the pub-runner
politicians and predatory lawyers of the John Bull's Other
Island period. Engineers, teachers, salesmen, railroadmen,
grocers' assistants, agriculturists, doctors, and journalists
are the makers of new Ireland.
Some of the chief manifestations of independentism have
been mentioned. They all derive their powers quite literally
from the consent of the governed. Every week the Dail
extends its orbit. It never forces the issue. It acts, not
with majority sanction, but with unanimous sanction. The
courts, boards, and councils to which it delegates powers
figure in the lives of the people as similar institutions in all
democratically-governed countries do; they are not mere
window-dressing got up for purposes of advertisement and
propaganda. Robert Lynd, literary editor of the London
Daily News, says that the institution of the courts was the
most important event in Ireland since the Norman conquest.
Perhaps it will be felt that no account of the Republic of
Ireland is complete without a reference to the special inter-
nal problem of Ulster. A remarkable change has come there.
The Derry riots, deliberately fomented by Dublin Castle
and the British government, as Vice-President Griffith con-
clusively proved, were less a symptom of a present disease
than the backwash of the dead past. Excluding Belfast the
substantial majority of Ulster people are republicans, and
this ultimate outpost of the British occupation will soon be
republican, too. The whole truth of Irish-British relations
is summed up by the New Witness: "The Union is broken:
England can never govern Ireland again."
August 28, 1920]
The Nation
243
What Has Happened to the Forty- eighters ?
By SWINBURNE HALE
THE life of the "liberal" is one tragedy after another.
Liberals are persons who complain that the rules are
not lived up to — radicals want to change the rules or do
away with them altogether. When a group of liberals set
out, with admirable logic and clearly defined propaganda,
to collect other liberals, they end up by finding that what
they have collected are not liberals at all, but radicals, be-
cause the radical happens to be more active, crosser about
abuses, and much more easily collectable.
This is precisely what has happened to the orthodox
leaders of the Committee of 48, and this is the secret of
their present tragedy. It was not their first tragedy, nor
will it be their last. Like the Progressive tragedy of 1912,
there will follow the Liberal tragedy of 1922. For the 48
experiment has demonstrated not only that radicals are more
easily collectable, but that they are infinitely more numerous.
It is even a question whether there are any liberals left in
America, with the exception of the clear-thinking and pre-
cise expounders of the doctrine of abolition of economic
privilege, who are now ensconced in lonely majesty of
thought behind the desks at 48 headquarters. The rank and
file of the 48 delegates, assembled in convention at Chicago,
when they went over to Carmen's Hall to fuse with the
rank and file of the Labor delegates, found that they looked
like the Labor delegates, felt like them, and behaved like
them. There was only one difference. Whereas the radi-
calism of the Labor rank and file was of a more or less
standard variety, so that the polling of a cross section of
the Labor delegates would have proved them substantially
in accord on remedies, the radicalism of the 48ers was a
varying shade, running from very mild pink to something
which might almost have perturbed the Attorney General
with its deep carmine. Here and there in the amalgamated
convention one could still see the earnest, aspiring, and
rather annoyed face of a liberal; but, by and large, there
was no doubting the essential quality of radicalism — which
it turned out, in the actions of the amalgamated convention,
meant precisely collectivism and nothing else. That body of
persons coming together from industrial centers of exploi-
tation, farming centers of exploitation, and the general
small business class of exploited people, proclaimed unmis-
takably that they recognized themselves as exploited, and
that their fight was with the exploiters. They recognized,
they stated, they impressed it upon the orthodox 48 leaders,
that although they had not the slightest intention of calling
themselves collectivists or communists or any kind of -ists,
or showing the slightest interest in any philosophy or
theory of Nicolai Lenin or Carl Marx or Nicholas Murray
Butler, or anybody else who had written about collectivism
from any point of view, they were none the less producing
in America a perfectly American, made-in-America, doc-
trine of American labor, farmer, and small-business collec-
tivism. They said unmistakably, "We want to get on toward
the next development of the idea of the State, which is a
state where the workers will have something to say about
the work they do, the way they do it, and the way they live
while they are doing it." They did not say a word about
the proletarian state. Probably ninety per cent of them
would have denied that there was any idea of the proletarian
state in their minds. They would have called that socialism,
and they were emphatically not socialists, however much
collectivism there may be in the socialist doctrine. They
were not socialists because they were not at all sure that
they wanted to put all kinds of business in the hands of a
central elected body called the government. They were not
at all sure that that sort of supposed remedy would prove
anything more than a substitution of one kind of despot
for another. But they did know very definitely what they
wanted. They expressed it this way in their platform:
"The right of labor to an increasing share in the responsi-
bilities and management of industry; application of this
principle to be developed in accordance with the experience
of actual operation." The New York Call is perfectly right
in saying that such a program is not socialism; equally
wrong are the 48 orthodox leaders in saying that such a
program is guild-socialism. It is no more guild-socialism
than it is syndicalism or I. W. W.-ism, which it has also
been called by certain upset 48ers. It is simply the feeling
that labor has got after dealing with the Steel Corporation,
and the coal companies, and the Pennsylvania State Con-
stabulary, and the Department of Justice, and the American
Legion, and various mayors and Chambers of Commerce,
and Committees of Public Safety, and other products of
modern America, that labor is done with liberalism and
with "democracy" and with following people who like uplift
and who try to enforce rules which cannot be enforced. It
is simply the feeling of labor that labor itself has got to
have a say-so about running labor's business.
That this would be the outcome at Chicago was more
than probable. But it was noticeable how definitely and
completely it became the outcome at Chicago, and how defi-
nitely and completely all of those leaders who still cried the
liberal cry and wept the liberal tear were quietly left in
executive session at the Hotel Morrison while the rank and
file climbed aboard the trolley cars and went over to join
the Labor delegates in fraternal cohesion of collectivism.
The first thing the amalgamated convention did officially
was to declare itself, by absolutely unanimous vote, to be a
new political party. When the mighty roar of ayes came
up from the floor on that resolution, not even one liberal
could find the courage to vote one little liberal no against
that roar. There was no doubting that the rank and file
there assembled were a new political party; and, from that
moment onward, they proceeded to rend and tear any plans
which had been neatly and nicely devised for their guidance
toward the kingdom of heaven by their able mentors of the
past.
If the Executive Committee of the Committee of 48, as
now reorganized by the elimination of its radicals, succeeds
in running a candidate for Congress here and there, and suc-
ceeds in 1922 in getting a Liberal Party before the people,
the radicals will not be disturbed; they will not even, per-
haps, be sorry. For if by any chance the Liberals should
succeed in collecting liberals, and there were a few hundreds
or a few thousands of them who could be ticketed and
labelled so that they could be easily and immediately recog-
nized, the radicals would at least know who they were, and
would be able to be very, very careful of them.
244
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2878
Nights and Days
By JAMES RORTY
NOCTURNE
Elise lives over the river in the west;
I left three stars to guard her there,
While I walked happily home. My feet clock-clocked
Upon the hard wood path; the poplars strode
Straightly beside me; seeing so many stars,
I reached far up and gathered seven for her
And seven for me, and twined them curiously
Between my fingers, while I sang faint songs
Elise had taught me — things I found half-caught
Within her throat, or kissed from out her hair.
I sang them softly and a marsh-bird blew
A muted, breathy whistle. So I walked
Until the wood road ended, and I came
Into the open meadow, and was seen
By all the myriad-winking fields of heaven
Afoot upon the road, singing, in my arms
Great peonies and roses from her breast.
Arose a starry whispering; I waved
A gossip hand and cried, "Be friendly still;
Elise and I shall travel there one day
When we are old."
RAINY NIGHT
Strange things happen at night
In the rain.
It was black
When I walked home; there were
No watchmen in the sky; the lamps
Of the fireflies smouldered and went out.
The streaming fingers of the rain
Stroked, stroked, stroked the suffering grass;
The bulbous shapes
Of trees sprang up to threaten me; but I was caught
As in a web of rain, and could not cry.
I blundered on; the burly, hooded forms
Of gray ghosts going home
Shouldered me, and I was glad to hear my brook
Chuckle beneath the bridge, and see
My kitchen lantern shining out at last.
MR. NEVINSON ARRIVES BY MOONLIGHT
If I should say that I was very cold
Because another planet stared at me,
You'd call me mad ; of course, I am not used
To moonlight — that is why I'm shivering.
There at the station, when I saw the moon
Peer at me over the mountain — I knew then
It wasn't healthy; is the landlord up?
That moon was at my elbow all the way —
I and my bag and the moon at my heels
Alone upon the highway ; not a sound
Except the whip-poor-wills that chanted whip
Poor-will and w/iip-poor-will — those birds are mad;
They sit alone in pine-tops on the hills,
Their feathers caked with silver, and their souls
Blasted with moonlight; once I passed a field
Of timothy, shining like a misty lake
The moon had frozen — brrh ! I shiver yet.
Beauty lays traps for men ; I stumbled once
Into a forest clearing where the moon,
One pointing pine, and I were all the world;
I think I was a little mad, or why
Should I have felt so naked? I was Man,
I felt — despite my flannels and my bag —
Lord of the Earth ; yet I was very cold
Because another planet stared at me.
Beauty lays traps for men; I am not Man;
My name is Nevinson — see, there's my card —
A salesman from Passaic ; I'll be here
A week, I guess — unless that moon — yes, thanks,
Another drink would help — and now I'll go
To bed; I'm tired. Damn those whip-poor-wills.
SUNDAY MORNING
This is the Seventh Day;
Over the valley
We'll shake a chime.
That the sheep may browse and be blest,
Dust of dead priests' words we scatter;
Every cow . . .
Dong . . . dong
Shall walk more soberly.
This is the Seventh Day;
Blandly the secular winds
Blow over the valley.
This is the Seventh Day;
Faith shall hitch
A hundred buggies.
Paul to the Corinthians wrote . . . how the sun shines,
The waters flow . . . praise Him from whom . . .
Dong . . . dong
And every spear
Of timothy shall stand.
This is the Seventh Day;
We'll shake a chime
Over the valley.
THE POOL
I have come far for this cleansing;
Now I shall not hurry.
The city had tied a great stone
About my neck.
I drop it — so!
Now I can see the mo.untain.
I leave this soiled bundle of bitterness
In the reeds by the brink.
Now
I stand free and naked to the evening.
Harken, 0 Sun,
Staring so hard at me through the balsams — you who fuse
Earth, air, and water in a golden calm —
I am not strange,
I too am beautiful,
I have not forgotten
The way of a man with a brook.
Plunge !
See, 0 Sun,
The first man laughs among the fishes.
August 28, 1920]
The Nation
245
In the Driftway
THE Drifter sat upon the white, beaten sands of
that twenty-five mile beach which forms the South
Shore of Martha's Vineyard Island. Before him stretched
the ocean, unbroken by land until Cape Haitien comes into
view. At his feet the restless ground swell of the At-
lantic was piling breaker upon breaker on the beach. In
his ears was the slow, booming cadence of the relentless
surf, and the deep-toned, incessant roar of wave upon sand.
Down the beach was an old wreck tossed up by a blow these
many years agone, her nose deep bedded in the sand, her
powerful timbers stretched stark and impotent to the sky.
Beyond the fifty feet of white water churned into foam, the
world was blue with the depth of color that only those who
go down to the sea know. The southeast gale stung one's
face. The sun smiled benignly. The Drifter's interest in
the racing toys of men off Sandy Hook began to wane. The
gravity of Polish crises seemed dim and remote. Here was
the sun and the wind and the sky and the magnificence of
the restless, booming ocean. The affairs of men faded.
The sea gods were good. Did anything else in the world
really matter?
* * -x- * *
THEY are obviously called "Lost and Found" columns
only in a spirit of false optimism, for it is almost
never that anything is "found." The question is, who finds
all the lost articles and refuses to advertise them? And
what does he do with them? It is of course more than
possible that they are not found at all but, as a result of
their owner's carelessness or high living, that they simply
sink into oblivion in some vast crater of Lost, Strayed, and
Stolens. If this is so what a hideous conglomeration of
things that somebody once cherished must be jostling and
crowding each other. The housing shortage is undoubt-
edly most acute there as elsewhere, due in part to the great
number of dropped stitches — another result of the war.
And what does the "white Scotch female poodle dog," with
"four legs and face clipped and freckles on stomach," do
for his supper? It is plain that he cannot exist on a per-
petual diet of bank books or summer furs or a "gentle-
men's diamond ring set in white gold in the vicinity of
Edgemere, L. I." Even a "diamond bug with thirty small
diamonds set in platinum" and "emerald eyes" could not be
very satisfactory to a hungry canine. There must be in-
numerable lost souls and shattered romances and broken
campaign promises to get in each other's way incessantly,
cooking their miserable meals of whatever scraps may be
left in a semi-occasional lost dinner pail (and dinner pails
are not now so fashionable as they once were) by the feeble
lights of the candles that have gone out (and in the days
of electricity these must be few and far between). There
can be little to relieve the monotony of their confused exist-
ence except now and then when some Lost Leader can enjoy
a quiet little snicker over an item in one of the morning
papers that has been left in the subway begging that the
gentleman "who by mistake exchanged valise with young
lady on the N. Y. Central communicate with, etc." On the
whole, being lost must be a melancholy fate. It were even
better to be a candidate for the vice-presidency.
The Drifter
Correspondence
No Injustice to Any One
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson warned our peo-
ple to beware of our money system. "He who controls your
money will control your people." I am past seventy years of
age now and I have lived to see this country entirely governed
by privileged corporations — a government of, for, and by the
corporations. The voice of the people is flouted and ridiculed.
It is now a government of and by force. "The people be damned"
is the motto now, every right and privilege of the people have
been denied them; the Government centralized; and the right of
"free speech and free press" taken away; the right of assem-
blage broken up by brazen autocratic officials — agents of the
privileged special interests; and history is now repeating itself.
The warnings of Jefferson and the fathers of our Government
are going to be heard and heeded, however. I have lived to see
my country Prussianized under the guise of a "Democratic Ad-
ministration." I have lived to see the money system of this
Government prostituted to the aid and support of monopolists,
trusts, and combines, who are exploiting the people. "For the
law of the gods they have set up their own traditions." I note
from press reports that Mr. Wilson asserts that "no injustice
has been done any one under his Administration." I arise to a
question of personal privilege. He and his Administration denied
me the Constitutional right of freedom of speech, and it denied
men the Constitutional right of the free use of the press. He
nullified the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Con-
stitution when he and his Congress enacted the Conscription
Law, the "Sedition Law," and the "Espionage Law."
Wilson and his Congress plunged us into a foreign war, of
which he said himself, "We had nothing to do with starting."
He and his Congress issued bonds and piled up a debt of more
than thirty billion dollars against the people of this nation,
which the laboring and producing people of the United States
of America will be made to pay. My posterity will be virtually
enslaved to bondholders for a hundred years. Yet, the man
Wilson asserts: "My Administration did no injustice to any one."
Midville, Georgia, July 29 H. L. Smith
Evolution with an R"
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: Thank you for putting opposite to Bertrand Russell's
article on the Bolsheviki, The Menace of Another War, with its
significant comment that these same Bolsheviki were "the single
liberal force in European diplomacy today." It is pertinent to
ask if we cannot well trust to time, together with the sane,
economic understanding and the broad constructive statesman-
ship of those who are directing Russian affairs, to bring order
out of chaos in the domestic field of their activities. Appar-
ently, Bertrand Russell, like so many of us, forgets that the
Bolsheviki have not yet been in power three years, when he
criticizes their accomplishments. He forgets, too, that revolu-
tion is simply evolution with an "r" prefixed, and that evolution
takes time. Moreover, he fails properly to take into account
the enormous size of Russia and its complex civilization, the
previous rottenness of the government, the stupefaction during
long years of a large part of the population by vodka. He for-
gets that this is a double revolution — political and economic,
that it has been carried on coincidently with a stupendous war,
and that no end of energy, man power, and money — almost since
its inception — has been directed against counter-revolution after
counter-revolution. And he practically ignores the blockade!
We have lied about Russia, we have aided her enemies, we have
hated her, we have fought her, and we have starved her. Let us
have done with it all, now, and let her alone.
Boston, August 11 Blanche Watson
246
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2878
Books
Appraising the Peace Conference
The Inside Story of the Peace Conference. By Dr. E. J. Dillon.
Harper and Brothers.
The Peace in the Making. By H. Wilson Harris. E. P. Dutton
and Company.
The Peace Conference Day by Day. By Charles T. Thompson.
With an Introductory Letter by Colonel E. M. House. Bren-
tano's.
Some Problems of the Peace Conference. By Charles Homer
Haskins and Robert Howard Lord. Harvard University
Press.
An Introduction to the Peace Treaties. By Arthur Pearson
Scott. Chicago University Press.
The War Guilt and Peace Crime of the Entente Allies. By
Stewart E. Bruce. F. L. Searl and Company.
Tp ACH of the above books is typical in its way of a kind of
-*— ' book of which we are likely to have many until the chief
actors themselves speak out. There will be descriptions of what
went on, or of what was said to have gone on, by observers
who were close to the Peace Conference although not actually
of it; partisan explanations and defenses by "experts" who
were cogs in the mechanism; "first aid" handbooks for those
who were not there but who want to know; and bitter arraign-
ments of the whole proceeding by writers who neither fear
Mr. Wilson nor regard M. Clemenceau. Then, when the men
who really made the Treaty of Versailles shall have told their
story — if they ever do — the critics will have a different task.
Dr. Dillon, the veteran correspondent of the London Daily
Telegraph, was admittedly preeminent among the correspon-
dents whom the Peace Conference drew to Paris for his long
and intimate acquaintance with European politics and public
men. He had also the advantage of knowing well at first hand
the countries and regions, especially the Balkans, Turkey, and
Russia, which offered the most dangerous pitfalls to the nego-
tiators. His "Inside Story," accordingly, is packed with inci-
dents illustrative of the methods of the Conference, of the
characteristics of the men who composed it, and of the in-
fluences, now open and now subterranean, which worked every-
where. Dr. Dillon does not write without bias. He obviously
has little sympathy for the Bolsheviki, and his attitude toward
Rumania and Poland is conservative and would be regarded by
many as reactionary. On the other hand, his scathing indict-
ment of the ignorance and inefficiency, the cynicism, the bad
faith, and the remorseless pride of power of the Big Five and
Four and Three is only equaled, but not excelled, by the now
well-known criticism of Professor Keynes. The two books,
indeed, supplement one another admirably, Dr. Dillon devoting
himself almost wholly to the political side of the peace while
Professor Keynes attacks its economic features. We permit
ourselves only a single quotation, and that the closing para-
graph of Dr. Dillon's final chapter:
"Whatever the tests one applies to the work of the Conference
— ethical, social, or political — they reveal it as a factor emi-
nently calculated to sap high interests, to weaken the moral
nerve of the present generation, to fan the flames of national
and racial hatred, to dig an abyss between the classes and the
masses, and to throw open the sluice-gates to the inrush of the
waves of anarchist internationalities. Truth, justice, equity,
and liberty have been twisted and pressed into the service of
economic-political boards. In the United States the people
who prided themselves on their aloofness are already fighting
over European interests. In Europe every nation's hand is
raised against its neighbors, and every people's hand against
its ruling class. Every government is making its policy sub-
servient to the needs of the future war which is universally
looked upon as an unavoidable outcome of the Versailles peace.
Imperialism and militarism are striking roots in soil where
they were hitherto unknown. In a word, Prussianism, instead
of being destroyed, has been openly adopted by its ostensible
enemies, and the huge sacrifices offered by the heroic armies
of the foremost nations are being misused to give one half of
the world just cause to rise up against the other half."
Mr. Harris, the accomplished correspondent of the London
Daily News, also tells the story of what happened and why.
His plan is less ambitious than that of Dr. Dillon, for he leaves
out most of the historical summaries which are a valuable
feature of Dr. Dillon's volume, and also tells fewer incidents.
He was close to the British side of the proceedings, however,
and knew only a little less intimately what France was doing.
His account of the Prinkipo episode, for example, and of the
apparently deliberate intermeddling of France to insure that
the proposed conference should come to naught, should be read
by anyone who still cherishes confidence in the good faith of
the Paris negotiators. As to the general procedure at Paris,
Mr. Harris is almost as severe a critic as is Dr. Dillon; but he
has faith in the League of Nations, and pens a hopeful final
chapter on the future of that organization.
Mr. Thompson, who is the superintendent of the Associated
Press foreign service, was in Paris before the Conference met
and stayed until the last gun was fired. As the subtitle indi-
cates— "A Presidential Pilgrimage Leading to the Discovery
of Europe" — the book is a sort of diary of events centering about
the activities of Mr. Wilson. Here one may read all about
how the President breakfasted, lunched, dined, attended recep-
tions and official functions, and drove out; whom he saw, what
was said, what he did, and what others thought about him
before and after knowing him. One suspects that Mr. Thomp-
son's easily-read pages owe a good deal to Colonel House, since
even an Associated Press correspondent could hardly have
known all the things that Mr. Thompson sets down without
someone on the inside to tip him off. To only one part of Mr.
Thompson's narrative do we take exception. At pages 406-415
appears an account of an extended interview on June 27 with
the President, which from its form would naturally be inter-
preted as a conversation between the President and Mr. Wilson
himself. As a matter of fact, it is a report of a meeting
between Mr. Wilson and the American correspondents, held at
Mr. Wilson's request at the Hotel Crillon, and attended by
practically all of the American correspondents who were then
in Paris.
The supporters of the treaty are, of course, entitled to their
innings, and they get them in the volume of Professor Haskins
and Professor Lord. Professor Haskins, who before the war
was known to scholars chiefly as an authority on early Norman
institutions, turned up at Paris as chief of the Division of
Western Europe in the American delegation, and later served
on the special committee of three which framed the treaty
provisions regarding the Saar valley and Alsace-Lorraine.
Professor Lord was the American expert on Poland. The vol-
ume now published is based upon a course of eight Lowell
Institute lectures, four of them by Professor Haskins and four
by Professor Lord. The historical, geographical, and ethno-
logical information which the authors have assembled will
doubtless be found useful. The point of view toward the Peace
Conference and its work may be gathered from two quotations.
Of the Treaty of Versailles Professor Haskins writes:
"The treaty of Versailles, like the other treaties drawn up
at Paris, is by no means a perfect instrument. Those who took
part in framing it would be the last to believe it verbally
inspired. . . . But it represents an honest effort to secure a
just and durable settlement, and neither the Conference in
general nor the United States in particular need be ashamed
of it."
Professor Lord, who admits that "of all the parts of the
Versailles Peace Treaty, there is perhaps none which it required
greater moral courage to make or which it may be more diffi-
cult to uphold than the Polish-German settlement," closes
his chapter on Poland with a paragraph which in view of
August 28, 1920]
The Nation
247
recent events reads today like something strangely remote:
"Nevertheless, the brilliant and original genius of the Polish
people; their ardent and unsurpassed spirit of patriotism; the
lessons which they may be presumed to have learned from
their misfortunes; the reassuring evidence supplied by their
conduct during these last two critical years — all this affords
grounds for hope, not only that Poland has permanently re-
covered her independence, but that she is capable of becoming
again what she was for so many centuries in the past: a bul-
wark of liberty, republicanism, and Western civilization in the
troubled East of Europe."
Professor Scott, of the University of Chicago, has set himself
the comparatively humble task of tracing briefly the diplomatic
events and political discussions about the causes and aims of
the war which led up to the Peace Conference, and of analyzing
the Treaty of Versailles. The result is a volume which may
be especially commended to students and teachers, and which
should prove helpful to anyone who finds the text of the treaty
hard reading. The author's attitude as a whole is friendly
to the treaty, but on controverted questions he does not fail to
present both sides. The general character of Mr. Bruce's book
may be judged from its title. There is none that is not guilty;
no, not one. For prevention thereof in the future, Mr. Bruce
proposes certain far-reaching changes in the Constitution of the
United States which will, he thinks, democratize that instrument.
William MacDonald
Woman's Fine Frenzy
Songs in the Common Chord. By Amelia E. Barr. D. Appleton
and Company.
A Whisper of Fire. By Agnes Ryan. The Four Seas Company.
Wilderness Songs. By Grace Hazard Conkling. Henry Holt
and Company.
Poems. By Gladys Cromwell. With an Introduction by Padraic
Colum. The Macmillan Company.
The Hesitant Heart. By Winifred Welles. B. W. Huebsch.
The Coat Without a Seam, and Other Poems. By Helen Gray
Cone. E. P. Dutton and Company.
Sixteen Dead Men, and Other Poems of Easter Week. By Dora
Sigerson Shorter. Mitchell Kennerley.
Moods. Prose Poems. By Mercedes de Acosta. Moffat, Yard
and Company.
Trolley Lines. By Andrea Hofer Proudfoot. Chicago: Ralph
Fletcher Seymour.
Diantha Goes the Primrose Way, and Other Verses. By Ade-
laide Manola Hughes. Harper and Brothers.
Bunch. By Susan Miles. Oxford: B. H. Blackwell.
Hail, Man! By Angela Morgan. John Lane Company.
Bluestone. Lyrics. By Marguerite Wilkinson. The Macmillan
Company.
Youth Riding. By Mary Carolyn Davies. The Macmillan Com-
pany.
A Woman of Thirty. By Marjorie Allen Seiffert. Alfred A.
Knopf.
Pictures of the Floating World. By Amy Lowell. The Mac-
millan Company.
UNIMPORTANT as it may seem to say so, the most obvious
fact about poetry written by women always is that it has
been written by women. Men sometimes write veritably like
women — not simply like the creatures women by proverb are;
but women always write like women — and never more so than
when they are cultivating the great broad touch which by
proverb is man's. This has been true at least since the later
Caroline days in England, when there was an Aphra Behn as
well as a Katherine Phillips; it is true now, when in the work
of every group of poetesses brought casually together there are
heard two plain strokes side by side — the gentle, perhaps too
gentle, and the strong, perhaps too strong. Both are ever-
lasting.
That the late Mrs. Barr was gentle would not in itself be
proof, therefore, that she was old-fashioned — though she was
old-fashioned. She frankly was content with fireside narrative
and easy injunction, with good deeds and cheerful rhythms.
Her rhythm occasionally cantered too fast, so that her cheeks
flushed and her bonnet bobbed; but there always was a halt
somewhere, with no real effect of a runaway. Agnes Ryan
never is agitated, yet there is a trace of flutter about the
spinsterly dignity with which she manages her commonplaces.
She speaks for woman's most precious prerogative, to state
true things without excess or stress — and if they are old, no
matter. Mrs. Conkling also feels platitudes snugly and sweetly.
Her cadences, like her attachments, are the generally accepted.
Her mood and meter seem all too neat, with seldom a sign that
their creation brought thrusts of pleasurable pain.
Gladys Cromwell left a volume of verse that is gentle with a
difference. It is subdued, but only as Emily Dickinson some-
times was subdued, poignantly and profoundly. The work of
a finely thoughtful woman whom the spectacle of sheer, naked
cleverness and successfulness hurt, it represents feminine intro-
spection almost at its best. Miss Cromwell took a melancholy
pleasure in her processes, brooding softly and coolly over in-
capacities which her imagination invented, and reviewing a
poetical past dreary with misconceived or neglected opportuni-
ties. Her poems convey a conviction of futility from which
relief was to be sought only in reflection. Thought, as a thing
possessed, was a little less precious than Love as a thing un-
possessed; but it was very precious:
Thought is fragrant like shining grass;
It makes for our spirits a lonely mead;
As animals taste the grass in shadow
On pensive lawns, our spirits feed.
Winifred Welles, likewise, is feminine with a difference. She
is tiny and sharp and shining, sleek and perfect, and very
right. Her volume is full of felicity, like the body of a cat.
Her quick, clean movements make for symmetry through some-
thing that looks like instinct; though it must have been nothing
other than excellent discipline which achieved the almost un-
canny economy in her better songs and soliloquies.
Among the poetesses in the larger mood, Helen Gray Cone,
though palpably not the least ambitious, is destined least to
survive the present hour for the reason that her ardors have
been lighted at unsubstantial altars, those of the late war and
the late peace. A poetess of the flag, she seems stale now as
well as strident; the flimsy principles she celebrated have
crumpled, and the resentments she shared are as dead as Pope's
Dunces. Mrs. Shorter's last volume, also patriotic, supported
a more picturesque cause, the cause of Ireland, but succeeded
no better as poetry. Clan-righteousness in her case meant clan-
prosiness; hatred of England filled her so full that there was
no room left for art, and she could write:
Sir Roger Casement, honored for his years
Of stress and struggle, of fatigue and work.
The rest speak vigorously about themselves. Mercedes de
Acosta, says Charles Hanson Towne in an introduction to some
incontestably prose poems, "may go very far." She already is
leagues beyond Don Marquis's Hermione, who appears a sensible
and piquant creature compared with one who hushes you elab-
orately, not to say ominously, only to confide:
I think it does not matter so much what we believe
as what we want to believe.
Such things, continues Mr. Towne, "refuse to be catalogued
and classified"; but they "have a haunting quality," and they
"leave one with a sense of finality." If finality here means
finality of departure, with never any return to haunt or please
or perplex, Mr. Towne for once is as much as half right any-
how. Andrea Hofer Proudfoot exploits herself strenuously and
polysyllabically in blocks of free verse which at least have hard
corners. Her gushes of confidence are not as exciting as they
were intended to be, but they are far from silly. Mrs. Hughes,
248
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2878
through a series of nervous and facile monologues, raises a hue
and cry over Mrs. Diantha's indiscretions with a lover. The
irregular affair is treated rather regularly on the whole, with
bustle and consecration and indecision and regret in the con-
ventional proportions. Susan Miles, colloquial but seldom racy,
offers a busily and somewhat shrewishly documented caricature
of Dunch, a representative English village, with too many de-
tails too knowingly stuck in for poetry to be left much play.
Angela Morgan, as the title she has chosen may indicate, is
eagerly didactic. She evangelizes by tempestuous platitudes,
ending her poems in whirlwinds of moral speculation.
A note of hill-wind wholesomeness and chaste carousal in the
fulness of life is never absent from current verse. At times it
is truly spirited; at other times it chirrups and is banal; but
always some woman or group of women has it. Marguerite
Wilkinson, for instance, has decided moral and metrical spring
without conspicuous originality; though she is deeply touching
here in Songs of an Empty House, on the childless state. Mary
Carolyn Davies enjoys the use of a particularly blithe and
intelligent voice. She works with a snapping energy of hand
and eye that enables her always to finish without falling. She
is cocksure, simple, and free, on tiptoe every minute to catch
on an eager cheek whatever breezes blow. Marjorie Allen
Seiffert is firmer and abler and more caustic, but perhaps no
more effective. Her hits are hard and clean, her mind is
muscular, she is invariably stunning; yet who can say that
she would not gain by occasional lapses into listlessness and
inefficiency? One respects her accomplishment oftener than
he is willing to. Her figures, elaborate and excellent as they
are, do not penetrate that core of the memory which lives on
tranquilly and forever.
Miss Lowell's fifth volume, a miscellany of lyrics and occa-
sional pieces gathered up out of the past five years, proves
her still possessed of an energy and an activity which few
poets or poetesses dream of, let alone possess. There still is
nothing tentative or wistful about her manner; her nerves
continue in excellent condition. The volume also makes clearer
than before where her special province lies — in the stuffs,
essentially, rather than the stuff, of nature and human nature.
Miss Lowell is to poetry now what Terborch and Vermeer
were to painting in the seventeenth century. She is a con-
noisseur of materials, of surfaces, of textures. She twitches
the good, self-standing brocade of life with a firm and ex-
perienced hand, searching incessantly for strong, stiff, bright
new words that may be adapted to her pattern. The flash of
all of this is mostly on the outward eye, which sees silver and
varnish and gold and jade and silk and agate and pewter
and porcelain and marble in glittering succession. Then there
are the colors which Miss Lowell cannot escape, and which she
almost makes her mannerism — plum, orange, lemon-green, steel-
blue, crocus, pink, rose-red, brick-red, cobalt, lapis lazuli,
emerald, ocher, yellow-green, mauve, amber, jade, sardonyx,
and opal. There also is the manifold luxury of hearing and
feeling stuffs handled; there is folding, and quilting, and cut-
ting, and slicing, and chipping, and splintering, and rustling,
and crackling, and laying away. By rights so much surface
should pall terribly; in fact, it palls only a little. Now and
then the reader may sigh for a spell of smooth and equable
ratiocination or narrative to interrupt this orgy of sensations;
again he may crave details of shape and dimension and quality
and character to thrust through and behind this play of planes;
but in general he goes along willingly with Miss Lowell wher-
ever she wishes to feel the industrious curl and movement of
existence :
I want to be a carpenter,
To work all day long in clean wood,
Shaving it into little thin slivers
Which screw up into curls behind my plane;
Pounding square, black nails into white boards,
With the claws of my hammer glistening
Like the tongue of a snake.
I want to shingle a house,
Sitting on the ridge-pole in a bright breeze.
I want to put the shingles on neatly,
Taking great care that each is directly between two others.
I want my hands to have the tang of wood:
Spruce, Cedar, Cypress.
I want to draw a line on a board with a flat pencil,
And then saw along that line,
With the sweet-smelling sawdust piling up in a yellow heap
at my feet.
M. V. D.
Shakespeare Unidentified
Shakespeare Identified. By J. Thomas Looney. Frederick A.
Stokes Company.
WITHOUT any systematic knowledge of Elizabethan life or
literature, Mr. Looney became convinced that no good could
come out of Stratford. In "Shakespeare Identified" he claims to
have proved beyond reasonable doubt that all of Shakespeare
and the best of Lyly were written by Edward De Vere, Earl of
Oxford, who as early as 1580 was a patron of players, and who
died in 1604, so that many of his best plays were acted and
printed posthumously.
Doubt as to the validity of Mr. Looney's imposing collection of
near evidence may be suggested by an examination of his method
of procedure. Convinced by previous writers that Shakespeare
was not the author of the plays, he sought in them the character
of an author whom he concluded to be a lover of verse, of music,
of sport, and so on. Being ignorant of the literature of the
time, he was in doubt as to where he might find such a man
until he hit upon the idea of searching an anthology for poems
in the Venus and Adonis stanza. What he thought the best of
such poems were by Edward De Vere, of whom he had never
heard; and from this point progress was easy, for striking re-
semblances appeared everywhere. Being somewhat naive, Mr.
Looney was not struck by the ease with which his guess received
confirmation, and he seems never to have suspected that the
qualities which he found common to De Vere and Shakespeare
were simply Elizabethan. Both poets were interested in Italy,
but so was every other literary Englishman; both expressed the
fancy that love is often beguiled because Cupid is a blind child;
and both (most wonderful of all) compared the contrasting colors
in a woman's face to the lily and the damask rose.
Having established these remarkable facts, Mr. Looney in-
vestigated the life of De Vere, and found in the reproach at-
tached to his name for Bohemian acquaintances a motive for con-
cealing his dramatic authorship — though why he should have con-
cealed Venus and Adonis and the Eape of Lucrece is not equally
clear, for certainly non-dramatic poetry was reputable enough.
Also, since the plays themselves express every shade of opinion
and character, Mr. Looney found in them many things which
seemed to fit De Vere, who, he says, like Bertram gratified with
some difficulty his desire for travel, like Hamlet concealed his
genius under assumed eccentricity, like Romeo had a wife of
fourteen years, and like Othello distrusted her. Mr. Looney, in
short, attributes to autobiography what belongs to previously
existing story or to dramatic utterance.
That the investigator is not completely up in Shakespearean
scholarship may be inferred from the fact of his stressing the
assumption that Shakespeare permitted without protest the un-
authorized publication of his plays, when Mr. Pollard has pretty
well exploded the myth of a supineness before the pirates. But
Mr. Looney's dominant fault is that his work is wholly in-
ferential. However much we may be convinced that De Vere,
had he been a genius, might have written such plays as Shake-
speare's, there is no tangible fact to connect them with him.
True it is that much which we say about Shakespeare is also
pure assumption; but we do know, not only that such a man
existed, but that there are some sixty references to him as author
i
August 28, 1920]
The Nation
249
before 1604 with not one word of doubt concerning him. In such
a case an ounce of contemporary evidence is worth a ton of sub-
sequent speculation, and much as we should like to know more
about Shakespeare it is hardly wise to substitute for an account
which is 90 per cent inference one which is 100 per cent con-
jecture. Joseph Krutch
Documents pour Servir
My Diaries: Being a Personal Record of Events, 1888-191 U. By
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. London: Martin Seeker. Volume I:
1919; Volume II: 1920.
THE successive instalments of Mr. Blunt's secret history of
his own times, being regarded as "indiscreet," have been
for the most part ignored by those great personages against
whom damaging revelations have been made. In this new fifth
part he tells the facts as he knows them about "the scramble
for Africa" and "the coalition against Germany." He is
courageous and outspoken, publishing private letters and records
of confidential conversations. His apology for dealing with
events so recent rests upon "the ungenerous terms imposed by
the Allied Governments at Paris on their opponents vanquished
in the war." Whatever may be thought of his personal loyalty
to friends and associates (once the occasion of a sharp corre-
spondence between himself and Frederick Harrison) there can
be no question that his volumes have helped point the way
toward the principle late enunciated of "open covenants openly
arrived at." He is a sincere exponent of "pitiless publicity";
pitiless, indeed, toward those who knew no pity. His position
is the more remarkable since taste and native gifts drew him
toward poetry, wealth toward the life of a gifted amateur of
arts and letters and travel, education and social position toward
the point of view of the aristocracy which furnishes England
with the governors whose policy and conduct he denounces.
The keynote of Mr. Blunt's Diaries is that of his entire career :
his championship of oppressed nationalities and especially of the
old civilizations of Asia and Northern Africa exploited so arro-
gantly as centers of trade by England and her continental rivals.
The earlier portion of the work, dealing with Eastern and
South African affairs during the nineties, is overshadowed in
interest by the second volume. To his mind the great war was
essentially an Eastern, not a Western, war; and he reviews the
causes of the catastrophe frankly from the point of view of the
Moslem world. England's increasingly obvious decision to repu-
diate her promises to evacuate Egypt carried with it the neces-
sity to compensate France elsewhere. Of the secret deal with
France with regard to Morocco Mr. Blunt heard so long ago as
1904. Grey's policy of constructing and consolidating the two
Ententes required tacit consent on the part of England to Italy's
raid upon Tripoli as a way of winning Italy from the Triple
Alliance, and it required also connivance with Russia in her
assault upon Persia. The acquiescence in the Tripoli adventure
together with Grey's series of errors in dealing with Turkey,
especially with regard to the Akabah affair and the Denshawi
executions, drove Turkey into the arms of the Central Powers
(thus prolonging the war when it came) at a time when the
necessities of Germany's economic position called for the preser-
vation of the independence of the Mohammedan states as a field
for commercial expansion. Edward VII's influence had been a
steadying one; but his death left the management of foreign
policy exclusively in the hands of Grey, "whose ignorance of
foreign affairs was really astonishing, knowing as he did no
foreign language and having made hardly so much as a holiday
tour of Europe." Consequently, from 1910 on the British For-
eign Office executed a series of blunders which led logically to
the war. Mr. Blunt has no liking for William II, "the Apostle
of European violence," but he justifies the Emperor's resent-
ment against England for her alliance with his two most dan-
gerous enemies. "Our policy," he writes, "of helping the Rus-
sian Czar financially after his defeat by the Japanese, and so
enabling the Czar to renew his military strength, seemed to Wil-
helm a gratuitous menace as obliging him to increase his own
army, while our Entente about Persia seemed a menace to the
development of his commercial plans connected with the Bagdad
railway. Nor, doubtless, was it unknown to him that Russia
should be put in possession of Constantinople, and thus perma-
nently block for Germany her trade route eastwards. All this,
added to our support of France in Morocco, was resented at
Berlin." Mr. Blunt feels that had there been an English states-
man in control of affairs courageous enough to withdraw from
these false positions, a few more years of peace might have been
gained which would have given the socialistic forces of England
and the western Continent time to gather strength and perhaps
avert a general war. That those actually in power in England
regarded war as inevitable and were planning accordingly is
made abundantly clear by the Diaries. There are records of
many important conversations on this subject (see especially
volume II, pages 322, 381, 405, 409, and 416). Throughout the
book there are repeated evidences of the growth in England of
"those doctrines of supermanity and imperial selfishness which
we have since ascribed to a German origin." The avowed reason
for England's participation, the protection of Belgian neutrality,
Mr. Blunt brushes perhaps too hastily and unphilosophically
aside, and declares: "The real cause of the quarrel with Ger-
many, I well knew, was no more honorable a one than that of
our dread of a too powerful commercial rival and the fear of
Kaiser Wilhelm's forcing France, if we stood aside, into com-
mercial alliance with him against us in the markets of the
world." With such a conviction Mr. Blunt refused to subscribe
to the absurd false doctrine of "My country, right or wrong,"
and preserved during the war an attitude of severest abstention.
His record of those years is reserved for posthumous publication
should his literary executors deem such publication wise.
These thousand crowded pages are difficult reading if the main
course of the argument is to be followed through the countless
side-issues, social, literary, artistic, geographic, philosophical,
religious. Had the material been sifted, rearranged, and ren-
dered more compact, the result would have made for lucidity;
but the loss would have been greater than the gain, because
there would have vanished from the record an impression of sin-
cere and spontaneous conviction. The preceding paragraph is
no adequate epitome of the obscure and entangled political in-
trigues chronicled in the book; nor is it possible to give more
than the barest indication of the vast amount of non-political
material that it contains. Mr. Blunt knew and at one time co-
operated with Herbert Spencer. He was in touch with A. R.
Wallace and other scientists. His upbringing and sympathies
drew him toward the modernist movement, and he held many
conferences with Father Tyrrell, while one of the most moving
episodes of the Diaries is the account of that heresiarch's death.
He was on familiar terms with Frederic Harrison and the
Positivists. George Wyndham was his cousin and most intimate
friend ; he was in almost as close contact with Winston Churchill.
The world of letters beckoned him, and to him its doors were
open. Of all the famous men he has known intimately he reck-
ons William Morris intellectually the strongest. Such praise is
the more impressive because of its infrequence in pages that con-
tain pen-portraits reminding one of the etymological connection
between the words "ink" and "caustic." Mr. Blunt's insight into
character and his ability to depict it take the form, not of highly
finished portraits such as one finds in Lord Morley's "Recollec-
tions," but of rapid sketches, confident and imaginative. Swin-
burne, "wasting his youth on drink and his old age on Theodore
Watts"; Alfred Austin, "the most absurd little cock sparrow of
a man"; Henley, having "the bodily horror of a dwarf" and "the
dwarf malignity of tongue"; Meredith, with the secret trouble
of his parentage which cast a shadow over his life; Asquith,
evolving from the square-toed Puritan into the "gay dog" of
London society; Balfour, hard, cruel, courageous, and cynical,
250
The Nation
[Vol. ill, No. 2878
his real mind being, according to "Margot" (Mrs. Asquith figures
prominently in the Diaries), metaphysical and religious; Francis
Thompson (who spent part of his last days in a cottage on Mr.
Blunt's estate), "emaciated beyond credibility," taking six ounces
of laudanum daily, and sitting for hours with "Martin Chuzzle-
wit" in his hand, held as often as not upside down; Sargent, so
bored by his women sitters that every now and then he had to
retire behind a screen to refresh himself by sticking his tongue
out at them; King Edward, preferring the society of Jews and
second-rate women to his dull aristocracy; Leo XIII, "nearly
divine, if there was divinity anywhere to be found on earth," yet
with something in his countenance suggestive of Voltaire: these
and literally hundreds of other notabilities throng his pages in
company with illustrious Moslems and Hindus. The mind and
eye of the poet are discernible in the descriptions of desert life
and curious expeditions, of shipwreck in the eastern Mediter-
ranean and "groups under the dreaming garden trees" of Sus-
sex. To the last the compassion which is the fundamental char-
acteristic of this strange, noble, quixotic career — it is civiliza-
tion's shame that such lives must be called quixotic — is visible as
it was in boyhood when in the lid of a box containing some cater-
pillars he pricked holes in the form of the constellations, "so that
the caterpillars inside might think they were still out of doors
and could see the stars." Samuel C. Chew
The Far East for Chambers of Commerce
Have We a Far Eastern Policy? By Charles H. Sherrill. Charles
Scribner's Sons.
ALIGHT book this, written after some months of travel in
the Orient by the former adjutant general of the State of
New York, diplomatist, lawyer, and author of "Stained Glass
Tours" in France, Italy, and England and of other books. He
deals with the political and racial problems of the Pacific Ocean
lands and America's interests in them. He is absorbed in trade,
in expansion of United States capital, and in making safe the
great sea of the Far East for a dominating but pleasant control
by the industrial and financial leaders of our republic. He sees
only the trade skin of the races involved. The only function of
their body politic that interests him is barter. That there are
other functions, and even organs, he is not aware.
He tours through Hawaii, Japan, China, and the Philippines,
blithely touching on tourist attractions, naval bases, funny
fruits, and national aspirations. He brings apt comparisons
from the baseball diamond and golf links to point his arguments,
but nowise burdens his readers with economic thought. The war
is over, the world prepared for the commercial harvest of the
victors, and time should not be wasted in false moves. Mr. Sher-
rill pleads for the retention of the Philippines and for an amica-
ble relation with Japan so that business can speed. He depre-
cates harsh criticism of Japan, assuring us anyway that our for-
ward-looking exporters "will before long exercise their influence
as paying advertisers upon our newspapers so as to modify and
ultimately to terminate their present unprofitable attacks upon
everything Japanese."
Mr. Sherrill's work is as readable as a bright, cheered speech
before a chamber of commerce by an enthusiastic expert in for-
eign trade. His chapters, if not already heard before such
earnest bodies, will yield those who have not had the opportunity
of even such limited observation ample material for talks and
reports on our duties towards Asiatics and our need of hustling
representatives, backed by a powerful navy, in the Orient. He
writes of speaking at a "large banquet in Tokyo" where, the
very while he drank his champagne, a mob was at the doors of
the hall crying for rice. Only a mystical adherence to the sup-
posed wishes of the Emperor — Son of God, as he is termed —
tempers for the time the savage mood of a people maddened by
the high cost of living, by the antics of a thousand war million-
aires (narrikins), and by the Government's militaristic expendi-
tures of blood and money in Siberia. The past two years — a few
months of which Mr. Sherrill passed in Japan — have been the
most dangerous to the imperial regime of Japan since the
Shoguns gave over their power, so that conservative residents,
both native and foreign, look for a successful revolutionary out-
burst within a year or two.
This book, though spirited enough, lacks verity of perception,
and is typical of the thanks propaganda of foreigners who visit
Japan and spend their time with hospitable officials. It is as
if one sought to know the truth about America by visiting the
White House, the Chief of Staff of our army, the United States
Chamber of Commerce, and the best hotel corridors.
Frederick O'Brien
The Place of Science
The Place of Science in Modern Civilization, and Other Essays.
By Thorstein Veblen. B. W. Huebsch.
'"PHIS book is a treasure for those students of economic and
social problems who are willing to put. some effort into
their thinking. Mr. Veblen is like the North from which he
hales— abundantly, unexpectedly generous to the man who will
sweat for his living; brutally indifferent to the one who expects
the fruit of the gods to drop into his mouth. Reading him
tightens the muscles and stiffens the intellectual spine. One
comes away from him a bit bruised and panting but with a
sense of power exerted and power achieved. It has been sug-
gested that some one ought to rewrite Mr. Veblen, to put him
into such flowing measures as would delight the readers of the
Saturday Evening Post. But then there would be no Mr.
Veblen. We should be one step nearer to popular education,
but scarcely nearer to the powerful joys of intelligence.
The three chapters on the Preconceptions of Economic Science
are of especial value to the modern economist (or citizen) who
has a suspicion that all is not well with the economic science
which derives from the "classicals." Mr. Veblen works through
the presuppositions underlying the economics of the Physiocrats,
Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Cairnes, and Marshall, tracing the for-
tunes of the animistic metaphysics, the associational, hedonistic
psychology, and the non-evolutionary approach that have in
greater or less degree characterized them. He shows the in-
creasing movement in other sciences toward a biological as over
against a metaphysical psychology and predicts this develop-
ment for economics. "All this, of course," he says, "is intended
to convey no dispraise of the work done, nor in any way to
disparage the theories which the passing generation of econo-
mists have elaborated, or the really great and admirable body
of knowledge which they have brought under the hand of
science; but only to indicate the direction in which the inquiry
in its later phases — not always with full consciousness — is
shifting as regards its categories and its point of view. . . .
Foot-pounds, calories, geometrically progressive procreation, and
doses of capital have not been supplanted by the equally uncouth
denominations of habits, propensities, aptitudes, and conven-
tions, nor does there seem to be any probability that they will
be; but the discussion which continues to run in terms of the
former class of concepts is in an increasing degree seeking sup-
port in concepts of the latter class.
The chapter on Some Neglected Points in the Theory of
Socialism will be a delight even to the more casual reader
because of its profound analysis of the "struggle for respect-
ability" as the outgrowth of emulation in a society based upon
private property, as well as because of its discussion of the
"constitutional method applied to industry." To those who see
no alternatives other than contract (competition) and status
(bureaucracy), this chapter will be most illuminating. The
book is a rich contribution to economic and social literature,
and is, in a way, Mr. Veblen at his scientific best.
H. A. OVERSTREET
August 28, 1920]
The Nation
251
Books in Brief
HAPPY the critic who, like William Dean Howells in his
charming Reminiscent Introduction to "The Great Modern
American Stories" (Boni and Liveright), by the term "modern"
can mean "contemporary with himself" and still deal with some
half dozen decades of fruitful time. Of these twenty-four stories
not a few first ascended into fame with the aid of the editorial
hand which here resubmits them to posterity, and all of them
delighted their great editor at some moment now luminously
recollected. Mr. Howells admits that he should have preferred
Aldrich's Marjorie Daw to Mademoiselle Zabriskie if the holders
of the copyright had allowed him to use it; but otherwise he has
been unhindered in his judgment. That judgment, as if in
gentle contempt of the prevalent dogmas with regard to the
short story, includes tales as extended and rounded as Henry
James's A Passionate Pilgrim and sketches as brief as Landon
R. Dashiell's Aunt Sanna Terry and George Ade's Erne Whit-
tlesy, or as innocent of orthodox narrative as A Prodigal in
Tahiti by Charles Warren Stoddard, exquisite neglected genius.
The expected names are all represented here except that of
Howells himself, whose modesty, though it was sure to do so,
ought not to have excluded something of his own — The Magic
of a Voice, perhaps, or, The Angel of the Lord. Harriet Pres-
cott Spofford, Henry B. Fuller, Edith Wyatt, Charlotte Perkins
Stetson Gilman, Madelene Yale Wynn, Virginia Tracy, if not
quite so confidently expected, abundantly make good their claims
to be in this company, none of them more so than Mrs. Gilman,
whose The Yellow Wall Paper is appallingly effective. Sophis-
ticated comedy will hardly go further than in Edith Wharton's
The Mission of Jane, or blithe whimsicality than in Frank R.
Stockton's The Christmas Wreck, or eerie suggestion and hide-
ous disappointment than in Ambrose Bierce's The Occurrence
at Owl Creek Bridge. No anthology, of course, is final; a dozen
other candidates for this volume will occur to any reader at all
expert; but if editing can be as nearly classical as writing, this
collection may have to be called a classic.
A S the music of the spheres was attuned to a key too vast
** and too divine to hit the sense of human hearing, so the
larger processes of nature, by their overwhelming magnitude
and sublimity, escape the perception of the average mind. But
the sage and hero who, like Scipio, catches the lost chords in
his dreams, can transpose a few of them to a mode audible and
intelligible to the rest of us. Viscount Bryce, the Montesquieu
and the Burke of the present generation, has one of those rare
minds that no pertinent fact, in the chosen field of study, escapes
because of its minuteness nor oppresses because of its magni-
tude. His recent Raleigh lecture before the British Academy
on "World History" (Oxford University Press), notwithstand-
ing its brevity, grasps the immense subject with high philosophi-
cal insight. The distinctive characteristic of world history, he
shows, as over against national or departmental history, is not
the mere largeness of the former, but the selection, by him who
would profitably treat it, of some special and definite line
of interest, common to the civilized races and transcending
national and racial barriers. Such a thread, and the most
conspicuous in the earlier centuries, was religion. Through
Christianity, through Islam, one increasing and (on the whole)
unifying purpose runs: a Catholicism that in the long run over-
matches the sectarianism of national and individual dissent. A
like unification is achieved, or aimed at, by the spiritual quality
of common ideals, especially as expressed in art, literature, and
science. Even now the republic of letters is an international
state, and a catholic communion of its initiates. Community of
interests, whether economic, as expressed in commerce, or ideal,
as voiced in international socialism, are powerful welding forces.
Thus it is that the historian of the world finds the Ariadne
thread of truth guiding him through the labyrinth of detail, in
ALFRED ' A ' KNOPF
|ie*!«l
B-O R Z O I
B OOK S
%%o W. 42 Street, NEW YORK
fe*^ll«£*S"IB^»S"ll^*S»IIRK^II^!all^*^ll,5*3l,ll,I5*3allB5*3'l
THIS SIMIAN WORLD
By
Clarence Day, Jr.
'HPO our way of thinking, it is one of the best pieces of satire from
the pen of an American. Anatole France in an extraordinarily
good humor might have written the book. Swift's satire was neither
so delicate nor so openly wielded, and Maeterlinck has not been able
to portray the bee as the interesting and inspiring creature that Mr.
Day makes of man."— New York Tribune. Illustrated by the Author
$1.50.
THE GOLDEN BIRD
By
Dorothy Easton
JOHN GALSWORTHY has contributed an introduction to this
book of sketches, and he says: "They are so really good that they
should require no preliminary puff. They are extraordinarily sensitive
and faithful, and never dull, because they have real meaning and
truth." There has been no dissenting voice in the reviews (either
here or abroad). $2.00.
THE
FREE-LANCE BOOKS
H. L. Mencken is the editor of this un-
usual series and to each volume he has
contributed an original and penetrating
introduction, written as only he can write.
$1.75 each.
I. YOUTH AND EGOLATRY
By Plo Baroja
A witty, stimulating and penetrating body of
doctrine by Spain's foremost contemporary
novelist.
II. VENTURES IN COMMON
SENSE
By E. W . Howe
A perfect mirror of the "average American's"
credo.
III. THE ANTICHRIST
By F. W. Nietzsche
A brilliant translation by H. L. Mencken.
IV. WE MODERNS
By Edwin Muir
"It is impossible to compare it with anything
less than the very greatest volumes of reflection
and meditation" — New York Evening Post.
^ng^giiggiigsiigsiissii^
252
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2878
"an account of the process and the forces whereby races, tribes,
nations, and states have been, or are being, drawn together into
one common life commensurate with the earth which they in-
habit." The process is almost complete. League of Nations or
not, the World-state is a fact; in it we live and move and have
our being. Our very breakfasts come from Brazil and from
Java, from Argentine and Canada ; our newspapers report items
of yesterday gathered from the rising to the setting sun. Our
intellectual life is nourished by the art and science of a score of
races. Amidst our civil wars and petty prejudices it is hard
for us to realize our good fortune in this blessed consummation.
But our children will do it better than we.
THAT like causes produce like results, in history as in physics,
is the thesis of Gilbert Murray in his comparison of "Our
Great War and the Great War of the Ancient Greeks" (Thomas
Seltzer). In the Peloponnesian War Sparta was cast for the
part of Germany, as a land power and a military aristocracy,
whereas Athens, a free democracy and a naval power, might
stand for England. Once the two were at grips every other
power in Hellas was drawn into the conflict on one side or the
other. The internal condition of Athens can be intimately
known, not only from the historians but from the dramas of
Aristophanes, almost all of them having been concerned with
contemporary life. There was a plague at Athens; there was
great scarcity both of food and of fuel, so that the villain in one
of the comedies is he who threatens to murder a sack of char-
coal. All the young men were away, throwing the conduct of
affairs so much into the hands of the women that three of the
eleven extant comedies deal with feminism. There was also a
"peace by negotiation" party, headed by Nicias, and a "last-
ditch" party, commanded by Cleon, whose policy "became more
and more repulsive to decent men." It is remarkable that
whereas Nicias might be Asquith or Lansdowne or Grey or any
one of half a dozen other British statesmen, almost all that is
said about Cleon fits Lloyd George. One more similarity in the
atmospheres of the two wars which the author characterizes as
"profoundly pathetic, if not actually disquieting," was that "the
more the cities of Greece were ruined by the havoc of war, the
more the lives of men and women were poisoned by the fear and
hate and suspicion which it engendered, the more was Athens
haunted by shining dreams of the future reconstruction of
human life, a great dream city in which the desolate and
oppressed come by their own again, where rich and poor, man
and woman, Athenian and Spartan, are all equal and at peace."
The dream failed; Hellas was ruined; while in the West arose
the great Republic of Rome to take up the burden of civilization.
Is Europe ruined to the same extent now? According to the
poet-scholar of Oxford, not beyond hope of recovery. The prom-
ised land will not always be a mirage.
A FTER pleading with his countrymen in vain for thirty-five
■r* years to take an intelligent interest in their theater and
to make it a place of wise amusement instead of a child's toy-
shop and the playground of licentious tomfoolery, Henry Arthur
Jones turns his attention in "Patriotism and Popular Educa-
tion" (Dutton) to a plea for the right kind of education for
the masses. Since the masses must always be exploited, the
interests of the state require that they be taught their place
in the world, together with the mastery of the necessary but
disagreeable crafts which are to supply us with food, clothing,
furniture, and houses. Mr. Jones, as a patriotic Englishman,
has strong convictions on a large variety of subjects, from
household management to international relations; and as an
experienced writer he can express himself vigorously in
from two to a dozen ways, can produce many interesting, many
wise, many suggestive, many amusing, and many provoking
paragraphs. But if one is looking for help in dealing with
either educational problems or the problems of state, he will
find many smaller books much more helpful.
You would give a great deal
for
A MAGAZINE EDITED BY
The Continent
Paul Morand
Paul Valery
Marcel Proust
Guy-Charles Cros
Julien Benda
Benedetto Croce
Miguel de Unamuno
Enrico Ferrieri
Thomas Mann
Waldo Frank
Padraic Colum
Mary Austin
Amy Lowell
Van Wyck Brooks
Robert Frost
Vachel Lindsay
E. A. Robinson
John Dewey
England and Ireland
W. B. Yeats
James Stephens
D. H. Lawrence
Ford Madox Hueffer
T. S. Eliot
Ezra Pound
James Joyce
Richard Aldington
Wyndham Lewis
These are more than regular contributors to
THE DIAL
Many of them are collaborators. They have given their
enthusiastic advice, have found new work for THE DIAL
to print, have made possible the publication, for the first
time in America, of a really complete magazine, bringing
new talent before the public against a background of uni-
versal contemporary culture.
Our foreign staff has made it possible for us to offer our
readers two indispensable things:
First, articles by prominent foreign writers on the creative
work now being done in their respective countries.
Second, the creative work itself — stories, poems, draw-
ings, selected with the advice and assistance of these com-
petent men.
This presentation of foreign material in no way diminishes
our care to publish the best American work. Indeed we
hope to give it, perhaps for the first time, an appropriate
setting.
If we seem arrogant, it is because of our contributors.
During the next six months THE DIAL will have:
Regular articles on current art exhibitions by Henry
McBride; on music by Paul Rosenfeld.
Reviews of the theatre and important books.
The Unpublished writings of Remy de Gourmont.
The Prisoner Who Sang; a short
serial novel by Johan Bojer.
Belphegor, by Julien Benda ; a sar-
donic and sagacious attack on the rage
for William James, Bergson, Rolland,
and other contemporary admirations.
Keep au courant.
Subscribe today.
The Dial Publishing Company
152 Westfl3th Street, New York
Please send me THE DIAL for one year, $4.00 (or) THE DIAL
for one year and the book I have checked:
The Rescue, by Joseph Conrad, for $4.75.
- The Golden Whales of California, by
Vachel Lindsay, for $4.60.
Fantastics, by Lafcadio Hearn, for $4.60.
- The Economic Consequences of the Peace,
by John Maynard Keynes, for $5.00.
Enclosed find check for $ -....
Name - - - - - - _ _..
N-8-28
International Relations Section
More Notes to Russia
THE reply of the British Government to the note of
July 24 from the Soviet Government of Russia, printed
in the last issue of the International Relations Section,
was dispatched in the form of two notes. The first, dated
July 26, reads as follows:
The British Government is glad to learn that the Soviet
Government has authorized the military command of the Soviet
armies to negotiate an immediate armistice with the Polish
military command, and that they are prepared to agree to a
conference meeting in London for the purpose of establishing
a definite agreement between Russia and the Powers which
were engaging in hostile actions against her or supporting
such action.
They note that the Soviet Government further proposes that
the representatives of the leading Powers of the Entente should
attend this conference, and they are communicating with their
Allies on this subject. Meanwhile they would suggest that
Messrs. Kamenev, Krassin, and Miliutin should be authorized
by the Soviet Government not merely to conclude the trade
agreement between Russia and the Allied Governments but also
to discuss preliminary arrangements for the proposed peace
conference, because communications by cable will involve delay
and possible misunderstanding.
In reply to the latter part of the telegram, the British Gov-
ernment would point out that no trade agreement, even if
completed, could have produced practical results if Soviet
Russia had refused an armistice and invaded Poland, and had
thus forced Great Britain and her Allies to give active support
to the Polish people in defending their liberties and independ-
ence. They, therefore, thought it best to stop Messrs. Kamenev,
Krassin, and Miliutin from making a journey which would be
fruitless if no armistice were arranged.
In view, however, of the present reply, they have instructed
the destroyer to bring Messrs. Kamenev, Krassin, and Miliutin
to England immediately, or, if they prefer another route, the
British Government will ask the governments concerned to
facilitate their journey.
As regards General Wrangel, the British Government must
declare that General Wrangel is not, as the Soviet Government
have suggested, their agent, or in any way under their control.
Nor have they had any responsibility for the recent offensive,
while the suggestion that the British Government have any
such designs with regard to the Crimea as the Soviet authorities
appear to imagine is absurd. They have, however, communi-
cated to General Wrangel the terms of the Russian Govern-
ment's declaration.
The second note is dated July 28, that is, after the meet-
ing between Mr. Lloyd George and M. Millerand at Boulogne.
The text follows :
British Government having consulted its Allies is now in a
position to send following reply to Chicherin's telegram of
July 24:
The British Government which, on the assumption .that an
armistice is about to be concluded and that hostilities are about
to cease between Soviet Russia and Poland, is proposing to its
Allies that they should take part in a conference to be held
in London at which the Soviet Government of Russia will also
be represented, considers that no doubt should be left as to
the object of the meeting, as to the Powers which are to be
summoned to attend it, or as to the essential subjects which it
is to discuss.
The two last telegrams from the Soviet Government leave
some doubt upon these points. The telegram of July 19 seems
to reject the participation of the Allies in the negotiations for
peace between the Soviet Government and the Polish Govern-
ment and other neighboring governments of Russia. The last
telegram, on the other hand, seems to admit this participation.
The British Government considers that, if the Allied Govern-
ments are to meet the delegates of the Soviet Government with
any chance of success, the delegates of the Polish Government,
and of the other border states who are concerned, must also be
present.
The conference should have as its essential object the re-
establishment of peace in Europe, and in the first place between
Poland and Russia, upon conditions which would secure the
independence of Poland and the legitimate interests of both
countries.
The conference shall also consider the questions which are
still outstanding between Soviet Russia and the border states
which have not yet signed a definite peace with Russia.
After the settlement of these questions the conference could
proceed to deal with the matters in dispute between the Govern-
ment of Soviet Russia and the Allies, and the reestablishment
of normal relations between them.
The Proposed Convention with Haiti
THE Fuller Convention, submitted to the Haitian Minis-
ter of Foreign Affairs on May 22, 1915, by Mr. Paul
Fuller, Jr., Envoy Extraordinary of the United States to
Haiti, read as follows, the preliminary and concluding para-
graphs being omitted:
1. The Government of the United States of America will pro-
tect the Republic of Haiti from outside attack and from the ag-
gression of any foreign Power, and to that end will employ such
forces of the army and navy of the United States as may be
necessary.
2. The Government of the United States of America will aid
the Government of Haiti to suppress insurrection from within
and will give effective support by the employment of the armed
forces of the United States army and navy to the extent needed.
3. The President of the Republic of Haiti covenants that no
rights, privileges, or facilities of any description whatsoever
will be granted, sold, leased, or otherwise accorded directly or
indirectly by the Government of Haiti concerning the occupation
or use of the Mole Saint-Nicolas to any foreign government or
to a national or the nationals of any other foreign government.
4. The President of the Republic of Haiti covenants that
within six months from the signing of this convention, the Gov-
ernment will enter into an arbitration agreement for the settle-
ment of such claims as American citizens or other foreigners
may have against the Government of Haiti, such arbitration
agreement to provide for the equal treatment of all foreigners
to the end that the people of Haiti may have the benefit of com-
petition between the nationals of all countries.
The Haitian Counter-Project
THE counter-project of the Haitian Government, of
June 4, 1915, with such of the modifications suggested
by Mr. Fuller as the Haitian Government was willing to
accept, read as follows:
I. The Government of the United States of America will lend
PUBUO
ua
254
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2878
its assistance to the Republic of Haiti for the preservation of its
independence. For that purpose it agrees to intervene to pre-
vent the intrusion of any Power and to repulse any act of
aggression against the Republic of Haiti. To that end it will
employ such forces of the army and navy of the United States
as may be necessary.
II. The Government of the United States will facilitate the
entry into Haiti of sufficient capital to assure the full economic
development of that country, and to improve,' within the imme-
diate future, its financial situation, especially to bring about
the unification of its debt in such fashion as to reduce the cus-
toms guaranties now required, and to lead to a fundamental
money reform.
In order to give such capital all desirable guaranties the
Government of Haiti agrees to employ in the customs service
only officials whose ability and character are well known, and
to replace those who in practice are found not to fill these con-
ditions.
The Government of Haiti will also assure the protection of
capital and in general of all foreign interests by the organiza-
tion of a mounted rural constabulary trained in the most mod-
ern methods.
In the meantime if it be necessary the Government of the
United States, after consultation with the Government of Haiti,
will give its aid in the repression of serious disorders or trou-
bles which might compromise these foreign interests.
The American forces which have in the given circumstances
cooperated with the Haitian troops in the restoration of order,
should be retired from Haitian territory at the first request of
the constitutional authority.
III. The President of the Republic of Haiti covenants that
no rights, privileges, or facilities of any description whatsoever
will be granted, sold, leased, or otherwise accorded directly or
indirectly by the Government of Haiti concerning the occupation
or use of the Mole Saint-Nicolas to any foreign government or
to a national or the nationals of any other foreign government.
IV. The President of the Republic of Haiti covenants
within six months of the signing of this convention to sign a
convention of arbitration with the Powers concerned for the
settlement of the diplomatic claims pending, which arbitration
convention will provide for the equal treatment of all claimants,
no special privileges being granted to any of them.
V. In case of difficulties regarding the interpretation of the
clauses of the present convention, the high contracting parties
agree to submit the difference to the Permanent Court of Arbi-
tration at The Hague.
Mr. Fuller had suggested a further modification which
the Haitian Government refused. It changed the final para-
graph of Article II to read: "The American forces which
have in the given circumstance cooperated with the Haitian
troops, shall, when order has been reestablished, be retired,"
etc. His other suggestions were accepted with unimpor-
tant verbal changes.
The Haitian- United States Convention
THE convention between the United States and Haiti
was ratified on September 16, 1915, after the occupa-
tion of the country by American troops. In its final form
it is in interesting contrast with the suggested agreements
printed above.
The United States and the Republic of Haiti, desiring to
confirm and strengthen the amity existing between them by
the most cordial cooperation in measures for their common
advantage, and the Republic of Haiti desiring to remedy the
present condition of its revenues and finances, to maintain
the tranquillity of the Republic, to carry out plans for the
economic development and prosperity of the Republic and its
people, and the United States being in full sympathy with all
of these aims and objects and desiring to contribute in all
proper ways to their accomplishment;
The United States and the Republic of Haiti have resolved
to conclude a convention with these objects in view, and have
appointed for that purpose plenipotentiaries:
The President of the Republic of Haiti, Mr. Louis Borno,
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Public Instruction,
The President of the United States, Mr. Robert Beale Davis,
Jr., Charge d'Affaires of the United States of America;
Who, having exhibited to each other their respective powers,
which are seen to be full in good and true form, have agreed
as follows:
Article I. The Government of the United States will, by
its good offices, aid the Haitian Government in the proper and
efficient development of its agricultural, mineral, and com-
mercial resources and in the establishment of the finances of
Haiti on a firm and solid basis.
Article II. The President of Haiti shall appoint, upon
nomination by the President of the United States, a General
Receiver and such aids and employees as may be necessary, who
shall collect, receive, and apply all customs duties on imports
and exports accruing at the several customs-houses and ports of
entry of the Republic of Haiti.
The President of Haiti shall appoint, upon nomination by the
President of the United States, a Financial Adviser who shall
be an officer attached to the Ministry of Finance, to give effect
to whose proposals and labors the Minister will lend efficient
aid. The Financial Adviser shall devise an adequate system of
public accounting, aid in increasing the revenues and adjusting
them to the expenses, inquire into the validity of the debts of
the Republic, enlighten both governments with reference to all
eventual debts, recommend improved methods of collecting and
applying the revenues, and make such other recommendations'
to the Minister of Finance as may be deemed necessary for the
welfare and prosperity of Haiti.
Article III. The Government of the Republic of Haiti will
provide by law or appropriate decrees for the payment of all
customs duties to the General Receiver, and will extend to the
Receivership, and to the Financial Adviser, all needful aid and
full protection in the execution of the powers conferred and
duties imposed herein; and the United States on its part will
extend like aid and protection.
Article IV. Upon the appointment of the Financial Ad-
viser, the Government of the Republic of Haiti in cooperation
with the Financial Adviser, shall collate, classify, arrange, and
make full statement of all the debts of the Republic, the
amounts, character, maturity, and condition thereof, and the
interest accruing and the sinking fund requisite to their final
discharge.
Article V. All sums collected and received by the General
Receiver shall be applied, first to the payment of the salaries
and allowances of the General Receiver, his assistants, and em-
ployees and expenses of the Receivership, including the salary
and expenses of the Financial Adviser, which salaries will be
determined by the previous agreement; second, to the interest
and sinking fund of the public debt of the Republic of Haiti;
and third, to the maintenance of the constabulary referred to
in Article X, and then the remainder to the Haitian Govern-
ment for the purposes of current expenses.
In making these applications the General Receiver will pro-
ceed to pay salaries and allowances monthly and expenses as
they arise, and on the first of each calendar month will set
aside in a separate fund the quantum of the collections and
receipts of the previous month.
Article VI. The expenses of the Receivership, including
salaries and allowances of the General Receiver, his assistants,
and employees, and the salary and expenses of the Financial
Adviser, shall not exceed 5 per cent of the collections and re-
August 28, 1920]
The Nation
255
ceipts from customs duties, unless by agreement by the two
governments.
Article VII. The General Receiver shall make monthly
reports of all collections, receipts, and disbursements to the
appropriate officers of the Republic of Haiti and to the Depart-
ment of State of the United States, which reports shall be open
to inspection and verification at all times by the appropriate
authorities of each of the said governments.
Article VIII. The Republic of Haiti shall not increase its
public debt, except by previous agreement with the President
of the United States, and shall not contract any debt or assume
any financial obligation unless the ordinary revenues of the
Republic available for that purpose, after defraying the ex-,
penses of the Government, shall be adequate to pay the interest
and provide a sinking fund for the final discharge of such
debt.
Article IX. The Republic of Haiti will not, without the
assent of the President of the United States, modify the customs
duties in a manner to reduce the revenues therefrom; and in
order that the revenues of the Republic may be adequate to
meet the public debt and the expenses of the Government, to
preserve tranquillity, and to promote material prosperity, the
Republic of Haiti will cooperate with the Financial Adviser in
his recommendations for improvement in the methods of collect-
ing and disbursing the revenues and for new sources of needed
income.
Article X. The Haitian Government obligates itself, for
the preservation of domestic peace, the security of individual
rights, and the full observance of the provisions of this treaty,
to create without delay an efficient constabulary, urban and
rural, composed of native Haitians. This constabulary shall be
organized and officered by Americans appointed by the President
of Haiti, upon nomination by the President of the United States.
The Haitian Government shall clothe these officers with the
proper and necessary authority and uphold them in the per-
formance of their functions. These officers will be replaced by
Haitians as they, by examination conducted under direction of a
board to be selected by the senior American officer of this con-
stabulary in the presence of a representative of the Haitian
Government, are found to be qualified to assume such duties.
The constabulary herein provided for shall, under the direction
of the Haitian Government, have supervision and control of
arms and ammunition, military supplies and traffic therein,
throughout the country. The high contracting parties agree
that the stipulations in this article are necessary to prevent
factional strife and disturbances.
Article XI. The Government of Haiti agrees not to sur-
render any of the territory of the Republic of Haiti by sale,
lease, or otherwise, or jurisdiction over such territory, to any
foreign government or Power, nor to enter into any treaty or
contract with any foreign Power or Powers that will impair or
tend to impair the independence of Haiti.
Article XII. The Haitian Government agrees to execute
with the United States a protocol for the settlement, by arbitra-
tion or otherwise, of all pending pecuniary claims of foreign
corporations, companies, citizens, or subjects against Haiti.
Article XIII. The Republic of Haiti, being desirous to
further the development of its natural resources, agrees to un-
dertake and execute such measures as, in the opinion of the
high contracting parties, may be necessary for the sanitation
and public improvement of the Republic under the supervision
and direction of an engineer or engineers, to be appointed by
the President of Haiti upon nomination of the President of the
United States, and authorized for that purpose by the Govern-
ment of Haiti.
Article XIV. The high contracting parties shall have
authority to take such steps as may be necessary to insure the
complete attainment of any of the objects comprehended in this
treaty; and should the necessity occur, the United States will
lend an efficient aid for the preservation of Haitian independ-
ence and the maintenance of a government adequate for the
protection of life, property, and individual liberty.
Article XV. The present treaty shall be approved and
ratified by the high contracting parties in conformity with their
respective laws, and the ratifications thereof shall be exchanged
in the City of Washington as soon as may be possible.
Article XVI. The present treaty shall remain in full force
and virtue for the term of ten years, to be counted from the day
of exchange of ratifications, and further for another term of
ten years if, for specific reasons presented by either of the high
contracting parties, the purpose of this treaty has not been fully
accomplished.
In faith whereof, the respective plenipotentiaries have signed
the present convention in duplicate, in the English and French
languages, and have thereunto affixed their seals.
Done at Port-au-Prince (Haiti), the 16th day of September
in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fifteen.
Robert Beale Davis, Jr.,
Charge d'Affaires of the United States
Louis Borno,
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
and Public Instruction
The New Constitution of Haiti
THE new Constitution of the Republic of Haiti, ratified
under the American Occupation, altered the former
Constitution in regard to the important subject of the right
of foreigners to hold land. Article 6 of the old Constitution
reads :
No one, unless he is a Haitian, may be a holder of land in
Haiti, regardless of what his title may be, nor acquire any real
estate.
Article 5 of the Constitution of 1918 makes the following
provision :
The right to hold property is given to foreigners residing in
Haiti, and to societies formed by foreigners, for dwelling pur-
poses and for agricultural, commercial, industrial, or educa-
tional enterprises. This right shall be discontinued five years
after the foreigner shall have ceased to reside in the country, or
when the activities of these companies shall have ceased.
The Haitian President's Proclamation
IN the Moniteur, official organ of the Republic of Haiti,
for September 4, 1915, in a column headed "Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity," the president of Haiti published a
proclamation on the situation arising from the occupation
by American troops of the customs-house at Port-au-Prince.
Haitians! At the very moment when the Government, en-
gaged in negotiations to settle the question of the presence of
American military forces on Haitian territory, was looking for-
ward to a prompt solution in accordance with law and justice,
it finds itself faced with the simple seizure of possession of the
customs administration of the capital.
Previously the customs-houses of several other cities of the
republic had been occupied in like fashion, and whenever the
news of such occupation reached the National Palace or the
"Department of Finances, it was followed by an energetic pro-
test, demanding that the diplomatic representative of the Amer-
ican Government residing at Port-au-Prince restore the cus-
toms-houses and put an end to acts so contrary to the relations
at present existing between the Government of Haiti and the
Government of the United States of North America.
Haitians! In bringing these facts officially to the attention
of the country, I owe it to myself to declare further, in the most
256
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2878
formal fashion, to you and to the entire civilized world, that the
order to carry out these acts so destructive of the interests,
rights, and sovereignty of the Haitian people is not due to any-
thing which can be cited against the patriotism, devotion, spirit
of sacrifice, and loyalty of those to whom the destinies of the
country have been intrusted. You are the judges of that.
Nor will I conceal the fact that my astonishment is greater
because the negotiations, which had been undertaken in the
hope of an agreement upon the basis of propositions presented
by the American Government itself, after having passed through
the ordinary phases of diplomatic discussion, with frankness and
courtesy on both sides, have now been relieved of the only ob-
stacles which had hitherto appeared to stand'in their way.
Haitians! In this agonizing situation, more than tragic for
every truly Haitian soul, the Government, which intends to
preserve full national sovereignty, will be able to maintain the
necessary resolution only if all are united in exercising their
intelligence and energy with it in the present task of saving the
nation. . . .
SUDRE DARTIGUENAVE
Given at the National Palace, September 2, 1915, in the 112th
year of our independence.
Story Writing Properly Taught
Expert instruction in Short-story Writing will be given by
the staff of Pearson's Magazine, under the personal super-
vision of Frank Harris. Persons whose experience with other
"courses" has been unsatisfactory, will find here a service of
superior worth. Careful criticism and revision of single
manuscripts also made by professional writers. Fees for
either service moderate. For information address,
PEARSON'S LITERARY SERVICE, 57 Fifth Are., New York
Just Published
No. 68. Illustrated Catalogue of
Rare Books in Beautiful Old Bindings
Th« DR. R. T. JUPP COLLECTION of
MSS., AUTOGRAPHS, BOOKS, etc., etc., by or relating to
CHARLES DICKENS
The Collection of Relics of the Original Dora of DAVID COPPERFIELD
BOOKS ON THE FINE ARTS, SPORT
and an extensive collection of BOOKS ON SHORTHAND
Fine Sets ef First Editions of CHARLES LEVER, GEORGE MEREDITH
and aPTAIN MARRYAT, GOULD'S BIRDS of AUSTRALIA, etc.
Post free from
HENRY SOTHERAN & CO.
Booksellers to the King
43, Piccadilly, W. 1,
or, 140 Strand. W. C. 2.
Cable Address; Bookmen, London London, England.
A I IPF KAFTCFR DRAMATISTS' AGENT— PLAYS
iiLILIu !\ilUjL!\ ESTABLISHED mi
1402 BROADWAY Motion Picture Department
NEW YORK R. L. GIFFEN, Asfoeiat* Manager
Plato's REPUBLIC Realized in SOVIET RUSSIA
As Bertrand Russell lately said in The Nation, the parallel is ex-
traordinarily exact between Plato's Republic and Soviet Russia, the
Communist Party members corresponding to the Guardians.
We publish the best translation of the REPUBLIC, cloth, 634 pages,
$2.00 postpaid ; also the ten Books of the Republic in paper at 15c
each. Plato's ideal State ruled by Guardians is described in Books
III and IV, mailed for 30c. Catalog free.
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY. 347 East Ohio Street. CHICAGO
o4ny change of address
should be mailed to our Subscription Department at least two
weeks before it is to become effective. This will insure unin-
terrupted delivery of The Nation to you, and will materially
lessen the pressure of work in our office.
When notifying us be sure to give both old and new addresses
and stipulate the exact date upon which you desire the change
made> SUBSCRIPTION DEPARTMENT
20 Vesey Street The Nation New York, N. Y.
Dagger of Darkness, 25c.
How the dark forces of superstition have steadily fought the advance
of knowledge through the centuries is graphically recounted in this great
work of the renowned scientist, Ernst Haeckel, whose name ranks next
to Darwin's in the field of evolutionary research.
APPEAL TO REASON, GIRARD, KANSAS.
^/"E have just compiled a booklet containing the
latest information and statistics about the
SAAR VALLEY
its wealth, resources and industries. Of valuable
interest to investors. Free on request.
We own and offer for spot delivery, 4 <£ Bonds of the
City of Saarbruecken. 4 <£ Community Bonds of the
Mortgage Bank, Saarbruecken.
VON POLENZ & CO., Inc.
60 Broadway New York
Telephone Bowling Green 4320
Boston Philadelphia Milwaukee
Cincinnati Chicago Denver
Berlin
Studies in History, Economics and
Public Law
Edited by the Faculty of Political
Science of Columbia University
No. 205 PRISON METHODS IN NEW
YORK STATE
By PHILIP KLEIN, Ph.D.
paper covers, $3.50
No. 207 THE INFLUENCE OF
OVERSEA EXPANSION ON ENG-
LAND TO 1700
By JAMES E. GILLESPIE, Ph.D.
paper covers, $3.00
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., Publishers
FOURTH AVE. AND 30TH STREET
NEW YORK
Notice to
Foreign Subscribers
Subscribers residing in foreign coun-
tries are requested to make remittance
by international money-order, or draft,
payable in New York, so that subscrip-
tions may be entered promptly.
Circulation Department
The Nation
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1920
No. 2879
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 257
EDITORIALS:
How Will You Vote? 260
What Housing Shortage Means 261
The Near Eastern Chaos 261
Propaganda Isn't Tired 262
The Ivory Tower 263
WHAT WILL THEY DO WITH THE VOTE ? By Stella Crossley Daljord 264
SELF-DETERMINING HAITI. II. WHAT THE UNITED STATES HAS
ACCOMPLISHED. By James Weldon Johnson 265
A FRAGMENT— FROM THE HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR. By
John Haynes Holmes 267
TYRANNY BY PROPHETS. By Henry G. Alsberg 268
REPEATING AMERICAN HISTORY. By Albert J. Beveridge 270
MAX KLINGER. By Friedrich Bruns 271
THE SCYTHIANS. From the Russian of Alexander Blok by Babette
Deutsch and Abraham Yarmolinsky 271
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By The Drifter 272
BOOKS :
Foster on the Steel Strike. By George Soule 273
Various Views of Ireland. By Preserved Smith 274
What a Budget Means. By Charles A. Beard 275
Diverse Americans 275
Books in Brief 276
Notes and News 278
DRAMA :
Hors D'CEuvres. By Ludwig Lewisohn 278
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION:
Resolutions of Dail Eireann 280
Irish Local Government Finances 281
Industry in Soviet Russia 282
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD. Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER LEWIS S. GANNETT
LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Adress: Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising: Swathmore Press, Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
POSSIBLY the heat explains it. At any event, it is vaca-
tion season and the period of markdowns. Let us at
least yawn charitably at the headlines of slush funds and
the unseemly spending of money for the Presidential aspir-
ants. Let us not hiss, nay, rather gently applaud, our famil-
iar friend, that sinister yet diverting old villain, Glittering
Gold, slowly looming upstage, with chorus. Ah, yes, there
is German gold backing Harding, who being agin the
League is therefore for Germany. British gold — according
to Representative Britten — strong for the League, stacks up
behind Cox. This sort of inductive reasoning is easy, and
just right for hot weather. Italian gold, objecting to the
Fiume settlement, is Republican; Jugoslav gold, Democratic.
Japanese gold has not yet been heard from, but let us hope
our astute campaigners will not overlook its possibilities,
especially on the Coast. Needless to say, Soviet gold is back-
ing the wicked Socialists. Sahara gold, of course, is behind
the Prohibitionists. The Farmer-Labor Party? Obviously
hyphenate gold in general! Indeed, only a free silver or a
greenback party could escape this genial calumny, showing
that the only really good party is a dead one. The only cer-
tainty emerging from all this is that our two major candi-
dates must be the original Gold Dust Twins — with the twin-
ship unmistakable.
CONGRATULATIONS to the gallant band of women who
have at last carried the barbed wire entanglements of
bigotry and reaction and nailed the banner of political sex
equality to the American masthead ! The suffrage train has
been so long en route, slowed by so many needless and futile
attempts to sidetrack or upset it, that we perhaps take its
puffing arrival a bit for granted. Yet it brings a stirring
and important victory, even though the great enfranchise-
ment by itself may not mean much. For the vote to these
twenty-five million newly made "people" is after all only a
symbol of our striving, despite severe setbacks, for that
truer and better democracy to which America lays claim.
What really matters is how women will use the ballot. Will
they carry on in the true spirit of Susan B. Anthony and
Lucretia Mott? Or will they consent to and by passivity
connive at the disfranchisement of their colored sisters in
the South — the acid test of understanding their new part?
Stop with the ballot they cannot, nor short of full equality,
economic as well as political. No office in the land but shall
be open, no distinction of sex but shall be abolished. And
from their struggle women ought surely to bring into our
world of handicaps and disqualifications a fuller and more
sympathetic understanding to destroy privilege, to remove
inequality, and to transform democracy from a mummified
fetish into a living reality.
THE British lion has settled down upon his haunches,
and there is a semblance of peace for the moment in
the Allied menagerie. No clear indication has been given,
however, that Mr. Lloyd George has abandoned his apparent
intention of extending practical recognition to the Soviet
Government and making some kind of trade agreement with
Russia. The subsidized Paris press is, of course, praising
M. Millerand for his "victory," but it remains to be seen
whether the accord which is said to have been reached be-
tween Mr. Lloyd George and Premier Giolitti amounts to
anything more than an agreement to insist that Russia shall
not be too hard on the Poles, and an understanding that
France is to be allowed to assume all the trouble and ex-
pense it pleases in supporting Wrangel. Mr. Balfour's "ulti-
matum" to Russia, while perhaps responsible for a slight
modification of the Russian peace terms to Poland, has
called out a pointed reminder from M. Chicherin that the
policy of interfering with the domestic concerns of other
nations is a game at which two can play. Meantime there
are disquieting reports that Warsaw is divided on the ques-
tion of carrying the war beyond the tentative Polish border,
with France backing the imperialists, and that the Russians
are bringing up reinforcements. Great Britain may well
desire a settlement in Europe, for the clouds in India and
Persia and Mesopotamia are darkening daily. Small won-
der that the Allies pray for the day when the "moral force"
of the United States — war vessels, munitions, soldiers, and
258
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2879
credits for supplies — shall be arrayed openly on their side,
not alone in the Russo-Polish imbroglio, but wherever the
demand for liberty and self-determination shows its head.
THE Dublin Dominion Conference has adopted resolu-
tions proposing a truce between the factions in Ire-
land, and favoring "an immediate and binding offer of full
national self-government, to be accepted or rejected by
specially elected representatives of the people of Ireland."
The resolutions would carry more weight if the Conference
itself had been really representative of the Irish people, and
if the advocates of "full national self-government" were
agreed as to what they want. As a matter of fact, how-
ever, Sinn Fein took no part in the Conference, with the
result that the members represented only the so-called
moderates who were at one only in desiring some kind of
a compromise; while Sir Horace Plunkett, who presided
over the fruitless Dublin Convention two years ago, is re-
ported to have said that he had "no definite plan for do-
minion home rule." The high sheriff of Dublin, Mr. Mc-
Walter, hit the nail on the head when he declared that the
responsibility for disorder in Dublin rested with the
British troops, and that he would undertake to maintain
both good order and good will with volunteers and former
soldiers if the Government would withdraw its soldiers and
policemen from the streets.
WITH General Alvarado, the Finance Minister, as its
spokesman, Mexico is fervently promising to be
good, the American oil companies are promising to pay
their taxes, in spite of the fact that they consider them
exorbitant, the Mexican envoy to Switzerland prophesies
a new era of "honesty, justice, and good faith," and every-
thing is as merry as a marriage bell. Meanwhile the usual
accounts of Americans captured by bandits are appearing
daily in the newspapers in case these amenities might be
suspended at any time and it might be necessary to revive
general public irritation in regard to the Mexican situation.
But for the present the lion is lying down with the lamb,
and General Alvarado has dinner with Edward L. Doheny,
president of numerous American oil companies in Mexico.
President de la Huerta is quite firm, however, on the sub-
ject of payment of taxes on oil properties, stating that "we
have decided to take all measures necessary, which are sanc-
tioned by law, to make the companies pay without further
delay" ; and General Obregon intimates that if he is elected
to the Presidency next month foreigners, while they will be
welcomed, must not expect any privileges not granted to
natives, and Americans will be treated just like any other
foreigners. What more have either any right to ask?
THE rioting in Denver, with the death of seven persons,
the injuring of fifty others, and the wrecking of the
plant of the Denver Post, which resulted in putting the city
under martial law, is but the natural fruition of conditions
in Denver, long ago exposed by Judge Ben Lindsey and
never rectified. The central figures in this drama are the
Denver Tramway Company and the forces behind it. Years
of a "public-be-damned" policy, a long record of corruption
culminating in open defiance of the law and the importation
of armed strikebreakers, finally led to the tragic explosion.
The Denver press, too, consistently played the incendiary
role which so many of our newspapers, instead of standing
for enlightenment and decency, have assumed — branding
the union workers as bolshevists, anarchists, and traitors,
and doing their best to arouse hatred. There was something
of retributive justice in the wholly deplorable assault on the
city's chief journalistic panderer to violence. Perhaps the
most interesting and significant incident of the strike re-
ceived almost no mention in newspapers throughout the
country — which while emphasizing the violence made it far
from clear that the firing was done by strikebreakers —
namely, the severe condemnation by General Leonard Wood
of the car company's policy of importing and arming strike-
breakers, and his order directing that they be sent out of
the city.
THE victory of the New York Call over Postmaster-Gen-
eral Burleson must give a peculiar thrill of satisfac-
tion to every newspaper and every individual that has had
dealings with that official during the last few years. By
withholding for nearly three years the Call's second-class
mailing privilege Mr. Burleson had every reason to think —
and doubtless hoped — that he would ruin the newspaper
or drive it out of business as he succeeded in doing with
hundreds of other publications. By the courage and ability
of its editors and managers, and the loyalty of its readers,
who made the survival of the paper their daily business, the
Call has not only lived, but has lived to get back its rights
and to prove Mr. Burleson a law-breaker or at least a law-
stretcher himself. But no mere restoration of its mailing
rights can restore the enormous sums of money lost through
the action of the Postmaster-General. Until the Call is ade-
quately repaid for the almost incalculable damage inflicted
by the Postmaster-General, until some recompense is made
for his cold-blooded attempt to strangle it to death,- the
case should not be allowed to rest. The Call should take
immediate steps to recover through the Court of Claims or
by suing the Postmaster-General himself the full amount
of its damage.
I HE defeat of the Bolsheviki in Poland may be laid less
to strategic wonder-working by General Weygand than
to their own vaulting ambition. In suffering their first
severe defeat in three years of superb resistance to pressure
from all sides, the Soviets made radical departures from
policy. They left their own boundaries and waged offensive
warfare. That their justification was great, in view of
Poland's unprovoked attack and their desire to allay defin-
itely the Polish menace, does not alter the situation. The
Soviets would have been stronger militarily, politically, and
morally had they stopped at the Polish border. In a sense
they repeated the German error of Brest-Litovsk, though
to be sure they had made plain that their aims were not
imperialistic. But their position is clearly much weakened
by the military defeat and the consequent modification of
their peace terms, including the inexcusable demand for
leaving in arms only the Polish peasants. Anti-Bolshevists
all over the world have asserted from the start that Soviet
Russia was a military autocracy. Whatever it has been or
is today, it would be wholly natural that it should become
one. Force propagates force. Prussianism feeds on itself,
as the brief and comparatively remote experience of the
United States with warfare showed clearly. That the per-
sistent hammering on all fronts by a hostile world would
denature the originally peace-loving and war-weary Rus-
sians is logical evolution, for which the Allied Powers have
only themselves to blame.
Sept. 4, 1920]
The Nation
259
THE best way to stop war is to stop it, and it looks as if
workers in various parts of the world were beginning
to realize that they have a conclusive veto power whenever
they choose to exercise it. In the Middle Ages the men who
declared wars fought them; kings and princes took the field
in person and risked their lives for the plunder or other
advantage that they sought. Our kings of finance and
princes of industry have developed a better way ; they delude
the workers with buncombe about flag and country and de-
mocracy and duty until thousands of ordinary mortals, with
no quarrel and nothing to gain, are cutting each other's
throats. At last the workers are sensing this. The notice
that British labor has served on Lloyd George that it will
refuse to make or transport war material to be used against
Russia is a declaration from the largest body that has so
far spoken so definitely, but the kind of action that it sug-
gests, in case of necessity, has in fact been carried on in
guerrilla fashion in Italy for months. Now comes word that
the Railway Workers' Union at Danzig has voted to halt all
war supplies arriving at that port destined for Poland,
while on the other side of the world the Australian Seamen's
Union has informed the Government that it will not be a
party to carrying any soldiers to war in future, and that if
the Government wants to transport troops it will have to
ship them itself. The reason for this action — failure to
include seamen in the scheme for war gratuities — is a poor
one, but the gesture is magnificent.
MEANWHILE, what is America doing? The Wilson
Administration, in its note to the Italian Ambassador,
has made clear its intention to prosecute an unauthorized
war against Russia with all the powers that it now possesses
or can usurp without too great protest. Mr. Wilson will go
just as far as he can and, in the current phrase, "get away
with it." Moreover, although it may be argued that the
President cannot go far without a Congressional appropria-
tion, it must not be forgotten that he can easily so commit
and involve the country that a demand upon Congress for
money can hardly be refused. We congratulate the Seattle
Central Labor Council, therefore, in urging all similar
bodies in American cities to ask the American Federation
of Labor to call a conference "to effectively prevent the
United States Government from making war on Russia with-
out first securing the consent of the people." In case the
A. F. of L. fails to act, the Seattle Council says that it is
ready to take the initiative in calling a conference. We hope
labor bodies will respond to this suggestion and that Mr.
Wilson may soon have tangible proof that he will meet with
obstruction in his own country in attempting to dictate by
force of arms what kind of government a foreign people
shall live under.
THE largest apple crop in years has been grown this
summer — 7,000,000 barrels more than last year in New
York State alone. The present retail price is from ten
cents a pound up, and the farmer gets as his share a dollar
and a half a barrel, or one cent a pound, which does not
cover the cost of picking! The result, unless some means
can be found of increasing the demand by reducing the price,
will be exactly what it was last year, when the farmer left
apples to rot on the ground until they got so deep it was
difficult to walk through the orchards, after which he shov-
eled them off into the creek. The New York Federation of
Agriculture reports that there will be a probable waste of
2,000,000 bushels in that State unless the farmer can be
guaranteed a market and a fair price. The remedy would
seem to be to eliminate the middleman, but when a summer
resident of Connecticut offered to ship several barrels of
apples to his New York City grocer at a low price, if the
grocer would sell them correspondingly cheaply, the grocer
said: "I'd like to but I can't do it. The dealers have a
complete monopoly and won't let me; if I sold these apples
now they would refuse me fruit at other times when I
needed it." One man, therefore, cannot cut off the middle-
man's head or his profit. Until the public is aroused to
united action and demands its produce directly from the
farmer, the present profiteering, and, worse, the present
waste, will go on.
THE collapse of the industries of Central Europe has
dangerously accentuated there the bitter opposition
between town and country which Bertrand Russell observed
in Russia. The farmers are more and more unwilling to
accept the depreciated currency for which little or nothing
can be bought; the industrial populations of the large Ger-
man cities have neither shoes nor machinery to offer the
agrarians in exchange for wheat and milk. Thus fifteen
to twenty millions of people in the industrial regions of
Central Europe, cut off from raw material abroad, from
coal to turn what little they have into exchangeable goods
and, therefore, by a final irony, from the meager food prod-
ucts of their own lands, are left in mid-air and asked to
choose between suicide and slow starvation. They will not
choose the former alternative nor, like the gentle Viennese,
the latter. Unless help comes, it is they who will man the
red armies of Central Europe at the specter of which the
statesmen of the West affect to tremble. It is not the
spread of communistic doctrines that will swell these
armies. In their ranks will be found, according to the
prediction of so sober a scholar as Professor Moritz Bonn,
"conservatives and intellectuals, bourgeois and capitalists,
who will all be impelled by but one will — the will to live."
The actual human alternative for these millions is between
starvation and revolt. It is another illustration of the
vast and vicious circle of the economic policy of the Allies.
Coal exactions and trade blockades cut off the urban popu-
lation of Central Europe even from their own inadequate
agricultural resources and drive the red banners of de-
spair nearer and nearer to the West.
PERSONS of the writing kind may have occasion some
day to recall with awe the name of M. Eugene Mont-
fort, who has just succeeded in convincing a Paris court
that writing is a business which calls for headquarters as
well as head. A French rent law, requiring that leases on
property occupied by practitioners of trades and professions
be extendible for a period equal to the period of the war,
was proved by M. Montfort to apply in the case of authors
no less than in the case of lawyers and butchers. To be
sure, authors hang no signs out and keep no office-hours;
but they maintain typewriters, collect books that are difficult
to move, and depend very much on friends who might for-
get new street numbers or who might not like lounging
in new places so well. America orders literary things on
the whole rather badly; yet the time may come, here as
abroad, when every hack will be guaranteed his garret and
every popular novelist his exclusive studio.
260
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2879
How Will You Vote?
IT is a truism that there are great issues before the peo-
ple in the Presidential election of 1920. Yet no one
would suspect that to be the case from reading the speeches
of Cox or Harding, or studying any of the other declarations
made on behalf of the Democratic or Republican parties.
The campaign is perhaps the most unreal in the nation's
history; the questions which concern the people are hardly
hinted at in the mummery in which the candidates of the
two major parties are indulging. That, of course, is the
hope of the politicians: that they will so far divorce their
campaigns from any vital issues as to lead the people to
forget that their government has, or should have, anything
to do with their life or work. In order that one may realize
how nearly Republicans and Democrats are both succeeding
in this purpose, let us set down six of what may be regarded
as the great issues before the American public today :
The cost of living;
The relations between capital and labor;
The making of peace abroad and the return of civil rights
in this country;
The housing shortage;
The coal scarcity;
The transportation breakdown.
Now, what are Cox or Harding, Roosevelt or Coolidge
proposing in respect to any of those questions? Nothing —
or worse than nothing. They are either ignoring them alto-
gether or dismissing them with windy phrases and mean-
ingless generalizations. All are clutching frantically at
the lifeless body of the League of Nations and trying to use
its ghost to divert the American people from consideration
of the real issues. Of course, rightminded people all over
this country are interested in a true league of nations — a
democratically-constituted body looking toward disarma-
ment and peace — but they do not find that in Mr. Wilson's
proposal, nor in any modification that can be made of it.
In fact, they fear that the fiasco at Versailles has postponed
the chance of a true world league for a good many years — at
least until new men are at the head of the great powers.
Christensen, the Farmer-Labor Party's candidate for
President, adequately summarized Harding's speech of ac-
ceptance in one word as "bunk." He was almost as brief
and equally incisive when he said later: "A promise of four
years more of Wilson hypocrisy is all I can get out of the
speech of acceptance of Governor Cox." No Democratic
speaker has yet said anything on that most momentous prob-
lem, the rising cost of living, that is one whit more promis-
ing or satisfactory than the meager declaration in the San
Francisco platform: "We pledge the Democratic Party to
a policy of strict economy in government expenditures and
to the enactment and enforcement of such legislation as may
be required to bring profiteers before the bar of criminal
justice." A profiteer, in most instances, is merely one who
makes as much money as he possibly can out of the profits
system. He cannot be reached by law in one case in a thou-
sand, and the attempt to cure a universal economic disease
by criminal prosecution of individuals is as futile as to try
to bail out the Atlantic Ocean with a pint cup. Yet Hard-
ing's remedy for the rising cost of living is substantially
the same as that of the Democrats — plus a protective tariff!
In respect to peace it may seem at first glance that there
is a substantial difference between the attitude of Demo-
crats and Republicans. Cox has reiterated lately that he
will not make a separate peace with Germany, while Hard-
ing is on record as saying: "I promise you formal and
effective peace so quickly as a Republican Congress can
pass its declaration for a Republican Executive to sign."
But what does that amount to beside Harding's refusal to
raise his voice against the war with Russia into which Pres-
ident Wilson is trying to drag the country? And does not
Harding's entire record lead to the belief that he would
involve the United States in a war with Mexico, without
hesitation, if pressure from the oil interests was sufficient?
The difference between Cox and Harding in regard to peace
is no more real than are any of the other reputed distinc-
tions in politics. And so it is with all the issues vital to
the country. No concrete proposal has come from either
Cox or Harding for meeting the housing shortage. Neither
has had any suggestion for relieving the coal scarcity which
Debs recently characterized from Atlanta Penitentiary as
the livest issue before the public. As to the railroads, what
constructive plan could be expected from Cox or Harding
when a Republican Congress and a Democratic President
have only recently restored these properties to the hands
that for fifty years have been manipulating them in oppo-
sition to the interests of the public?
And still there are intelligent and progressive voters who
say they expect to vote for Cox because he is the "better .
man," or for Harding because they do not want to "throw
away" their ballot. When one votes for Cox or Harding '
he is 'not voting for a man but a system — a system which
comes to precisely the same thing whether it is tagged as
the Democratic or the Republican Party; a system that is
bent on maintaining the industrial status quo in its own
selfish interest. That its two parties represent merely a
difference in sectional or factional control of the ma-
chinery of encrusted privilege has never been plainer than
today. The person who throws away his ballot next No-
vember will be the one who votes for either Cox or Harding,
for he will be perpetuating a kind of political action which
ought by now to be recognized as futile humbug and mean-
ingless mummery.
A newspaper humorist has suggested that it is a ques-
tion next November of "Debs or dubs." This is close to the
truth. The Socialist Party or the Farmer-Labor Party are
the only ones for which it is in the least worth while to
vote. There is no human probability that either will carry
the election, but it is supremely important to roll up a big
popular vote against the old parties and in favor of a radi-
cal movement in America. Such a movement may prove
eventually to be neither the Socialist Party nor the Farmer-
Labor Party; it may prove to be both. It is not necessary
to believe all of the platform on which Christensen stands
in order to vote for him; one need not be a Socialist to
support Debs. Such a vote this year will be a voice of pro-
test against the old parties and their evasion of the only
issues that count; it will be a much-needed sign of the
strength of progressive feeling in the country; it will be
the individual voter's only possible contribution toward pro-
ducing a new political alignment; it will be the only action
that warrants the bother of going to the polls. To expect
anything worth while from either Democrats or Republicans
is like angling for fish in the Dead Sea.
Sept. 4, 1920]
The Nation
261
What Housing Shortage Means
EVERYBODY knows that there are not today in any-
large American city enough houses to provide decently
for the needs of the population, that no adequate steps to
deal with the situation have been taken anywhere, and that
the city population continues to grow. What does a short-
age of houses mean to the people who suffer from it and to
the community as a whole?
For one thing, it means that thousands of families in the
United States have for years been living, and must go on
indefinitely living, in undesirable or unsuitable quarters.
Thousands of families which need four, five, or six rooms
as the barest minimum of decency and comfort are com-
pelled to live in two or three rooms, or even in one. Thou-
sands more who would gladly own their homes must live in
apartments, thousands who would gladly live in apartments
are forced into hotels or boarding or rooming houses. Men
and women who work in town are being driven to live in the
suburbs, and in suburbs more and more remote, or must
make shift to occupy throughout the year country or sea-
shore cottages built only for summer use. Yet the people
have no choice, for there are no houses. The building of
garages, theaters, and business blocks, for which there seem
to be money and material enough, does not relieve the hous-
ing shortage.
The conditions under which hundreds of thousands of
people in this country are forced to live — not poor persons
merely, but those who receive more than a so-called living
wage as well — are a national disgrace. Families with sev-
eral children crowded into one room; two families in three
rooms; the old and the sick on the top floors of apartment
houses without elevators ; families living in cellars ; tumble-
down and filthy buildings with dark and narrow stairways
and passages, unsanitary plumbing, and inadequate fire-
escapes or none at all, crowded to the roofs; rooms which
have not been painted or papered for years and which are
infested with vermin: these are the "houses" of which the
crowded quarters of Boston and New York and Chicago and
St. Louis and every other large city, not to speak of many
a ghastly factory town, show examples without end. No
wonder that epidemic disease, once started, must often run
its course; that the lack of privacy blunts refinement when
it does not destroy it altogether; that young people who
marry decide that they must have no children ; and that im-
morality and crime find plenty of hiding places. Yet the
crowded, suffering population cannot move, for there are no
houses.
Another result of housing shortage is oppressive land-
lordism. Few landlords have been content with such in-
creases of rents as naturally accompany high prices and
high wages. Tenants have found their houses or apart-
ments rented over their heads without being given an
opportunity to continue the leases themselves. Lease agree-
ments have been broken when someone else offered to pay
more. Evictions have multiplied a thousand fold, often
with use of force, where the landlords or their agents have
been able to obtain the support of the courts. Tenant com-
munities that have combined for self-protection have been
subjected to wholesale dispossession or terrorism, and occu-
pants who could not be forced in any other way to give place
to higher bidders have had allegations of immoral or objec-
tionable conduct trumped up against them; requests for
reasonable improvements or ordinary repairs have never
been more brusquely refused. Yet the average tenant must
suffer in silence, lucky if even on harsh terms he is gra-
ciously permitted to have a roof over his head, for there are
no houses.
Recent advances in railway passenger rates have added
heavily to the annual expenses of some hundreds of thou-
sands of commuters. People are robbing themselves of food
in order to pay the landlord who robs them in excessive
rent, and families already indecently crowded are taking
in lodgers". There is no hope of relief from this alarming
situation in private enterprise, for capital must have its
interest and private rent will exact the uttermost farthing.
Only the power of government, fully and promptly exerted,
can give homes to the people who need them now and pro-
vide the homes that will be needed in the immediate future.
Will government act, or will it dawdle and discuss until the
people, driven to desperation by suffering and abuse, take
the law into their own hands?
The Near Eastern Chaos
IN the Near East four important events are at this writ-
ing taking place: Great Britain is at war with her
mandatee, Mesopotamia; Egypt has been promised inde-
pendence^— with limitations — by the British Government;
the Near Eastern conference of the Third Internationale is
presumably being held at Baku; and Enver Pasha is in
Moscow. The relations of these events are about as clear
as the general situation in that part of the world — which is
to say that they are not clear at all — but the lack of any
visible coherence is another index to Allied activities in the
Near East. If any focal point can be found in the picture,
it is Moscow. Egypt is, perhaps, the bright spot. Lacking
the official text of the agreement said to have been signed
by Lord Milner and Said Zagloul Pasha, it is impossible to
be sure there are no jokers in its clauses, but the summaries
published indicate that a real triumph has been won by the
Nationalists. If Lord Milner's reception last year in Egypt
and his subsequent secret conferences at London with Said
Zagloul persuaded him and the British Government that by
independence the Egyptians meant nothing less than free-
dom, it redounds to the credit of British intelligence as
well as of Egyptian tactics.
The peaceful promise of this action throws a more lurid
light on the depressing chaos of the Near East outside of
Egypt. In December Mr. Balfour remarked in the House of
Commons that British supremacy in Egypt would be main-
tained, "and let nobody in Egypt or elsewhere make any
mistake about it." But British supremacy has apparently
been limited, even though Egypt stands, as Lord Cur-
zon says, "at the door of Africa and on the highway to
India." Why, then, should freedom be withheld from coun-
tries of less strategic importance which are aglow today
with an equal fervor for freedom? It is an interesting fact
that the resistance of a people to oppression is itself always
used as a reason for oppression. There is evidently some-
thing disreputable in a nation's attempting to overthrow
the power of a foreign invader of its soil. And so the
present state of vigorous revolt in Mesopotamia is held as
little less than treasonable. After a series of uprisings
against British rule that have grown more and more serious,
the British Government has at last admitted that it is war,
262
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2879
and has dispatched troops from India and enrolled volun-
teers to fight its ungrateful Arabian wards. India and
Persia are in no more than their normal state of discontent
and frustrated desire to be free; but the Turks under Mus-
tapha Kemal and his leaders are carrying on an active cam-
paign, defeated by the French in one place and driven back
by the Greeks in another, but returning to harry the invad-
ers at every opportunity.
As for Syria, that unhappy state is playing the role of
the latest victim of trust in Allied faith. Believing the
promises made during the war, Emir Feisal united the
tribes of Arabia and Syria under his banner and led
a peasant army of some 30,000 against the Turks. Through-
out the war he held out against the extremists in his own
ranks, and trusted and yielded to Allenby; when the war
was over he even evacuated territory held by Arab troops
so that the French could occupy the lands assigned them
under the Sykes-Picot agreement. When the British evacu-
ated Syria many of the Arabs demanded united action with
Mustapha Kemal against the French. Feisal refused, risk-
ing the loss of his prestige in his faith in the Allies' word.
Feisal alone was strong enough to hold the pan-Mohamme-
dan extremists in check, and he could hold them in check
only if the British and French kept their word. The British
and French did not keep their word. The Syrian state with
Feisal at its head was not recognized and the Powers made
it plain that while the aspiration for freedom was a useful
sentiment when it drove the Arabs to fight the Turks, free-
dom put into practice could only be considered in the nature
of an unfriendly act. So the French occupied Damascus,
and Feisal, abandoned by the Allies and by his supporters
the Arabs, fled from his country, leaving it committed to a
pro-Turkish policy and condemned, doubtless, to years of
guerrilla warfare with its mandatory.
Meanwhile Russia must not be forgotten. Russian propa-
ganda certainly is not the original cause of Asiatic discon-
tent. But Russia can organize the discontent fomented
by the deceit and double-dealing of the Allies and use
it to create a situation full of danger to the world.
Hints of Bolshevist or "anarchist" influence have appeared
in the London dispatches regarding events in Mesopotamia.
Soviet uprisings i*re taking place in Afghanistan, an ally
of Russia. There continue to be two governments in Per-
sia— cut respectively after the Bolshevist and the British
pattern. As for Kemal, he is ready not only for affiliation
with bolshevism but for conversion to the faith. He is
reported to have accepted the soviet form of government for
the future Turkish state, and has said: "Since we are
equally warring against European and British imperialistic
capitalism, it naturally follows that we are cooperating with
the Bolsheviki." Enver Pasha is in Russia where, from
headquarters in Moscow, it is reported, he intends to direct
the anti-British movement in the Near East and coordinate
it with the activities of the Bolsheviki.
Some weeks ago the Soviet Government issued a call to
the "peoples of Asia" to come to a conference in the city of
Baku in the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan on September 1.
The call recites the grievances of the workers of the Near
East, and states the purpose of the meeting in these con-
crete terms:
Peasants and workers of the Near East! If you organize
yourselves, if you form your own Workers' and Peasants' Gov-
ernment, if you arm yourselves, if you unite with the Red Rus-
sian Workers' and Peasants' Army, then you will be able to defy
the English, French, and American capitalists, then you will
settle accounts with your own exploiters, then you will find it
possible, in a free alliance with the workers' republics of the
world, to look after your own interests.
The determination embodied in this call is Russia's alter-
native to peace with Europe. Is Great Britain prepared to
face it? If peace is not made the Allies have only two
questions to consider : Does Russia actually intend, as Karl
Radek says it intends, to "set the Near and Far East on
fire"? Has it the power to accomplish its purpose? Of the
first no doubt need be entertained. The second depends on
whether England can trust the temper of the Near East to
stand firm against words like those printed above. On the
answer to that question depends the future of the British
Empire in the Near East.
Propaganda Isn't Tired
ARE you tired of propaganda? Yes, you say, and in the
bargain you are tired of hearing about propaganda,
tired of seeing propaganda exposed, tired of being warned
against propaganda. You are tired of anti-propaganda
propaganda, and you want to become a child again and
believe the news. So do we all. But it is far from time yet
for such simple faith.
If you want to become a child at the movies, for instance,
and believe everything — and you should, at the movies —
you will be falling into arms more crafty and expert than
normally you would like to feel around you. You will go
to see "The Riders of the Dawn," and with the multitude
you will applaud a raid upon a labor camp wherein curiously
misrepresented members of the I. W. W. are beaten out of
town with whips. You will go to "Poldekin" some evening
for a laugh, and you will have it — if Booth Tarkington has
rightly gauged you — at the expense of bolshevism. Which
would be fair enough were Booth Tarkington not so deadly
bent on converting you by laughter. "You can't argue with
a Bolshevist," he has written to the producers of the film;
"he can't be cured by statistics or oratory. Experience of
bolshevism would cure him; but that takes too much time,
and besides, it would wreck the country. A hopeful alterna-
tive is to laugh bolshevism to death; if bolshevism becomes
ridiculous it's done for."
Or you can take your newspaper on trust and do for
Russia even more simply. If you are foreign-born, and have
not yet found English easy reading, you will be regularly
supplied by the State Department, through the columns of
your German or Greek or Italian newspaper, with passages
on sovietism from the press of your native country. The
whole press of your native country? No, because the State
Department finds some of it uninteresting, undignified, and
unofficial. No, only or mainly from the conservative press.
Foreign-born or not, you may treat yourself to shocks and
dismal disclosures without stint by attending to the Russian
dispatches of the Associated Press. You will learn what it
is that "observers" over there believe. "The Bolsheviki
threw over 77-mm shells at intervals during the day from
what observers believed to be a German gun." "Observers
expressed the opinion that Germans apparently were super-
vising most of the artillery work." So run the advices of
August 15. As if observers were near enough to read name-
plates and appraise powder!
And never will you go without melancholy assurances
Sept. 4, 1920]
The Nation
263
that Russia's great cities are decaying. Deplorable stagna-
tion and confusion prevail in a country which will not make
peace — and thus far cannot. As for confusion, you will do
well at this point to pause and remember that strikes are
confusing every industry in America, from anthracite in
Pennsylvania to chair-pushing at Atlantic City. As for
stagnation, cities as rich as Chicago and New York, though
they are White and not Red, have built no houses recently.
The Ivory Tower
IN a moment of sturdy polemical exuberance the other
day Mr. H. L. Mencken threw an approving word at the
political columns of The Nation, but informed the world
that its criticism of literature was still unduly conservative
and academic. Well, we do not think that Mr. Mencken has
read our literary reviews and editorials with the attention
which we are vain enough to think they deserve. We seem
even to recall reviewing favorably, though doubtless in our
own stodgy way, one or two volumes which he afterwards
discovered. Our critical theory and our specific apprecia-
tions have, furthermore — and this is no bad sign — seemed
perilously radical to some of Mr. Mencken's dearest enemies.
Even though we agree with him far oftener and far more
fundamentally than we do with his opponents, a subtle inner
monitor warns him — for only thus can his announcement be
explained — that the academic microbe is in our blood and
that our eyes, avoiding from time to time the dust as well
as the flowers of the literary roadside, are fixed upon some
ivory tower.
Mr. Mencken is quite right. We have suffered, far more
intimately and cruelly perhaps than he, from the moralistic
belligerency, the intellectual stagnancy, the harsh dullness
of the academic spirit at its worst. Yet when, with the most
cordial admiration and agreement, we read his essays and
the essays of others concerning what has "intrigued" or has
failed to "intrigue" them, we feel a lack which drives us
again and again to that pathetic seeking of the ivory tower
which Mr. Mencken suspects. For at their worst, the uni-
versities have never quite lost the memory and the love of
great things and the abiding sense — often warped, we admit,
and put to dangerous uses — of the continuity of the historic
culture of the race. When a distinguished literary person
can no longer, by his own unashamed confession, read one
of the soundest masterpieces of English poetry because,
presumably, it deals in serenely measured language with a
subject of remote and naked nobleness; when the young
practitioners of free verse have never assimilated the things
from which they had an entire and natural right to react,
but include the art of John Milton and the minor imitators
of Tennyson in their equally knowing disdain; when critics
who protest against flaccid and timid verse are oblivious of
Catullus and aware only of Mr. D. H. Lawrence, or when
they combat moralistic doctrines in art with never a memory
of the vision or the teaching of Goethe — when such things
crowd about us at every turn we can still see the use and
function of the dishonored groves and academes. What
would Mr. Mencken himself think of a hot young composer
who wrote tone-poems, as he has a perfect right to do, with-
out ever having mastered the sonata form, or produced
music in the manner of Mr. Ornstein, but could not tell a
sonata of Beethoven from a fugue by Bach? It is well to
possess the moment. It is more than well; it is necessary.
Not to possess it is the common fault of the academic critic
and betrays him into an hundred absurdities. But to be
possessed by it is a misfortune almost equally grave.
Thus, while we are nearly always in agreement with the
radical critics, our reasons are but rarely identical with
theirs. For in our reasons and in the processes by which
we arrive at them, the ardor of the moment is tempered
and corrected by certain larger views and memories. We
are quite as hostile as Mr. Mencken can possibly be to the
rigid and outlived traditions that would seek to cripple life
and its expression in the arts. But these traditions are not
new, although they may vary in form and in their degree
of ferocity; the protest of free minds against them is not
new either. Nearly every creative spirit has been, after
the manner of his age and personality, an insurgent. The
tradition of insurgency, of revolt, of freedom is, in fact,
quite as rich and far more significant than the tradition of
sluggish conformity or angry conservatism. To disregard
that tradition of freedom is to isolate and impoverish one-
self and render one's works and judgments ephemeral and
thin. The inventors of a new versification would sound less
shrill and absolute were they more richly aware of other
insurgents who, at other periods, have engaged in the same
business. They would also have a clearer and deeper vision
of the problem before them. The critics who defend Dreiser
haled to court — and we are wholly at one with them — could
grasp more thoroughly their conflict, their defense, and
the character of the forces arrayed against them by re-
calling the similar experiences of Baudelaire and Flaubert
and by connecting these with earlier and fiercer martyrdoms
of the free spirit in dungeons and at the stake. The drama-
tist who cannot persuade managers to produce plays that
are not false and cheery would be fortified by the knowledge
that each new vision of the sum of things and each new
view of moral sanctions and conflicts has had a bitter
struggle before its dramatic embodiment could reach the
audiences of its age. We are not, fortunately, creatures in
the void. To cut ourselves adrift from the past, in this
sense, is but to repeat old errors, reassert the thrice dis-
covered, and thus retard the advent of the liberties we have
at heart.
Now the trouble with the universities is, of course, that
officially they do not represent the tradition of freedom
at all. In economics and in philosophy, of which criticism
is a branch, they follow and do not lead. Hence nearly all
academic criticism is worthless. But the universities do
possess and pass on the materials out of which the tradi-
tion of liberty can be built. And from the insurgent critical
and poetical voices about us it is clear that this possession
and transmission are functions no one else is ready to per-
form. However timid and disingenuous their teaching, our
universities do deal with Euripides and Lucretius, Mon-
taigne and Voltaire, Kant and Goethe, Hazlitt and Shelley.
Men lend their tribal customs and unreasoning terrors the
names of divine sanctions and universal truths and fortify
their wills to war and persecution. The Puritan against
whom Mr. Mencken cries out is but another manifestation
of that eternal spirit of unreason, of tyranny, and of pro-
pitiative self-laceration. And Mr. Mencken himself would
see that Puritan more clearly and combat his works and
ways more effectively if he viewed him a little more under
those aspects of man's eternity which are still, for better
or worse, guarded within the ivory tower.
264
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2879
What Will They Do With the Vote?
By STELLA CROSSLEY DALJORD
ONE of the most important results of the long suffrage
fight just ended is the education in the fundamentals
of American social life that thousands of women have re-
ceived. We have learned as much, perhaps more, in seeking
the vote as we shall learn for a long time in using it. For
nothing has brought so many women of different classes
together on a common working basis as suffrage. True,
the women who work long hours and the poor with large
families have had little time for the active suffrage work
done by those with some margin of leisure; but in the cam-
paigns, with their widely conducted house-to-house canvass,
we have come to know each other as we could not otherwise,
and have had our eyes opened to the economic struggle in
these United States. We have learned to throw to the
winds the things we have been told and to reason first hand
from our own observations. It is likely, therefore, that
a large share of the energy formerly in suffrage work will
be redirected into the channels of the labor movement.
This is particularly true of the younger suffrage worker.
Not so long ago, after her feminist baptism of fire, she
was convinced that the ills chiefly afflicting the community
were the gross inequalities of women. These adjusted, she
believed, with women having a voice in government, that
wars would be avoided, social evils remedied and the world
generally a fitter place to live in.
But after campaigning in cities, small towns, and out-
lying rural districts, she begins to have grave doubts about
the feminist program as a panacea for social ills, or even
for the ills of women. She begins to see that perhaps the
feminist program of readjustment should be but a part of
a larger, more embracing program of economic readjust-
ment. Just "Votes for Women" may not amount to much,
but the votes of women cast intelligently in the struggle
against the present sick economic order may make con-
siderable difference.
Perhaps this same young woman has worked for suffrage in
a mill town. Most mill towns are much alike. Here is one with
a population of thirteen or fourteen thousand and, per capita,
a very rich town, but the suffrage worker learns that most
of the wealth is in the hands of a score of the town's fami-
lies, while the vast majority of the folks, who do most of the
work to produce this wealth, live in poverty and dirt. Some-
times this majority, who — according to the stated rules of
democracy as the suffrage worker learned them in school
and the Declaration of Independence — should have some say
as to how things should be in their town, has protested
against insufficient wages and unsanitary housing; but ugly
things have been done to them when they have spoken for
themselves, though their protests have all been of a peace-
ful sort; and at present the Mayor, usually one of the
large manufacturers and millionaires of the town, will not
even allow the workingmen to parade. It might "lead to
trouble," "trouble," really meaning changing the status quo
in the little town which is very comfortable for the handful
of its first families.
When the suffrage worker watches the several thousand
of women mill workers come out of the mills at night, the
older ones withered and bent, the younger ones with some
of the bloom, that the mill will soon steal, still on their
cheeks; when she reflects that virtually all of these women
are working for a wage far below the minimum of decent
living, she realizes that perhaps mere votes will not help
so materially in their lives after all. Something more is
needed. In her suffrage canvass this ardent young worker
comes across the wife of a mill worker, mother of seven
children, five of them unwanted, bending over a wash tub
in a grimy house, and cheerily gives this hopeless woman a
"Better Babies" leaflet as an argument for suffrage, but
the woman, unbending from the wash tub, says querulously :
"Babies — aw, babies! 'Cunnin' babies,' ye say! I've had
seven o' them cunnin' things and I'm sick and tired of
'em. I'd like to know some way of not havin' any more and
how to feed them I've got!" Again the suffrage worker
begins to doubt whether mere votes will help. She goes
home from her day's work discouraged and at sea. She has
been face to face that day with the bare and ugly struggle
for existence in a world that the majority of women in
America face ; and votes do not seem of such great moment.
In the larger cities where she has done organization work
in the "Polish section," the "Italian section," and the "Jew-
ish section," she realizes, from her intimate contact with
the women folk of these would-be good Americans, some-
thing of the cant of so-called "Americanization work." She
feels that true Americanization work would be the Golden
Rule applied to those men and women of other countries who
come to our shores, not the exploitation of their labor that
usually takes place. She learns from the tired women with
whom she has spent her day that "teaching foreigners
American ways" should begin with paying them wages that
will allow them to cultivate American ways.
And the campaigner in country districts has gained a
sympathetic understanding of her rural sister whom she
may have regarded with impatience heretofore. She knows
she, too, would be "dumb," inarticulate and sometimes hope-
less if she started the day at four o'clock, took care of six
children, four hired hands, ten cows, and seventy-five chick-
ens, all with her two hands.
Or perhaps campaigning in the South the suffrage worker
is brought face to face with the grave national problem
of gross injustice and cruelty to the Negro. She is told that
it is all right to talk of suffrage for white women, but she
must pretend that Negro women will be kept from the vote
as have the Negro men. She may have even witnessed the
orgy of a lynching. She realizes that asking for votes for
women on the ground of democracy is a farce if, in the same
breath, that democracy is denied the fellow American with
a darker skin.
It is likely that many suffrage workers will turn the
energies, released from suffrage work, into reform work of
a mild sort; but among the younger ones many of marked
ability, genius for organization, and political acumen, espe-
cially in the "militant group," will plunge deeply into the
economic movement. Many of them, in the States where
suffrage exists, have done so already and more will follow.
Most of them are by nature rebels. And the influence they
may wield with their large following of new voters, will be
considerable.
Sept. 4, 1920]
The Nation
265
Self-Determining Haiti
II. WHAT THE UNITED STATES HAS ACCOMPLISHED
By JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
WHEN the truth about the conquest of Haiti — the
slaughter of three thousand and practically unarmed
Haitians, with the incidentally needless death of a score of
American boys — begins to filter through the rigid Adminis-
tration censorship to the American people, the apologists will
become active. Their justification of what has been done
will be grouped under two heads: one, the necessity, and
two, the results. Under the first, much stress will be laid
upon the "anarchy" which existed in Haiti, upon the back-
wardness of the Haitians and their absolute unfitness to
govern themselves. The pretext which caused the interven-
tion was taken up in the first article of this series. The
characteristics, alleged and real, of the Haitian people will
be taken up in a subsequent article. Now as to results:
The apologists will attempt to show that material improve-
ments in Haiti justify American intervention. Let us see
what they are.
Diligent inquiry reveals just three: The building of the
road from Port-au-Prince to Cape Haitien ; the enforcement
of certain sanitary regulations in the larger cities; and the
improvement of the public hospital at Port-au-Prince. The
enforcement of certain sanitary regulations is not so im-
portant as it may sound, for even under exclusive native
rule, Haiti has been a remarkably healthy country and had
never suffered from such epidemics as used to sweep Cuba
and the Panama Canal region. The regulations, moreover,
were of a purely minor character — the sort that might be
issued by a board of health in any American city or town —
and were in no wise fundamental, because there was no
need. The same applies to the improvement of the hospital,
long before the American Occupation, an effectively con-
ducted institution but which, it is only fair to say, bene-
fited considerably by the regulations and more up-to-date
methods of American army surgeons — the best in the world.
Neither of these accomplishments, however, creditable as
they are, can well be put forward as a justification for mili-
tary domination. The building of the great highway from
Port-au-Prince to Cape Haitien is a monumental piece of
work, but it is doubtful whether the object in building it
was to supply the Haitians with a great highway or to con-
struct a military road which would facilitate the transpor-
tation of troops and supplies from one end of the island to
the other. And this represents the sum total of the con-
structive accomplishment after five years of American
Occupation.
Now, the highway, while doubtless the most important
achievement of the three, involved the most brutal of all
the blunders of the Occupation. The work was in charge of
an officer of Marines who stands out even in that organiza-
tion for his "treat 'em rough" methods. He discovered the
obsolete Haitian corvee and decided to enforce it with the
most modern Marine efficiency. The corvee, or road law, in
Haiti provided that each citizen should work a certain num-
ber of days on the public roads to keep them in condition,
or pay a certain sum of money. In the days when this law
was in force the Haitian government never required the
men to work the roads except in their respective communi-
ties, and the number of days was usually limited to three a
year. But the Occupation seized men wherever it could find
them, and no able-bodied Haitian was safe from such raids,
which most closely resembled the African slave raids of past
centuries. And slavery it was — though temporary. By day
or by night, from the bosom of their families, from their
little farms or while trudging peacefully on the country
roads, Haitians were seized and forcibly taken to toil for
months in far sections of the country. Those who protested
or resisted were beaten into submission. At night, after
long hours of unremitting labor under armed taskmasters,
who swiftly discouraged any slackening of effort with boot
or rifle butt, the victims were herded in compounds. Those
attempting to escape were shot. Their terror-stricken fam-
ilies meanwhile were often in total ignorance of the fate of
their husbands, fathers, brothers.
It is chiefly out of these methods that arose the need for
"pacification." Many men of the rural districts became
panic-stricken and fled to the hills and mountains. Others
rebelled and did likewise, preferring death to slavery. These
refugees largely make up the "caco" forces, to hunt down
which has become the duty and the sport of American
Marines, who were privileged to shoot a "caco" on sight. If
anyone doubts that "caco" hunting is the sport of American
Marines in Haiti, let him learn the facts about the death of
Charlemagne. Charlemagne Peralte was a Haitian of edu-
cation and culture and of great influence in his district. He
was tried by an American courtmartial on the charge of
aiding "cacos." He was sentenced, not to prison, however,
but to five years of hard labor on the roads, and was forced
to work in convict garb on the streets of Cape Haitien. He
made his escape and put himself at the head of several hun-
dred followers in a valiant though hopeless attempt to free
Haiti. The America of the Revolution, indeed the America
of the Civil War, would have regarded Charlemagne not as
a criminal but a patriot. He met his death not in open
fight, not in an attempt at his capture, but through a das-
tard deed. While standing over his camp fire, he was shot
in cold blood by an American Marine officer who stood con-
cealed by the darkness, and who had reached the camp
through bribery and trickery. This deed, which was noth-
ing short of assassination, has been heralded as an example
of American heroism. Of this deed, Harry Franck, writing
in the June Century of "The Death of Charlemagne," says :
"Indeed it is fit to rank with any of the stirring warrior
tales with which history is seasoned from the days of the
Greeks down to the recent world war." America should read
"The Death of Charlemagne" which attempts to glorify a
black smirch on American arms and tradition.
There is a reason why the methods employed in road
building affected the Haitian country folk in a way in which
it might not have affected the people of any other Latin-
American country. Not since the independence of the coun-
try has there been any such thing as a peon in Haiti. The
revolution by which Haiti gained her independence was not
merely a political revolution, it was also a social revolution.
Among the many radical changes wrought was that of cut-
266
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2879
ting up the large slave estates into small parcels and allot-
ting them among former slaves. And so it was that every
Haitian in the rural districts lived on his own plot of land.
a plot on which his family has lived for perhaps more than
a hundred years. No matter how small or how large that
plot is, and whether he raises much or little on it, it is his
and he is an independent farmer.
The completed highway, moreover, continued to be a barb
in the Haitian wound. Automobiles on this road, running
without any speed limit, are a constant inconvenience or
danger to the natives carrying their market produce to town
on their heads or loaded on the backs of animals. I have
seen these people scramble in terror often up the side or
down the declivity of the mountain for places of safety for
themselves and their animals as the machines snorted by. I
have seen a market woman's horse take flight and scatter
the produce loaded on his back all over the road for several
hundred yards. I have heard an American commercial trav-
eler laughingly tell how on the trip from Cape Haitien to
Port-au-Prince the automobile he was in killed a donkey and
two pigs. It had not occurred to him that the donkey might
be the chief capital of the small Haitian farmer and that
the loss of it might entirely bankrupt him. It is all very
humorous, of course, unless you happen to be the Haitian
pedestrian.
The majority of visitors on arriving at Port-au-Prince
and noticing the well-paved, well-kept streets, will at once
jump to the conclusion that this work was done by the Amer-
ican Occupation. The Occupation goes to no trouble to
refute this conclusion, and in fact it will by implication cor-
roborate it. If one should exclaim, "Why, I am surprised to
see what a well-paved city Port-au-Prince is!" he would be
almost certain to receive the answer, "Yes, but you should
have seen it before the Occupation." The implication here
is that Port-au-Prince was a mudhole and that the Occupa-
tion is responsible for its clean and well-paved streets. It
is true that at the time of the intervention, five years ago,
there were only one or two paved streets in the Haitian
capital, but the contracts for paving the entire city had
been let by the Haitian Government, and the work had
already been begu:i. This work was completed during the
Occupation, but the Occupation did not pave, and had noth-
ing to do with the paving of a single street in Port-au-
Prince.
One accomplishment I did expect to find — that the Amer-
ican Occupation, in its five years of absolute rule, had
developed and improved the Haitian system of public edu-
cation. The United States has made some efforts in this
direction in other countries where it has taken control. In
Porto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, the attempt, at least,
was made to establish modern school systems. Selected
youths from these countries were taken and sent to the
United States for training in order that they might return
and be better teachers, and American teachers were sent to
those islands in exchange. The American Occupation in
Haiti has not advanced public education a single step. No
new buildings have been erected. Not a single Haitian youth
has been sent to the United States for training as a teacher,
nor has a single American teacher, white or colored, been
sent to Haiti. According to the general budget of Haiti,
1919-1920, there are teachers in the rural schools receiving
as little as six dollars a month. Some of these teachers may
not be worth more than six dollars a month. But after five
years of American rule, there ought not to be a single
teacher in the country who is not worth more than that
paltry sum.
Another source of discontent is the Gendarmerie. When
the Occupation took possession of the island, it disarmed all
Haitians, including the various local police forces. To
remedy this situation the Convention (Article X), provided
that there should be created, —
without delay, an efficient constabulary, urban and rural, com-
posed of native Haitians. This constabulary shall be organized
and officered by Americans, appointed by the President of Haiti
upon nomination by the President of the United States. . . .
These officers shall be replaced by Haitians as they, by examina-
tion conducted under direction of a board to be selected by the
Senior American Officer of this constabulary in the presence of
a representative of the Haitian Government, are found to be
qualified to assume such duties.
During the first months of the Occupation officers of the
Haitian Gendarmerie were commissioned officers of the
marines, but the war took all these officers to Europe. Five
years have passed and the constabulary is still officered
entirely by marines, but almost without exception they are
ex-privates or non-commissioned officers of the United
States Marine Corps commissioned in the gendarmerie.
Many of these men are rough, uncouth, and uneducated, and
a great number from the South, are violently steeped in
color prejudice. They direct all policing of city and town.
It falls to them, ignorant of Haitian ways and language, to
enforce every minor police regulation. Needless to say,
this is a grave source of continued irritation. Where the
genial American "cop" could, with a wave of his hand or
club, convey the full majesty of the law to the small boy
transgressor or to some equally innocuous offender, the
strong-arm tactics for which the marines are famous, are
apt to be promptly evoked. The pledge in the Convention
that "these officers be replaced by Haitians" who could
qualify, has, like other pledges, become a mere scrap of
paper. Graduates of the famous French military academy
of St. Cyr, men who have actually qualified for commissions
in the French army, are denied the opportunity to fill even a
lesser commission in the Haitian Gendarmerie, although
such men, in addition to their pre-eminent qualifications of
training, would, because of their understanding of local con-
ditions and their complete familiarity with the ways of their
own country, make ideal guardians of the peace.
The American Occupation of Haiti is not only guilty of
sins of omission, it is guilty of sins of commission in addi-
tion to those committed in the building of the great road
across the island. Brutalities and atrocities on the part of
American marines have occurred with sufficient frequency
to be the cause of deep resentment and terror. Marines talk
freely of what they "did" to some Haitians in the outlying
districts. Familiar methods of torture to make captives
reveal what they often do not know are nonchalantly dis-
cussed. Just before I left Port-au-Prince an American
Marine had caught a Haitian boy stealing sugar off the
wharf and instead of arresting him he battered his brains
out with the butt of his rifle. I learned from the lips of
American Marines themselves of a number of cases of rape
of Haitian women by marines. I often sat at tables in the
hotels and cafes in company with marine officers and they
talked before me without restraint. I remember the descrip-
tion of a "caco" hunt by one of them; he told how they
finally came upon a crowd of natives engaged in the popular
pastime of cock-fighting and how they "let them have it"
I
Sept. 4, 1920]
The Nation
267
with machine guns and rifle fire. I heard another, a captain
of marines, relate how he at a fire in Port-au-Prince ordered
a "rather dressed up Haitian," standing on the sidewalk, to
"get in there" and take a hand at the pumps. It appeared
that the Haitian merely shrugged his shoulders. The cap-
tain of marines then laughingly said: "I had on a pretty
heavy pair of boots and I let him have a kick that landed
him in the middle of the street. Someone ran up and told
me that the man was an ex-member of the Haitian Assem-
bly." The fact that the man had been a member of the
Haitian Assembly made the whole incident more laughable
to the captain of marines.
Perhaps the most serious aspect of American brutality in
Haiti is not to be found in individual cases of cruelty,
numerous and inexcusable though they are, but rather in
the American attitude, well illustrated by the diagnosis of
an American officer discussing the situation and its diffi-
culty: "The trouble with this whole business is that some
of these people with a little money and education think they
are as good as we are," and this is the keynote of the atti-
tude of every American to every Haitian. Americans have
carried American hatred to Haiti. They have planted the
feeling of caste and color prejudice where it never before
existed.
And such are the "accomplishments" of the United States
in Haiti. The Occupation has not only failed to achieve
anything worth while, but has made it impossible to do so
because of the distrust and bitterness that it has engendered
in the Haitian people. Through the present instrumental-
ities no matter how earnestly the United States may desire
to be fair to Haiti and make intervention a success, it will
not succeed. An entirely new deal is necessary. This Gov-
ernment forced the Haitian leaders to accept the promise of
American aid and American supervision. With that Amer-
ican aid the Haitian Government defaulted its external and
internal debt, an obligation, which under self-government
the Haitians had scrupulously observed. And American
supervision turned out to be a military tyranny supporting
a program of economic exploitation. The United States had
an opportunity to gain the confidence of the Haitian people.
That opportunity has been destroyed. When American
troops first landed, although the Haitian people were out-
raged, there was a feeling nevertheless which might well
have developed into cooperation. There were those who had
hopes that the United States, guided by its traditional policy
of nearly a century and a half, pursuing its fine stand in
Cuba, under McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, would extend
aid that would be mutually beneficial to both countries.
Those Haitians who indulged this hope are disappointed and
bitter. Those members of the Haitian Assembly who, while
acting under coercion were nevertheless hopeful of Amer-
ican promises, incurred unpopularity by voting for the Con-
vention, are today bitterly disappointed and utterly dis-
illusioned.
If the United States should leave Haiti today, it would
leave more than a thousand widows and orphans of its own
making, more banditry than has existed for a century,
resentment, hatred and despair in the heart of a whole peo-
ple, to say nothing of the irreparable injury to its own tra-
dition as the defender of the rights of man.
The real reasons for the Occupation and the continued
presence of American troops in Haiti, will be told in the
issue of September 11, in an article entitled Government Of,
By, and For the National City Bank.
A Fragment
From the History of the Great War
By PROF. YUAN SEN, University of Shanghai
(Published by Wow-Wow, Pekin, 1993)
Translated by JOHN HAYNES HOLMES
"We are, then, in my judgment, on the threshold of a second
stage in the World War." — Frank H. Simonds, in the New
York Tribune, August 15, 1920.
THE second stage of the Great War, which was destined
to complete the European wreck begun in the first
stage (1914-1918), and to lead to the final collapse of west-
ern civilization, may be said to have opened in January, 1921.
This stage may be roughly distinguished from the one
which preceded it by the new and strange alignment of con-
tending nations. Russia was now the enemy to be destroyed.
Germany, on the other hand, took Russia's former place
among the Allies. The League for Peace,* organized in
December, 1920, was composed of England, France, Ger-
many, Japan, and later the United States. Italy was pre-
vented from joining the alliance by the so-called "Christmas
Revolution," which threw the government into the hands of
the Socialists, who promptly made common cause with the
Bolsheviki of Russia. England, never able to bring her
arms effectively into the struggle, was paralyzed by the
great victory of the Labor Party in November, 1920. Only
the coming of America to take England's place on the battle
line, as she had taken Russia's place in 1917, held the alli-
ance together, and thus prolonged the conflict till the final
and complete catastrophe in 1925. From 1921 on, we may
say that the conflict was substantially between Russia on
the one side, and the United States on the other.
The entrance of Germany into the league against bolshe-
vist Russia, was effected only with difficulty. In England
and France there was naturally some prejudice against the
Germans, surviving from the earlier phase of the world
struggle. To great masses of Englishmen and Frenchmen,
especially among the laboring classes and the war veterans,
it seemed a preposterous thing to receive the Germans as
friends and allies, and fight, not against, but with them.
Even as late as 1921, there was occasional refusal to lift the
German flag side by side with the tricolor and St. George's
cross. But the methods of fashioning public opinion prac-
ticed so effectively from 1914 to 1918, were now as effec-
tively applied again. All opposition to the German alliance
was sternly repressed. Any word spoken against Germany
was punished as rigorously as words spoken in favor of
Germany in earlier days. Nor was government propaganda
forgotten. Hundreds of speakers and millions of pamphlets
were scattered through both countries, to teach the people
the unexampled virtues of German character, and the neces-
sity of strengthening the German nation as the one chief
bulwark against the flood of barbarism now sweeping down
upon the world. The result, of course, was inevitable, espe-
cially after the bolshevist uprising in India, and the refusal
of Lenin to pay the Czar's debts to France. It was hence-
forth "any port in a storm" ; and Germany was received into
full and equal fellowship with her former enemies.
♦Not to be confused with the abortive League of Nations, provided for in the
Treaty of Versailles.
268
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2879
It was in Germany itself, however, that the most serious
difficulties were encountered. The collapse of Poland in the
autumn of 1920, strengthened immeasurably the revolution-
ary party of the Sparticides which had been put down in
bloodshed and terror in the early days of the Ebert govern-
ment. An immediate campaign, for alliance with the Bol-
sheviki, and war to the death against the nations which had
betrayed Germany after the armistice of November, 1918,
and forced upon her helpless people the most cruel peace
ever imposed by the victors upon the vanquished, met with
wide popular favor. Here was a God-given opportunity,
said the Sparticides, not only to take vengeance upon the
Allies, but to restore Germany to her former position of
power. Before such a movement Ebert was helpless, and
the extension of bolshevism to the frontier of the Rhine
seemed inevitable for weeks.
Then came the famous Mannheim Conference, secret for
so many years, but now revealed in all its details. On
October 2, Lloyd George, Millerand, Ebert, and Stinnes met
in Mannheim, and drew up the "Agreement" which later led
to the formal League of Peace. This "Agreement" provided,
first, that the Treaty of Versailles should be canceled; sec-
ond, that the Kaiser should be restored to his former throne ;
third, that the counter-revolutionary movement in the
Kaiser's favor should be instantly recognized and supported
by France and England; fourth, that reorganized Germany
should at once declare war against the Soviets; fifth, that
Germany should be provided by France and England with
arms and ammunition ; and last, that a league or alliance of
nations should be formed for the support of the war against
bolshevist Russia. Four weeks to a day after this Confer-
ence, the Kaiser crossed the Dutch border into Germany,
under the escort of French and English troops, and a week
later was proclaimed his new government at Berlin. Von
Zimmerman was made Chancellor, von Ludendorff War Min-
ister, von Tirpitz was placed in charge of naval affairs, and
von Jagow given his old portfolio as Foreign Minister. Von
Hindenburg was chosen to command the new German armies,
because of his familiarity with the eastern front, and later
after the organization of the League of Peace, made com-
mander of all the allied forces, with Marshal Foch as chief
of staff.
With the formal opening of war against the Bolsheviki
by this new European alliance, every effort was made to
bring America into the struggle. The National Security
League and similar bodies were now as eager to help Ger-
many against the "Huns,"* as they had formerly been eager
to destroy Germany altogether. It was largely because of
the agitation of these groups that President Wilson was
persuaded to summon a special session of Congress in No-
vember, shortly after the sweeping victory of Harding, and
in his famous "thirteen points" message call for a declara-
tion of war against Russia, "to make the world safe for
democracy." The Republicans promptly met this request of
the Executive with the reminder that the United States was
still at war with Germany, and that it was impossible for
the nation to be at war with two different nations which
were themselves at war against each other. Attorney Gen-
eral Palmer answered this rather far-fetched and certainly
unscrupulous move of the Republicans by stating that Amer-
ica was indeed still at war with Germany, and that the war-
powers of the government were therefore still existent.
•It must be remembered that this term, "Huns," used to describe the Germans
in 1914-1918, was now applied to the Russians.
Then came the notorious "raids" of the Attorney General
against Republicans for opposing the administration in time
of war. Republican clubs, like Communistic clubs of earlier
days, were everywhere invaded, and their members beaten
up, cast into prison, and held without bail. Never was
there a more extraordinary situation. Indeed, it is doubtful
if the tangle of war and peace, alliances and hostilities,
would ever have been satisfactorily straightened out, and
America brought into alliance with Germany and the League
of Peace, had it not been for . . .
[TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: It is most unfortunate that the
"Fragment" of Prof. Yuan Sen's history ends at this point.
It is known, however, that the American people were success-
fully brought into the war, and manifested an even greater
fury in its prosecution (if this be possible) than they had
shown against Germany in the first phase of the struggle.]
Tyranny by Prophets
By HENRY G. ALSBERG
Moscow, July 17
T must be admitted that Russia has not now a demo-
cratic form of government in any sense of the word.
Pretty nearly everybody will admit that it is neither a dic-
tatorship of the proletariat nor a dictatorship of a party —
the Communist Party — but only a dictatorship of a central
committee of a party, the Central Committee of Commis-
sars, the Eighteen. But things could not have been other-
wise. The increasing disorganization brought about by
war and invasions forced the government to become more
and more dictatorial. Within the Communist Party the
discipline may be said to be of a military character. Com-
munists are more severely punished for their sins than
are outsiders. If a Communist is caught speculating, the
chances are that he will be shot. A Communist is sup-
posed to make many more sacrifices than a mere layman.
He must volunteer for the front. The army contains over
300,000 party members and a great deal of the inefficiency
in the government must be attributed to the fact that the
best revolutionary brains and energy are at the front. Con-
stant demands come from the army for more organizers,
and constantly the cities have to give up their best for the
military Moloch.
As I have pointed out before, the trade unions
have, for the present, become a mere cog in the
governmental machine of dictatorship. Similarly, I am
inclined to think from what I hear that the electoral ma-
chinery has been so arranged that the present Government
can keep its majority. The elections are by no means
direct, but indirect, like our old senatorial elections, only
the final election of members to the All-Russian central
Soviets is not once but about three times removed from
the common or garden variety of elector. I think I have
had evidence, at least sufficient to convince an ordinary
person whose mind does not insist on strictly legal proof,
that elections in the villages are often manipulated from
the gubiernia towns. Besides, the villages, as a matter of
plain fact, have only one-fifth of the representation that
the city proletariat has. Informally, in the usual Russian
manner of not making the institutions gibe with the facts
or vice versa, in some gubiernias the peasant has only about
one-tenth of the representation given to the workmen. That
Sept. 4, 1920]
The Nation
269
I know is the way the electoral system worked out in
Samara. Quite plainly the peasants are not to be allowed,
as I stated before, to kill the social revolution by their
inert, small-proprietor backwardness.
It is very hard to make the outside world see the straits
to which war and blockade and invasion have brought
Russia, and how necessary it was to establish a dictatorship
in order to save the country from Mexification. You have
to be here to know the general level of education and in-
telligence, to understand that discipline and order, even of
the low degree accomplished by the Bolsheviki, have been
needed to pull things through. Very characteristic is the
legend about how Trotzky managed to save Petrograd. The
city was about to be given up to Judenich when Trotzky
telegraphed the commander to hold out until he arrived.
When he came he announced immediately that Petrograd
would not be given up voluntarily, but that the defense
would be organized in a street-to-street and house-to-house
fight. The people of Petrograd, seeing that nothing would
be gained by letting in Judenich, decided it would be the
best policy to fight — and they did. It has needed an iron
will to force this people to endure starvation and hardship
and deprivation of all sorts in order to bring about a glori-
ous result. Tyranny, if you will, but tyranny exercised by
prophets.
Of course, with the dictatorship went a very strong sup-
pression of freedom of speech and of assembly. Practically
none but government newspapers exist. For a time the
Mensheviki were allowed to publish a newspaper, and the
Social Revolutionaries of the Left get out a sort of eco-
nomic statistical periodical whenever the government, which
controls the whole supply of paper, gives them some. They
also get out a forbidden sheet now and then, a few copies of
which were given me. The anarchist press in Petrograd,
which was publishing some of Kropotkin's articles, has just
been shut down temporarily. Freedom of assembly does not
exist. Even at permitted meetings, since Chernov got up
at the typographers' meeting and unexpectedly attacked the
government, a permit for speakers is necessary. Again,
until peace comes, we must hold the wars responsible for
this gagging of public opinion. I have had admissions from
pretty nearly all parties of the opposition that they are more
or less actively engaged in propaganda against the govern-
ment, intended to lead to its overthrow. The Left Social
Revolutionaries, who were against the Brest-Litovsk treaty,
now openly want to wreck the Red army, because they do
not believe in organized armies but in international up-
risings. Accepting the point of view that force is a legiti-
mate instrument, then certainly the suppression of freedom
of speech justifies itself on the ground that the nation
which for three years has been in constant danger, must be
saved. We Americans were four thousand miles from the
scene of battle, and we gagged our press. Is it strange that
a nation which has had the enemy at a point as near to
the capital as Albany is to New York should perhaps
go our government one better in the suppression of free
speech?
In this connection I must say here, briefly, that none of
the parties of the opposition has any program to offer in
place of that of the Bolsheviki. I have talked with the Left
and Right Social Revolutionaries, with the Tolstoi anarch-
ists, Chetkov and Buliakin, and a whole roomful of dream-
ers who had no solution to offer except that it was wrong
to resist and that it was equally wrong to recognize any
form of government. I confess I was deeply touched by
these people; but seeing that they were so remote from the
great masses, one could not imagine them saving anything
but their own dim souls. They were the shadow, perhaps,
of a better Arcadia. The Mensheviki agree to the dictator-
ship of the proletariat, but still babble about a constitu-
tional convention, which nobody wants or thinks about. All
the opposition parties, with the exception, of course, of the
Tolstoi anarchists, hasten to tell you that it is criminal to
oppose the government in the present crisis; that until
peace has come nobody should actively oppose them. In
short, nobody has any alternative to propose. Kropotkin
himself believes not only that intervention, the blockade,
and the Polish war should cease, but also that the western
world should recognize the present government. And Kro-
potkin, as will be seen in a later article, by no means believes
the present government ideal!
The final instrument in the list of oppressions usually
cited against the Soviet government is the Chesvichaika, the
Extraordinary Commission. This Commission apparently
has absolute powers, and need be governed only by "its
revolutionary conscience." I know very little about the
Chesvichaika. No doubt there are a great many political
prisoners in jail, held without trial, and any irresponsible
court of this kind should be abhorrent to a democratic state.
But again we have to repeat the fact of Russia's parlous
condition and the necessity of extreme measures in order
to save the revolution.
On the whole, I do not believe that the V. C. K., as it is
called, is nearly as efficient as we have been led to believe;
and, from what I hear, its meshes are comfortably large.
Sometimes, naturally enough, in times of great stress, inno-
cent men get arrested and even executed. I personally know
of one such case where, during the wholesale arrests and
executions which followed the attack on Lenin, an innocent
man was arrested and shot. The V. C. K. admitted his
innocence afterward and sent a commission of inquiry to
the family. What is truly characteristic and Russian about
the story is that this commission, finding that the bereaved
family had more cattle than it was entitled to, turned itself
into an expropriation expedition and took away several of
the cows. I have also heard of other authentic instances of
persons who have been arrested and kept in jail for several
months — persons who were quite innocent — and even of a
case where an innocent man died in jail as a consequence of
the poor conditions. On the other hand, the members of the
British delegation, who visited the prisons, maintained that
conditions there were infinitely preferable to those in Brit-
ish prisons, and a number of them were connoisseurs in this
line, having served and suffered and lost their health in
English jails during the war. Perhaps it will be significant
to point out that the prisons have a first claim upon the
food, with the children and institutions, but before the
civilian population, according to the regulations of the food
distribution department.
Again, let me call attention to the fact that Russia is not
a retail country, and that this wholesale nation of 160,000,-
000 is living through very wholesale times, under terrific
pressure — pressure such as no nation since the France of
Danton's time has endured. Russia has no time for habeas
corpus, free speech and such-like refinements which our
own government found superfluous in time of war.
270
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2879
Repeating American History*
By ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE
NEXT to the achievement of national independence, the
principal object for which our forefathers drew the
sword and risked the hazard of punishment for treason,
was to overthrow the British suppression of those very
liberties which are guaranteed in our National Bill of
Rights: . . . speech was to be free, conscience unfettered,
and person and property secure in a sense new to mankind.
The founders of the American nation intended to set up
the everlasting reign of tolerance; and so obsessed of lib-
erty were they that they really supposed they had done so.
The American people soon had an opportunity to make
all this clear. European conditions were then strikingly
similar to those which now appall us. The French Revo-
lution terrified the world. Established order everywhere
was threatened and quaking. The "Christian and civilized
governments," as they then styled themselves, Great Britain,
Prussia and Austria, combined to crush by force of arms
what they fervently believed to be a menace to civilization.
In many countries, but particularly in the United Kingdom
and in America, the Jacobins of France had earnest adher-
ents. In England, organizations were formed, principally
among working men but including scholars and writers,
for the purpose of securing democratic changes in the
British constitution, such as universal suffrage and annual
parliaments — reforms which, at that time, were regarded
by static minds as destructive, revolutionary, anarchistic.
These societies were comparatively small as to numbers and
without much influence. Yet not only the royal government
but also the "higher classes" as May calls them in his
Constitutional History of England, became wildly alarmed;
and together with men of property and substance every-
where, formed counter-societies for the purpose of preserv-
ing law, order, and the existing Constitution. It was these
societies that Sir Thomas Erskine publicly branded as
enemies of freedom.
These organizations raised funds, employed spies, and in
every way supported and encouraged the government in a
crusade to suppress and punish obnoxious writings and
speeches ; and everywhere men were arrested, indicted, tried,
and convicted for sedition or constructive treason. Mere
statements which today are the commonplaces of liberty,
were condemned as incitements to subvert the British Con-
stitution and overthrow the government. A period of re-
pression and suppression occurred — a legal reign of terror.
Judges held to be criminal mere proposals to change or im-
prove British institutions. One eminent justice avowed that
universal suffrage "would unquestionably be tantamount to a
total subversion of this British constitution" — a statement
typical of those which, at that time, fairly spouted from the
bench. Among felons that crowded the "convict ships"
bound for Australia, were occasional heroes of conscience,
some of the best and noblest characters in the kingdom, de-
ported for sedition and constructive treason.
The Government procured the enactment of the celebrated
repressive measures of 1795. Fox denounced them as de-
structive of liberty, and prophesied that they would in-
crease the agitation they were designed to suppress. Ar-
rests, trials, convictions increased. In the name of patriot-
* From an address to the American Bar Association at St. Louis, August 26.
ism a sort of holy war against ideas was proclaimed and
ruthlessly carried on, the government required everybody
to encase their minds in a straight-jacket of conventional
thinking. The British Sedition Act of 1795 declared mere
membership in certain societies to be criminal; thus came
the recrudescence of that doctrine of tyranny, "guilt by
association." Men were prosecuted not for overt acts, but
for belonging to the proscribed societies. Yet no real
danger existed. The great body of the British people were
sound. They abhorred the French Revolution, its practices
and its doctrines, as much as King George himself.
At the same time there was similar alarm in America,
and with better reason; for great numbers of Americans
were earnest sympathizers with the French Revolution.
Formidable organizations modeled on the Jacobin Clubs of
France and calling themselves "Democratic Societies," were
formed in many States. Through these the gospel of
French republicanism was sown broadcast. Certain classes
thought they saw in all this a movement for radical change
in American institutions and the overthrow of the govern-
ment. Their frightened eyes beheld the destruction of pri-
vate property, the downfall of religion, the utter disruption
of society. These men sincerely felt that the only method
of preserving order and liberty was not by meeting radical
arguments in open discussion and demonstrating their fal-
lacy, but by suppressing them altogether.
At this evil moment our relations with the French Re-
public reached the breaking point. But for the moderation
of John Marshall, then Secretary of State, that war with"
France which actually raged on the oceans for two years,,
would have been formally declared. French partisans and
French propagandists increased their activities ; and then
in an hour of madness and in the midst of terrific popular
excitement, the Federalist majority in Congress enacted the
Alien and Sedition laws of 1798. . . . Republican Con-
gressmen bitterly resisted the Alien and Sedition bills;
they said that those measures violated the guarantees of
the First Amendment. . . . But the Federalists in
Congress and most of the influential leaders of the party
throughout the country — "the wise, rich and good" as they
called themselves — had completely lost their heads. Terror
of the French Revolution and hatred of democracy had ex-
tinguished their common sense. . . . The Federalist
majority paid no heed, and the bills became laws.
In the numerous prosecutions in the national courts the
judges, all of whom belonged to the Federalist party that
had enacted these repressive statutes, acted and spoke in
the same manner and words that the English judges had
used from the beginning of the French Revolution and were
continuing to employ. Their charges to juries were like
stump speeches; they denounced France in terms of un-
bridaled and lurid violence; they browbeat witnesses, lec-
tured counsel, assailed prisoners at the bar. If the judges
thought the offensive writing had a tendency to incite dis-
affection, they inferred that such was the intent of the
writer; or conversely. . . . The very bitter hatred and
profound distrust of the bench caused by the action of
national judges in construing and enforcing the Sedition
Act of 1798, all but wrecked our judicial establishment —
and that bitterness and distrust lasted for more than half
a century. Yet the courts are the one steadying influence
in our democracy, without which popular government would
wreck itself to pieces; and this influence was impaired,
wellnigh destroyed, by the judges themselves.
Sept. 4, 1920]
The Nation
271
Max Klinger
By FRIEDRICH BRUNS
IN the history of German art and letters the year 1920
will be memorable because of the death of Richard
Dehmel and Max Klinger, the greatest lyric genius, and
the foremost painter and sculptor of the generation in their
country. Both artists took over the heritage of the past
and sought to interpret life anew. Both hoped and strove
for a new world, das dritte Reich, in which the ideals of
Hellas and Christ were to be welded into one. When the
world in which they lived was rent asunder they passed
away as by a derisive act of fate in the fulness of their
power.
Klinger belongs to those poet-artists to whom German
art, for better and for worse, has owed its peculiar char-
acter since the days of Diirer. They are poets of the brush
and the chisel; they seek to interpret life in concrete sym-
bols and seem always to trespass on the realm of poetry.
Schwind, Thoma, Feuerbach, and Bocklin, offer the best
example of this trend in the nineteenth century. In the
sweep and fertility of his imagination, Klinger outstrips
all of these. He began as a» etcher and brought new honor
to this art. He preferred the needle to the brush because
it permits a wider range of subjects. Since etchings, as
Klinger tells us, are merely shadows, they can depict even
the monstrous without giving offense. In his own he ranges
from the light play of winsome fancy and humor to the
grotesque and the tragic. Even in these, however, his
tendency toward the monumental and plastic, through
which he achieves his powerful effects, is apparent. No
one who has really seen Mutter und Tod is likely to forget
its utter simplicity and its expressive yet delicate symbol-
ism. Much mention has been made of Klinger's early real-
ism, and his admiration of Flaubert and Zola is evident.
It is equally clear that realism is but one of the aspects
of Klinger's art and but a phase in his development. It
trained his eye and hand to greater accuracy. He admired
Menzel; he loved Bocklin.
In his paintings Klinger, like Feuerbach, Marees, and
Bocklin, strives to achieve monumental effects. Sometimes
he crowds his canvas and the symbolical meaning of the
various groups may puzzle the beholder. A picture may
seem over-burdened with meaning, yet its solemn, quiet
beauty has an irresistible charm. Two fields of subject
matter chiefly engross his endeavor: the glory of Hellas
and the Cross of Christ. From the sensuous beauty of
Greece in the Judgment of Paris Klinger turns to the
Crucifixion and reaches the pinnacle of his religious art
in his Pieta with its fine, harmonious simplicity. This was
followed, a few years later, by Christ in Olympus. The
finest interpretation of this last painting is Dehmel's poem,
Jesus und Psyche. Its fundamental idea is that the sensu-
ous beauty of Greece and the spirit of Christ must be
welded into one.
A strong tendency toward plastic art is clearly inherent
in Klinger. As the years passed by, he turned his atten-
tion more and more to sculpture. Even in his paintings
the plastic representation of the human body had become
more and more the object of his endeavor. In some of his
sculpture this has become the exclusive goal, as, for ex-
ample, in The Bathing Girl. Here symbolism is wholly
absent. The symbolical trend reappears in the portrait-
busts of Elsa Asenieff, Franz Liszt, and Friedrich Nietz-
sche. In his first statues, Salome and Cassandra, the
former the embodiment of Oscar Wilde's Salome, the lat-
ter the heroic woman who calmly meets her fate, the sym-
bolical trend was clearly evident. It achieved its highest
expression in the Beethoven, Klinger's most ambitious
work. As in Salome and Cassandra, Klinger once more
made an effective use of color. He carried out the doc-
trine Bocklin had preached. This innovation aroused a
storm of protest. That the Greeks had employed color in
their statues was conveniently forgotten. The symbolism
was no less an offense. What does it mean, was the query.
"The Germans see only with their ears," Bocklin once
said. The remark will bear a more general application.
Numerous interpretations soon appeared. Dehmel's Jesus
und Psyche contained a fine appreciation, but probably
found few readers. The reliefs on the bronze seat depict
the same idea as Christ in Olympus. The greatness of the
work was, however, felt by many, and the city of Leipzig
honored its great son by purchasing the Beethoven for
its museum.
The death of Klinger calls to mind Rodin, the greatest
modern French sculptor. At first sight they seem utterly
different, Klinger, the idealist, Rodin, the realist. But if
we apply these terms to the really great we touch only the
surface. In a deeper sense, Max Klinger and Auguste
Rodin belong together as great modern interpreters of the
human soul in marble and bronze.
The Scythians
TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN OF ALEXANDER
BLOK BY BABETTE DEUTSCH AND
ABRAHAM YARMOLINSKY.
Pan-Mongolism — though the word is strange,
My ear acclaims its gongs.
— Vladimir Solovyov
You are the millions; we are multitude
And multitude and multitude.
Come, fight! Yea, we are Scythians,
Yea, Asians, a squint-eyed, greedy brood.
For you : the centuries ; for us : one hour.
Like slaves, obeying and abhorred,
We were the shield between the breeds
Of Europe and the raging Mongol horde.
For centuries your ancient hammers forged
And drowned the thunder of far hates.
You heard like wild fantastic tales
Old Lisbon's and Messina's sudden fates.
Yea, so to love as our hot blood can love
Long since you ceased to love; the taste
You have forgotten, of a love
That burns like fire and like the fire lays waste.
All things we love: clear Number's burning chill,
The ecstasies that secret bloom.
All things we know: the Gallic light
And the parturient Germanic gloom.
272
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2879
And we remember all: Parisian hells,
The breath of Venice's lagoons,
Far fragrance of green lemon groves,
And dim Cologne's cathedral-splintered moons.
And flesh we love, its color and its taste,
Its deathy odor, heavy, raw.
And is it our guilt if your bones
Will crack beneath our powerful, supple paw?
It is our wont to seize wild colts at play :
They rear and impotently shake
Wild manes — we crush their mighty croups.
And shrewish women slaves we tame — or break.
Come unto us, from the black ways of war,
Come to our peaceful arms and rest.
Comrades, while it is not too late,
Sheathe the old sword. May brotherhood be blest.
If not, we have not anything to lose.
We also know old perfidies.
By sick descendants you will be
Accursed for centuries and centuries.
To welcome pretty Europe, we shall spread
And scatter in the tangled space
Of our wide thickets. We shall turn
To you our alien Asiatic face.
For centuries your eyes were toward the East.
Our pearls you hoarded in your chests,
And mockingly you bode the day
When you could aim your cannon at our breasts.
The time has come. Disaster beats its wings.
With every day the insults grow.
The hour will strike, and without ruth
Your proud and powerless Paestums be laid low.
Oh pause, old world, while life still beats in you.
Oh weary one, oh worn, oh wise!
Halt here, as once did Oedipus
Before the Sphinx's enigmatic eyes.
Yea, Russia is a Sphinx. Exulting, grieving,
And sweating blood, she cannot sate
Her eyes that gaze and gaze and gaze
At you with stone-lipped love for you, and hate.
Go, all of you, to Ural fastnesses,
We clear the battle-ground for war;
Cold Number shaping guns of steel
Where the fierce Mongol hordes in frenzy pour.
But we, we shall no longer be your shield.
We, careless of the battle-cries,
Shall watch the deadly duel seethe,
Aloof, with indurate and narrow eyes.
We shall not move when the ferocious Hun
Despoils the corpse and leaves it bare,
Burns towns, herds cattle in the church,
And smell of white flesh roasting fills the air.
For the last time, old world, we bid you come,
Feast brotherly within our walls.
To share our peace and glowing toil
Once only the barbarian lyre calls.
In the Driftway
TWO men there are at present who are much in the public
eye: Prince Carol of Rumania, visiting incognito in
New York, and the Lord Mayor of Cork, dying in a London
prison. Each is set apart from his fellows — one for what he
is, one for what he believes. Each inspires awe and curi-
osity in the minds of common men; each wins almost a
column daily in the press. It is much the same awe and
curiosity, too, although their cases are so very different.
There is the Prince, who if he were not a prince, would be
regarded, if he were regarded at all, as a rather dull young
man with a garish taste in dress, combining, as he is said to,
a brown hat, a green shirt, a red tie, and a blue suit. Yet
being a prince he is dined by an ex-ambassador, an ex-sena-
tor, an ex-congressman, an associate justice of the Court of
Appeals, and various other prominent and successful busi-
ness and professional men, and he makes at the dinner a
speech that is both silly and sordid, ending with the state-
ment that "Rumania ... is now fighting to become one
of the richest nations of Europe." And on the other hand
there is Terence MacSweeney, who believes so sternly and
strongly and unflinchingly in the right and justice of the
cause of Ireland that he is willing to die for it.
*****
THESE men at present are the objects of hero-worship,
and while the hero-worship of Prince Carol is pitiful
and not a little sad, that of the Lord Mayor of Cork is inspir-
ing and hopeful. The Prince is a sham, but his worshipers
are sincere; they bow and scrape to him because they think
he is glorious ; because a prince should be glorious, and it is
not their fault but their misfortune that he is not. But the
latest news of the Lord Mayor of Cork is printed in red
letters on news bulletins and men crowd around to read it
because they are, consciously or unconsciously, making
obeisance to a genuine hero ; one who regards his life, which
in the last analysis is the most precious thing a man has, as
of less account than his faith. And though faith like this
can be shared or even understood by only a few, it is recog-
nized by everyone, and receives the tribute of reverence
which is its due.
The Drifter
Contributors to This Issue
Stella Crossley Daljof.e, a former suffrage organizer,
is now an active social worker.
John Haynes Holmes is the pastor of the Community
Church of New York, the editor of Unity, and a
writer on topics of current interest.
Albert J. Beveridge, author and historian, was United
States Senator from Indiana from 1899 to 1911.
Babette Deutsch is a poet, the author of "Banners."
Abraham Yarmolinsky is the head of the Slavonic Di-
vision of the New York Public Library.
James Weldon Johnson has been United States Consul
in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and the Azores.
Friedrich Bruns is an assistant professor in the Univer-
sity of Wisconsin who has written on the philosophy
of art and on dramatic theory.
Sept. 4, 1920]
The Nation
273
Books
Foster on the Steel Strike
The Great Steel Strike and Its Lessons. By William Z. Foster.
B. W. Huebsch, Inc.
OF the two parts of Mr. Foster's title the latter is the more
important. The steel strike of 1919, widespread and por-
tentous as it was, has now become historical in the economic
life of the nation. What is to follow it, and how the develop-
ment is to take place, are the questions that now chiefly concern
us. The rise and fall of the hopes of hundreds of thousands of
steel workers was, to be sure, as dramatic, as much steeped
in heroic emotion and rich incident, as the struggle for liberty
of many a small nation. Those who left the little office in the
M'Gee Building in Pittsburgh where Foster had his desk and
went out to visit the workers and their families in the dozens of
towns where the strike was actually lived out soon discovered
the absurdity of the bookish idea that this was a plot engineered
by a "red radical" or two. Foster might have been supplanted
by Gompers, or Lenin, or Warren G. Harding, without any
great difference being made in the state of mind of the strikers.
The strike was a popular uprising, with its sources deep in the
years of communal oppression which the peasant immigrants
had endured. The score or more of organizers who directed it
merely succeeded in turning this full current into channels.
There will be another strike, and then perhaps the channels will
be different, but the current will be the same. That little force
of union officials could no more have begun the mass movement
of 350,000 men without the deep underlying resentment which
lay ready to be tapped, nor have stopped the movement, once
started, before it had run its course, than a geologist could turn
on or off an eruption of Vesuvius.
I remember standing with John Fitch, who wrote the intro-
duction to this book, in the basement of a little hall in Home-
stead— the only one in the town where meetings were allowed
to be held, though even there they were later shut off. We
were behind the speaker, Joseph D. Cannon of the Mine, Mill,
and Smelter Workers; we had entered without his knowledge.
It was a sultry dry, and the low room, crowded to the doors with
standing men, was stifling. As these Slavs wiped the sweat
from their foreheads they stood silent, listening to the speaker
with strained and eager attention. He was telling them elo-
quently about the hardships endured by George Washington's
ragged army in its seven-years' struggle for freedom, a struggle
which symbolized American ideals, and which, he said, the
trade-union movement was still carrying on for the benefit of
the workers and their children's children. When the steel
workers should win the eight-hour day and have a little leisure
he wanted them to learn English and then to read the story
of Washington's army. A man in the audience broke in with a
cry: "I been in America twenty-five years; no get chance learn
English yet!" In a flash the landscape of his life was revealed.
Toiling year after year for most of his waking hours, without
a share even in the country that profited from his work, rejected
and persecuted when he asked for one — his tone was that of a
puzzled and heart-broken child. The natural question arising
from such experiences in the field was not whether Foster and
the trade-union movement had justly earned the condemnation
of the public in assuming responsibility for the strike, but
whether they were fitted to carry out their responsibility to
the workers in the matter of leading and winning it.
Some such feeling as this lies behind Foster's story of the
great movement which he and John Fitzpatrick, as officers of
the National Committee for Organizing Steel Workers, directed.
It is a straightforward account, not so much of the deeper cur-
rents and cross currents of the strike, as of the part played in
it by the trade-union movement. The plans and tactics adopted,
the successes and failures, the lessons to be learned for labor's
struggle in the future, Foster describes in the form of an
apologia for his methods and his ideas about trade-union
strategy. His defense is deployed, not against the reactionaries
who thought the steel strike a red plot, but against the radicals
who think the conservative American Federation of Labor is
incapable of leading the steel workers to victory.
To understand Foster's attack on the subject it is necessary to
know a little about his personality and history. He is a Massa-
chusetts Yankee, with the typical Yankee combination of
shrewd practical sense and intellectual idealism. He is not a
full-blooded, emotional seeker after prestige and power, or an
exploiter of personality. Almost painfully modest, he lives, like
a true intellectual, entirely in the realm of ideas — though he is
a master of many trades. Early in his trade-union career he
became a convinced syndicalist — which means in substance two
things : that he saw the inequities and inefficiencies of capitalism,
and that he espoused industrial unionism as the chief hope of the
workers. But a short experience with the I. W. W., coupled with
a first-hand study of the European labor movement, awakened
his practical sense. "The I. W. W.," as he often says, "are ab-
solutely against results." To do anything in this world one must
use the tools that exist; one must work with the forces of life,
prepared to take full advantage of leaps and sports, but not ex-
pecting evolution to unroll at a word of command. The trade-
union movement is the historical, the natural organization of the
workers. The trade-union movement suffers when the radicals
— that is, the thinkers and the active, courageous spirits — leave
it. Therefore Foster advised the I. W. W. to give up their at-
tempt to form competing unions — ideal, perfectionist, revolu-
tionary unions. He spent six years trying to persuade members
of the I. W. W. to come back into the great trade-union move-
ment and to work with the masses of their fellows where they
would be of most use. It was not a doctrine of compromise,
neither was it the stupid intrigue which the public has come to
understand by the phrase "boring from within." To say that
Foster is a Red, surreptitiously using the trade-union move-
ment for his own purposes, is a caricature of the truth. He has
long-suffering loyalty and hope for the labor movement as a
whole and for the trade unions as its chief present embodi-
ment. He sees that social evolution is at work here, and he
believes the goal of that evolution to be the goal he desires.
Meanwhile, he patiently and ingeniously does his share in the
work wherever opportunity offers. The group of ideas which
I have thus crudely and briefly expressed is, with Foster, the
motive power of a life.
His first large attempt to prove his thesis in action was with
the Chicago packing house employees. Here the old trade unions
had met their usual failure in organizing unskilled immigrant
workers in a great and powerful industry. Some form of in-
dustrial unionism was obviously necessary. But Foster did not
turn to the I. W. W. or to any newer independent group. He
devised a scheme for securing the cooperation of the dozen or
more American Federation of Labor craft unions and thus
bringing about industrial action. He succeeded, by the applica-
tion of faith and ingenuity, in securing organization and a
collective agreement through the trade union movement, and he
succeeded at the same time in giving the old unions an impetus
forward. On the success of this achievement he built his steel
campaign. His description of his plans is dramatic and con-
vincing. He brought about the committee of the twenty-four
cooperating unions as he desired. If he had then been able to go
on with a prompt nation-wide organizing campaign, culminat-
ing before the signing of peace, there is little doubt that the
steel workers would have won collective bargaining with no
more trouble than a parade of their strength. But here the old
unions failed him. They did not provide enough money. They
did not send enough good organizers. The campaign had to be
localized. By the time it had gathered full headway the large
employers were prepared and the governmental machinery of
arbitration was dissolved. The Steel Corporation had its im-
274
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2879
mense war surplus as a fighting chest, and the demand for
munitions had ceased. When the strike was called it was al-
ready too late to win, and the trade-union movement was at
fault. Nevertheless, the strike had to be called on account of
pressure from the rank and file. During the strike also the
old unionism displayed its weaknesses. The principal union of
the highly skilled failed to cooperate with the unskilled.
Toward the end it began to sabotage the strike, and was a
factor in bringing about its collapse. Foster candidly admits
these facts — with the exception that he sincerely believed it
possible to win the strike even at the late date of its beginning.
Foster has resigned, and the union mentioned above has brought
about the dissolution of the organizing committee itself. In
spite of all this Foster maintains his attitude toward the trade-
union movement more stoutly than ever. He sinks all personal
disappointments and grievances, and calls the attention of
radicals to the great advance which the steel strike marked over
former battles of the old unionism. He recommends specific
improvements in the next campaign and argues for a recognition
of the evolutionary process. "The conclusion is bound to be
optimistic and full of enthusiasm for the future."
Whether or not Foster's optimism is well founded is a ques-
tion which would bear much discussion, and which only the
future can finally decide. For the moment it is enough that
his attitude has been ably set forth — and this itself is an event
of prime importance. His book is worth a dozen abstract dis-
cussions of the labor movement, for it is an example, one of the
best examples that has ever arisen, of labor doing its own
thinking, making its own detailed and disinterested analysis.
For its clarity, cogency, and significance, it is better worth read-
ing than nine-tenths of the volumes written about public affairs.
George Soule
Various Views of Ireland
The Irish Wars. By J. J. O'Connell. Dublin: Martin Lester,
Ltd.
The Irish Rebellion of 16^1. By Lord Ernest Hamilton. Lon-
don: John Murray.
An Irish Commune : The History of Ralahine. Adapted from
the narrative of E. T. Craig, with an introduction by George
Russell (JE) and notes by Diarmuid O'Cobhthaigh. Dublin:
Martin Lester, Ltd.
HP HE more vital an issue, unfortunately, the harder it often
* is to get the ti/uth about it. Nevertheless, if partisanship
is openly avowed, one is not misled by it and can often learn
much even from the ex parte statements of special pleaders.
The plainly patriotic bias of Mr. O'Connell's military history
of Ireland from the Norse invasions till the close of the eigh-
teenth century does not greatly detract from its value. With
extraordinary clearness he brings out the constant factors in
Irish geography and culture that so often made the history of
each invasion repeat that of the last. Ireland is divided into
three physical regions, the northern mountains, the southern
highlands, and the central plain; and this plain is divided in
two by the river Shannon. Now, though there are openings
for invaders in the river-mouths of the north and south, they
sink into insignificance compared with the two great avenues
to the dominating (because the richest and central) portion,
the rivers Boyne and Liffey. The really exposed and vulner-
able heart of the island lies opposite England, and this has been
the cause of her age-long dependence on the Normans, the
Tudors, and their successors. A second constant element in
Irish history has been the fact that her art of war, like her
civilization in general, has always lagged a little in the rear of
the best European contemporary models. The Irish hosts fought
bravely, but usually went down before superior armaments : the
battle-axe of the Norsemen, the mailed cavalry of the Normans,
the firearms of the Tudors and of Cromwell. Another feature
of the tale that recurs almost invariably is that each great
Continental rival of Britain has sought to stir up and use Ire-
land as a base against the common enemy. Spain, France, and
Germany have thus used her.
The avowed object of Lord Ernest Hamilton, whose third book
on Ulster takes up the tale at the accession of James I and
covers the period of the first Stuarts, is to correct the errors of
certain British historians who are said to have suppressed,
through a mistaken sense of generosity, events in Irish history
which reflect discredit on the native race. Lecky in particular
is accused of continual special-pleading in favor of the Irish,
spreading upon his pages a constant suggestio falsi in their
favor, while leaving himself a loophole of truthful statement
by which to escape if pressed. Lord Ernest professes to be
animated by a sense not of generosity but of truth in painting
a picture of the Irish so dark that he admits it will appear to
the average reader as a libel. He sees one side nearly all white
and the other nearly all black. When the first permanent plan-
tations of British were made in Ulster the natives were driven
from their lands to the bogs, but it is said that they felt no
resentment at this expropriation until the riches of the land
improved by Saxon toil excited their cupidity. As they con-
tinued prowling around the land they had once possessed, it was
proposed to treat them like wolves, a vermin from which the
country must be freed. Lord Ernest sees nothing wrong in
this, and when the great rebellion broke out he says it had no
motives but the injured pride of a few native chiefs, certainly
not the religious and patriotic causes to which it is commonly
attributed. He labors to show that the massacres in which
many thousands of British perished furnished a just excuse
for the bloody reprisals, including Cromwell's stern measures,,
by which they were punished. The massacre at Drogheda is
justified on the ground that it followed an assault and was'
mainly directed not against the Irish but against the English
Royalist garrison. But through all the heartrending story,
even as distorted by Lord Ernest's affections, it is plain that
the stronger race was the aggressor and the weaker race more
sinned against than sinning. Faults there were on both sides;
but for an impartial and statesmanlike account of the conflict,
the historian, even though he may learn here and there details
from Lord Ernest, will continue to turn to the pages of Lecky.
From the annals written in blood and tears it is pleasant to
turn to the story of a beautiful and hopeful, even if eventually
unsuccessful, experiment in communism made in County Clare
ninety years ago. The agrarian conditions of Ireland were at
that time terrible; poverty was general and bitter, rioting and
crime were rife, and the government had no remedy to offer
but suspension of the habeas corpus act and drastic punish-
ments by police and military. In these disheartening circum-
stances an Englishman named Craig, inspired by social ideas
similar to those held by Owen, undaunted by criticisms of his
plan as "Utopian, rash, and absurd," founded a commune on the
estate of Mr. John S. Vandeleur at Ralahine. The tenantry,
including forty adults and some children, organized themselves
into a company agreeing to hold all things in common after
they had paid the rent with which they were still burdened.
Liquor and tobacco were banished, a set of rules for self-gov-
ernment adopted, and the management of the farm put under
"democratic control." Encouraged by the prospect of profiting
from all that they made over and above the rent, the peasants
put a new spirit into their work and more than made a success
of it. Agrarian crimes, frequent on the estate during past
years, automatically ceased; good order and discipline pre-
vailed; a common store was started; children were educated
better than they had ever been before; and a fund was pro-
vided with which to take care of sick members or of orphaned
children. Greater crops did something to improve the economic
condition of the workers. But after three years the hopeful
little experiment came to an end through no fault of its own.
Mr. Vandeleur gambled away at his club not only his own
Sept. 4, 1920]
The Nation
275
property, but, as JE puts it, "what may well have been a happier
destiny for his country." The estate came into bankruptcy and
legal proceedings were taken against Craig. His heart was
so in the work that he burst into tears when he heard the bad
news, and, if we may believe his rhetoric, his hair turned gray
in a single night. But his noble effort was not all in vain.
"I think it possible," writes M, "that the soul of Ralahine may
reincarnate speedily in modern Ireland, where people now talk
almost as much about cooperation as about Sinn Fein."
Preserved Smith
What a Budget Means
The Budget and Responsible Government. By Frederick A.
Cleveland and Arthur Eugene Buck. With an introduction
by William Howard Taft. The Macmillan Company.
The Evolution of the Budget in Massachusetts. By Luther H.
Gulick. The Macmillan Company.
"T~\ O you believe in God? Yes or No, and no equivocation."
■*— ' In this peremptory language an irate college president
once addressed his professor of philosophy. "That depends
upon your concept of the Deity," gently replied the officer of
instruction. At the end of the academic year he was not classi-
fied among the "gainfully employed."
In these days it is also necessary to believe in a budget sys-
tem. Everybody does, you know. That which was academic
has become practical. All political parties favor it. Ladies'
clubs discuss it. Mr. Cox points with pride to what he has done
in Ohio, and Mr. Harding to what he would do in Washington.
But the more than casual student of the subject, if sharply
questioned as to his belief in a budget system, would have to
use the language of the professor: "That depends upon your
concept of a budget."
Nobody knows this better than the authors of the volumes
before us. Many a cheerful advocate of a budget system will
be shocked to find that one of the leaders in budget reform,
Dr. F. A. Cleveland, believes that the idea involves some
fundamental changes in our form of government — the substi-
tution of responsible government for our scheme of divided
powers and irresponsible party manipulation. About one-half
of the volume by Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Buck is occupied with
a historical review of the principles of democratic control, the
rising protest against invisible boss rule, and recent efforts to
improve public administration and public finance. All of this
is very informing in that it shows the vital relation between
a budget system and the structure and operation of government.
Dr. Cleveland thinks we need four things to make American
political devices truly democratic and a budget system an
effective instrument of financial control: (1) the preparation
of plans, financial and administrative, by an executive who
stands in the full light of publicity and can be held responsible
to the people; (2) legislative review of the plans in open
session with the executive present to be heard in defense of
his program; (3) the right of appeal to the electorate in case
of a deadlock; and (4) machinery for holding squarely re-
sponsible the victor in any appeal to the voters. Dr. Cleve-
land does not anywhere give us an exact picture of the scheme
of government required to accomplish these results. If he tried
to visualize it narrowly, he might be shocked by his own te-
merity as well as by the child of his imagination. What parlia-
mentary government in the true sense of the word would do to
American institutions is dreadful to contemplate. Pushed half
way to its logical consequences, it would mean a political revolu-
tion. Perhaps Dr. Cleveland's answer would be: "Let those
who have eyes face the light."
For the student of budget legislation and administration in
the technical sense, the chapters by Mr. Buck will be especially
welcome. They embrace a careful review of recent efforts to
reorganize state administration and introduce budget reform.
Here will be found a full and orderly account of these activities,
illuminated by wise and pertinent comment from a man who
combines practical experience with systematic thinking. Mr.
Buck does not make any excursions into political philosophy,
but he supplies, sometimes with a touch of dry humor, enough
information to blow up a whole regiment of smooth-tongued
reformers in the field of budget administration. Mr. Taft con-
tributes a brief introduction which adds the weight of his great
name to the joint enterprise. It is probable that Mr. Taft did
not read the volume which he introduces to us, for his views
on the merits of the Good-McCormick bills are sharply opposed
to the opinions expressed by Dr. Cleveland in the body of the
text. The editor, Dr. Lindsay, has come heroically to the rescue
in his prefatory note. He has brought about an apparent
reconciliation, or perhaps it would be better to say, patched
up an apparent truce, with considerable skill.
Dr. Gulick's contribution to the subject of the budget is based
on his experience as secretary of the joint special committee
on finance and budget procedure of the Massachusetts legisla-
ture. His volume describes the actual operation of a "budget
system" as seen from the inside. It will prove exceedingly
helpful to those political adolescents who imagine that a piece
of legislation imposing on the governor the duty of preparing
a financial plan will produce any important changes in our
way of doing business. The upshot of Dr. Gulick's researches
is that political power is where it is and will be where it will
be no matter what the fiscal devices. What we have in state
government is a concatenation of political forces. Sometimes
they function through the legislature; sometimes through the
governor; sometimes through a combination of the two. We
may impose the duty of preparing a budget on the governor,
but we cannot prevent him from holding back-room sessions
with the legislative leaders and agreeing on the whole business
in advance. We may vest the power in a legislative commit-
tee, but we cannot prevent a strong governor supported by
dominant political forces from prescribing the limits of legisla-
tive action. All of which leads us back again to Dr. Cleve-
land's idea of making political power, wherever it is located,
both visible and responsible. The question is: Can it be done
in a democracy?
Both volumes are in a way the product of the New York
Bureau of Municipal Research and Training School for Public
Service. Dr. Cleveland was formerly the director of the insti-
tution, and Mr. Buck and Dr. Gulick are now members of the
staff. Charles A. Beard
Diverse Americans
Growing Up. By Mary Heaton Vorse. Boni and Liveright.
Children in the Mist. By George Madden Martin. D. Apple-
ton and Company.
Mountain. By Clement Wood. E. P. Dutton and Company.
■flTlTH uncommon charm, with lightness and precision of
» » touch, Mrs. Vorse illustrates the modern attitude toward
the child. That attitude may be defined — to use famous but
tarnished words — as one of watchful waiting. No longer is the
child an object for molding and often heavy hands; it is per-
mitted to take its own line of character, to grow in the free and
intimate sense, and interference is strictly limited to the func-
tion of protection. One records such a definition of the attitude
of sensible parents and educators to children not without a sense
of the crushing irony of the fact that neither states nor majori-
ties, neither principalities nor powers, have yet approximated
anything like so civilized a point of view in their treatment of
those children of a larger growth, men. Though firmly bent on
her discoveries in pedagogical psychology, Mrs. Vorse is any-
thing but dry and didactic. The Marceys are people — extraor-
dinarily real people, in spite of the curious little discrepancies
which one cannot help noting. Their attitude to their babies is
276
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2879
the finest thing about them; in all other respects their grain
seems coarser. It is but just to remember that everyone has
known American families whose general culture is narrow and
thin but into which the college-bred mother and wife introduces
many such liberal notions as do not conflict with the funda-
mental orthodoxies in regard to property and sex. Finally
there are the children — Robert, Sara, and Jamie. In describing
them Mrs. Vorse has beautifully brought out the important fact
that children are impelled by a wild, primitive, and eerie shame
to keep so much of their inner and outer lives hidden from their
elders. They are quite like little savages at secret and mystic
rites. Or else an instinctive wisdom teaches them that the
blunted imagination and crippled impulses of adults will try to
destroy the pleasant and primitive land of fancy in which they
live. It must not be thought from this account that Mrs. Vorse
has many moments of solemnity. Her humor — as in the price-
less Brewster incident — is fresh and rich and delicate. One
may quite forget her psychological implications and yield to
the mirth and human charm of her story and her people.
Mrs. Martin writes more heavily and lumberingly than Mrs.
Vorse. But she has material more anciently native to literary
craftsmanship, and her style, which is at times very slipshod
and confused, rises and tightens with her theme. She has
attempted nothing less than to tell, in a series of eight stories,
the spiritual history of the Negro from the day of his emanci-
pation to the World War. In its entirety the plan could have
succeeded only in greater and more powerful hands. Taking
the stories merely and frankly as episodes, they are profoundly
true and moving. Mrs. Martin avoids both sentiment and indig-
nation; her tone is warm but quiet; she lets the stern implica-
tions arise in their bare and tragic force. Nothing finer or more
searching has been written in our imaginative literature as it
deals with the Negro than the calm, rather brief story called
Sleeping Sickness. Old Angelique is the trusted nurse in illness
of all her white neighbors. But her grandson is lynched on a
vague suspicion and the old woman courteously but irrevocably
withdraws herself from her former friends and employers. A
strange sickness breaks out among the little children. Ange-
lique remembers it, and the simples that will cure it, from
slavery times. She saves the child of her own household and
lets her white neighbor's child die. Because she is bitter and
unfeeling? No. But because she knows that her failure to
save the white child would not have been attributed to human
fallibility but to "nigger" depravity. She will not put her hand
into the lion's mouth again as she did when she brought her
trembling grandson to town and intrusted him to the sheriff's
care. Mrs. Martin does not always reach the natural dignity
and truth of this narrative. But several of the stories — The
Flight, The Blue Handkerchief — deal adequately with the rich
stream of romance that flows through the American history of
the Negro. And everywhere, to one who knows it, Mrs. Martin
conveys a correct sense and image of the "low country" of South
Carolina which is her scene.
That gifted poet and sturdy liberal, Clement Wood, enters
the field of fiction busily and robustly. We have every reason
to feel kindly toward him, but he arouses in us an old wish —
Oh, that Zola had never written! Mr. Wood himself may not
have read Zola for years; he may never have read him at all.
But that absurd, old formula seems to be in the very air we
breathe and to produce over and over again these hurriedly, hud-
dled, and, in both senses, artless novels of sociological or economic
propaganda. We are, in these matters, very much on the side
of Mr. Wood. But fiction is a fine art and fine art means inti-
macy, saturation, a spirit of inner absorption that creates a form
of beauty from within outward. These Zolaist novels have
breadth without expressiveness; they are crowded without dif-
ferentiation and violent without power. They are too busy to
have any modulation and too intent on the economic functioning
of their characters to know them at all. Occasionally the first
half of such a book will be human. That was the case with
Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." Then it trails off into pamphlet-
eering. Mr. Wood may reply that the cause is more than art,
and we shall not contradict him. But the two are not the same.
"Mountain" is dedicated to Dreiser. But Dreiser's great virtue
is that he has no tendenz, that he sinks himself to the point of
self-identification into men and things to discover their essential
nature. Neither a wheat pit nor a mountain nor a woman nor
a grog-shop becomes to him an overshadowing symbol, monster,
myth. He sees a mountain, a woman, a grog-shop, and extracts
from the concrete thing or person the universal significance that
is nothing but its own unique and incomparable nature. Mr.
Wood deals with symbols, representations, tendencies, forces.
He is busy proving a dozen things. We agree with him in all.
But from the point of view of art the mind is unpersuaded and
the imagination a blank. The book is all haste and over-eager-
ness. The creative hand has scarcely touched it yet.
Books in Brief
HP HERE is a childlike beauty in Gerald Stanley Lee's "Ghost
*■ in the White House" (E. P. Dutton) — something between
Ruskin and Charles Rann Kennedy, with a strong dash of the
Springfield Republican. The book is neither a threnody nor a
satire on any past or present occupant of the White House, but
is a serious attempt to grapple, by means of gentle revery, with
current economic and political problems. The ghost is the spirit
of the people supposed inarticulately to haunt the executive
mansion; and Mr. Lee has made it sqeak and gibber in the
streets of the capital to admiration. It tells us just .the kind
of president it wants next — not exactly the Cox or Harding type"
— and it rails on Henry Cabot Lodge and Postmaster Burleson
in the most delightful manner. The author's idea is that if we
could make people a little more human they would, notwith-
standing the old adage, err less. If Lodge could see himself
prinking his soul before the glass of his own conceit; if Burle-
son could see himself wasting thousands of dollars by his penny-
wise policy; they might stop. The treatment Mr. Lee recom-
mends for the Senate is to "boil it down to one human being
being human, to boil it down to a baby, even"; and then, "what
it would do would be deep, direct, and wise." Lots of us would
like to boil the Senate, but we should expect the result to be
rather like Irish stew than like a baby. That is what happened
to Pelias when Medea boiled him in a cauldron in order to
rejuvenate him. Or, again, take the labor problem. If only
we could get the man making ten dollars a week talking and
laughing with the man who makes a hundred dollars a week,
everything would be as smooth as a skating-rink. If only
Dooley or some other humorist were present at conferences be-
tween capitalists and workers, "to get in a small deep light-
hearted word," the conferences would not break up like a party
of little girls in high dudgeon. The idea is delightful, but does
it quite exhaust the possibilities of a complicated situation?
The author has thought, or mused, a lot, but he has hardly
studied the problems at all. He fancies that economics is a
very simple science — and so it is, his economics. He has not
the faintest conception of the real forces that are now reshap-
ing the industrial world. A vast tide is rising, and it will take
more mooning than Mr. Lee can do to control it.
' HP HE first article of the covenant of a true Society of
Nations ought not to be a naive appeal to fraternity but
simply this: Coal and iron can no longer in any country remain
private property" — so Clarence K. Streit concludes, quoting
Gustave Tery, the first of the Freeman Pamphlets, "Where Iron
is, There is the Fatherland" (Huebsch). In fifty pages he sum-
marizes the fantastic true story of international finance which
was revealed in France and concealed in America a year ago:
the careful arrangements of French interests to supply Krupp
with enough French ferro-silicon when the great war was fore-
Sept. 4, 1920]
The Nation
277
seen; the international interlocking directorates, the tentacles
of the Metallgesellschaft in the heart of French industry — far
subtler and deadlier than any defeatist propaganda could ever
be; the "gentlemen's agreements" by which French airplanes
spared smelters firing for the boches and the Germans spared
coal-mines grubbing for the French; and the almost incredible
story of the de Wendel family. Francois de Wendel, president
of the French Steel Trust, was a member of the French Parlia-
ment; Charles de Wendel, his brother, whose mines on the Ger-
man side of the Lorraine frontier had underground channels
into the French mines, was a naturalized German and a member
of the Reichstag. Humbert de Wendel was sole French pur-
chasing agent for iron and steel in England; his brother-in-law
was appointed to check him up; a branch of the Steel Trust
allocated the metal in France. An employee of the Trust was
the general staff officer responsible for the non-bombardment of
the Trust's property exploited by the Germans in the Briey
Basin. And to Francois de Wendel, as member of the Chamber
of Deputies, were referred charges of profiteering in steel for
investigation and report! Mr. Streit tells the story simply,
straightforwardly, with ample citation of authority, but almost
too unjournalistically. The booklet is marred by awkward
translations and by careless proof-reading of place names.
PROFESSOR JOHN ERSKINE discusses "Democracy and
Ideals" (Doran) without a single reference to Bolshevism — ■
a gratifying omission. Two addresses before academic audi-
ences in the United States and several lectures and papers
inspired by his educational work with the American army over-
seas in 1918 and 1919 are here presented as a study of the
American character and its needs. One chapter explains the
American character to a British audience; another interprets
Americans and Frenchmen to each other. Our boastfulness,
sentimentality, detachment from the past, lack of taste and of
tradition, are analyzed with a tact that should leave the for-
eigner indulgent and the native unresentful. Our more serious
defects are best handled in comparison with those of the Ger-
mans. Lynching, for instance. We tolerate it, but after all
we prefer to regard it as a crime; whereas the Germans, who
boasted of the Lusitania iniquity, do not know a crime even
when they see it in a cage. Mr. Erskine's leniency here is bal-
anced by his harshness in asserting that our democracy pro-
duces no martyrs. But did not a sense of responsibility to
society lead Eugene Debs to tell the truth as he saw it and
suffer the heavy penalty? To admire Thoreau in the class-
room and ignore Debs in the penitentiary almost classes Mr.
Erskine with the conservatives — those worshipers of dead
radicals. His fine vision of the future is of a nation united in
a warfare against ignorance. One may share his vision with-
out subscribing to his specific educational program: a year of
compulsory training with the colors for all youths, half of the
year to be devoted to military science, the other half to the
study of college and vocational subjects under military disci-
pline. Administered by men like Mr. Erskine, such a scheme
might bring the results he desires. But one might as well face
the fact that such a program is more likely to be administered
by Mitchell Palmers. The Palmers would know how to forge
compulsory education under military discipline into a weapon
adapted to ends far other than those sought by Mr. Erskine.
The last chapter speaks sympathetically of the effort to relate
the universities more closely to community needs, and of the
spontaneous movements among the workers themselves for a
full educational opportunity. In such enterprises as these,
surely, rather than in compulsory service, lies the hope that as
a nation we may eventually emulate the French in recognizing
"the moral obligation to be intelligent."
F> UFUS JONES'S "A Service of Love in Wartime" (Mac-
*- millan) is, as he says, "something more than the story of
an impressive piece of relief work; it is the interpretation of a
way of life." It is the story of the Quakers who found oppor-
tunity to express their pacifist convictions in reconstruction
service in France. Incidentally it is a record of our War De-
partment's methods in dealing with the conscientious objectors;
as such, it becomes unconsciously an interpretation of another
way of life as well. Indeed it is this record of the religious
objectors in the draft camps which is the most vivid part of
Rufus Jones's book — for he was the chief representative of the
Quakers in long and painful negotiations with the military
authorities. His account is a necessary corollary to Captain
Kellogg's book on the conscientious objector. The problem was
really beyond the military machine; as Rufus Jones says, "the
problem would have been simplified, both for the C. O. and the
military, if all C. O.'s had made a uniform stand, but the corol-
lary of freedom of conscience is a final farewell to uniformity."
The full record of the Quaker work in France remains to be
told, if it ever can be told. Rufus Jones quotes from the letters
of many workers and gives something of the spirit of that rare
attempt to express Christianity in action and to live the mes-
sage of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends: "The al-
ternative to war is not inactivity and cowardice. It is the
irresistible and constructive power of good will." The Quaker
work in France conspicuously lacked that element of emotional
joy-riding which occasionally desecrated some American relief
efforts in France. Its spirit continues in the child-feeding work
which the Quakers are now doing, with Mr. Hoover's coopera-
tion, in Germany, and of which Rufus Jones gives a necessarily
inadequate sketch.
\T 0 critics will be made, but some will be served, by what is
•^ in many respects a preposterous compilation, "Methods and
Materials of Literary Criticism: Lyric, Epic, and Allied Forms
of Poetry," by Charles Mills Gayley and Benjamin Putnam
Kurtz (Ginn). The book is a sequel to Gayley 's and Scott's
"Introduction to the Method and Materials of Literary Criti-
cism," published in 1899; "a third volume, approaching com-
pletion, will present tragedy, comedy, and cognate forms."
Nine hundred pages, closely printed and annotated after the
manner of Paul's inescapable "Grundriss," codify in the driest
known language all that has been said about lyric and epic
poetry in Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese,
English, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, German, Dutch, Icelandic, Swed-
ish, Danish, Norwegian, Lappish, Finnish, Russian, Serbian,
Magyar, Polish, Turkish, Afghan, Syriac, Armenian, Arabian,
Persian, Indian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hebrew,
Chinese, Japanese, Andamanese, and Eskimo. There are elabo-
rate suggestions for study — for that kind of study which in-
volves "seeing" Aristotle, Hegel, Hallam, Herder, Gummere,
Dryden, Dacier, and so on to the end of poetry and patience.
TDOTH the manner and the matter of "Ladies of Grecourt,"
■*-* by Ruth Gaines (Dutton), do credit to the spirit and the
culture of American college girls. The Smith College Unit
carried on relief work fifteen miles from the front line trenches
on the Somme sector in France until they were driven out by
the advancing Germans. They had charge of evacuating the
towns, and saved the lives of hundreds of French women and
children. As soon as possible after the armistice they returned
to help rehabilitate the ruined villages, establishing themselves
in the ruins of an old chateau in one of the ancient towns of
Picardy, in the region where the dramas of Froissart were
played out, where warring nations, Celts, Romans, the hosts
of Charlemagne, and Crusaders, passed in bygone centuries.
A PARTY to a trial is hardly the person to present a detached
•** picture of it, but "Albany: the Crisis in Government" (Boni
and Liveright) , by Louis Waldman, one of the ousted Socialist
assemblymen, is for the present the only available summary of
the most critical political episode in recent American history.
The book contains much direct quotation from important docu-
278
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2879
ments and speeches, while the chapter on The Country's Reaction
gives representative editorials and cartoons from non-socialist
papers; and there are copies of resolutions adopted by various
non-socialist bodies in protest against the action of the New
York legislature. Morris Hillquit's summing-up speech is also
printed separately under the title "Socialism on Trial" (Huebsch) ,
as one of The Freeman Pamphlets.
Notes and News
If art is the conscience of the human race, as Friedrich
Hebbel said, the anthology is the conscience of the literary art.
Anthologies continue to abound in every kind of literary
weather. Logan Pearsall Smith's "Treasury of English Prose"
(Houghton Mifflin) holds fine flowers from the sixteenth, seven-
teenth, and nineteenth centuries in England and from Emerson,
Whitman, Lincoln, and Wilson in America. Mr. Smith has
let his ear preside at every choosing, so that his volume is as
rigorously cadenced as a collection of sonnets would be. Here
with some omissions is the most perfect music which English
prose has made. Another indefatigable anthologist, Mr. Louis
Untermeyer, has done for "Modern British Poetry" (Harcourt,
Brace and Howe) the kind of thing he recently did for "Modern
American Poetry" (the same) — selected from each of a great
many poets between Hardy and Robert Graves a few good
poems and furnished useful, though commonplace, biographical
and critical comment. Tall, austere, and supremely printed,
Mr. T. J. Cobden-Sanderson's "Wordsworth; An Anthology"
(Knopf) is arranged to exhibit its poet as a profound mystic
no less than as an apostle of quiet, natural joy. It is the best
of Wordsworth in the best of type. "A Tankard of Ale: An
Anthology of Drinking Songs," boldly compiled by Theodore
Maynard (McBride), is a really glorious collection, chiefly
from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, of purely Eng-
lish celebrations of beer and its brothers. America might have
been represented, but in the opinion of the editor, who is as
fond of prohibition as he is of an empty bottle, she did not
deserve it. Margaret Widdemer has brought together in "The
Haunted Hour" (Harcourt, Brace and Howe), happily without
the dignity of spiritism too much or at all on her conscience,
the liveliest and best poems in English that deal with the re-
turn of spirits to the earth. Her mood ranges widely, from the
tragedy of the older ballads to the farce of the "Ingoldsby
Legends." Foreign literatures also continue to be purveyed
by way of anthology. In a handsome volume, "Spanish Prose
and Poetry Old and New, with Translated Specimens" (Ox-
ford), Ida Farnell presents twenty-two Spanish writers, begin-
ning with Juan Ruiz of the fourteenth century and ending with
Francisco Villaespesa of our own time. Her prefaces, though
enfeebled as criticism by moral and patriotic bias, are enthusi-
astic, and arouse keener expectations than her translations
satisfy. To the already large body of literature in English
devoted to Serbian folk poetry are added now "Kossovo: Heroic
Songs of the Serbs," translated, with Vuk Karajich's original
text on parallel pages, by Helen Rootham (Houghton Mifflin),
and "An Anthology of Jugoslav Poetry: Serbian Lyrics," edited
by Beatrice Stevenson Stanoyevich (Badger) from the versions
of Sir John Bowring, Owen Meredith, J. W. Wiles, and her-
self. J. T. Hackett's "My Commonplace Book" (London: T.
Fisher Unwin) is a narrow and rather naive record of the
reading which an Australian lawyer began to do in the days
when Evolution was everybody's first concern and Bailey's
"Festus" was known between its covers. The quotations, how-
ever, are from sources wide enough apart in space and time
to render the book occasionally and casually engaging.
The King James text of the Bible, divided into chapters and
paragraphs but not into verses, and printed like any modern
book, is promised for publication by Doubleday, Page and Com-
pany, whose first and trial volume, "The Gospel According to
Saint Matthew," is entirely readable and may become popular.
"The Yale Series of Younger Poets" (Yale University Press)
so far includes Howard Buck's "The Tempering," John Chip-
man Farrar's "Forgotten Shrines," and David Osborne Hamil-
ton's "Four Gardens." Of these three volumes, only the second
shows more than ordinary, bumptious temperament. Mr. Farrar
has achieved clear and tender outlines in the section called
Portraits, and should be encouraged to proceed further.
Mr. Henry Holt's treatise "On the Cosmic Relations," first
published in 1914, has been called for in a second edition, more
accurately named "The Cosmic Relations and Immortality"
(Houghton Mifflin). Four chapters have been added and the
summary somewhat modified, to bring into the record the psy-
chic activities of the war years. If the new matter is not
very new, after all, that is the defect of the recent revela-
tions, which may be boiled down to very little — less than Mr.
Holt thinks. The notable thing about this book, now as in the
earlier edition, is the nobility of spirit which informs it. One
catches the vibration of that sense of puissance which in Cicero
and Franklin would not let them believe that they could ever be
dissolved into mindless mist and chaos.
Drama
Hors D'QEuvres
T'HE theatrical seasons melt into each other and are really
* without beginning or end. The lights of Broadway never
burn low. Summer is thronged with what are known as "girl
and music shows" — the "Midnight Frolic," the "Scandals," the
"Century Revues," the "Greenwich Village Follies," and, crown
of them all, the Ziegfeld "Follies." This famous entertainment
opens in the dead middle of June and tickets fetch fabulous
prices. You visit it in a mood by no means puritanical and
severe and leave it sleepy and morose. There is more living,
sensuous stir in a sonnet. The pipes are here and the timbrels.
But no wild ecstasy. The girls have a dainty prettiness and
wear fantastically beautiful costumes. But they are quite icy
within. Their limbs move — that is all. The audience is cheaply
decorous. Not a gleam, not a throb. Ecstasy dwells on the
baseball diamond, at the camp-meeting. At the "Follies" you
witness a gigantic exercise in repression.
When August comes, Autumn is supposed to be here, and the
playwrights emerge with "smashing hits." At least they hope
so. So Mr. Shipman appears, accompanied by the inevitable
collaborator — this time Mr. Percival Wilde. Their product,
"Crooked Gamblers" (the Hudson Theater), is noisy and monot-
onous. The gamblers are plungers on Wall Street; the scene
and action are not without a rough verisimilitude, but the moral
framework is purely conventional and the economic prattle
childish. Within a few days after the appearance of this piece,
however, the tone of the opening season changed. No melodrama
has yet boomed and rattled; no crooks have made a glorious
"getaway"; not a shot has been fired. Instead we have romance
and the re-working of standard dramatic actions for the audi-
ences of the hour.
The romance is exotic; it is a thing of rich colors and decora-
tive passions. Withdrawn from the realities we know, these
fables can be fanciful and arbitrary as the happenings in a
fairy-tale. They annoy us only when an unnatural contact with
life is suddenly established. Then the pleasant spell breaks and
Forty-second Street comes racing in. The adapters of Feliu y
Codina's "Spanish Love" (Maxine Elliott's Theater), have
avoided this danger. The play is an affair of bright, sudden
yellows tempered by grave, deep, blue, and orange backgrounds.
Dancers from Madrid click their swift castanets. By contrast
with the best American dancers their feet are heavy and their
Sept. 4, 1920]
The Nation
279
bodies a little thick and slow. But sparks of inner abandon —
feigned or not — compensate for the lack of litheness and rapid
grace. No one acts, since there is little room for acting. The
passions are not primitive, but are conventionalizations of the
primitive. But color is everything here, and that is given us. ■
"The Lady of the Lamp" (Republic Theater) is the fourth
Chinese play within two years and by far the best. Dismiss the
absurd prologue and epilogue that rend the veil and shatter the
illusion and you have a beautifully poignant legend of a gentle
and pacific emperor — an emperor of calm gardens and tinkling
pagodas — who could not save his beloved from the warlike
Manchus of the North. The garden of Chengtu and the terrace
of the Yen pagoda are of a delicate beauty, fragile and doomed
to dust. Two admirable bits of acting, furthermore, persuade
the imagination even when the dialogue falls far below the
quality of the legend itself. George Gaul has, as always, a
virile sweetness of tone and gesture that fit him for the em-
peror's part; Henry Herbert, the Kira in Masefield's "The Faith-
ful," is all subtle ferocity and stealthy power — a superb monster
with a gorgeous mask.
Next come two old friends in new guises — Moliere's "Le Bour-
geois Gentilhomme" and Sudermann's "Heimat." Yet no critic
observed the obvious derivation of "The Checkerboard" (39th
Street Theater), by Frederic and Fannie Hatton, or of "Enter
Madame" (Garrick Theater), by Giulia Conti and Dolly Byrne.
Nor did anyone rejoice at the fact that there are play-purveyors
at large who know enough to adapt such actions to our stage.
If only the Hattons had spared us the oily sentiment or spread
their unguents with more sparing hands! For an American M.
Jourdain needed no trimmings. Nothing could be clearer or
more vivid than the comic force of his situation. He is, in this
case, a millionaire manufacturer of ash-cans who desires to
associate with fashionable and titled persons. He is taken in
and fleeced by strolling Russian dancers, so that even the "bal-
lets" of Moliere are introduced after the classical pattern. A
huddled happy ending dulls the edge of the satire and the chief
rogue turns out all heart and quixotism. But the ash-can man-
ufacturer turned gentleman and his wife remain magnificently
skilful comic adaptations, and the latter's part is acted by Miss
Kate Mayhew with so rich and unerring an insight into the
homely things of American life as to make her performance a
bit of fine and memorable art.
The adaptation of the fable of "Heimat" is more thorough-
going but far less honest. Even the famous entrance technique
of Sudermann is used. After a long preparation the prima
donna bursts in with her maid, chef, secretary, doctor, and dog.
Only instead of a father who wants his daughter to observe his
standards, there is a husband who wants his wife to toast his
slippers. The fable is made trivial because, on our stage, prima
donnas are not supposed to do what Magda did, nor are tragic
endings supposed to happen. Thus the conflict is not merely
softened; there is none left. The play was obviously built for
Gilda Varesi, who desired, perhaps, to imitate the triumphs of
Eleanora Duse as Magda. But over-timidity pays neither in
art nor in life. When the essential conflict of a play is de-
stroyed, what is there left the actor but empty gestures?
Turn from the pomp and circumstance of all these plays and
see a little group of Irish actors at the dim, cramped Bramhall
Playhouse on Twenty-seventh Street. Whitford Kane, that
gifted realist with a poet's soul, produces and directs the plays.
Among them are Yeats's "Kathleen na Houlahan," interpreted
with a haunting loveliness of mood, Synge's great "Riders to
the Sea," not inadequately done, Lady Gregory's "Workhouse
Ward," with its wild yet searching humor, and "Honest Lodg-
ings," a play by a young Irish-American, Ralph Cullinan, which
illustrates in its unpretentious way the purity and veracity of
an art rooted in a soil and a folk. There are no fine hangings
and costumes here. There is a breath of earth and sea and the
simple, beautiful speech of men and women.
Ludwig Lewisohn
BRENTANCTS
Retail Book Department
FiTtn Avenue and 27tn Street, New York City
BOOKS ON PRESENT DAY TOPICS
Our Economic and Other Problems
By Otto H. Kahn $4.00
What must be done to set the world again on its feet
financially? Mr. Kahn makes a brilliant contribution
to this baffling problem. He discusses the railroads
constructively, he exposes the fallacies of an ill-
designed taxation, and he lays bare the fundamentals
of our economic structure.
The New Unionism
By J. M. Budish and George Soule $3.00
Workers in the clothing industries, largely of foreign
birth, have progressed inside of twenty years from the
worst sweatshop conditions to a leading position in
American organized labor. The story of how this was
accomplished is not only dramatic in itself, but illus-
trates the growth of a new type of unionism. This
account of its origin, its structure and methods, its
remarkable programs for adult education and its con-
tribution to modern democracy, written in collabora-
tion by a trade-union official and by the former labor
editor of the New York Evening Post, will attract
the general reader, as well as all who are interested in
the labor movement.
The Foreign Trade of the United States, Its
Character, Organization, and Methods
By Thos. F. Ford and L. Cummings Ford, with an
Introduction by William L. Saunders, President
American Manufacturers' Export Association $3.00
The principles underlying foreign commerce are ex-
cellently handled in this book — a book that will give
one valuable information whenever it is read or when-
ever it is used for reference. For the inexperienced,
.the student, or the beginner, it should be invaluable.
Is Violence the Way Out of Our Industrial
Disputes?
By John Haynes Holmes $1.25
In the industrial, as in the international field, it offers
in the author's judgment the only way of escape from
the sufferings we now endure.
Looking Forward
By Charles F. Higham $2.00
"A very clear and easily read exposition of the imme-
diate future confronting our science of publicity. . . .
A constructive analysis of the means at our disposal
for harnessing the tremendous force of public opinion."
A New Robinson Crusoe
By Gilson Gardner $1.25
Robinson Crusoe with most of the classic incidents
intact. Retold in the spirit of modern industrial
society and with all the new-won lessons of modern
economic life. "Economics" is no longer a forbidden
word; this book is a fascinating introduction to the
science.
Postage Additional
BRENTANCTS
Retail Book Department
Fifth Avenue and 27tn Street
New York City
International Relations Section
Resolutions of Dail Eireann
THE documents printed below appeared in the London
Morning Post of August 10 as extracts from "an im-
portant series of documents" which had "come into posses-
sion of the authorities." In an editorial printed in the
same issue the Post hints that the documents were obtained
through confiscation of the "private correspondence" of
Sinn Fein.
The first document is described by the Post as "the
agenda for a meeting of the Parliament of the Irish Re-
public which was to be held in June."
The following resolutions were adopted at the last meeting:
1. That the decision of the Ministry authorizing the Presi-
dent to expend at his discretion such sum not exceeding $500,-
000 as he may require in connection with the election campaign
for the presidency of the United States of America be and is
hereby ratified.
2. That the President be empowered to expend a sum not
exceeding $1,000,000 to obtain the recognition of the Irish Re-
public by the Government of the United States.
3. That the sum of $1,000,000 be voted to the Department
of Defense.
4. That the President be authorized to appoint consuls and
diplomatic agents to the following countries: Russia, France,
Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, and
that he be also empowered to appoint one director in each of the
following cities in the United States, namely, Chicago, New
Orleans, San Francisco, and Boston, to organize and direct Irish
opinion at these centers. That the names of a number of per-
sons suitable for these posts be supplied to the President by
the Ministry, and that the agents be selected by the President
from among the persons so nominated.
5. That the Ministry be empowered to appoint an Ambassa-
dor to Washington, in the United States of America.
6. That the Ministry be authorized to dispatch a diplomatic
mission to the Government of the Russian Socialist Federal
Soviet Republic with a view to establishing diplomatic relations
with that Government. That the salary of the secretary to the
Commission of Inquiry into the Resources and Industries of
Ireland be increased to £500 per annum, as from March 1, 1920.
Department of Home Affairs
1. That the establishment of courts of justice and equity be
decreed.
2. That the Ministry be empowered when they deem fit to
establish courts having criminal jurisdiction.
Claims to Land
Dairy and agricultural and residential holdings. Whereas it
has come to our knowledge that claims to farms of land (dairy
and agricultural and residential holdings worked by the occu-
piers) have been and are being made in parts of the country,
such claims being based on the fact that the claimants or their
ancestors were formerly in occupation of the property so
claimed. And whereas these claims are, for the most part, of
old date, and while many of them may be well founded, others
seem to be of a frivolous nature and are put forward in the
hope of intimidating the present occupiers.
Now it is decreed by Dail Eireann in meeting assembled:
(1) That the present time, when the Irish people are locked
in a life and death struggle with their traditional enemy, is
ill-chosen for the stirring up of strife among our fellow-country-
men; and that all our energies must be directed toward clearing
out — not the occupier of this or that piece of land — but the
foreign invader of our country. (2) That when the national
triumph has been achieved — immediately the Republic has re-
ceived recognition and finds itself unhampered by enemy armies
of occupation, steps shall be taken, by legislation of An Dail
and otherwise, to do justice and equity to all those who have
suffered wrong in the past through the power and operation of
England's unjust laws. (3) That pending such recognition no
claims of the kind referred to shall be heard or determined by
the courts of the Republic unless by written license of the
Minister for Home Affairs. (4) That in the meanwhile claim-
ants may file particulars of their claims with the registrar of
the court in which the property is situated.
It was further decreed that any person or persons who per-
sists or persist in pressing forward a disputed claim of the
nature above referred to shall do so in the knowledge that such
action is a breach of this decree, and it is ordered that the
forces of the Republic be used to protect the citizens against
the adoption of high-handed methods by any such person or
persons.
Trade and Commerce
The Dail authorize the Ministry to promote the establishment
of an Import and Export Company and to invest in it, if they
see fit, a sum not exceeding £150,000.
Income Tax
In the Finance Department it was resolved that six branches
of the Bank be established, for which a sum of £25,000 is
voted; that a department for the collection of income tax be
instituted by Dail and that all persons who pay the income
tax to that department which otherwise they would pay to the
British Government be indemnified against losses caused by
distraint or otherwise in agreed circumstances. Discretionary
power being given to the Dail Income Tax Department to refuse
such taxes as it deems inadvisable to accept; that the sum of
£1,000 be granted to the Irish Republican Prisoners' Depen-
dents Fund.
Dr. Fogarty, Bishop of Killaloe, President Eamonn de Valera,
T.D., East Clare, and James O'Mara, T.D., Kilkenny South,
are reappointed Trustees for the Funds of Dail Eireann as
from July 1, 1920, to June 30, 1921, under the existing deed of
trust.
An investment of £300,000 is to be made in Dublin Corpora-
tion stock in connection with the promotion of a scheme for
housing in Dublin.
Elections, 1920
The Local Government Department of Dail Eireann greets
the newly-elected Councils and Boards of Guardians, and recog-
nizes in the results of the recent elections, carried out under
the system of proportional representation, further proof of
the loyalty of the overwhelming majority of the Irish people to
the Government of the Irish Republic.
With a view to possible arrests and to safeguarding the
Republican majority on each body, all representatives thereon
who give allegiance to Dail Eireann are asked to fill up and
sign undated forms of resignation. These may be handed, for
the present, to the leader of the Republican group on each body.
They will not be used unless by reason of arrests or otherwise
there is a likelihood of the majority on each body disappearing.
They are not to be used without consultation with the depart-
ment; if it is decided at any time to use any of these resigna-
tions the men who would be coopted to fill the vacancy would,
of course, be pledged to resign when the original Councillor
would be free to resume duty.
Obstacles to Tax Gathering
In view of recent events the British tax-gatherers are likely
to look to officials of local authorities for facilities to enable
Sept. 4, 1920]
The Nation
281
them to prepare new income tax schedules, etc. Therefore, it is
ordered by the Dail:
1. That no lists of ratepayers for information of British
agents be drawn up in the Council office, nor any facilities given
for copying or taking extracts from rate or valuation books
for above purpose.
2. That no lists be supplied to such agents showing the
salaries or wages paid by the Councils to their officials or
employees.
3. That every possible obstacle be placed in the way of the
British Government in collecting taxes and otherwise.
No rate is to be struck to meet criminal injury or malicious
injury claims, and such claims ought not to be defended in the
English Courts.
Where at all possible, wages, disputes, etc., should be referred
to Courts recognized by Dail Eireann. Where at all possible,
Irish goods only should be purchased. In filling appointments
in the public service, Councils should see that only loyal citizens
of the Republic are elected.
Irish Local Government Finances
THE following report written by the Substitute Minister
for Local Government deals with the question of cut-
ting adrift from British authority in local matters and is
also taken from the London Morning Post of August 10.
A conference in connection with general local government
policy was held, the Substitute Minister for Local Government
presiding. Present: the Lord Mayor of Cork, the Mayor of
Limerick, Dr. Hayes, T.D., the Accountant of Dublin Corpora-
tion, the Accountant of Kerry County Council, the Secretary
of Monaghan County Council, Messrs. Nolan-Whelan and Dan
McCarthy.
There was a full and frank discussion of the possibility of
local authorities functioning independently after severing all
connection with the English Local Government Board. The
financial loss involved naturally figured largely in the discus-
sion. In this connection I have been supplied with the following
figures for Dublin Corporation:
Local Taxation Account £44,809 8 10
Royal Gifts (Charles II., etc.) 509 2 10
School meals 5,322 5 9
Irish Housing Fund 1,483 6 4
Maternity and Child Welfare 807 19 5
Venereal Diseases 1,820 0 0
Registration of Voters 1,757 0 0
Grants for Tuberculosis 13,672 5 6
Land Cultivation 1,301 15 1
Technical Education . . . : 27,394 16 0
Total £98,877 19 9
Government Bounty in lieu of rates 56,796 11 2
Total £155,674 10 11
The above figures are for 1919-20. I am informed that for
1920-21 the Government Bounty in lieu of rates will be increased
by about £9,000.
The Lord Mayor of Cork supplies the following figures:
Loss in grants in aid of rates £13,203 0 0
For Technical Education 9,529 0 0
Total £22,732 0 0
Theoretically this loss could be covered in Dublin by an in-
creased rate of 3s. 2d. and in Cork by an increase of 2s. 6d.
But it must be borne in mind that under the conditions we are
contemplating the rates would be without legal (English) sanc-
tion and their enforcement might well prove a matter of ex-
treme difficulty. There is further the point that under these
conditions the banks would certainly refuse any accommoda-
tion whatever to public bodies, many of which at present work
for a. portion of the year on a heavy overdraft. For the entire
country the Local Taxation Account, which goes overboard auto-
matically under a "clean cut" policy, amounts to one million
and a half annually. This does not represent the total pos-
sible loss in government grants — large sums which I have not
found it possible to ascertain might be lost under the following
heads: Contribution in aid of guaranties for railways and
harbors; receipts on behalf of criminal lunatics; grants to
harbor authorities; grants from Department of Technical In-
struction, from the Commissioners of National Education; tu-
berculosis grant; feeding and medical inspection of school chil-
dren; housing grant, etc. The loss of the Local Taxation
Account alone would involve such serious consequences that to
bring about by our own act a state of affairs to which it is a
sequence is a course which I could not recommend. I believe
that such a situation will inevitably develop in the course of
the struggle over the criminal and malicious injury claims, but
it is better in my opinion to place the responsibility of with-
holding these large sums upon the enemy rather than to cut
them off by our own deliberate act.
In refusing to strike the criminal and malicious injury rates
we will have the support of the great body of the people. If,
as a result of our action (or inaction) in this matter, the enemy
makes the Local Taxation Account an indemnity fund for such
claims, the people will be ripe for reprisals such as refusal to
pay income tax and land annuities. We must aim at keeping
the enemy in the wrong in the eyes of the people. I recom-
mend, therefore, that the Boards which will pass under our
control after the coming elections continue to allow their clerks
or secretaries to forward minutes of their proceedings to the
English Local Government Board. This is the act of the clerk
or secretary — not of the Council or Board — and it is the clerk
or secretary that is personally liable for failure. But I recom-
mend that Boards and Councils insist on a copy of minutes
being either forwarded to my Department or handed or for-
warded to some Republican representative who will hold them
in charge for us, subject to our inspection and to be forwarded
as required.
All Councils and Boards should be instructed to pass a resolu-
tion of allegiance to Dail Eireann and to pledge themselves to
obedience to its decrees. All officials appointed for the future
by public bodies should be required to sign a declaration of
allegiance.
In any case where sanction is required by the English Local
Government Board to any appointment the Council or Board
must stand over [sic] its appointment and continue to pay the
salary of the official selected by them. The remedy of the Local
Government Board for this is surcharge and seizure (a piano
belonging to Frank Lawless, T.D., was seized for a payment
to Dr. Hayes). To meet contingencies of this kind for the
future a full understanding with organized labor is essential,
and should be sought without delay. There should be no
transport facilities for goods seized by enemy agents. Rail-
waymen should be prepared to abandon a train immediately
on notification that goods so seized were aboard, and the same
understanding would be necessary at the docks. If we are not
prepared, of our own initiative, to cut adrift from the Local
Government Board I see no sufficient reason why we should
burden ourselves with a self-denying ordinance against making
full use of them in the matter of housing loans, drainage, etc.
Housing is a matter of absolutely paramount importance,
and if the word went out that our Councils were absolutely
debarred from taking any steps in this matter the political
effect would be distinctly bad. It has been suggested to me that
our Councils should refuse to submit books for Local Govern-
ment Board audit — this is really equivalent to the "clean cut,"
and would involve all its consequences. If it were upheld I
see no reason why that line of action should not be adopted
282
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2879
openly and by resolution, when it would at least have the value
of a demonstration — though a costly one. Auditing, and highly
expert auditing, is absolutely necessary. Admittedly the Local
Government Board auditors give very good value. In case of
surcharges where any matter of principle is involved, e.g., the
case mentioned of payment to an official to whose appointment
Local Government Board refused sanction, such surcharge
should not be paid, but to refuse to submit at all to the audit
would be to precipitate by our own act a conflict, the onus of
which we should aim at placing on the shoulders of the enemy.
Let the main conflict rage round the criminal and malicious
injury claims and in other respects fight only a guerilla war-
fare. I believe that the criminal and malicious injury fight will
bring the "clean cut," but will bring it with many people on
our side who would be against us if they considered we had
ourselves invited or precipitated it. This criminal and malicious
injury fight may begin at any moment in the county boroughs
— they have not struck this rate for the current year, while
so far as I am aware all the county councils have. It would
be open to anyone holding a decree to move in the courts for a
mandamus ordering the rate to be struck, and naming as special
defendants the persons who voted against the striking of the
rate. Those so named would be liable for the costs of the
proceedings — and the business of seizure of goods would com-
mence. It is suggested that Vanston is incorrect when he
states in a footnote that claims for injuries to the person are
payable on demand by the treasurer out of the general funds
of the Council, and that the words: "Out of moneys under his
control" must be taken as meaning "out of moneys under his
control applicable to the purpose." Where no rate has been
struck there are no such moneys.
It is certainly significant that up to the present no demand
has been presented by any person holding a decree. But pre-
suming that Vanston is incorrect, the law could, of course, be
amended, and even the malicious injury claims could be made
payable on demand by the Treasurer. We must not assume
too readily that the English Government retort to the failure
of public bodies to strike these rates will be the stoppage of the
grants in aid. That seems an obvious and simple course, but
it is possible they might continue the grants and make the
claims payable on demand out of general funds, particularly
as in many places the amount of the grants would not nearly
equal the amount of the claims. In Cork, for instance, the
claims would involve an increased rate of 14s. 3d., whereas the
loss of the grants could be met by an extra rate of 2s. 6d. in
the pound. In the county boroughs there is an official treas-
urer, who would be personally liable for failure to obey an
order. The banks are the treasurers for the County Councils
and Poor Law Boards, and it may be taken as certain that the
banks would obey any order and meet any legal claim served
upon them. A County Council could not withdraw its account
from a particular bank without the sanction of the Local Gov-
ernment Board. I am informed that a skilful (and friendly)
accountant could so arrange matters that at no time would
there be any considerable sum to the credit of his authority.
This would necessitate the fullest cooperation on the part of
the banks — as the public bodies would need to work all the year
on an overdraft to be cleared off only on the last day of the
financial year by the lodgment of the rates.
Possibilities of the future in the criminal and malicious in-
jury fight are: stoppage of some or all grants, attempts to
trace and seize the funds of public bodies to the extent of these
claims, appointment of an officer to strike and levy a rate suffi-
cient to meet the claims, or sequestration of corporate prop-
erty, funds, rents, and income until the obligation is dis-
charged. In some, if not all, of the above contingencies it
would be a matter for consideration whether we ought not to
place the responsibility for local administration on the plun-
derers, adding to their other difficulties the problem of col-
lecting rates from a hostile population, with an unfriendly
staff. This might be a better course to adopt than to endeavor
to function ourselves under hopelessly unfavorable financial
conditions necessitating the invidious alternatives of drastic re-
ductions of staff or drastic increase of rates.
Another report of the Substitute Minister for Local
Government states the difficulties he saw in an immediate
breach with the English Local Government Board.
(a) The financial loss (grants, etc.), would probably be im-
mediate, and would have to be faced by Councils consisting for
the most part of men with no experience of local administration.
I find it hard to believe that the English Government would
continue to pay grants to Councils that have declared war.
(b) If rates were increased to meet to some extent such
loss we might be faced with refusal to pay by political op-
ponents; such rates might even be declared illegal by the Eng-
lish Government, as Local Government Board would under cir-
cumstances we are contemplating have no supervision of ex-
penditure.
(c) Public bodies are dependent for a portion of the year
on large overdrafts. Such overdrafts are given on the security
of the rates. To a business man with a purely business out-
look rates would not have the same security with the public
bodies in open revolt against English Local Government Board,
and deprived of English machinery for the enforcement of rates.
Moulding public opinion against banks refusing overdrafts if
efficiently carried out would certainly prove punitive, but would
not meet the immediate embarrassments that would result to
local bodies. As practically all the banks would be concerned,
and as they would probably adopt uniform action, the question
even of punitive measures would present some difficulty.
(d) If we refuse to forward minutes to English Local Gov-
ernment Board, to accept their audit, and otherwise to conform
to existing regulations, we cannot consistently apply for loans
from Board of Works or from the British Treasury. In any
case, sanction and loan would certainly be refused. Therefore,
housing, drainage, and all similar activities of public bodies
would be at a standstill. What the effect of this would be in
labor circles it is easy to conceive.
Before we embark on a course which means functioning inde-
pendently (and I am convinced that failure to forward minutes,
submit to audit, etc., involves this), we should be sure that we
are not rushing the Boards and Councils into a hopelessly false
position and imposing on them a superhuman task. Person-
ally I regretfully adhere to the view I expressed in my former
report, viz., that it would be better to endeavor to maneuver
the enemy into taking over the burden of local administration
or, failing this, that Boards and Councils should carry on until,
by the stoppage of grants, etc., the financial position would have
become hopeless, and then simultaneously cease to function,
issuing a statement to their constituents.
I have considered this matter as a distinct problem — Republi-
can Councils vs. English Local Government Board — and not in
the light of general policy. So considered it might take on
different aspects. Also, I have not contemplated financial as-
sistance from our Government to local bodies.
C. O'h-Uigin
Substitute Minister for Local Government
Industry in Soviet Russia
THE following article by Nicholas Bukharin, summariz-
ing industrial conditions in Soviet Russia up to June,
1920, is reprinted from Pravda (Moscow) for June 27.
Economic Life [the official organ of the Supreme Council of
National Economy] has recently devoted a special number to a
synthetic survey of the state of our industries. This is the
first attempt at presenting a general picture of our industrial
life and our economic ruin. For that reason it deserves close
Sept. 4, 1920]
The Nation
283
attention. In spite of the fact that we are acutely conscious
of the necessity for exact accounting, in spite of the fact that
we are ostensibly swayed by what some term "fanaticism of
accounting," nevertheless in reality very little has been done
in that direction. Even elementary recording is in a very poor
state. It often happens that on the same subject you get fig-
ures differing from 100 to 300 per cent. The statistico-economic
section of Economic Life has attempted to give a survey based
on the materials which have accumulated in the files of that
publication. However far from perfection the data thus ob-
tained may be, they are probably nearer the truth than many
other records.
An examination of these data enables one immediately to
perceive the system of causes which are ruining our economic
life. In various combinations the same complaints persistently
recur: the blockade and the absence of the import of the most
necessary products of foreign industries; the physical destruc-
tion of the industrial apparatus and the seizure of important
sources of raw material and fuel by White Guards; a fuel and
raw material crisis; a fodder shortage; the exodus of qualified
workmen from the cities and a labor shortage generally; the
demoralization of transportation in its various forms (by rail,
by water, and by wheels), etc.
Below we present the most substantial findings of the in-
vestigation.
I. Transportation (by Rail)
The number of cars dispatched per 24 hours per 100 versts*
of the used railroad net was as follows:
1916 1919
January 48 28
May 58 33
For 1920 the figures are: January, 14; February, 12; March,
14; April, 15; May, 19.
The distance covered by the freight cars for 1920 was con-
stantly on the increase. Here are the figures: January, 206,-
260; February, 196,721; March, 250,392; April, 342,526; May,
422,560. Thus in five months the distance increased more
than 100 per cent and exceeded the distances covered during
the corresponding months of 1919. The turnover of each car
improved in 1920, but is behind the corresponding figure for
1919.
The number of sound cars per 100 versts of the net under
operation is on the increase in 1920: January, 395; February,
378; March, 435; April, 481; May, 548. In 1919 the corre-
sponding figures for January and May were 804 and 600 re-
spectively.
The number of sound railway engines during the first five
months of 1920 was as follows: 8; 7; 8; 9; 6; 11.
On the whole, in spite of the exceedingly demoralized state
of transportation, there can be observed a slow and as yet very
insignificant improvement. This is to be accounted for by the
fact that our transportation was given an exceptional amount
of attention, that here a special campaign was conducted, as a
result of which we succeeded in improving the forms of organ-
ization and in raising the labor discipline.
II. Fuel
Coal. In the Donetz Basin, which in recent years has passed
from hand to hand and has been repeatedly pillaged, the situa-
tion is as follows: 14 million, 19.3 million, 24.3 million, and
13.8 million poods of coal respectively were mined during the
first four months of 1920.** The April decrease was charac-
teristic of the prewar period; the corresponding figures for
the first four months of 1913 are 143, 117, 156, and 84 million.
In May the amount of coal mined reached 19 million poods,
the forecast for June is 24 million. The coal produced during
the first quarter of 1920 was 40 per cent less than the amount
• A verst is 3,500 feet or about two-thirds of a mile.
•♦ A pood is equivalent to thirty-six pounds avoirdupois.
mined during the corresponding months of 1919 and seven
times less than during an equal period of time before the war.
The number of miners decreased but slightly in comparison
with 1919—94,000 men as against 111,000 in 1919— but the
productivity of labor fell sharply.
In the Moscow region the situation is different. Here the
production increased not only in comparison with the preceding
year but also in comparison with 1916. Here are the figures
expressing the amounts produced for a period of four months
(in thousands of poods) : 1916, 9.072; 1919, 9.835; 1920, 10.610.
Yet this increase is due not to the greater productivity of labor,
but to the enormous growth in the number of miners, which in
1919 increased four times in comparison with 1916, and in
1920 rose an additional 11 per cent. As for the productivity
of labor it was sharply falling.
As regards the Ural region, figures are obtainable only for
the Kizel and Chelyabinsk districts. The production at Kizel
rose from 1,116,000 poods in January, 1920, to 1,692,000 in
April; total production, in comparison with 1919, fell from
6,968,000 to 5,391,000 poods, the fall in production exceeding the
decrease of labor. In the Chelyabinsk district the amount
mined in the first quarter of 1920 was 9,835,000 poods, 41 per
cent more than was expected.
Petroleum. Until lately this most important fuel was in the
hands of the bandits of international imperialism, and that cir-
cumstance caused us incalculable injury. According to prelim-
inary calculations, the probable production of petroleum for the
period of seven months (June 1, 1920, to January 1, 1921) will
be about 196 million poods. The landing of it at the various
shipping centers on the Volga proceeds satisfactorily, although
the shipping of it at Astrakhan is greatly hindered. For the
period of May 11 to May 30, 5,645,000 poods of petroleum prod-
ucts were shipped from there. In June the shipment consider-
ably increased.
Peat. In 1919, 67,000,000 poods of peat were produced. The
main obstacle is a labor shortage, in connection with difficulties
in provisioning.
III. The Metal Industries
The machine shops united by "Gomza" [chief management of
the industry]. Here the situation may be characterized as
highly unfavorable, to say the least. The labor shortage, the
provisioning crisis, the fuel famine are exceedingly acute. Only
very recently an improvement has taken place in the supply of
fuel. Until March such plants as the Kolomna and Mytish-
chensk mills were idle because of a lack of fuel. General data
are not available. In February of the current year, as against
January, a general improvement has taken place in all branches,
except the construction and repairing of railway engines, which
circumstance is perhaps due to the fact that the engines are
being repaired elsewhere.
Colored Metals. The production has been greatly curtailed,
for it was based on imported metal. There are four plants un-
der the Main Board; they all function, but the production is in-
significant. Reasons: labor shortage, lack of raw materials and
fuel.
Agricultural repair shops. In 1919, 316 smithies and 250
machine shops were opened. The production of agricultural im-
plements fell, even in comparison with last year. An improve-
ment may take place with the receipt of metal from the Ural
region.
IV. The Textile Industries
The cotton industry (spinning, weaving, dyeing factories).
Before the war there were in Russia, exclusive of Poland and
Finland, eighty-eight spinning mills with seven million spindles.
On September 1, 384,000 spindles were being worked; on De-
cember 1, 546,000 spindles; in January, 1920, 408,000; in
March, 531,000; in April, 319,000. For the future seventeen
spinning mills with 434,000 spindles have been singled out, as a
284
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2879
"shock" group. In the field of weaving industry, there has been
formed a "shock" group, containing forty-three mills with 17,841
looms. According to the program of December, 1919, thirty-two
dyeing factories with a daily production of 60,000 pieces were
scheduled to run. In reality many of these factories were idle
because of the absence of fuel. At present only a "shock" group
of sixteen factories is working. The average daily productivity,
in thousands of pieces, of the factories was, for the first five
months of 1920, respectively, 9.5, 10, 13, 13.3, 13.5.
The fuel crisis, the lack of raw materials and qualified labor,
coupled with difficulties in provisioning make impossible the
functioning of any other factories except the shock group with
its 78,200 workmen.
Wool Industry. The plan provides for the functioning of
eighty-four mills (76.3 per cent), with 419 apparatus (63.3 per
cent), 198,933 spindles (59.5 per cent) and 8,385 looms (42.5 per
cent). Most of the factories are running. They are provided
with a supply of natural wool, artificial wool, and rags, to last
9, 3.5, and 10 months respectively.
Flax Industry. On February 1, 1920, 52 per cent of the spin-
dles were working. In January, 90,780 poods of yarn were pro-
duced. The factories are well provided with raw material. On
February 1, 1920, 5,702 weaving looms were working out of a
total of 14,000, i. e., 40 per cent. During January, 4,800,000
square arshins of fabric (48,000 poods) were produced. The
chief difficulties are: fuel, provisioning, and also the absorption
of qualified help.
V. Chemical Industries
Rubber industry. In October, 1917, there were seven large
rubber factories. Of these only four are now functioning. Be-
fore the war about 30,000 people were employed in the rubber
industry, at present only about 6,000. Production is about 5
per cent of the normal. The problem of fuel and electric energy
is very acute here. Under the present conditions the supply of
raw rubber will last three years, normally it would be exhausted
in two months.
Glass industry. Before the war there were 275 glass fac-
tories plus twenty china factories, employing 93,000 people
in all. Toward the beginning of 1919 there remained on the
territory of Soviet Russia 160 factories, of which eighty were
running, the number of workmen being 40,000. At present
seventy-eight factories with 32,000 men are functioning. In
the course of the year 1919 they produced about 80,000 boxes of
window glass, i. e., 60 to 65 per cent of the normal prewar
amount. The fall in production is due chiefly to the lack of
fuel, raw materia1, and labor. During the second quarter of
1920 it is planned to run forty factories.
Paper Industry. The "Glavbum" [chief management of the
paper industry] controls 112 mills. Of these only seventy-three
plants with 18,500 employees are working. In 1919 2,638,000
poods of paper were produced, or 69 per cent of the amount
planned. In 1920 the production of paper and card-board fell
considerably. Chief reasons: lack of fuel and the absence of
nets.
VI. Production of Stimulants and Food Products
Tobacco industry. In January, 1920, eight factories were idle
out of a total of forty. In 1919 the production of higher sorts
of tobacco and of makhorka (an inferior sort of tobacco) was
respectively 32 and 25 per cent of the normal prewar output.
The production for the period January to April, 1920 was 75
to 94 per cent of the amount planned. Chief difficulties: lack
of fuel and war in the South.
Starch and Molasses industries. At present there are 2,555
factories, of which 1,500 are small establishments. Number
of people employed is 13,800; production for the twenty-four
hour period, 373,000 poods. During the season of 1919-1920
there were working 206 large and 343 small plants. At present
there is a lack of raw material, and everything depends on the
amount of potatoes which the factories will be able to secure.
Tea industry. In the spring of 1920, there were twenty-two
establishments producing tea substitutes, employing 1,800 peo-
ple. Of these plants only sixteen are functioning. The output
was 244,991 pounds in January, 1919, 668,055 pounds in April,
and 1,053,459 pounds in September. Then there was a fall,
followed by a rapid rise. In January, 1920, the production
was 697,000 pounds, and in May 1,700,000 pounds.
VII. The Electric Section of the Supreme Council of
National Economy
The section controls ten electric stations, thirty-nine factories
(forming the Electro-Trust), six electro-mechanical plants,
eleven private establishments, eight kustar shops producing elec-
tric fixtures. During the first four months of 1920 the work
of the electric stations amounted to 8,000 kilowatts, the amount
produced in Petrograd being 6,800 to 6,500 kilowatts. Of the
thirty-nine plants thirty-three were running, the total number
of employees being 9,578.
Such is the main outline of our industrial situation. It is
not a gay picture if one looks merely at things as they appear
at present and is unable to discern the promise of the future.
It is clear, however, that a great deal can be done if the prob-
lems of fuel and transportation are satisfactorily solved. But
precisely in these two branches of industry there is and will
be a forward movement. Transportation is slowly improving;
the enormous reserves of petroleum at Baku will revive both
our transportation and our industries; we will be enabled to
shift the raw materials which are so needed by the factories.
It is here that our main industrial efforts are concentrated.
But the success of our efforts depends also upon the safety of
our territory. That is why the struggle of the Red Army
against Baron Wrangel and the Polish nobility must be brought
to a successful completion at any price. Without it an economic
renascence is unthinkable.
The Strangest Story
that has been told in many years. It is
so unusual and so compelling that the
reader cannot lay it aside until the end
is reached.
CAPE CURREY
By Rene Juta
A vivid, colorful mystery and love story set in
South Africa. It is about the whimsical Dr. James
Barry — Surgeon Major to Cape Colony — and his
secret garden that hides a dangerous secret and al-
most brings disaster to a beautiful and lovable girl.
"It is all worth reading," says The Times, and The
Evening Post says it is "a remarkable first novel."
Price $1.75
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1920
No. 2880
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 285
EDITORIALS :
The Campaign to Date 288
Passing on the Costs 288
The Empty Coal Bin 289
Pity the Poor Reviewer 290
BRITISH LABOR AND DIRECT ACTION. By Harold J. Laski 291
ITALY'S "EASTWARD ORIENTATION." By Hiram K. Moderwell 292
RUSSIA'S INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM. By Henry G. Alsberg 293
SELF-DETERMINING HAITI. III. GOVERNMENT OF, BY, AND
FOR THE NATIONAL CITY BANK. By James Weldon Johnson 295
POOR MAN'S MUSIC. By M. P. Willcocks 297
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 293
CORRESPONDENCE 299
PASSAGE. By Elizabeth Babcock 300
BOOKS:
A Studied Insult to Democracy. By D. S. Muzzey 300
Cannan the Mystic. By Richard Roberts 301
Labor's Lear. By Arthur Gleason 302
Story Tellers of the North , 303
Books in Brief 304
DRAMA:
Plays for a People's Theater. By Ludwig Lewisohn 306
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION:
Why Haiti Has No Budget 307
The Businessmen's Protest 308
"By Order of the American Minister" 309
The Concession of the National City Bank 310
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER LEWIS S. GANNETT
LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Adress : Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising: Swathmore Press, Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
PITY the lot of the poor independent editor, or better,
the rich one. Here is the New York Evening Post,
which has plumped with a splash for Cox for President on
the issue of the League of Nations, American honor, no
separate peace, and all the rest. Promptly the Ohio Repub-
lican State Committee comes out with a statement, con-
spicuously published throughout the West, that this proves
that the international banking ring is for Cox, since
Thomas W. Lamont, he of J. P. Morgan & Co., is the owner
of the Evening Post. Next comes Parley P. Christensen,
the Farmer-Labor Presidential candidate, before the Senate
Committee on Election Funds, to swear that the Evening
Post's course proves that Wall Street is backing and financ-
ing both parties — both ends against the middle — since the
Evening Post is for Cox and Mr. Henry P. Davison,
also of Morgan's, has personally assured Senator Harding
of his support. When we add that the Democratic National
Committee rejoiced over the Evening Post's proof that the
independents were for Cox, it will be seen that the Evening
Post's decision gave joy in every camp — save in that of the
New York Sun. This grave censor so solemnly rebukes Mr.
Lamont and his newspaper for throwing themselves into the
arms of Boss Murphy, "Tom" Taggart, Brennan, boss of
Chicago, Senator Nugent of New Jersey, and similar "wet"
sponsors of Governor Cox that we submit there is no other
course left to Mr. Lamont to establish both his own rectitude
and the independence of his newspaper than to come out for
Debs.
THE dockworkers' strike in Italy, supposedly amicably
settled on August 17, has developed new and distress-
ing complications, and has spread to metal foundries and
machine shops. On August 31 the management of an en-
gineering corporation in Milan locked out its force of sev-
eral thousand hands during lunch time. This act was in
violation of an agreement of the employers' federation
against individual action, and resulted in a meeting of the
syndicalist unions and seizure by the workers of all metal-
working factories throughout Lombardy unless the firms
would agree not to resort to a lockout. The seizures have
spread from Milan to Rome, Turin, Naples, and other large
cities; the workers are camping out at the factories and
refusing admission to any one without a permit from the
workmen's committees which have been formed and now
maintain an almost military severity of discipline. So far
efforts to dislodge these unwelcome guests have been quite
unsuccessful, and, since the workers can forge their own
weapons for defense, are likely to remain so. The strength
of the workers' position is evident from the fact that Signor
Labriola, the Minister of Labor, is making an attempt at
conciliation, the Government being unwilling or unable to
intervene effectively by force of arms.
THIRTY-SIX conscientious objectors are still in prison,
and so are Eugene Debs, James Larkin, several hun-
dred members of the Industrial Workers of the World,
twenty-two-year-old Mollie Steimer, and several score more
who not only differed from the policy of the Government
during the war but had the effrontery to say so. In England,
France, Italy, and in the countries of our late enemies, far-
reaching amnesty proclamations have been made; but in
this land in which free speech and free assembly are guar-
anteed by the Constitution, men and women are still held
behind prison bars for crimes of opinion ! Every few weeks
the War Department gives proof of a touching liberalism
in releasing one or two more conscientious objectors or in
commuting another of the ferocious twenty-year sentences ;
but good men are still in jail. One man just released
from Leavenworth writes : "I've been feeling like a man com-
ing out from under an anaesthetic, learning to use his arms
and legs again. The prolonged and systematic starvation-
diet in the American Siberia leaves one feeling only about
half-alive. But the doctor says that there is nothing seri-
ously wrong, and I am hoping that with a few weeks of good
food and the atmosphere of terror removed, I shall revive
to the point of normal efficiency again." This man is de-
voting such strength as he has in the interest of the men
whom he left behind in jail. "They are suffering at Leaven-
worth beyond my power to describe it."
286
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2880
IN the name of American labor Samuel Gompers has
indorsed the Democratic ticket. Basing its choice on the
labor records of the two candidates, the report of the so-
called non-partisan political committee of the American
Federation of Labor describes Mr. Cox's attitude as perfect,
while Mr. Harding is found with the incriminating stop
watch and bonus legislation in his past. That the party
of the erstwhile full dinner pail, in the days when a full
stomach was held to be the total measure of the working
man's ambition, is not unduly friendly to labor is obvious.
But can much more be said of the Democrats, whose plat-
form forbids a strike by the underpaid and overworked
postal employees because, forsooth, they are government
workers, while Mr. Burleson, one of the three Cabinet mem-
bers whose mind has run sufficiently with President Wilson's
to last in office eight years, promptly lops off the heads of
those who even dare to present their grievances? The
report, moreover, confesses:
It must be exasperating to the whole American public that
political parties bidding for the suffrage of the whole citizenship
cannot state in definite terms what are their proposals and what
are their pledges. The same exasperation must be felt regard-
ing many of the utterances of candidates.
After such an admission one may well wonder whether Mr.
Gompers is not merely repaying President Wilson for mul-
tiple kindnesses throughout the war. But one thing is cer-
tain. Mr. Gompers will not be able to "deliver" the labor
vote. While some of it will go by force of habit to each
of the old parties, the workers of the United States — hand
and brain — are becoming painfully conscious that there are
but two parties whose record and utterances hold out more
than empty promises of a "square deal for labor." These
two are not the Republican or the Democratic parties.
FAR more important than the speeches of Cox and Hard-
ing, to which the newspapers have been giving col-
umns, is the control of the Democratic Party in Montana
won in the State primary by the Nonpartisan League, but
ignored altogether by the Eastern press. This victory
means that Nonpartisan League candidates will appear
as nominees of the Democratic Party for State offices in
the November election. It does not mean necessarily that
these men will be elected, for old-line Democrats will doubt-
less unite with the Republicans to defeat the League men
in Montana, just as old-line Republicans will unite with the
Democrats in North Dakota to reestablish old-line poli-
tics in that State. Fortunately, the Nonpartisan League in
Montana has the support of a large part of organized labor.
B. K. Wheeler, the candidate for Governor, has promised:
"If elected, I will not put the Anaconda Copper Company
out of business, but I will put it out of politics."
POLAND has invaded Lithuania "for strategic reasons" ;
Poland cannot be bound by "artificial boundaries"
based on mere racial considerations; and State Department
officials count the Polish attitude "entirely satisfactory."
There is nothing left to say about the attitude of our State
Department on the Russo-Polish question; it has so con-
sistently distorted facts and misrepresented motives, an-
nounced and abandoned high purposes, that adequate com-
ment is impossible. Premier Witos's note announces that
Poland wishes frontiers based upon "the wishes of the local
population, the economic necessities, and the national
rights" — this last being a particularly distensible term —
but that she cannot let her military operations be inter-
fered with by any artificial boundary. The French Govern-
ment openly pushes the Poles to take as much territory as
they have the military force to hold. Poland has learned
nothing, unless it be military caution, as a result of her
recent adventure. Autumn is upon us, and it is doubtful
whether further large-scale operations can come before the
snows, but it is clear that a winter of peace is not to be
granted to hungry and shivering Europe. The next ques-
tion is the method of payment for the immense supplies of
munitions which have been pouring in upon the Poles from
all the major crusaders in the late war to end war; we
suppose that will be America's part, and we may discover
the concrete meaning of Mr. Colby's recent promise of "all
available" help to Poland in an increased budget here at
home.
THE international labor boycott against Hungary has
been abandoned with its objects only half attained. It
was an epoch-making adventure in a new kind of interna-
tional diplomacy, and its mere existence and even partial
success was a symbol of the new forces at work in Europe
and a beacon of hope to those who have lost faith in the
post-war governments. There was a "White Terror" in
Hungary ; workingmen were being persecuted, tortured bar-
barously, their unions dissolved, their meetings suppressed.
It was no ordinary Palmerian or Millerandesque repression,
and the horror-stories stirred working-class Europe to anger.
The International Federation of Trade Unions thereupon*
took action; it organized an international boycott of the
land of the White Terror. At midnight on June 19 trains
ceased running Hungarywards from the Vienna stations;
post and telegraph service was crippled; the Danube steam-
ers banked their fires. Workers in Trieste refused to handle
cargoes for Hungary; to a less degree the Czech and Ru-
manian workers joined in shutting Hungary off from the
world. Telegrams from Budapest had to seek a devious
outlet via Warsaw.
THE Hungarian Government announced a counter-boy-
cott of Austria and declared it would never treat with
the workers ; it fell. The new Government accepted the me-
diation of Chancellor Renner of Austria, and negotiated
with the labor delegates as with an equal power. It denied
the facts of the Terror, and refused some of the demands
of the Federation, but the boycott undoubtedly put the fear
of God and of labor into the hearts of the Hungarian Junk-
ers and modified the degree of the repression. The boycott
dragged on for nearly two months, but the failure of the
German railwaymen and of the unorganized workers of
Slovakia to join effectively weakened it at vital points. It
was called off. There have been protest strikes within na-
tions before; this was the first organized effort to use the
economic power of labor on a continental scale. Mr. Elihu
Root and his League supporters of economic boycotts might
well study the experiment with care.
A GOOD deal of the talk which is being indulged in
over campaign contributions is beside the mark. The
real question is not whether the Republicans have started
out to get five million or fifteen, or the Democrats half or
twice either of those sums, but whether the money which is
Sept. 11, 1920]
The Nation
287
being raised, whatever the amount, is being lawfully and
properly used. It ought to be clear to anyone upon a little
reflection that the conduct of a Presidential campaign is in
the very nature of the case an expensive undertaking. Now
that about 25,000,000 women have been added to the list,
the potential number of persons who may vote for Presi-
dential electors, for Senators, and for Representatives is
not far from 50,000,000 ; and these voters are scattered over
a continental area which exceeds 3,000,000 square miles.
The legitimate cost of organizing, informing, and directing
the voters of a national party in a country of so great an
extent and with so huge an electorate is bound to be great —
probably some millions of dollars at the least. What the
people would like to know is whether individuals or corpora-
tions are being virtually assessed by the officials of any
party, whether contributions are being solicited or accepted
with any promise or understanding as to favorable gov-
ernment action in return, and whether the funds of any
party are being corruptly used. If Governor Cox and his
advisers have any information about Republican procedure
at these points, they would do well to make it public; other-
wise their attack upon the Republicans is not likely to
amount to anything.
THE conviction appears to be growing that housing, at
least in so far as it concerns persons of relatively small
means, is a proper subject for government action and should
no longer be left to private initiative. The Philadelphia
Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, a body to
which no taint of radicalism has ever attached, has lately
declared that houses for those who earn low wages can no
longer be built anywhere in the world at a cost which will
permit them to be either sold or rented without loss, and
that "it is unquestionably true that an industrial system,
or even any particular industry, which fails to make possible
adequate shelter, food, clothing, and recreation for all of
its operatives is unworthy to exist." The Chapter proposes
"that housing for those earning low wages or salaries be
legalized as a public utility; that the manufacture of this
class of homes as a profitable industry should cease in theory
as it has already ceased in fact; and that the government,
national and local, should at once adopt measures making
possible the supply of the prime necessary of life." Similar
suggestions of government action are multiplying in New
York, and will doubtless come before the Legislature at the
special session which is to be held this month.
ASSUMPTION by the government, whether Federal,
State, or local, of responsibility for housing might in
time relieve the housing shortage, but while the crisis exists
a way ought to be found to prevent extortion by landlords
and agents. An interesting suggestion has been made by
State Senator Edward J. Dowling of New York, who pro-
poses that the maximum annual rent of a tenement house
shall not exceed 10 per cent net of the actual value of the
property. The actual value of the property for this purpose
would be the assessed value plus 20 per cent. It is not clear
what deductions are to be made in order to arrive at a figure
of 10 per cent net, and 10 per cent gross would obviously,
in many cases, leave no return at all, or at best a very small
one, on the capital invested. The proposal is significant,
however, as an effort to limit rents by more intelligent
methods than the greed of landlords or the working of supply
and demand.
IT is a delicate question sometimes where legitimate de-
fense of one's principles ends and mere footless obstruc-
tion begins. The latter stage has undoubtedly been reached,
however, by the House of Representatives of the Tennessee
Legislature in the attempt to recall its ratification of the
woman suffrage amendment to the Federal Constitution.
We may next expect to find these sovereign statesmen voting
to non-concur in the Multiplication Table and to reconsider
the Ten Commandments. Or going still farther back, they
may presently reopen the decree of the Creator of All
Things: "Let there be light." And having debated it, they
will doubtless report: "Not so, O Lord; by a vote of 47 to
24 the House of Representatives of the State of Tennessee
votes to non-concur, and herewith reverts to primeval
darkness."
THE American Red Cross has discontinued the use of its
original seal with the fine motto "Neutrality — Human-
ity." Neutrality was abandoned during the war; now, even
humanity seems too high an ideal — at least in regard to the
780 Russian children in charge of the organization. These
are Petrograd children who were sent to Siberia for better
food and living conditions ; there they came under the wing
of our Red Cross, and later were brought across the Pacific,
on their way, as it was officially reported, to their homes.
But after the arrival of the children in America it was
stated that they were to be sent to France. A Red Cross
officer in New York admitted that the children were not to
be sent home because of "political conditions" in Russia,
bearing out the charge of Lunacharski, Soviet Commissar
of Education, who quoted the Red Cross to the effect that
"we cannot leave the children in the hands of the Bolsheviki,
who will demoralize them." The Red Cross contends that
it is sending the children to France because it is nearer
Russia. Mr. Martens of the Soviet Bureau in New York
has offered to cable to Russia and secure the home ad-
dresses of the children in Petrograd ; and Russians in New
York have even offered to charter a ship to carry the
children home and relieve the Red Cross of further respon-
sibility. More than 400 of the children have signed an appeal
to be sent home at once, to which it is to be hoped the Red
Cross will give heed.
THINGS which we hope for that will never come to
pass:
A week without a prevarication by Lloyd George.
A clear-cut statement in favor of Irish freedom by the
Pope in Rome.
A month in which the French do not back the wrong
horse in Russia.
A week in which our State Department does not stultify
itself in foreign affairs.
A day upon which the nationalization of women lie will
be buried in America.
The time when all Germans will realize the truth about
the Kaiser, the war, and their own acts in it.
A signed editorial by William Howard Taft bearing evi-
dence of some slight knowledge and information.
A speech by Warren Harding which respects the King's
English.
An hour during which Woodrow Wilson will entertain a
doubt as to his own perfect infallibility.
The day when some of our politicians will realize that the
old order is dead.
288
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2880
The Campaign to Date
IT was at Williston, North Dakota, the other day that an
old man arose in a political gathering to announce to the
audience that he, a life-long Republican, for the first time
in his life would vote the Democratic ticket. "Stand for
that reactionary, Harding, I cannot." Whereupon arose
another gray-head to say: "Well, I've voted the Democratic
ticket all my life, but I'll be hanged if I'm going to vote for
Wilson's man Cox. Harding for me." This incident is
highly characteristic of the campaign. Never have party
loyalties sat so loosely; never have there been more contra-
dictory drifts of sentiment, never more confusing cross-cur-
rents. Thus, New Yorkers who have been traveling in the
Far West this summer are amazed at the absence, of any
political discussions on the trains, in the hotels, on the trails.
But Senator Borah declares, in a published interview, that
never in twenty-five years of campaigning in Idaho and
Washington has he had larger audiences; and he did his
talking in the middle of the harvest. Franklin Roosevelt,
too, reports great political interest; yet the newspapers of
Washington and Montana are complaining of the apathy of
the voters and, in some sections, of their refusal to register.
Not even the most hysterical shrieking that the Bolsheviki
were at the door called out a large Republican vote in the
Montana primaries, or prevented the Nonpartisan Leaguers
— the "American Bolsheviki," as the mine-owners' press
dubs them — from capturing the Democratic Party.
Out of all the confusion certain things are now apparent
to the observers who are indifferent to the humbuggery of
both Republican and Democratic parties. The drift of the
hour in mid-campaign is clearly to the Republicans; not, of
course, because they have anything constructive to offer, nor
because they are waging an aggressive or intelligent or
educational campaign — they are not — nor because they have
an alluring candidate. Mr. Harding's dull, uninteresting per-
sonality awakens no thrill. His talking in the jargon of
the farm to the farmers, of the stage to the players, and of
the diamond to baseball professionals makes no dent in the
consciousness of the people. To imitate him, we should say
that he has not yet made a "two-bagger"; at best a weak
bunt feebly trickling along the first base line is all that
"fattens" his batting average, which is not .300, but some-
where about .046. He is probably the weakest batter yet
nominated by any party, but he bids fair to be the next
President. Why? He is being elected by the hypocrisies,
the untruths, the shams, and the failures of Woodrow
Wilson. Everywhere in the West there is utter disgust with
eight years of Wilsonism — and in the East, too. The country
wants to rebuke the Democracy because of Wilson; many
people, notably in the West, feel that he betrayed them into
the war after reelecting himself on the platform "He kept
us out of war," and then at Paris betrayed his own as well
as the country's ideals in the war. They know now that the
assurances that it was a war to safeguard liberty, to extend
democracy, to end war, were as false as the claim that
Liberty Bonds were the best investment in the world.
Woodrow Wilson has been found out.
Much as the people desire peace, much as they would like
a democratic league of nations, the general drift is against
Cox because of the belief that the present League makes not
for peace but war. "If we were in the League now our
boys would be fighting in Poland," is what one hears if one
talks with cowboy or railroad conductor, or ranchman, or
business man in the West. Not that this fear of the League
is a. dominant issue — there is no dominant issue; it is one
of the many influences which are deciding people as to how
they shall vote. Indubitably Governor Cox has forced the
fighting; he is calling people names and indulging in per-
sonalities, and he is winning the first page oftener than
Harding. His "sensational" charges, unsupported by his
own lieutenants, make a splash for the moment and then
the public forgets him to give vent to its anger at the in-
creased freight and passenger rates, at the inability of the
farmers to get cars to move last year's wheat, to say nothing
of this year's, at the steady rise in the cost of living.
Politics aren't talked unless a casual visitor broaches the
subject — except in North Dakota where the growing bitter-
ness between the Nonpartisans and their enemies the "Poison
Ivas" suggests the passions of Ireland. Yet underneath it
all is a mighty stirring; there is grave unrest, deep dissatis-
faction with political and economic conditions. Still waters
are still deep in politics — as they were in 1910 when no one
was prepared for the Republican disasters. One can trace
the widespread unhappiness in the press of the country,
however much that press may seek to hide the facts.
If Christensen were better known nationally, if he had a
stronger organization and more money behind him, the
Farmer-Labor candidate would create havoc among both the
old organizations. As it is, he will undoubtedly poll a large
popular vote throughout the Northwest, although, owing to
the character of our Presidential voting-system, it may not,
show in the electoral vote. Debs, too, will poll a vote far
above normal Socialist strength, particularly in the great
industrial centers.
One or the other of these men ought to have the vote of
every progressive-minded citizen next November. Such
a ballot is not an indorsement of all they stand for any more
than a vote for Cox or Harding is an approval of all the
latter say ; but it will be notice to the country that the man
or woman who casts it is tired of the collapsing reign of
privilege and incompetence which the old parties jointly
sustain, and that he wishes to help in organizing the forces
of a better political future.
Passing on the Costs
EVERY day we find "the public" being either condoled
with or reassured or warned by the benevolent press
of the country. First, it is warned that railway wage in-
creases and coal wage increases will surely mean higher
prices all along the line. Presently we find it being reas-
sured: the railway wage award involves, of course, an
enormous rate increase, but after all no rise in prices is
likely to result. Next we find that prices have risen; con-
dolences pour forth from the press. The dominant theme,
however, is the inevitable logic of prices following wages
on their upward course. The New York Times and its
thousand counterparts all over the country are at one in
this simple analysis of the economic situation, which they
glibly call "the vicious circle." Wages increase; costs in-
crease; prices increase. Labor grows rich; "the public"
grows poor. Not that the public is opposed to labor; as
the Times recently pointed out editorially, the public is
always ready to sympathize with the poor "if the poor will
only conduct themselves worthily" — in other words, if the
Sept. 11, 1920]
The Nation
289
poor will undertake to remain poor. This analysis of the
New York Times and the bland condescension with which it
is put forward deserve some study if only for the reason
that the fate of "the public" itself is really at stake in the
matter. In the first place, the assumption that prices must
rise as fast as wages (in fact, of course, they rise much
faster) is based on a widespread misunderstanding of the
facts which the employing class never dispels unless it be
by accident. Such an accident occurred at the time of the
rise in freight rates — an incident which illustrates to per-
fection the fallacy of the "vicious circle" as a law of eco-
nomic procedure. The railroad workers were granted an
increase amounting to the formidable sum of $625,000,000.
It was "assumed" at the time the award was made that an
increase in rates would thereupon be demanded by the
roads, and accordingly on July 31 the Interstate Commerce
Commission permitted an increase in passenger, freight,
excess baggage, and Pullman rates totaling upwards of
$1,500,000,000. Since the increase in railway rates amounted
to more than twice the sum of the wage increase that pre-
ceded it, a rise in the cost of living could not be blamed
entirely on the voraciousness of labor; the railways, there-
fore, decided that the cost of living must not rise. To be
sure, the increase in labor's revenue had been duly reflected
in the increased cost of transportation — at that stage the
vicious circle was still intact. But the roads had their own
reasons for not wanting higher prices of commodities to
follow the increased transportation rates. Railway execu-
tives and the organizations and newspapers which reflect
their views forgot the vicious circle and hastened to reassure
the public at large. American Railroads, the organ of the
Association of Railway Executives, printed a table showing
the rate of increase which should result from the new rates.
Dressed meats per pound shipped from Chicago to Phila-
delphia should cost from 2.7 mills to 4.4 mills more, depend-
ing on the size of the shipment. Butter sent from Chicago
to Philadelphia should increase some three-tenths of a cent
per pound. So the figures ran. At the time the new rates
were granted Mr. Willard, president of the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad, spoke a word of comfort to the worried pub-
lic : "If the rate increase will bring renewed activity in the
development of the railroads, and I think it will, then the
advances, instead of tending to increase the cost of living,
will have just the opposite effect." And a few days later he
added: "The public are already beginning to get the benefit
of the rate increase, and the rate increase has not yet gone
into effect."
In a sense he never intended, Mr. Willard was right. The
public began to feel the effect — if not the benefit — of the
rate increase almost immediately. It did not notice that
more, and therefore cheaper, commodities were on the mar-
ket. But its attention was painfully centered on the fact
that milk increased one cent a quart in New York City on
the first of September, that coal had gone up $1.50 a ton in
some localities since the rate increase had been granted.
The other day a New York retail shoe dealer expressed
benevolent concern over the steady upward tendency of
prices of shoes. "See that box of shoes," he said. "That
box of shoes cost me $1.60 freight from Brockton, Massa-
chusetts, and now the rate is going higher. That means
that the price of shoes is going up, too." There were 28
pairs of shoes in the box. The customer did some rapid long
division in his head and arrived at the conclusion that the
20 per cent increase in freight rates would add a little more
than one cent to each pair of shoes. "Well, I don't figure
that way," said the shoe dealer. "Y'see, I figure that there's
the increase in the cost of shipping the leather to the
tanners, and a couple more increases when you ship the
tanned leather to the wholesaler and from him to the manu-
facturer, and another between him and me — and you add
all of them to the cost of the shoes and get something nearer
to $1 a pair increased price." Thus functions the mind of
the retailer, and doubtless of the manufacturer and the
wholesaler too.
The fact, of course, is that a manufacturer or a railway
company that raises wages 20 per cent and then announces
that prices must increase 20 per cent to match is fooling the
public by pretending to compare incommensurables. Wages
form a varying percentage, sometimes large and sometimes
small, of the total cost of production. The labor cost in
operating a blast furnace is only about 3 per cent of the
selling price of pig-iron. An attempt to perform the feat of
balancing a 10 per cent raise in wages and a 10 per cent
increase in prices in such an instance is manifestly
grotesque.
However, the attempt is made with discouraging success
after every strike, and in every industry. The steel mills,
the mines, the railways, the express companies, all have
tried the same trick; the newspapers have countenanced it,
and the public has been gulled. As the railway executives
pointed out — when it happened to be to their interest to
admit it — increases in wages, even when they carry with
them large increases in rates, need not result in any con-
siderable added cost to the public. That such added cost
always does occur is due to the fact that the public has
evolved no method — other than the primitive, ineffective,
club-swinging method of Mr. Palmer — to protect itself from
profiteers; while the business interests find the theory of
the "vicious circle" so vastly to their advantage that higher
wages become a most profitable investment.
The Empty Coal Bin
WE are all grasshoppers. We spend the summer singing
and, with the thermometer well above the comfort
point, cannot be persuaded to take too seriously the fact
that next winter's coal bin is empty. When cold weather
comes, if there is no other way of keeping warm — well, we
can jazz. But, of course, we won't; at least many will
clamor for some other alternative, and in lieu of anything
more practical will fall back on the favorite method of meet-
ing an industrial crisis — blaming it on the labor unions.
It is small wonder that the average man is not concerning
himself with, or even aware of, the coal shortage. It is not
a subject of even passing notice on the part of the Presi-
dential candidates of what a western newspaper headline
aptly calls the two "aged" political parties, although Debs
has called it the most immediately vital question before the
people. That, of course, is a good reason why it should be
ignored by Cox and Harding, who are keeping people's minds
off the real issues by mutual recriminations in regard to
campaign funds and the pretense that our most important
concern is the League of Nations and a program of miscel-
laneous meddling in the affairs of weak nations.
Yet those who know are agreed that the country is facing
winter with a scarcity both of anthracite and of bituminous
coal, due partly to actual shortage at the pit mouths, partly
290
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2880
to lack of cars or of intelligence on the part of the railways
and consequent failure to distribute the product properly
over the country. On top of the bad conditions that have
prevailed we now have an interruption of work in the
anthracite fields, due to dissatisfaction with the recent
award of the President's commission, granting increases in
wages of from 17 to 20 per cent. The officers of the miners'
organizations cannot go back on their agreement, but neither
can they prevent the men from exercising their privilege
as free workers of downing tools in what our daily press is
fond of calling "outlaw" strikes.
Coal mining is a hard life at best. It takes a good deal
of the sweetness out of a man early, and all over the world
the coal fields are centers of dissatisfaction with, and
revolt against, the existing industrial order. Hence, under-
production is universal and coal scarcity is not a national
but a world problem. England, at this writing, is again in
fear of a general strike, owing to the demand of the miners
for higher wages for themselves and lower prices for con-
sumers. France mined a third less coal last year than in
1918 and less than in any year of the war except 1915;
while Upper Silesia, which normally produces a fourth of all
Germany's coal, is at present occupied chiefly with interna-
tional jockeying in regard to the again-postponed plebiscite.
The only way to get sufficient coal out of the ground is
through the steady efforts of a force of men large enough
for the task. The only way to obtain such a force is by
offering good enough conditions to attract workers. "Out-
law" strikes are evidence that such conditions do not exist.
It is time that the Wilson Administration, the Governor
of Kansas, and the public accepted this truth and quit
trying to fill the country's coal bins by injunctions, prison
sentences, and an attempt to establish peonage among Amer-
ican workingmen. The transportation difficulty is a separate
problem, to the solution of which the Interstate Commerce
Commission ought to bring its best energy and intelligence.
Pity the Poor Reviewer
THE way of the reviewer is hard. Like other people he
has a job and a conscience; the one he must keep, the
other he must keep clean. He has, however, many masters
— publishers, plain people, and his own mind. If a publisher
publishes bad books, the reviewer must feign to like that
possibly dreadful person, else plain people, who cannot tell
Chambers from Chekhov, will accuse him of mere spite. If
a publisher publishes good books, the reviewer must not be
seen with him at luncheon ; plain people would wag knowing
heads. The fact that most publishers are given to publish-
ing both bad and good books only complicates our hapless
reviewer's situation and causes him to play alternate parts
in the eyes of the simple and the cunning in their own con-
ceit. If a publisher is guilty of several bad books in suc-
cession, he feels aggrieved by the reviewer and withdraws
in virtuous rage; when his daughter or his nephew writes
a book, he suddenly remembers both reviewer and review
again. "Then, why," the plain man asks, "do you have to
know publishers at all?" To which the poor reviewer has
two replies: Firstly, the publishers want to know him. If,
for the austerest reasons, he praises their wares, they invite
him to the Ritz. He goes — conscious of his rectitude as well
as of his needs. For he, too, to keep his self-respect at home
and the wolf from the door, writes books occasionally. And
books must be published. He cannot keep himself cloistered.
Business and pleasure invite him as they do the rest of man-
kind. He has no anterior objection to associating with
plumbers and physicians, actors and acrobats. He would
probably find them restful and refreshing. But society
crumbles into coteries. Wherever he turns he meets editors
authors, publishers. They need and fear, love and distrust,
coddle and scold him. Let him be as just as the stars, as
incorruptible as steel, he shall not escape suspicion.
"But at least," comes our sturdy plain man, "you needn't
praise your friends or permit them, in turn, to praise you."
At that bland remark the reviewer, usually a mild and
modest person, turns slightly red in the face and rises to his
full height. "We're not, my good man," he declares, "dis-
cussing a new brand of tinned fish or a dentifrice. My
friends are those who share my hopes, fortify my aspira-
tions, embody my ideals of life and art. Whom shall I
choose as my friends but such? When I praise their books
I praise that within them which has endeared them to me
and I support the causes under whose banners our minds
have met. What! Shall I keep silent when truth andTjeauty
are made manifest because the speaker is my friend? But
that truth and beauty within him made him my friend. You
accuse me of log-rolling for X? It is the poet in him that
I love. Yet the poet and the man are one. His verses are
himself and I who know that self best can most justly in-
terpret him and his work to the world. It is not, you see, as
simple as you fancy." Thus the reviewer crushes the
Philistine. In his own conscience he knows that things dont
always work out on so lofty a plane. There is not only
praise; there is also blame, and there is the foolish fear of
fools from which he, too, is not quite exempt. His dearest
enemy has made a thundering ass of himself in print. The
reviewer turns up his sleeves and utters his gentle sub-
stitute for a war-whoop. But the sound sticks in his throat
and his sleeves curl back over his hands. What will people
say? He writhes as a critic but sometimes keeps mum as a
man.
Descending into his own mind the reviewer discovers that.,
though not free from common foibles, his securest reliance
is on the motive that made him take up the driving of this
particular trade. He does, when all is said, love poetry
better than people — even publishers — art better than au-
thors, truth better than the toleration of the crowd. He
finds, upon investigation, that mutual admiration and ran-
corous slating of the vicious kind proceed either from ob-
viously political enmities or, more commonly, not from
critics at all but from second-rate poets and novelists
whose vanity has been underfed or wounded. He observes,
furthermore, that these poets and novelists are as a rule —
though not always — quite young, and so he recalls the con-
soling words of Jules Lemaitre : "It belongs to the character
of the good critic to understand more things than a young
novelist and to be more indulgent." He cannot, of course,
always maintain so crystalline a serenity of temper and, now
and then, the very suspicion with which his motives are fre-
quently regarded will draw from him a sharp word or a
perversely stinging phrase. But when he compares the spirit
of his own activity with that which animates the activities
of brokers and booksellers, theologians and theatrical man-
agers, politicians and even professors, he comes to the con-
clusion that he is, at his best, a very fine fellow indeed and,
even at his worst, more to be pitied than scorned.
Sept. 11, 1920]
The Nation
291
British Labor and Direct Action
By HAROLD J. LASKI
London, Augiist 15
NO one can say as yet that war with Russia has been
definitely averted, although at present it seems more
than likely; but it can at least be insisted that if peace is
secured, that achievement will be due to British labor.
The National Conference of August 13 marks an epoch in
the history of trade union tactics. It was not merely an
expression of labor's solidarity against war. It was not
merely that radicals like Mr. Smillie and Mr. Lansbury
joined hands with moderates like Mr. Thomas and Mr.
Clynes. What was more important was the clear proof
that labor has now learned how to improvise an organiza-
tion which is decisive in a crisis. The Council of Action
met on Tuesday; the National Conference took its decisions
on Friday. The Council remains in being, and it has the
power in its hands, the authority of fact not less than the
moral force of right, to prevent that drift into the war
which the uncertainty of Mr. Lloyd George and the in-
trigues of Mr. Churchill and the French had made seem
inevitable on Monday.
The whole background of the decision is worth consid-
ering. It does not mean that British labor is committed
to the general theory of direct action. There are trade
union leaders, Mr. Williams of the Transport Workers, for
example, who are urgent for its adoption as a revolutionary
measure. Such sentiment appeals only to a fragment of
the movement as a whole. The men who gathered in Cen-
tral Hall, Westminster, on Thursday were not revolution-
aries. They saw their way clear to three propositions only.
They knew, first of all, that the obstacle to peace with
Russia lay, not in Moscow, but in Warsaw and Paris. They
knew, in the second place, that unless Mr. Lloyd George's
hands were forced by an overwhelming expression of popu-
lar sentiment, he might well be persuaded into commit-
ments which meant war. They knew, in the third, that the
remedy was in their hands. If, as Mr. Thomas said, they
deliberately challenged the British Constitution, that was
because men have ceased to look to the present House of
Commons either for common-sense or courage. Labor knew
on Thursday that if war was to be prevented, it was only
a striking manifestation of solidarity which would do it.
The obvious means was the threat of a general strike. No
one who heard the speeches on Friday could doubt that the
threat was real. The resolution to down tools was passed
amid a scene almost unexampled in Labor Congresses. For
a moment after its unanimous passage there was deadly
silence. Then, as its significance became apparent, a cheer
went up which might have penetrated almost to Downing
Street, not five hundred yards away. It was the first time
since the war ended that the depth of labor sentiment had
become apparent. It need not be made so clear again.
The attitude of the public to the threat is of great inter-
est. Newspapers like the Times and the Morning Post do
not conceal their anger at the usurpation by labor of con-
stitutional power. More moderate opinion like that of the
Daily News says with admirable bluntness that labor has
made peace the only possible solution. The man in the
street, as one hears him on the way to the city, feels a sense
of relief that is almost beyond utterance. Everywhere there
is a general contempt for Poland, a deep-seated suspicion
of France. Indeed, Poland might well have been offered
far worse terms without interesting the average English-
man in its welfare. A small fragment of intellectual opin-
ion, a Catholic clique in the Foreign Office, these, with Mr.
Churchill, are the only people prepared to defend the Polish
adventure. If Germany had been involved it might have
been different, for even labor has still to learn how vital
is the necessity of a renewed understanding with Germany.
Beyond that, Poland counted for nothing. Indeed, sooner
than make war on behalf of foreign entanglements, the
average Englishman would renounce the modern policy of
continental interference for his traditional isolation.
But this adoption of direct action must not be understood
as more than a limited adoption for a particular occasion.
Neither Mr. Thomas nor Mr. Clynes would accept it for a
purely domestic issue; and one gets the conviction that,
outside the miners and a section of the transport workers,
they represent the general sentiment of labor. The outlook
is too uncertain for the mass of the workers to be anxious
to put theories to the test. There is, of course, deep unrest;
and a series of large wage-movements in the early autumn
is foreshadowed already. Yet one does not get the im-
pression of a discontent that, at the moment, goes deeper
than it did a year ago. There is general resentment at the
housing muddle. There is a widespread dissatisfaction with
the Government's foreign policy. But there is not that drift
toward the left which a superficial acquaintance with the
labor press might suggest. On the contrary, the interest
of the rank and file not less than of the leaders is concen-
trated more on the institutional development of trade union-
ism, particularly with the establishment of that General
Staff for Labor which first emerged during the 1919 rail-
way strike, than with the wider issues of the political sys-
tem as a whole.
The miners are an exception. No one can travel in
South Wales or Durham without the sense that the issue
of nationalization is far from moribund. The government
bill has been rejected by the Miners Federation; and they
will refuse to work with it or under it. The bill itself has
been mercilessly criticized in the House of Lords; and not
even the coal owners can summon up enthusiasm about it.
The miners have now definitely adhered to the policy of
"freezing out profits" by demand for wage increases; and
they allure the public sympathy by their insistence that
the cost of coal can be reduced. Their argument depends
on technical accounting statistics; but certainly it is ap-
parent that the government has not answered their case.
And the miners are strengthened in their action by the
sympathy of independent minds like Lord Haldane and the
recent adoption of their scheme by the International Miners'
Conference at Geneva. The strike ballot will certainly be
affirmative; and neither Mr. Smillie nor Mr. Hodges is to be
cajoled by the diplomacy of Mr. Lloyd George.
The outlook is thus of special interest. Recent by-elec-
tions show clearly that if labor has not increased its hold
upon the House of Commons, it is gaining ground in the
292
The Nation
[Vol. ill, No. 2880
constituencies. If it succeeds in its policy of no-war, it will
have full energy to concentrate upon domestic issues, and
no party has ever been so well served with ideas as is labor
by its advisory committees. Its weakness — and it is a great
weakness — is in the House of Commons. Neither Mr.
Adamson nor Mr. Henderson has good health; Mr. Clynes
carries weight in the House, but little outside it; Mr.
Thomas is influential, but he is a little too friendly with
such influences as that of Lady Astor, to be acceptable
to the party as a whole. What the party needs is the power
of the old blood like Mr. Ramsay Macdonald and Mr.
Snowden, and the newer adherents like Mr. Arthur Green-
wood and Mr. R. H. Tawney. It needs, above all, to em-
bark upon a far more extensive educational policy. One
gets the sense, above all senses, in England that we are
running a race between education and revolution. If labor
gives to institutions like the Workingmen's Educational As-
sociation the support and funds they deserve, some way
out of the present chaos may be found. Hope seems
to be there. But the future lies so emphatically upon
the knees of the gods that prophecy is worse than
fruitless.
Italy's "Eastward Orientation'
By HIRAM K. MODERWELL
Rome, August 13
IN professional diplomatic circles they call it "assuming
an eastward orientation." Others, according to tempera-
ment, call it "entering into relations with Moscow," or "ex-
tending de facto recognition to the Bolsheviki," or "shaking
hands with murder." By whatever name they may call
Italy's recent decision to exchange quasi-diplomatic agents
with Soviet Russia, the fact that Lenin's government has
been for all practical purposes recognized by a great
western Power remains solid as cucumbers. Mr. Vosovsky,
the Russian agent to Italy, is to have the diplomatic privi-
leges of courier and code. The Italian agent will have re-
ciprocal privileges. On this basis the two governments can
transact their mutual business quite as effectively as they
could through ministers fully clothed in ambassadorial
powers and long-tailed coats. I do not know whether Mr.
Vosovsky will be invited to diplomatic parties by the king,
or whether the wife of the French ambassador will leave her
card on Mrs. Vosovsky, if there be such a one. Probably
not. But I am quite sure that Mr. Vosovsky and Mr. Giolitti
will do business together.
Probably in the absence of formal diplomatic recognition,
the average newspaper reader of the Entente countries will
miss the full meaning of Italy's act. Indeed, it is intended
that he should. Italy wants to draw the fullest possible
advantage from the new Russian relation without straining
to the breaking point the Entente which guarantees her coal
and wheat. She does not want to give the Northcliffe papers
too easy an opportunity to announce that "Italy joins red
blackguards." She is more than willing to coddle a public
opinion which allows itself to be swayed by formalities and
phrases. But when the Italian politicians talk of their
"orientation toward Moscow" they mean very distinctly that
they have "oriented" away from Paris. They have not the
slightest interest in the Entente as such, and their only
interest in France is that sustained toward an enemy whom
they hold to be tricky and dangerous. They want to do all
they may safely do to break the Entente, the French con-
tinental system, and the Versailles treaty which sanctifies
that system with Wilsonian jargon and African mercenaries.
Let it be understood. Italy's de facto recognition of
Russia is not the work of Socialists. It is the work of an
anti-Socialist government, a work achieved without the as-
sistance, or even the knowledge, of the Socialists. It is sup-
ported by all the non-Socialist parties. It is most vigorously
supported by the most narrowly nationalist parties. These
politicians are acting from political, not economic, motives.
Most of them admit with jolly carelessness that they do not
understand much of economics. What they do understand is
that Italy was done out of her Balkan annexations because
France proclaimed the Slavic portions of the Austrian em-
pire to be allies instead of enemies; that France has been
patron to such rivals of Italy as Jugoslavia and Greece ; that
she has attempted to rebuild an Austrian empire under
French influence to menace Italian interests under the form
of a Danube confederation; and that she has succeeded in
creating a quasi-alliance of small states, beginning with
Bavaria and extending through Czecho-Slovakia and Hun-
gary to Rumania and the Black Sea, which forms a diplo-
matic barrier between herself and the north. The Italian
politician says that wherever he turns in Italy's interests,
he finds traces of the mysterious and sinister hand of
France. The average Italian nationalist seems to believe-
that the world is only a vast anti-Italian plot directed by
France. The more intelligent nationalist, and the shrewd
conservative like Nitti, knows that the French system is per-
turbing the peace of the world and driving Europe, including
Italy, daily nearer bankruptcy. These political groups looked
about for a counterpoise to France. Though they threw
their influence, in the councils of the Entente, consistently
against the excesses of French policy, this was not enough.
Russia was the only power in a position to shatter the
French system. At first cautiously and .then at last openly,
the Italian Government threw its support to Russia.
This Italian policy is, of course, a direct consequence of
the peace of Versailles which suffocated the spirit of recon-
ciliation and sought to enforce peace by putting swords into
the hands of a dozen young and raw imperialisms. But the
greater menace comes from the fact that each of these
swords has been made from a plowshare. For so long as
steel is used to kill and not to produce, the deterioration of
the economic situation continues. So long as each of the
new imperialisms is encouraged by a selfish national spirit to
achieve its national prosperity at the expense of its neigh-
bors instead of by cooperation with its neighbors, to seize
or hold by force the things it needs for its life, so long
Europe must continue to produce less than it consumes.
This condition is affecting Italy disastrously. She has half-
understood that unless the system is shattered her own
future is chaos.
Last December the financial statement of Minister of the
Treasury Schanzer showed a deficit of two milliard 800 mil-
lion lire. Six months later Meda's statement showed the
deficit to be twelve milliard. Neither statement includes
any interest payments on the foreign debt; the Allies have
been obliged to remit them. Meda's budget as estimated
for the year 1920-21 is summarized as follows (in millions
of lire) :
Sept. 11, 1920]
The Nation
293
Ordinary receipts 10,000
Extraordinary receipts (sale of war stocks, etc.) . . 1,500
11,500
Ordinary expenses 12,050
Extraordinary expenses
1. Cereals 6,300
2. War, Marine, Colonies 2,850
3. Liberated and redeemed areas 2,000
4. Maritime traffic 500
Total expenses 23,700
Less total receipts 11,500
Deficit 12,200
Among the receipts is included the income from a capital
and income tax more stringent than any yet imposed by any
of the victorious Allies. [Two American business men of
large affairs have just been telling me that this capital tax
is a bad measure, England and France having both con-
sidered it recently and rejected it.] But most instructive is
the item "cereals." It represents the deficit borne by the
government in the sale of cheap bread to the people. Italy
consumes some seventy-two million quintals of grain a year;
she normally raises forty-eight million. This year, due to
politico-psychological conditions, she can expect only forty
million. Of this twenty-five million or more must be left
with the peasants. There remains then a consumption of
forty-seven million with only fifteen million of home produce
to meet it. The remainder must be purchased abroad. It
must be purchased in England where the lira is less than a
third its normal value; in America, where the lira is less
than a quarter.* And the people can be persuaded to pay no
more than one lira a kilo for bread. The Nitti Government
tried to raise the price of a lira and a half, and within two
days there was barricade fighting in the streets of Bari.
The project was withdrawn but the Nitti Government fell.
What hope is there of canceling this deficit through the
restoration of normal exchange? Not much. Exchange, we
may assume, depends on the balance of exports and imports.
Italy's import and export figures of the present year show
an appreciable improvement, due to the prohibition or dis-
couragement of all imports except absolute necessities. But
they are a long way from normal, to say nothing of repair-
ing the accumulated disadvantage!
Where, then, shall Italy buy cheap wheat? Partly, of
course, from Jugoslavia, if she can ever patch up her quarrel
with that country and if that country can ever achieve a
passable railroad system. But obviously and chiefly from
Russia. Italy has used her influence within the Entente
for the modification of the existing conditions. But always
the sacred Treaty of Versailles stands in the way. Well,
then, the Treaty of Versailles must be broken. Russia is the
one power capable of doing it.
And so, sparing only the formalities, Italy turns her face
to the East. Moral support to Moscow ; the prestige of sub-
stantial recognition; facilities for doing business; perhaps
moderate shipments of needed machinery — encouragement
for revolution in Hungary — these are instruments in the
new "orientation" intended to break the world-settlement
which is now scarcely more than a year old.
•Indeed, the question now is not so much what Italy will have to pay for im-
ported grain, as whether she can get it at all. Both North and South America
have placed restrictions or embargoes on grain export.
Russia's Industrial Problem
By HENRY G. ALSBERG
Moscow, July 27
THE question of the productivity of industry in Soviet
Russia is still acute, tangled, and difficult. Again, it is
impossible to distinguish between what is due to six years
of war — two and a half years of which have been civil war —
and the blockade and what is due to the new system. Over
ninety per cent of the population was illiterate before the
war began. Probably only three per cent could have been
counted as capable of intelligent administrative work, and of
this three per cent one and a half went over to the "Whites"
and sabotaged. Of the remaining one and one half per cent,
three quarters of one per cent are at the front. Remains
the little scant three quarters of one per cent to run this
vast empire. I insist again that, for the present, the will
must to a large extent be taken for the deed until peace
returns.
Let me give one concrete example. I am living in the
Dela Voyd Dvor Hotel. Most of the delegates to the Third
International are being housed here. The hotel is poorly
run. We are all morally sure that half the food is being
stolen. There are forty servants who serve very poorly
about forty guests. The commandant of the hotel appears
to most of us as somewhat below normal. Why does the
government not supply a better commandant ? Because any-
body in Russia at the present time with brains enough to
be manager of a large hotel would probably be commander
of an army corps, or chief of an important government de-
partment.
Russian industry at present does not function at more
than 15 per cent of its former efficiency, generally speaking.
There are many causes for this, of which three stand out as
the most important. 1 — The blockade. 2 — Lack of trans-
portation, which, naturally, in all except the Ural and Donetz
districts, also accounts for the lack of fuel. 3 — Lack of
food.
1 — I think the most important of these basic causes of low
productivity is the blockade, which has had not only impor-
tant material but also equally important moral effects. It is
useless to say that the blockade has been the most useful
asset the Entente could have presented to the Bolsheviki. One
cannot deny that the blockade and the attack from without
have consolidated all the public against the invader. The
benefit is largely, therefore, political. Also, one must admit
that at the present moment a considerable natural, economic
blockade exists against Russia, because she has not very
much to export against imports. On the other hand she has
a great deal of gold to pay for manufactured articles, and
certainly would have some credit based on natural resources.
At any rate, countries . like Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Es-
thonia, and Latvia have been given their initial impetus
toward recovery by just that sort of help from the outside.
Quantities of things, that we consider merely elementary,
such as medicines, medical supplies, rubber articles, sole
leather, all of which were imported before, now are quite
lacking in Russia. For instance, the hospitals have now
only one thermometer to about every hundred patients.
Thermometers never were manufactured in Russia. Neither
were most of the disinfectants. I don't think I need recapit-
294
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2880
ulate all the articles formerly imported that are now entirely
missing. A very little imagination will help an American
to visualize the situation if he will only think of Russia as
a country in the same stage of industrial development as
the United States was before the civil war.
But even more serious has been the moral effect of the
blockade. Many of the officials have admitted the desolating
effect of being cut off from the intellectual life of the west-
ern world for six years. Samashke, Commissar of Public
Health, asked me whether I couldn't see that he got some
scientific journals, because he actually did not know what
advances science has been making. Absolute isolation, no
foreign art, literature, science, news, has had a very de-
pressing and even demoralizing effect, which one can only
begin to understand if one is, as I have been, subjected to
it for several months. And the intelligence of Russia has
been facing this blockade for almost three years, and then
three years' additional blockade of the great war! I think
the whole of Russia will heave a tremendous sigh of relief
and joy when free intercourse with the western world
recommences.
2 — The cry of lack of transportation has gone up con-
tinually in Russian propaganda. Personally I think it has
been overdone. Like every other Russian industry, the rail-
ways have deteriorated tremendously since the March revo-
lution and even since the beginning of 1917. Strange to
say, however, the chief drop came so soon after the Bolshe-
viki seized the government that their regime could have had
very little effect. The Labor Department here has pretty
reliable statistics to show that the great drop came during
the period of chaos and dissolution of 1917, and in the first
months of 1918, when workingmen ceased working and fac-
tory owners and managers sabotaged. Since then the drop
in productivity has been minimal, or, in many instances
there has even been a rise.
If transportation has deteriorated, the causes have been
the same as for deterioration in other industries. And if
the transportation facilities do not improve it is for the
same reason that the other industries do not improve in
productivity. There are plenty of shops that could make
new locomotives as well as repair them. I have been in
several such factories, the Putiloff works, at Petrograd, and
the Sernova works at Nijni-Novgorod. Near Moscow there
are the old Singer Sewing Machine works, now devoted to
locomotive repairing, and throughout Russia a host of
other factories where locomotives could be repaired or even
manufactured. But these factories at the present time do
not produce enough actually to keep up with the wear and
tear on the roads. If the railroads functioned properly, no
doubt raw materials for the factories and food for the
towns could be easily transported. But, since they do not,
because the repair shops don't work, then we must come
down to an inquiry as to why the men in the. repair shops
won't produce, because, in the last analysis, the productivity
depends upon the workman's willingness or ability to work.
3 — The plain fact of the matter is that the men will not
work in the factories because they haven't enough to eat.
But then the men haven't enough to eat because the peasants
won't give them food. And why won't the peasants give
the food? Because the factories can't give them any manu-
factured articles in exchange for said food. It all sounds
like a hopeless nursery rigmarole, wiggling around in a
sort of vicious circle. But as a matter of fact there are
several proposed methods for breaking down the evil ring
which now binds Russian industry.
First, however, I want to say a few words more con-
cerning this matter of hunger in the factory. I have
visited a goodly number of factories. I have spoken to a
number of managers of factories. And I have been given
the notes of other investigators who have visited factories
not open to me. Everywhere one hears the same story.
Many of the workmen have gone back to the villages because
there they could get enough to eat. And of those workmen
that remain on the pay-rolls, three-quarters shirk work or
do not work at all, because in order to get the quantity of
food over and above the pyok which is necessary to exis-
tence, they have to speculate — that is, they have to go into
the country and bring things into town and sell them at a
profit, or they have to buy and sell things on the market at
a commission, as it were, in order to earn the necessary
surplus. This whole subject really merits a long article in
itself. But no intelligent understanding of the most elemen-
tary character of the Russian industrial situation is possible
without consideration of this hunger factor. That lack of
food accounts chiefly for lack of production cannot be
doubted by anybody who has been going around in Russia
with his eyes open. In the few factories where, either
through the special enterprise of the manager or because of
exceptional favor, as in the case of the American-Russian
Instrument Factory, sufficient food is given the workmen,
there is no lack of hands. The American-Russian Tool-
Factory has from three to five applicants daily for jobs. It
is a small factory, employing not much over 150 men. Can-
didates must now pass an examination before being taken on.
The Russian industrial question, in the last analysis, re-
solves itself into a simple credit problem. If the peasant
will not send food without an immediate return in plows
and nails and shoes, and the workman will not produce these
things unless he first gets food, then you have a deadlock,
unless somebody comes along who can advance the food to
the factory worker to make the plows and nails and shoes,
and so start the ball of industry rolling. There are two
solutions currently proposed here. The one believes that
capital should be introduced from the outside, in the shape
of plows, nails, and shoes, to start the flow of food from
the peasants' bins. The other believes that a certain
amount of private enterprise, of middleman's enterprise,
should be allowed to get the food from the peasant on pri-
vate credit, as in the old days, and so get it to the factories.
The plain fact is that at the present moment the Soviet
government has not sufficient machinery of distribution to
keep the population supplied. Private speculation survives.
But the old class of middlemen has been destroyed or
driven underground. These latter people know how to get
credit from the peasant, and get food on tick from him to
advance to the city proletariat. I am among those that
hold it will be much cheaper, in actual material as well as
in political and social values, to resuscitate temporarily the
middleman and small dealer, whose taking off is now almost
universally admitted to have been untimely, in view of the
fact that the government machine was so rudimentary.
Foreign capital will make very onerous conditions, and will
demand to be secured against the expropriatorial tendencies
of an antagonistic system by heavy and costly guaranties.
And the socialistic body will suffer materially and morally
as a consequence.
Sept. 11, 1920]
The Nation
295
Self-Determining Haiti
III. GOVERNMENT OF, BY, AND FOR THE NATIONAL CITY BANK
By JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
FORMER articles of this series described the Military-
Occupation of Haiti and the crowd of civilian place
holders as among the forces at work in Haiti to maintain the
present status in that country. But more powerful though
less obvious, and more sinister, because of its deep and varied
radications, is the force exercised by the National City Bank
of New York. It seeks more than the mere maintenance of
the present status in Haiti ; it is constantly working to bring
about a condition more suitable and profitable to itself. Be-
hind the Occupation, working conjointly with the Depart-
ment of State, stands this great banking institution of New
York and elsewhere. The financial potentates allied with it
are the ones who will profit by the control of Haiti. The
United States Marine Corps and the various office-holding
"deserving Democrats," who help maintain the status quo
there, are in reality working for great financial interests in
this country, although Uncle Sam and Haiti pay their
salaries.
Mr. Roger L. Farnham, vice-president of the National City
Bank, was effectively instrumental in bringing about Ameri-
can intervention in Haiti. With the administration at Wash-
ington, the word of Mr. Farnham supersedes that of any-
body else on the island. While Mr. Bailly-Blanchard, with
the title of minister, is its representative in name, Mr. Farn-
ham is its representative in fact. His goings and comings
are aboard vessels of the United States Navy. His bank, the
National City, has been in charge of the Banque Nationale
d'Haiti throughout the Occupation.* Only a few weeks ago
he was appointed receiver of the National Railroad of Haiti,
controlling practically the entire railway system in the island
with valuable territorial concessions in all parts.** The
$5,000,000 sugar plant at Port-au-Prince, it is commonly re-
ported, is about to fall into his hands.
Now, of all the various responsibilities, expressed, im-
plied, or assumed by the United States in Haiti, it would
naturally be supposed that the financial obligation would be
foremost. Indeed, the sister republic of Santo Domingo was
taken over by the United States Navy for no other reason
than failure to pay its internal debt. But Haiti for over one
hundred years scrupulously paid its external and internal
debt — a fact worth remembering when one hears of "anarchy
and disorder" in that land — until five years ago when under
* The National City Bank originally (about 1911) purchased 2,000 shares
of the stock of the Banque Nationale d'Haiti. After the Occupation it pur-
chased 6,000 additional shares in the hands of three New York banking firms.
Since then it has been negotiating for the complete control of the stock, the
balance of whicn is held in France. The contract for this transfer of the
Bank and the granting of a new charter under the laws of Haiti were agreed
upon and signed at Washington last February. But the delay in completing
these arrangements is caused by the impasse between the State Department
and the National City Bank, on the one hand, and the Haitian Government
on the other, due to the fact that the State Department and the National
City Bank insisted upon including in the contract a clause prohibiting the
importation and exportation of foreign money into Haiti subject only to the
control of the financial adviser. To this new power the Haitian Government
refuses to consent.
** Originally, Mr. James P. McDonald secured from the Haitian Govern-
ment the concession to build the railroads under the charter of the National
Railways of Haiti. He arranged with W. R. Grace & Company to finance
the concession. Grace and Company formed a syndicate under the aegis of
the National City Bank which issued $2,500,000 bonds, sold in France. These
bonds were guaranteed by the Haitian Government at an interest of 6 per
cent on $32,500 for each mile. A short while after the floating of these bonds,
Mr. Farnham became President of the company. The syndicate advanced an-
other $2,000,000 for the completion of the railroad in accordance with the
concession granted by the Haitian Government. This money was used, but
the work was not completed in accordance with the contract made by the
Haitian Government in the concession. The Haitian Government then re-
fused any longer to pay the interest on the mileage. These happenings w.ere
prior to 1915.
the financial guardianship of the United States interest on
both the internal and, with one exception, external debt was
defaulted; and this in spite of the fact that specified reve-
nues were pledged for the payment of this interest. Apart
from the distinct injury to the honor and reputation of the
country, the hardship on individuals has been great. For
while the foreign debt is held particularly in France which,
being under great financial obligations to the United States
since the beginning of the war, has not been able to protest
effectively, the interior debt is held almost entirely by
Haitian citizens. Haitian Government bonds have long been
the recognized substantial investment for the well-to-do and
middle class people, considered as are in this country, United
States, state, and municipal bonds. Non-payment on these
securities has placed many families in absolute want.
What has happened to these bonds? They are being sold
for a song, for the little cash they will bring. Individuals
closely connected with the National Bank of Haiti are ready
purchasers. When the new Haitian loan is floated it will,
of course, contain ample provisions for redeeming these old
bonds at par. The profits will be more than handsome. Not
that the National Bank has not already made hay in the
sunshine of American Occupation. From the beginning it
has been sole depositary of all revenues collected in the name
of the Haitian Government by the American Occupation, re-
ceiving in addition to the interest rate a commission on all
funds deposited. The bank is the sole agent in the transmis-
sion of these funds. It has also the exclusive note-issuing
privilege in the republic. At the same time complaint is
widespread among the Haitian business men that the Bank
no longer as of old accommodates them with credit and that
its interests are now entirely in developments of its own.
Now, one of the promises that was made to the Haitian
Government, partly to allay its doubts and fears as to the
purpose and character of the American intervention, was
that the United States would put the country's finances on a
solid and substantial basis. A loan for $30,000,000 or more
was one of the features of this promised assistance. Pur-
suant, supposedly, to this plan, a Financial Adviser for
Haiti was appointed in the person of Mr. John Avery Mc-
Ilhenny. Who is Mr. Mcllhenny? That he has the cordial
backing and direction of so able a financier as Mr. Farnham
is comforting when one reviews the past record and experi-
ence in finance of Haiti's Financial Adviser as given by him
in "Who's Who in America," for 1918-1919. He was born in
Avery Island, Iberia Parish, La. ; went to Tulane University
for one year; was a private in the Louisiana State militia
for five years; trooper in the U. S. Cavalry in 1898; pro-
moted to second lieutenancy for gallantry in action at San
Juan; has been member of the Louisiana House of Repre-
sentatives and Senate; was a member of the U. S. Civil
Service Commission in 1906 and president of the same in
1913; Democrat. It is under his Financial Advisership that
the Haitian interest has been continued in default with the
one exception above noted, when several months ago $3,000,-
000 was converted into francs to meet the accumulated in-
terest payments on the foreign debt. Dissatisfaction on the
296
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2880
part of the Haitians developed over the lack of financial per-
spicacity in this transaction of Mr. Mcllhenny because the
sum was converted into francs at the rate of nine to a dollar
while shortly after the rate of exchange on French francs
dropped to fourteen to a dollar. Indeed, Mr. Mcllhenny's
unfitness by training and experience for the delicate and im-
portant position which he is filling was one of the most gen-
erally admitted facts which I gathered in Haiti.
At the present writing, however, Mr. Mcllhenny has be-
come a conspicuous figure in the history of the Occupation
of Haiti as the instrument by which the National City Bank
is striving to complete the riveting, double-locking and bolt-
ing of its financial control of the island. For although it
would appear that the absolute military domination under
which Haiti is held would enable the financial powers to
accomplish almost anything they desire, they are wise
enough to realize that a day of reckoning, such as, for in-
stance, a change in the Administration in the United States,
may be coming. So they are eager and anxious to have
everything they want signed, sealed, and delivered. Any-
thing, of course, that the Haitians have fully "consented to"
no one else can reasonably object to.
A little recent history: in February of the present year,
the ministers of the different departments, in order to con-
form to the letter of the law (Article 116 of the Constitution
of Haiti, which was saddled upon her in 1918 by the Occu-
pation'* and Article 2 of the Haitian-American Conven-
tion**) began work on the preparation of the accounts for
1918-1919 and the budget for 1920-1921. On March 22 a
draft of the budget was sent to Mr. A. J. Maumus, Acting
Financial Adviser, in the absence of Mr. Mcllhenny who had
at that time been in the United States for seven months.
Mr. Maumus replied on March 29, suggesting postponement
of all discussion of the budget until Mr. Mcllhenny's return.
Nevertheless, the Legislative body, in pursuance of the law,
opened on its constitutional date, Monday, April 5. Despite
the great urgency of the matter in hand, the Haitian ad-
ministration was obliged to mark time until June 1, when
Mr. Mcllhenny returned to Haiti. Several conferences with
the various ministers were then undertaken. On June 12, at
one of these conferences, there arrived in the place of the
Financial Adviser a note stating that he would be obliged to
stop all study of the budget "until the time when certain
affairs of considerable importance to the well-being of the
country shall be finally settled according to recommendations
made by me to the Haitian Government." As he did not
give in his note the slightest idea what these important
affairs were, the Haitian Secretary wrote asking for in-
formation, at the same time calling attention to the already
great and embarrassing delay, and reminding Mr. Mcllhenny
that the preparation of the accounts and budget was one of
his legal duties as an official attached to the Haitian Govern-
ment, of which he could not divest himself.
On July 19 Mr. Mcllhenny supplied his previous omission
in a memorandum which he transmitted to the Haitian De-
partment of Finance, in which he said: "I had instructions
from the Department of State of the United States just be-
fore my departure for Haiti, in a part of a letter of May 20,
* "The general accounts and the budgets prescribed by the preceding article
must be submitted to the Legislative Body by the Secretary of Finance not
later than eight days after the opening of the Legislative Session."
*• "The President of Haiti shall appoint, on the nomination of the Presi-
dent of the United States, a Financial Adviser who shall be attached to the
Ministry of Finance, to whom the Secretary (of Finance) shall lend effective
aid in the prosecution of his work. The Financial Adviser shall work out a
system of public accounting, shall aid in increasing the revenues and in their
adjustment to expenditures. ."
to declare to the Haitian Government that it was necessary
to give its immediate and formal approval to :
1. A modification of the Bank Contract agreed upon by the
Department of State and the National City Bank of New York.
2. Transfer of the National Bank of the Republic of Haiti
to a new bank registered under the laws of Haiti, to be known
as the National Bank of the Republic of Haiti.
3. The execution of Article 15 of the Contract of Withdrawal
prohibiting the importation and exportation of non-Haitian
money except that which might be necessary for the needs of
commerce in the opinion of the Financial Adviser."
Now, what is the meaning and significance of these pro-
posals? The full details have not been given out, but it is
known that they are part of a new monetary law for Haiti
involving the complete transfer of the Banque Nationale
d'Haiti to the National City Bank of New York. The docu-
ment embodying the agreements, with the exception of the
clause prohibiting the importation of foreign money, was
signed at Washington, February 6, 1920, by Mr. Mcllhenny,
the Haitian Minister at Washington and the Haitian Secre-
tary of Finance. The Haitian Government has officially de-
clared that the clause prohibiting the importation and ex-
portation of foreign money, except as it may be deemed
necessary in the opinion of the Financial Adviser, was added
to the original agreement by some unknown party. It is for
the purpose of compelling the Haitian Government to ap-
prove the agreements, including the "prohibition clause,"
that pressure is now being applied. Efforts on the part of
business interests in Haiti to learn the character and scope-
of what was done at Washington have been thwarted by
close secrecy. However, sufficient of its import has become
known to understand the reasons for the unqualified and
definite refusal of President Dartiguenave and the Govern-
ment to give their approval. Those reasons are that the
agreements would give to the National Bank of Haiti, and
thereby to the National City Bank of New York, exclusive
monopoly upon the right of importing and exporting Ameri-
can and other foreign money to and from Haiti, a monopoly
which would carry unprecedented and extraordinarily lucra-
tive privileges.
The proposal involved in this agreement has called forth
a vigorous protest on the part of every important banking
and business concern in Haiti with the exception, of course,
of the National Bank of Haiti. This protest was trans-
mitted to the Haitian Minister of Finance on July 30 past.
The protest is signed not only by Haitians and Europeans
doing business in that country but also by the leading
American business concerns, among which are The Ameri-
can Foreign Banking Corporation, The Haitian-American
Sugar Company, The Panama Railroad Steamship Line,
The Clyde Steamship Line, and The West Indies Trading
Company. Among the foreign signers are the Royal Bank of
Canada, Le Comptoir Frangais, Le Comptoir Commercial,
and besides a number of business firms.
We have now in Haiti a triangular situation with the
National City Bank and our Department of State in two
corners and the Haitian government in the third. Pres-
sure is being brought on the Haitian government to com-
pel it to grant a monopoly which on its face appears de-
signed to give the National City Bank a strangle hold on the
financial life of that country. With the Haitian govern-
ment refusing to yield, we have the Financial Adviser who
is, according to the Haitian-American Convention, a Hai-
tian official charged with certain duties (in this case the
Sept. 11, 1920]
The Nation
297
approval of the budget and accounts), refusing to carry out
those duties until the government yields to the pressure
which is being brought.
Haiti is now experiencing the "third degree." Ever since
the Bank Contract was drawn and signed at Washington
increasing pressure has been applied to make the Haitian
government accept the clause prohibiting the importation
of foreign money. Mr. Mcllhenny is now holding up the
salaries of the President, ministers of departments, mem-
bers of the Council of State, and the official interpreter.
[These salaries have not been paid since July 1.]* And
there the matter now stands.
Several things may happen. The Administration, finding
present methods insufficient, may decide to act as in Santo
Domingo, to abolish the President, cabinet, and all civil
government — as they have already abolished the Haitian
Assembly — and put into effect, by purely military force,
what, in the face of the unflinching Haitian refusal to sign
away their birthright, the combined military, civil, and
financial pressure has been unable to accomplish. Or, with
an election and a probable change of Administration in
this country pending, with a Congressional investigation
foreshadowed, it may be decided that matters are "too diffi-
cult" and the National City Bank may find that it can be
more profitably engaged elsewhere. Indications of such a
course are not lacking. From the point of view of the
National City Bank, of course, the institution has not only
done nothing which is not wholly legitimate, proper, and
according to the canons of big business throughout the
world, but has actually performed constructive and gener-
ous service to a backward and uncivilized people in attempt-
ing to promote their railways, to develop their country,
and to shape soundly their finance. That Mr. Farnham and
those associated with him hold these views sincerely, there
is no doubt. But that the Haitians, after over one hundred
years of self-government and liberty, contemplating the
slaughter of three thousand of their sons, the loss of their
political and economic freedom, without compensating ad-
vantages which they can appreciate, feel very differently,
is equally true.
The next article of the series will be entitled "The Haitian
People."
Poor Man's Music
By M. P. WILLCOCKS
HE is a spare man, as country postmen are apt to be who
have walked on an average twenty miles a day for a
matter of thirty years. In a cold wind he coughs and seems
to hug himself against the draught. But the fact he makes
you realize is the absolute simplicity of joy. In his case, and
it is a miracle of sixty years, it depends on nothing more
than a sensitive ear. He has tested the quality of all the
church-bells in the district and will stop, forefinger raised
and blue eyes alert, to make you understand that the fifth in
a certain peal is not true. True sound is his test of all
truth ; not only will he walk four miles to a nightingale copse,
but he can tell how the bird's note varies with the winds of
every different spring. He collects good nightingale years
as other men note vintages.
• See documents in International Relations Section.
Yet all his life he has lived on the edge of beauty with a
gulf of ugly circumstance between him and fulfilment. It is
strange, this sense of frustrated desire, that has but served
to whet his appetite, leaving him with a deeper bliss ahead.
For in a beautiful country, the Somersetshire flats, the land
of cloud-shadows that flit across a sea of green, with pol-
larded willows and the straight water "rhines" that glitter
in the sun, all framed by the blue Mendip distances, he lives
in the one ugly place, a town that once flourished on beer but
is now squalid with disused factories and tumble-down
cottages. In this part the women vie with Dutch housewives
and go down on their knees to wash the pavement in front
of their houses. Every day at Sam's home, whatever hap-
pens, and even when it is pouring, the day's work begins
with the scrubbing of the flags outside his door. For his
wife, Eliza, "cleans on the top of what's clean," and all his
life her efficiency has been Sam's law. With it they have
reared eight children, but all the time he has felt — and she
knows it — that she would have been happier with a husband
who could "knock up a fowl-house" in his odd times instead
of playing Handel or studying the scores of Father Bach.
Yet it was she who saved enough out of the housekeeping
money to buy him first a harmonium and then a piano for
that front-room parlor which in winter time is useless to him
because they can't afford two fires.
The best way to get to the heart of that household is to sit
down with Eliza of a late afternoon. The old living-room is
shadowy, deep-set, with thick walls and a low window. But
there is a big fire in the stove grate, with an iron kettle
hanging over it on a chain and a cat in a tight ball on the
rug. Eliza, who has just been out to feed the fowls, crosses
her firm hands at her waist and begins ; she is no eternally
knitting woman. Her face is worn and alert, but not tense,
because she has always been master of herself and so at ease.
She has the rigid figure of one who has borne many children,
but her tongue is wonderful. She sees pictures, and every
time she gives you the essentials. You are not surprised to
learn that she has begun to speak a bit at political meetings.
Her talk of old times comes first. It is all about barriers
and how you have to bring them down. For she started in
life as a pupil teacher in an elementary school — and her
father was a dissenter. And before she could rise in the
world into a full-fledged teacher with a career it was evident
she must be confirmed in the church. But her father was a
thinking cobbler, with another thinking cobbler for friend,
and the two friends would knock off work again and again
to dispute the point — to confirm, or not to confirm. Then
the vicar called and persuaded, threatened, coaxed; but the
cobblers downed him by eloquence. There should be no bow-
ing in the house of Rimmon for her father's daughter, no,
not for the sake of conquering the world. She was not con-
firmed, and so lost her step in life. But she is prouder than
an aristocrat of the stuff she comes from, and looks on her
life since as a sort of point-to-point race through Liberalism,
Cooperation, and Labor, with old liberal friends horrified
now at the way she has "upped" and gone with the times,
producing two socialist sons, and one of these a sucking
labor leader. She is for the open road, this daughter of the
cobbler.
Of Sam, her man, there is not a word except a bit of a
sigh that his health has broken early. If only he could have
held on a year or two longer, the pension from the Post Office
would have been so much bigger. One feels that, like poor
health, music in a husband is a thing to put up with. Not
298
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2880
that she says so. Instead, she talks about how they bought the
piano by instalments and not without an attempt by the dealer
to foist off a poor instrument on a workingman. It was Eliza,
not Sam, who at last got in a real musician to test that
piano. She always buys the best fruit for her jam, and she
chooses all extras, such as pianos and plays, on the same
principle. When they couldn't get the landlord to repair the
house, she sent for the mason herself and gave notice to the
landlord that he would get no rent till he paid that mason.
When she gives the cat his milk, she picks him up and holds
his head to the saucer, lest he should "finick" over his
victuals. The last cat had short shrift when he ate chickens,
and she sees nothing of her neighbors except when they
want advice in their troubles or want to borrow a shilling.
She it is, rather than Sam, who seems responsible for the
efficient sons. These have all a strong grip on fact, an
exactitude in statement, and a faculty of disentangling
things. Yet through them all there runs a strain of beauty
that is the rare finish of their father's nature. One son can
take a solo part in the "Elijah" ; another reads every modern
play he can lay hands on, poring over them in the hedge-
side on his rounds as a country postman. When Sam has
taken a cup of tea up to his missus in the early morning, he
always goes into the front room for ten minutes with Men-
delssohn, or Handel, or Bach. For years father's music has
been his children's walking-bell in the dawn. It sets him
ready, he says, for the humdrum day, this music in the
freshness after sleep.
With him his love of music is direct, unescapable. That
walk he once took along the Great North Road from New
Barnet through the Finchleys, Highgate, Kentish Town, and
King's Cross to St. Paul's with the glory of anticipation
before him is a great memory yet. But at the first notes his
heartbeats nearly killed him; it seemed as though heaven
were opening to a mortal, for he had been a country boy.
The traditions of his boyhood are of poverty, dull and grind-
ing yet dogged by fugitive impressions of beautiful sound.
It is of people that his wife always talks, of people and ideas
that even today are of incalculable strength in a changing
world. But Sam will never discuss how his son shapes as a
labor speaker. He lives, not in his children, but in himself,
so wonderful to him in his private domain.
His father, a Buckinghamshire laborer, had so many
children that for many years there was always a baby on
tap, so to speak. It was his father's habit to retire early
to bed every night, taking with him the baby of the moment
and there to sing with the child beside him, mostly old
church hymns. So came the dawn of consciousness to this
man of music — his father's voice singing Newton's Begone
Unbelief from the "Olney Hymns" to the tune called Han-
over. There was also "Not all the blood of beasts on Jewish
altars slain" and "All ye that pass by," by Charles Wesley.
The poor man, his father, had not in one sense much to give,
yet in another it was a royal gift when, in that one upstair
room, the family bedroom, he opened the gates of sound for
his boy. Of his mother he remembers little, except that she
was a silent woman.
The gates of the kingdom opened fully before he was four-
teen, in the magic time when manhood was awaking. At
this period he was a crow-starver, a boy who spent hours
a day with a clapper in the fields of seeding wheat to scare
the birds away. He earned at this three shillings a week,
and when his father was out of work he supported the
family on it. Often of a snowy day his father, coming up
to bring the child his dinner, would send him home to the
fire and take his place. But this was a sunny Sunday in
spring, with the winter wheat pushing. The boy lay in a
field half asleep, young warm limbs on warm earth with
life pulsing in both. The bells of several parishes were
going for afternoon service, and in the warmth of the wind
the sound came to him across the young green. And then
there sounded, so he says, in the air overhead, such music
as he had never heard before, such music as he never heard
again, as though a heavenly overworld had opened. Today
he quotes Comus when he tells the story.
I was all ear,
And took in strains that might create a soul
Under the ribs of death.
But he has never spoken to his children or his wife of this.
It is with him even now, after all these years, as though
one had accidentally felt the wind of a god's passing. And
although in words he puts as the cause of this experience
the church bells heard in a dreaming moment, in his heart
there lies another thought than that — of a divine world
opened for a second to the poor crow-starver and to him
alone.
One catches a glimpse of the boy he was when with fingers
stiff with labor he touches the keys of the piano, playing
Beethoven's "Hymn to Creation," or when he conjectures
that if all brains had been Unitarian in temper there would
have been none of the music and painting which has been
called forth by the worship of the Madonna. His wife takes,
him every Sunday to the Unitarian chapel. There is a cer-
tain bitterness in him at the stiffness of his fingers, and at"
remembering that his boy's voice was strained by shouting
at crows. It is a joy when at the local "pictures" the piano-
forte accompanist who knows him well strikes up the march
he has composed and called "The Postman." Up in the music
rack at the chapel, too, is a copy of a piece of church music
by him. But he is a poor man, and so the organist has never
chosen it to play. The other day he removed the score.
What he lives for is the sense of sudden freedom given
him by his music. His wife it is, not he, who broods over
human ties. She tells you of that strange afternoon when
her boy, who died in the war, was to go back after his first —
and only — leave. He fell asleep on the sofa by the fire and
as the hands crept nearer to the minute when he must start
for the station, she hesitated whether she should wake him.
And yet, if she did not
She woke him and on the Monday after he had gone back
to France, as they sat at tea, she was facing the little deep-
Contributors to This Issue
Harold J. Laski, now a professor at the University of
London, was for several years a lecturer at Harvard
and at the New School for Social Research last winter.
Hiram K. Moderwell is an American journalist now in
Italy.
Henry G. Alsberg has been correspondent for The Nation
in Europe for more than a year.
Mary Patricia Willcocks is an English essayist and con-
tributor to various journals.
James Weldon Johnson has been United States consul
in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and the Azores.
D. S. Muzzey is professor of history at Columbia Uni-
versity.
Sept. 11, 1920]
The Nation
299
set window. Suddenly, when her husband cried out, "Why,
mother, what's the matter with you?" she felt her face go
white and she burst out crying. She never told them at
the table, but what she saw was her boy looking in at the
window. He was killed on that Monday, and now, she says,
he is often about the house. They talk of leaving it some-
times, but if they do, I know she will feel he is gone even
further away than he is now.
Sam speaks of the same time, but what he talks of is how,
being off duty on the Sunday morning when the news came,
he met old Jem, the other postman, with the letter. As Sam
opened it, he thought it was from his son, so like was the
Sergeant's fist, and said : "Lucky dog, the boy is. He's not
had a wound and yet he's where a man hasn't one chance of
life in fifty." And then, looking up from reading what he
held, he said : "Jem, he's gone." Just like that. And Jem
said, "Never. You don't mean it."
But Sam said he never, at the time, felt it more than
that. He worried that he'd have to tell the boy's mother
and that it was a Sunday. How ever would they get over
the day? But he went back and called from the bottom of
the stairs : "Mother, something's wrong with Bert. . . ."
But she played the woman, he says, and they got through
the day somehow.
But as to whether he will ever see his son again, he doesn't
know. He doesn't think about that. Yet on the morning's
round, with all the country waking to new life, when he gets
thinking as to what the boy felt and whether he suffered
much and whether he thought of them all at home — "Why,
then it's often very hard to get down what stands for one's
breakfast. It seems so uncommon dry."
In the old days he used sometimes, when on the round, to
set about composing a Te Deum of his own. Or he would
boom through the lingering syllables of Grey's Elegy. But
now, for a time at least, the world of fact has closed round
him. He has a favorite saying: "The house of bondage is
never far off." And I'm afraid he says it most often when,
in the midst of music, the door opens and his wife comes in.
All the same, what he said first when they retired him
was: "And now I shall enjoy this spring, anyway."
In the Driftway
A STORY has been going the rounds of the European
press about Tangier and an international commission.
Since it concerns Tangier, the story is naturally picturesque,
and since it concerns an international commission, it is
inevitably a joke. Some years ago the commission was
created to name the streets of the city, and debated many
moons on a suitable designation for the principal thorough-
fare. The British representative proposed Shakespeare, the
Freneh delegate Racine, and the Spanish member Cervantes.
Time rolled by but each delegate remained firm, unwilling to
cede a point that would involve any loss of prestige for his
country. Finally an appeal was made to some neutrals, one
of whom, with a flash of genius, suggested Adam. It was
agreed. Adam seemed an individual at once eminent and
sufficiently international to wound nobody's pride and satisfy
all demands. So they had a metal plate made with the name
and bore it forth ceremoniously to christen the street.
Arrived at the principal corner, they were about to affix the
plate when they looked up — and discovered a sign there
already which said "Via Garibaldi." The Italians had named
the street a year or so previously, and the designation had
been known to and accepted by all the population except the
international commission. According to last reports, the
latter body had retired to its chambers, to resume its dis-
cussion of the claims of Shakespeare, Racine, and Cervantes,
with a view to picking out a name for the second most im-
portant street.
*****
WHEN last the Drifter was in Tangier that main thor-
oughfare, over the name of which the international
commission pondered so long and vainly, was a glory to trav-
erse. It twisted and turned up the hill from the pier, past
the Great Mosque, past the principal cafes, past the market
place, to the French legation on the heights. It was a mael-
strom of animation and noise, a mixture of men and beasts,
a motion picture reel of oriental life; but the Drifter could
never take in many of its details, for there was no sidewalk
and if one took his eyes for a moment off the path ahead to
fix them on an object at one side — wollop ! A load of bags or
casks protruding from some donkey's back would clout him
on the head and send him careening against the walls of the
houses or his fellow pedestrians.
*****
T was of wonderful breadth, that main street — fully
twenty feet. The other streets were not more than eight,
six, or even four. They wound and wound and wound, be-
tween houses nearly all coated alike with a whitish stucco
and with almost no windows on the streets. There were no
signs, and it took a wise man to find his way around among
these lanes between blank walls. On the day of his arrival
in Tangier the Drifter set out to visit the American consu-
late. Learning that it was only a minute's walk from his
hotel, he disdained the proffered services of a guide and
went forth alone. After more than an hour's search, during
which he was completely lost, the Drifter was thankful to
get back to his hotel. He deferred his visit to the consulate
until next day, when he was humble enough to accept the
services of a guide. Yet the Drifter is sorry to learn that
they are naming the streets of Tangier. To him they were
always a symbol of the oriental mind — uncharted, mysteri-
ous, and inscrutable. As the Moors themselves would say:
"Allah confound the Christians!"
The Drifter
Correspondence
Maxim Gorky, Brown, Hale, and Hearty!
To the Editor op The Nation:
Sir : Here is something strange. You will remember Bertrand
Russell's moving description of Maxim Gorky as he found him
in Moscow, mortally ill in bed. "Gorky is dying," wrote Rus-
sell. Subsequently he disclaimed any thought of holding the
dictatorship of the proletariat responsible for Gorky's ill-health.
But now comes a letter to the New Yorker Volkszeitung from
a correspondent in Russia, dated Petrograd, July 7, 1920, with
the following passage:
". . . And who should come along but Maxim Gorky, him-
self, big, brown, hale and hearty, broad-shouldered and whole-
some. We pressed hands. He urges me to come and see him.
» •
Many readers of The Nation will be glad to have this assur-
ance that Gorky is not so ill as Russell imagined.
New York City, August 25 Kenneth Durant
300
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2880
Passage
By ELIZABETH BABCOCK
A swallow cannot fly so far
In one whole day
As from your house to mine.
And yet, when I stopped yesterday —
The shadow said 'twas five o'clock —
To tie a little tumbled vine,
I saw your thought of me — a bird —
Flash by the yellow hollyhock.
A swallow cannot fly so far.
But in some strange, some winged way,
I was close-standing where you are.
And there the thought that I had seen
In the swift passing of a bird —
A gray wing in my garden's green —
I heard.
Books
A Studied Insult to Democracy
The French Revolution: A Study in Democracy. By Nesta H.
Webster. E. P. Dutton and Company.
OINCE the appearance, a dozen years ago, of Prince Kropot-
^ kin's interpretation of "The Great French Revolution" as
an agrarian proletarian movement, "the source and origin of
all the present communist, anarchist, and socialist conceptions,"
no book on this subject of perennial interest has come with a
sharper challenge to the educated public than Mrs. Webster's
volume. The author's thesis is substantially this: the Revolu-
tion was not a great popular movement for liberty, equality,
and fraternity, but a series of intrigues engineered by Orlean-
ist conspirators, joined with German anarchists, to thwart the
reforms which the enlightened Louis XVI and his generous
nobles and clergy had entered upon for the happiness of the
people of France. The English-reading public has been de-
ceived by the Prussianized Carlyle and by the novelists and his-
torians who have followed his lead into taking the Revolutionary
protagonists like Mirabeau and Danton at their own estimate
and making earnest with the hypocritical professions of demo-
cratic zeal with which they covered their venal treachery to
king and people alike. The Terror, instead of being an epi-
sode incidental to the tremendous disturbance in social and polit-
ical life caused by the necessary destruction of the old regime
and heightened by the danger of foreign invasion and counter-
revolution, was from the beginning the very principle of the
Revolution, and was itself the cause of destruction, war, and
anarchy. The Revolution produced nothing good — only eighty
years of unrest. "France had a far clearer conception of liberty,
even of democracy, during the years that precede the Revolu-
tion than in those that followed after" (p. 489). "It was not
ideas of liberty that the Revolution bequeathed to France, but
a legacy of bitterness, of envy, and of strife" (p. 490).
Before examining Mrs. Webster's defense of this astonishing
theory of the total depravity of the French Revolution, let us
acknowledge the undoubted merits of the book. It shows an
immense amount of careful study and is fortified on every page
with reference to authorities, mostly contemporary. The style
is fascinating, the temper sincere, and the argument (granting
the hypotheses) convincing. But there are faults of method,
prejudices of standpoint, and manipulations of material, which
make the book not only a most biased interpretation of the
French Revolution but one of the most mischievous and mali-
cious attacks on democracy that have come to our notice.
The fundamental fault of Mrs. Webster's book is the utter
ignoring of the abuses of the old regime. Six pages of a Pro-
logue to a book of over 500 pages are devoted to "the people
before the Revolution," and the burden of these pages is to
show that Louis XVI "had embarked in the work of reform
with the cooperation of Turgot and Malesherbes" when he was
suddenly interrupted by a great conspiracy instigated by the
Duke of Orleans, who wished to supplant him on the throne.
All the rest of the book is the history of this conspiracy. It is
a drama in five acts of mounting violence — the storming of the
Bastille, the march on Versailles, the invasion of the Tuileries,
the massacres of September, and the Reign of Terror. These
events have no roots in the generations of royal, ecclesiastical,
and feudal tyranny and obscurantism that preceded the sum-
mons of the Estates General; they are only the desperate plots
of a depraved noble of the blood, encouraged by Prussian
intrigue. The labors of De Tocqueville, Taine, Quinet, Droz,
Cherest, and a host of other scholars in exposing the abuses
of the old regime are passed over without notice. They would
be detrimental to the author's hypothesis that the Revolution
was the plot of enraged "subversives" against an enlightened
and progressive monarchy. Imagine writing the history of the
American Revolution in a series of pen-pictures describing the
Conway Cabal, the treason of Arnold, the flight of the Congress
from Philadelphia, and the Newburgh mutiny, with not a word
about the Grenville legislation or the Intolerable Acts!
Louis XVI "embarked on reform" with the help of Turgot,
says Mrs. Webster. The truth is that Turgot embarked on
reform with the promise of help from Louis — and was basely
deserted by the monarch at the instigation of the Queen, the
clergy, and the nobles. This is but a typical instance of Mrs".
Webster's perversion of facts. Her devotion to the court of the
old regime is so extreme that it leads her into ludicrous misrep-
resentations. The King undoubtedly was a kindly soul and a
man of private virtues, but he was dull, heavy, lazy, and reed-
less. In Mrs. Webster's pages he displays surprising knowledge
of shipbuilding (p. 28), he "carries out the principles of democ-
racy to their utmost conclusion" (p. 53), he "comprehends the
tangible needs of the people" (p. 139), he acts with "sound
common sense" in his relations with the assembly (p. 145), he
"knows his history well," and he is "the best geographer in his
kingdom" (p. 204). All this, and much more to the same effect,
is simply bosh. The Queen is portrayed as a noble patriotic
woman, whose one aim was to thwart the Prussian intrigues
to overturn the throne of France and break the Austrian
alliance. The clergy were men of "unbounded charity" (p. 47)
and "immense liberality" (p. 18) because the Archbishop of
Paris contributed his silver plate to help relieve the distress of
famine. No mention is made of Cardinal Rohan, Talleyrand, or
the Abbe of St. Croix. The refusal of the clergy to pay a
respectable fraction of their obligations to save the state from
bankruptcy is not thought worthy of notice. Mrs. Webster
passes by the persecution urged by the clergy under the old
regime and their proscription of the entire work of the scholars
of the humanitarian and scientific movement, but dwells at
enormous length on the pathetic scenes of their own suffering
in the massacres. She does not tell how the unspeakable
Lomenie de Brienne, after he was dismissed amid the execra-
tions and lampoonings of the nation, was loaded with honors
by the court — a cardinal's hat and a large pension for himself,
a coadjutorship for a nephew, a place in the Queen's household
for a niece. In short, Mrs. Webster ignores completely the real
causes of the French Revolution.
In her use of authorities Mrs. Webster, in spite of professions
of scientific impartiality, shows unwarrantable partisanship.
Aulard, the greatest of present day students of the Revolution,
is ignored. Louis Madelin is "occasionally referred to." If
the work of modern scholars were neglected only to give the
Sept. 11, 1920]
The Nation
301
right of evidence to contemporary historians of the Revolution,
there would be no complaint to offer. But among those contem-
poraries Mrs. Webster shows persistent preference for the royal-
ists. Sympathizers with the Revolution she finds conveniently
unreliable, but the royalist authorities like Montjoie, Beaulieu,
and Ferrieres she quotes at length. She confesses that Mont-
joie has a "violent animosity" toward the Orleanists, and that
"his accusations against them should not be accepted unless con-
firmed by other contemporary evidence" (p. xiii), yet again and
again she quotes his unsupported evidence for her statements —
or fortifies them from Ferrieres, "an anti-Orleanist," who
"throws an interesting light on the intrigue at work behind the
earlier revolutionary movement" (p. xiv). And this, in spite
of her acknowledgment that "to condemn an individual or a
party on the word of their enemies, or to absolve them on the
testimony of their accomplices, is as absurd as if one were to
accept evidence at a trial without inquiring into the identities
of the witnesses" (p. xi). But this was written anent the
accomplices of the Revolutionary leaders, and not of the cour-
tiers.
A fixed idea of the author, obtruded at every point of her
narrative, is the complicity of the Revolutionary leaders with
Prussia. Of course, at the present time the serviceability of
such a conviction in her readers to the establishment of the
theory of the diabolical nature of the Revolution is obvious.
The Jacobin Club grew out of the disciples of the German
Illuminati, whose program was the "overturning of religion and
government" (p. 191). The War of 1792 "was brought about
by the Girondins largely in the interests of Prussia" (p. 208).
"Of all the revolutionary legends, the legend of 'patriotic fervor'
displayed by the leaders is the most absurd of all [sic]"
(p. 247). It was not against the invaders but against the king
— the expert geographer king, who was "carrying out the prin-
ciples of democracy to their utmost conclusions" — that the people
were stirred up (ibid.). Valmy gives Mrs. Webster a momen-
tary pause, but she recovers quickly. Of course "the defeat of
Valmy was a superb victory for Prussia." For to have reestab-
lished the Bourbons on the throne would have been to open the
way to a renewal of the Franco- Austrian alliance (p. 352).
Mrs. Webster is too clever to be caught by any little trick like
Valmy. The net result of the mishandling of the King was to
bring the Prussian hordes into Paris in the end. "The 6th of
October, 1789, proved but the prelude to the 8th [18th] of Janu-
ary, 1871" (p. 171). Mrs. Webster forgets that the government
which fell before the Prussians in 1870-71 was just the most
successful copy of the old regime in its manifold "abuses" that
France had seen in the century.
In her anxiety to show that the Revolution had no justification
in the social and political condition of France under the old
regime and no real support from the people ("for in every
country the characteristic of the true people is hatred of inno-
vation"!) (p. 406), Mrs. Webster is led into strange contradic-
tions. On one page she makes the people the dupes of charla-
tans like Mirabeau, Danton, and Robespierre; and on the next
page she represents the king and the Constitution as borne like
an ark "in that mighty tide — the will of the people" (p. 256).
"The people," she says on page 116, "by calumny, corruption,
and terror, were made to work out their own destruction, to kill
their best friends, and to strike down the hands that fed them";
but on page 479 she says that France "was saved from internal
ruin and disruption, in spite of the Terror, by the indomitable
spirit of her people." Mrs. Webster's book purports to be "a
study in democracy," but in fact she has as little understanding
of the people as do most apologists for the rule of privilege.
She is interested in the beneficent court and in its diabolical
enemy, the Orleanist-Prussian conspiracy. The people serve as
the episodic chorus to one or the other of these protagonists.
There are very few slips in specific statement of fact. Mau-
repas was not "dismissed" but died in office in 1781 (p. 26) ; the
Tiers were not "informed that the hall must be closed to debates"
on the 20th of June, 1789, but assembled at the gates only to
find them shut and guarded by soldiers of the king's guard
(p. 48) ; Mirabeau did not "support the royal veto" a week
before his stentorian dismissal of De Breze (p. 50), for the dis-
cussion of the Constitution did not begin until several weeks
later; there was no "anarchic code known as the Constitution
de VAn //" "adopted" without further reference to the "desires
of the people" (p. 414). The Constitution de VAn I, which
Mrs. Webster has in mind, was submitted to a plebiscite and
adopted by a vote of 1,801,918 to 11,610, but was never put into
effective operation. Yet, however accurate in detail, Mrs. Web-
ster's book is misleading from beginning to end. It is founded
on a narrow prejudice in favor of the old regime. The king is
represented as a modern Saint Louis, sitting beneath his oak at
Vincennes to receive the petitions of his people (p. 370), whereas
as a matter of fact twelve Breton nobles who came to Ver-
sailles with a petition were thrown into the Bastille. Not a
courtier or an abbe is shown in an unfavorable light. On the
other hand, no opportunity is missed to present in the worst
light possible every revolutionary leader. There is a charac-
teristic bit of sophistry in the very motto inscribed on the title
page — St. Just's statement that "the popular revolution was the
surface of a volcano of foreign conspiracies." Every student
of the French Revolution knows that St. Just used these words
in an entirely different kind of apologetic from Mrs. Webster's.
It is astonishing that Mrs. Webster could write this encomium
on the old regime in France in the full twentieth century, and
it is more astonishing still that several scholars who bear well-
known names could have been "taken in" by her clever plea.
There was some excuse for Burke's Reflections. The immense
gains of the Revolution were not yet manifest in his day. But
even Burke was moderation itself in the judgment of the great
movement in comparison with Mrs. Webster. He only thought
the Revolutionary leaders "pettifogging lawyers" and "country
attorneys," bunglers who "set up a trade without the knowledge
to use their tools." Mrs. Webster makes them villains. Burke
saw in the frivolous Marie Antoinette simply a fairy figure who
should wake feelings of chivalry in any man. Mrs. Webster
elevates this pretty trifler, with the mentality of a manicurist,
into a noble patriotic woman standing between her country and
her country's implacable foe, the Prussian. Burke, in Tom
Paine's classic jibe, "pities the plumage and forgets the dying
bird." Mrs. Webster picks up the dying bird and wrings its
neck. The book is called "a study in democracy"; it is a studied
insult to democracy from cover to cover.
D. S. Muzzey
Cannan the Mystic
The Release of the Soul. By Gilbert Cannan. Boni and Live-
right.
T T is not unlikely that many, perhaps most, of the people who
■ read Mr. Cannan's new book will wonder what he is driving
at. A little of this bewilderment will be,, due to Mr. Cannan
himself; for when he passes over from the dramatic to the dis-
cursive a certain elusiveness invades his speech. His hand is
surer at the business of painting a portrait than at that of
stating an idea. In this book, however, the obscurity of which
the ordinary reader may complain is due chiefly to the subject-
matter. The mildest mysticism will be unintelligible to a gen-
eration which has gone to school with pragmatists; and in this
volume Mr. Cannan has gone (as they would say in Scotland)
"far ben." Moreover, the subject has no standardized idiom ; each
mystic has his own vocabulary, and you are never sure that he
is giving to a word the meaning that you are accustomed to give
it. Here, for instance, Mr. Cannan uses "soul" and "spirit" in
senses almost exactly the reverse of the familiar New Testa-
ment usages. Until one masters the mystic's private polariza-
tion of words and phrases, it is idle to expect his pages to be
302
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2880
easy reading. Beside all this, and of still more consequence, the
mystic takes you into a region which you cannot traverse — even
in his company — without the kindling of a sixth sense; and as
few moderns appear to possess this sense, or even to be aware
of its existence, the "reading public" will solemnly wonder
whether Mr. Cannan's mind is not beginning to give way.
Mr. Cannan will doubtless take this view of the case as a
sort of indorsement. For it is what another generation said
of William Blake; and Mr. Cannan would conceivably feel com-
plimented to find himself assigned to so good company. Mr.
Cannan is at bottom trying to do for his own time what Blake
endeavored to do for his. In the current pulpit idiom, both
men are concerned with proclaiming the primacy of "spiritual
values." Neither, perhaps, would recognize their message under
this description, yet it is in some such idiom that both will have
to be interpreted to the average man who despite his religious
indifference is still soaked in the evangelical ideology. There
is, however, a considerable difference in the precise content
that Mr. Cannan would give to the word "spiritual." According
to the evangelical tradition of the nineteenth century, we are
involved in a dualism, not to say an antithesis, of spiritual and
material. And this dualism Mr. Cannan in common with Blake
would deny. Blake once said that the body is that part of the
soul that we can see, and he might have gone on to say in
similar terms that the world is that part of the universe that
we can see. For the Mid-Victorian evangelical there were two
worlds, the world that is and the world that is to be, and the
problem of life resolved itself into one of making the best of
both worlds — of getting on in this world and getting safely
into the next. And his solution was simple — honest business
for this world and religion for the next. The two worlds were
conceived as being separated by a distance of time — two worlds,
as it were, in succession. But what Mr. Cannan would have us
realize is that the world of sense and the world of spirit are
one and the same, that really to live is to live in both at the
same time. It is perhaps inevitable that we should continue to
think and speak in terms of a dualism; and no great harm is
done so long as we realize that two worlds which may be dis-
tinguished in thought are inseparable in fact, that in spite of
appearance there is no real schism of spiritual and material in
life. But the present disintegration of life is due largely to the
domination of our minds by this dualism, and the consequent
tendency to mistake a part of the universe for the whole or to
deny one part of it in favor of the other. The mystic and the
philosophical idealist have tended to deny the seen, and the
practitioner of Eealpolitik and the man in the street have
denied the unseen. The true attitude is that which affirms the
reality and the unity of both, and sets out to realize the one in
the other.
Mr. Cannan draws a vivid picture of the unreality of the
world which men have fashioned for themselves to live in. He
apparently takes the Bergsonian view that the intellect, fash-
ioned to deal with matter, has got into the saddle and has been
able to determine the world of our common life. But from the
nature of the case such a world as the intellect would create
is only partial, and therefore disproportionate and distorted.
It is a world of perverse emphases and illusions, and the people
who live in it spend themselves in the pursuit of things that do
not and cannot satisfy them. It is purely a world of things,
and its governing philosophy is that a man's life consists in the
multitude of the things he possesses. The logic of this way of
life has plunged us into the abyss of war, and, seemingly, we
have learned so little from the bloody discipline of the last few
years that we have no thought but of reconstructing our Vanity
Fair as speedily as possible, and of building other and greater
Cities of Destruction. Meanwhile the nobler and more precious
part of life — the part that is out of sight and which Mr. Cannan
calls the soul — is sleeping away to death within us.
In "Pink Roses" Mr. Cannan makes one of his characters say
that life is a number of little things acutely realized. The
trouble of the modern world lies in the poverty of its faculty
of realization. If it could only find its soul, it would learn how
few things are after all needful to the joy and the fulfilment
of life. Mr. Cannan has written this book with the single pur-
pose of evoking the soul and turning it upon the world of men
and things so that a new world may be born, of enabling men
to recognize that the new world is already round about them if
only they had eyes to see it. At present the field of vision is
crowded with the peep-show of the politicians, the circus of
so-called statecraft, the tragi-comedy of militarism, the puppet
show of diplomacy, the farce of commercialized art, and the rest
of the make-believe that constitutes this sham we call civili-
zation. We shall hope in vain for any kind of new world worth
living in until some such miracle happens as Mr. Cannan de-
scribes; and what he has written does much to prepare the way
for the miracle. The book is one of those which must be read
two or three times over before its whole significance becomes
clear; but it is abundantly worth that trouble.
Richard Roberts
Labor's Lear
Labor and the Employer. By Samuel Gompers. E. P. Dutton
and Company.
UNDOUBTEDLY Mr. Gompers is the king of American labor.
Sections of the movement have outgrown him. Certain
unions, such as the Amalgamated Garment Workers, have swept
out beyond him. Some of the rank and file inside his Federation
are promoting ideas of which he does not approve. There are
liberal and radical elements which refuse his leadership. His
enemies find him an impediment in a time of rapid social change.
They allege that if the American Federation of Labor were
one more competitive concern, like a motor factory or trust
company, a concern of meager social importance in an over-
stocked world, then we could forgive this one strong man for
rigging his machine at the center, for drilling his pliable offi-
cials, for shaping the organization as the instrument of his
purpose. But, they say of the American Federation of Labor,
here is the only repository of the efforts and hopes of millions,
the one channel for their collective will. It ought to be theirs,
not his. And yet the fact remains that the opposition has not
produced an individual who can measure up to him. After all
has been said that can be well said about machine manipula-
tion, this seventy-year-old president remains in control because
he outweighs, outwits, out-debates those who would trip him
into oblivion. Mr. Gompers grew into power at a time when
American labor was distracted by numerous vague and small
industrial and political movements. His ideas received their
deep set from those days when he fought disruption. He
founded his Federation in a certain policy. He is now loath
to toss that policy into the melting-pot of a world-revolution.
"Labor and the Employer" shows Mr. Gompers in agreement
with the leaders of labor in Western Europe over perhaps three-
quarters of the fundamentals in trade union policy. Mr. Frank
Hodges would be proud to have written Mr. Gompers's chapter
on The Labor View of Profit Sharing, Efficiency Management,
and Industrial Democracy. Mr. Gompers and Mr. Matthew
Woll together admirably sum up the situation in this sentence:
"There has yet to appear the first employer or industrial-expert-
made 'industrial democracy' plan which contemplates the ex-
istence of trade union organization as the expression of the
workers' desires in the plant." But it is pathetic to drive
through these 311 pages by Mr. Gompers and realize how his
enemies waste his time in dispute on ancient matters. He
deals with the company store, the right of collective bargaining,
the eight-hour day, the open shop, the strike, picketing, profit
sharing, compulsory arbitration. Nearly all the book is con-
cerned with this elementary material. He leaves the great
solutions to the future (page 291). In this time of change
Sept. 11, 1920]
The Nation
303
he has nothing to offer but the values and standards of an age
that is dead. He ought to be freed for thinking out the prob-
lems of his day in the setting of his vast experience. When
he does let himself go, he has a fine rebel stroke:
"The lawyer and the courts have been two of the chief
weapons of this brand of men organized to destroy labor or-
ganizations. A third has been the private detective agencies."
"Big business owns most of the political bosses."
"In no country on the face of the globe is there such a re-
lentless disregard of the human race and of the workers of
the country as that which exists among the employers of our
nation."
President Gompers must often look longingly now across the
water to the British labor movement. It has no single leader-
ship, no executive center, no general philosophy. It is inco-
herent, stodgy, illogical. It lacks a machine, a steam-roller,
dutiful henchmen. But it is a mighty force. It slowly gathers
itself to take over the political and industrial government of
England. It has fifty men of outstanding ability. It has won
the rights for which American labor struggles. That Anglo-
Saxon movement of the workers was built on other lines than
those of the American Federation of Labor. It was built from
the mass up. It developed the individuality of its members.
It kept its communications open with the ideas of a new age.
It harnessed its idealists to the organization.
In his old age Mr. Gompers is left stripped. The most power-
ful social reaction in recent history sets in upon him. Em-
ployers mass to force the open shop. Enormous groups of the
unskilled remain unorganized. Inside the American Federation
of Labor wide spaces divide some of his international presi-
dents from the rank and file. His organization is torn by
"unofficial" movements and the winds of "unofficial" doctrine.
The staunch old man is a king without a kingdom. In his last
days he is beaten on by the storm. He is labor's Lear.
Arthur Gleason
Story Tellers of the North
Ditte: Girl Alive! By Martin Anderson Nexo. Translated
from the Danish. Henry Holt and Company.
Treacherous Ground. By Johan Bojer. Translated from the
Norwegian by Jessie Muir. Moffat, Yard and Company.
BENEATH all normal troubles and perplexities these story-
tellers of the North preserve a reflective evenness of temper.
They are impassioned but not eager, anxious but in no haste.
Yet they are not, in the Latin sense, impassive either, and Blasco
Ibanez's calling Bojer "a Maupassant of the North" is a bit
of shrill ineptitude. Neither Bojer nor Nexo adopts any fixed
artistic attitude at all; a simple humanness suffices them, a
clean and natural desire to see things kindly and yet exactly
as they are. One would never suspect from the novels of Nexo
that he is a socialist of the extreme left and editor of the
Klassenkampen of Copenhagen. Bojer is much more like Tolstoy
than he is like Maupassant, though equally without the Rus-
sian's towering genius and his excesses. Both men are after
truth in human terms, though their approaches to it lie very
far apart. Nexo is a sociologist and economist, Bojer a moral-
ist. They are probably capable of some bitterness toward each
other. But in the perspective in which we see them their
quietude of mind and natural objectivity of manner serve to
bring them closer together.
A single sentence in "Ditte: Girl Alive!" sums up in its limpid
clearness Nexo's final conclusions about life. "One could recog-
nize the Man family anywhere," he declares, "by their bad
qualities being traceable to definite sources, while for the good
in them there was no explanation at all; it was inbred." Some
such belief is, quite evidently, at the basis of all the modern
efforts to reconstruct society. It is not, as morose moralists
object, a foolish belief in the goodness of men, taking goodness
to mean definite and changeless kinds of conduct, but rather
faith in a certain general good-will and patience of people when-
ever they are not subjected to cruel and arbitrary forces. It
is these qualities that Nexo illustrates in his story. He does
not omit the shadows from his world. Sorine's crime is ter-
rible enough. But it is traceable to the definite cause of
poverty grinding down a morbid soul which is destroyed by the
false pride engendered in a social system in which possession is
the test of worth. On the other hand, there is Lars Peter with
his inexplicable courage and sweetness of temper despite his
harsh misfortunes; there is old Maren, who has a touch of
grandeur in her simple woes; there is Ditte herself with her
unfailing "natural piety" and loving kindness. The story
scrupulously avoids an artificial symmetry of structure and
follows, so far as possible, the rhythm of life. The firmness and
simplicity of the style shine even through an inferior trans-
lation. The book is admirably rich in the things and creatures
that fill these humble lives, and we are as familiar with Lars
Peter's hut and his old horse, Klaus, as were he and the children.
Ditte is constantly preoccupied, as she had to be, with questions
of food and gear. But this preoccupation never subdues a
flutter of the spirit that is in her. Like Pelle she is, in her
gentle way, a conqueror. We leave her here as she is about
to go out into service and brave a somewhat larger world. In
that keener and more vivid life we shall want to meet her
courageous and friendly soul again.
Nexo seeks the source of human difficulties in natural evil;
Bojer seeks it in moral evil. "Treacherous Ground" is the story
of a sick conscience that finds all expiation in the world of
objective reality ineffectual and vain. The central incident is a
classical and ever recurrent one. In one form or another it
appears in "Faust," in Tolstoy's "Resurrection," in Hauptmann's
"Rose Bernd," in Galsworthy's "The Eldest Son." Erik Evje,
the son of rich Norwegian landholders, falls in love with a
peasant girl. He wants to marry her, but his parents will not
permit the marriage. So the girl Olina bears a fatherless child.
Later she bears a second child by another man and this child,
like Gretchen and Rose Bernd, she kills and is therefore sent
to prison. Erik turns from God to science and from science to
the ideal of social reconstruction. His conscience is unhealed.
He returns home and seeks to expiate his sin by practical help-
fulness to the peasants of his neighborhood. But the lands and
houses he gives them rest on shifting quicksands and his
securest hope becomes his most violent disaster. His life, like
the lives of so many of Ibsen's people, was built from the
beginning on 'treacherous ground." The story, like all that
Bojer tells, has fine spiritual delicacy and a serene verisimilitude.
But one who, like Nexo, regards life with a larger vision and a
more controlled sobriety might make an impressive reply to the
tendency of the book. Whether Erik Evje and Olina, the
peasant girl, would have been happy in any high and humanly
fruitful sense had they been married is more than doubtful.
Galsworthy in "The Eldest Son" asks the same question and
answers it emphatically in the negative. Hence the wound in
Erik Evje's conscience was not caused primarily by regret over
the loss of Olina — nor does Bojer try to persuade us that it was —
but by his sense of responsibility for the moral deterioration
and subsequent misfortunes of the girl. But was not the respon-
bility for these to be attributed, in an at least equal measure,
to the attitude of a society that makes the unmarried mother
an outcast and keeps its charity for degradation that is legal-
ized? Erik did not want to harm the girl; the neighbors and
friends who forsook her and cast her off definitely did. They
took Erik's deed out of his hands into theirs. His expiation
was futile. But it was so because society had distorted and had
changed the whole and purely personal character of his original
sin and thus forced it to bear consequences that were neither
in the act nor in his mind. The moral idealist refuses to enter-
tain such considerations. The creative artist who, like Nexo,
has them at heart writes more solidly and largely and reaches
out beyond the dimness of his day.
304
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2880
Books in Brief
"rpHE LIMITS OF SOCIALISM" (Macmillan), by 0. Fred
*■ Boucke, is a critique of certain phases of Marxianism in
the light of present-day scientific conclusions. Most of the
familiar dogmas are passed over and attention is directed to an
examination of socialism as a promise of effective social reform.
The question considered is : Does modern science justify the belief
of Marx that socialism provides an adequate theory of demo-
cratic prosperity? Mr. Boucke is a competent student of Marx;
he takes the Marxian economics seriously; he pays high tribute
to the intellectual candor and encyclopedic equipment of both
Marx and Engels; and in spite of a somewhat meticulous criti-
cism he ends by accepting more than he rejects. When he leaves
the field of economics he is less convincing. His tediously long
examination of the doctrine of the economic interpretation of
history ends in a bog of rather obvious psychology through
which one flounders impatiently. Probably few careful stu-
dents would take seriously the author's low estimate of the
savings possible under an intelligent collectivistic regime, or the
narrow limits which he sets to increase in production. Discus-
sing the problem of agriculture, he makes the statement that "in
European countries the peak of productivity has long been
reached" — this in the light of what the war did to stimulate pro-
duction in England ! The book will prove rather stiff exposition
to the general reader, who will be annoyed at the needlessly scien-
tific vocabulary. Mr. Boucke is so engrossed with his science that
he seems to have forgotten his own pragmatic philosophy, which
should teach him that social philosophies may work in spite of
their disregard of current sociology. To vast numbers of men
and women today socialism is a gospel of hope, the single promise
of betterment in a world of sordid struggle; and a persuasive
battle cry is more potent to stir the blood than all the science
of the schools. Society will achieve prosperity when enough
men will it; and Marxianism, whatever may be the fate of its
economics, encourages men to will prosperity.
"T^IPLOMACY and the Study of International Relations,"
-■-' by D. P. Heatley, of the University of Edinburgh
(Clarendon Press), is one of those curious works of erudition
which only a British or a Continental scholar, as a rule, is
likely to produce, but the precise usefulness of which is not
quite clear. Mr. Heatley himself describes his book as an at-
tempt "to portray diplomacy and the conduct of foreign policy
from the standpoint of history, to show how they have been
analyzed and appraised by representative writers, and to indi-
cate sources from which the knowledge thus acquired may be
supplemented." A long first section, devoted in part to point-
ing out the failures and successes of diplomacy in the past and
the necessary place which it must continue to hold in the future,
assembles also a varied collection of opinions about the equip-
ment of the diplomatist, the methods he should use or avoid,
the preparation of dispatches, etc. Succeeding divisions in-
clude an annotated bibliography of important source collections
and other works in the field of diplomacy, an informing his-
torical study of the doctrine of British sovereignty of the seas,
a survey of the literature of international ethics, and numerous
extracts illustrative of diplomatic procedure. The particular
international questions raised by the great war are not gone
into.
PADRAIC COLUM has done a beautiful thing for children
in "The Girl who Sat by the Ashes" (Macmillan). Of all
the Cinderella tales of many lands this is the most poetic and
living. The story of Maid-Alone, as this Irish kitchen wench
names herself, is so exquisitely told that it should be pictured
with the same simplicity. Instead, the book is burdened with
a profusion of complicated swirls which the young reader will
probably remove with a pen-knife. Another celebrated char-
acter of the child world, whose adventures are admirably re-
corded, is "The Little Lead Soldier," now for the first time
translated from the Italian of Anna Franchi (Penn Publish-
ing Company). Italian children have long loved Tamburino,
whose travels brought the world into the nursery. The pictures
by Hattie Longstreet Price catch the spirit of this classic. Not
Italian but of Italy is Nannine La Villa Meiklejohn's story,
"The Cart of Many Colors" (Dutton). A gaily painted Sicilian
cart is here the vehicle for patriotic Italian propaganda, but so
many characteristic customs and scenes figure in the story, and
so many vistas of history are glimpsed in passing, that the
young American reader may establish a close contact with his
dark-eyed playmates overseas. Although one of the most invit-
ing books on the counters, "The Three Mulla-Mulgars," by
Walter De la Mare (Knopf), will be a disappointment to most
children. The illustrations by Dorothy P. Lathrop are stimu-
lating to the fancy, but as for the tale itself, a weariness of
detail, with many strange words and unpronounceable names
and very little story, makes the book a burden and not a pleas-
ure. The three-volume-novel style is ponderous for fairy tales;
Mr. De la Mare's delight in his own creation has blinded him
to the child's point of view.
"T7NGLAND under the Yorkists," by Isobel D. Thornley
1L
(Longmans, Green), is a source-book appealing to the
needs of various classes of scholars. While exhibiting to uni-
versity students the materials from which history is written,
the editor has printed a few new texts and edited others in a
style learned enough to instruct the most advanced master of
the period. The work is admirably done; all branches of his-
tory, political, constitutional, ecclesiastical, economic, and social,
are included. The material is taken from histories, memoirs,
treaties, letters, charters, and legal documents of all sorts. One
may read here the finely tempered comments of Comines, the
cool and admirable accounts of events by Polydore Vergil, Sir
Thomas More's narrative of the death of the princes in the
Tower, the lively correspondence of the Pastons, Celys, Stonors,
and Plumptons, and the records of momentous diplomatic con-
ferences and of church visitations. The idea that the sources
for this particular period are poorer than for the earlier Middle
Ages on the one hand and for the sixteenth century on the
other is mistaken. While the monastic chronicles declined in
volume and in value, their place was taken by a vast array of
new sources entirely unknown to the previous age. When once
the student has a thread on which to string data, there is no
better way than to send him to the sources. They present both
the liveliest and the truest picture of past times. A document
can distort facts, intentionally or unintentionally, but it can
never belie the spirit of the age that gave it birth.
T Ti 7" ALES, once a conquered province, now England's oldest
» » ally and partner, is brilliantly treated in "The Making of
Modern Wales: Studies in the Tudor Settlement of Wales," by
W. Llewelyn Williams (London: Macmillan). After the sup-
posed conquest by the Normans, between 1282 and 1542, "the
Welshery" — looked upon as inferior folk — were never pacified
until brute force gave way to justice. No Englishman's life
was safe forty rods away from his castle gate; while the coun-
try itself, with a population of about 125,000, was in chronic
anarchy, with feuds and intestine wars. When the Tudors, a
Welsh dynasty, occupied the throne of England, a constitution
was granted to Wales. This, in a generation or two, wrought
a veritable political miracle. In 1535 Henry VIII incorporated
Wales with England in an "Act for Laws and justice to be
ministered in Wales in like form as it is in this realm," declar-
ing that all natives of Wales should enjoy and inherit "all and
singular Freedoms, Liberties, Rights, Privileges and Laws with
Englishmen." The change for the better — as now seen in the
perspective of four centuries — was nothing less than startling.
The Act of Union created no long friction and dissatisfaction
Sept. 11, 1920]
The Nation
305
as it did later in Scotland. When the policy of Anglicization
through force was superseded by one which recognized the lan-
guage and respected the traditions of the Welsh people, with
their oldest literary inheritances in Europe, those people became
the most easily governed in the realm. The British in India
might well profit by the administrative example which is here
set forth.
«'rp HE MODERN READER'S BIBLE FOR SCHOOLS" (New
* Testament), edited by R. G. Moulton (Macmillan), is a
volume of 347 pages presenting the text, somewhat abridged, of
the Modern Reader's Bible, namely that of the English Revision.
The four Gospels are given in their entirety, the sayings of
Jesus being printed in a distinctive type. The Acts of the
Apostles and the Epistles are considerably abridged. In the
latter an editorial condensation is followed by a selection of
leading passages in the language of Scripture. For each portion
of Scripture there is an introduction written from the literary
point of view, occasional exercises in Bible study, and explana-
tory notes. The notes are in two sections — those on specific
passages, and general notes, in which such matters as demon-
ology, mystery-religions, and "the unpardonable sin" are dis-
cussed. In the notes the editor has utilized to some extent the
results of modern biblical scholarship, as in the explanations
of the meaning of the word prophecy in connection with the
Book of Revelation and of the symbolism of the gift of tongues.
On the whole the book seems admirably adapted to the purpose
intended — to provide a text of the New Testament with explana-
tions adequate and truthful yet thoroughly adapted virginibus
puerisque.
O ANDOLPH BOURNE was sorry during the war to see the
™ ^ universities drop their philosophy like something of which
they were very tired and contribute to a critical situation not
critics but contrivers, not valuable skeptics but indispensable
efficiency-experts. "Some War-Time Lessons" (Columbia Uni-
versity Press), by Frederick Paul Keppel, who left the deanship
of Columbia College to become Third Assistant Secretary of
War, is not a philosophical or critical book, though in another
way it is a sensible one. Mr. Keppel knows young men of the
average, patriotic sort, and knows them well; and he believes it
to have been good for them that they achieved a certain
solidarity of spirit under the stress of a great cause. Another
sort of young men he does not know so well. He is better aware
that the war made a great many useful and attractive citizens
than he is that it made a good many useful and not unat-
tractive protestants against the government.
"(~\ LD JUNK" (Knopf) is one of those volumes of prose
*-^ which are printed for no other reason than that they are
written well. A Foreword by S. K. Ratcliffe describes the
author, H. M. Tomlinson, as a London journalist who is in-
definably but indisputably a "London Saxon." Whatever Mr.
Ratcliffe's inspiration for the epithet may have been, Mr. Tom-
linson does plainly stand and converse in a manner that modern
America understands to be English. His accounts of Africa,
of the sea, of New York, of Britain, of the war, of rare and
obscure persons and places, are the work of an exquisitely edu-
cated man. Delicate and helpless in his gestures, he yet is en-
duringly accurate in imagination. His images are of that ex-
cellent variety which send your eye to the corner of the ceiling
for testing and reflection — and acceptance. He patently is a
survival from gentler times, when the machinery of life wa3
not so shiny or loud; but the discrepancy is registered in an-
gelically ironic smiles rather than in any kind of wail. His
stare envelops rather than avoids, and he writes a beautiful
book.
ALFRED * A * KNOPF
2ao W. 42 Street, NEW YORK
l*?*5>l!"?*5iI!^*5all^*5l'll6^»!!BllB?»?,H^S:*3Bll«5*5aII^*J«lla2*3*l
lt£»2s 1 1 a£»2a 1 1 ai'ii I 1 i&£>2a 1 1 ns*i 1 1 *£*2a 1 1 afrd I lns*a 1 1 bkms 1 1 Eras •
The following books will be published September 15:
PLACE YOUR ORDER WITH YOUR BOOKSELLER AT ONCE.
YOUTH and the BRIGHT MEDUSA By wnu Cath
Author of My Antonia, The Song of the Lark, etc.
THERE are not many living writers from whom a new book commands the attention with which each suc-
cessive volume of Miss Cather's is now awaited. There seems to be no disputing the fact that she is our
greatest living woman novelist. In the stories in the present volume she deals with youth's adventure with the
many-colored Medusa of art. Each tale is marked by the amazing ardor and restless energy of imagination
which is peculiarly Miss Cather's ; by a quick, bold cutting into the tissues of human experience and emotion
that makes each of them a new discovery about character and life. $2.25.
er
HAGAR'S HOARDS ,rhh T
*-»•■»- ^ George Kibbe Turner
The scene of this tale of an old man's greed and a young
man's love, is Memphis during the yellow fever epidemic of
1878. Mr. Turner excels in vivid characterization and sureness
of touch, and he has, in this novel, created a really dis-
tinguished piece of work. $2.25.
THE CONTROL OF IDEALS
By H. B. Van IVesep
This book aims to teach us how to "laugh a little at our own
ideals and hold them no less dear." It is written in the spirit
of a Nietzsche shorn of his madness but not bereft of his
insight. The author is a research worker in philanthropic
problems at the Rockefeller Foundation and his manuscript
was read and recommended for publication by the head of the
department of philosophy in a great university, an eminent
authority on politics and government and an intelligent lay-
man. $2.00.
THE FORERUNNERS
y Kahlil Gibran
"The Madman" and "Twenty Drawings" have won for
Mr. Gibran in the past two years the recognition in this
country that is due the national poet and novelist of the
Arabic-speaking peoples. The present volume continues the
vein of ironic symbolism of the earlier book. It is illustrated
with five fine drawings by the author. $1.50.
MLLE. DE MAUPIN %otMe Gautier
The third in the series of handsome reprints of French
classics with introductions by Burton Rascoe which Mr. Knopf
instituted last year. This book is uniform with Ma-'
Bovary and Manon Ltscaut. Printed on Warren's India Tint
Olde Style paper ; bound in black buckram with gold stamping
and gilt top. $4.00.
306
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2880
THE deadliest of several deadly superstitions about university
dissertations is that their authors must confine themselves
"within measurable limits" so as to be clear and incontroverti-
ble— as if there could be value in limited truth, or as if there
were limits to a competent reader's curiosity. It is with typical
timidity that Flora Ross Amos, in the preface to her "Early
Theories of Translation" (Columbia University Press), warns
against any expectation that in her survey of English transla-
tion between Alfred and Pope she has furnished more than a
reference book to theories — that she has turned any light upon
the relations between theory and practice. What she has done,
of course, is useful, particularly to those students of transla-
tion in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries
who have been somewhat in the dark as to precept in the middle
ages and the sixteenth century; but it is not interesting to those
who are concerned first and last with literary results in the
matter of translation.
Drama
Plays for a People's Theater
The Fight for Freedom. By Douglas Goldring. With a Preface
by Henri Barbusse. Thomas Seltzer.
Touch and Go. By D. H. Lawrence. Thomas Seltzer.
LONG before the war the Arbeitertheater was a firmly estab-
lished institution in Central Europe. Today, as Mr. Goldring
points out, the unifying ideas of the new world that is being
born express themselves fully and freely through the medium of
the theater in Russia, Germany, Austria, and Holland. He
wants England to do likewise. He wants to see the miners, the
transport workers, the postmen, and the police interest them-
selves in the establishment of a Labor Theater. It is an ad-
mirable wish and some day it will come true. But we must be
patient and not in our eagerness and passion for good causes
neglect to take into account certain national traits of decisive
importance. A typical German figure under the old regime was
the proletarian — janitor, printer, blacksmith — who starved him-
self to give his son a learned education — not the training of a
skilled mechanic or an engineer, but that of a philologist or
jurist. In this ambition there was a strain of servile snobbish-
ness; there was also an ancient and honorable respect for the
things of the mind. When this proletarian became class-
conscious he was no longer so anxious to have his son achieve
a doctorate. But to establish and fortify the personal worth
of himself and his class he took instinctively to Reklam editions
of the classics and to seeing the masterpieces of the drama on
the stage. He transformed his old self into new and nobler
uses. The tradition behind the British and the native American
worker is radically different. "The Fight for Freedom" has
already appeared in Die Weissen Blatter and been accepted for
production in Berlin and Vienna. What audience have we for
it here? Not the militant bourgeoisie of upper Broadway. Only,
in all likelihood, the Yiddish workers. And with them we are
definitely back in Central and Eastern Europe. Our native
theater, like the British theater which Mr. Goldring describes,
connects the word revolution with innovations in decorative
effects, not with those internationalist and moral ideas that,
amid hunger and disease and pain, are recreating the life of
the Continental peoples.
Mr. D. H. Lawrence, though no less preoccupied with world
conflicts than Mr. Goldring, desires the new theater to be free
of the fetters of any class and address itself to the basic human-
ity of all men. He is weary, as Nietzsche was, of functions
and officialisms masquerading as men; he wants the reintegra-
tion of characteristics into creatures for which Strindberg pleaded
long ago. He wants the dramatic struggle to be stripped of
the mechanical accidents that obscure it and to reveal the crucial
passions which, according to his notable distinction, transform
disaster into tragedy. And he, like Mr. Goldring, is full of
hope and of a beautiful ardor and of a vision of what the theater
can and shall be. In that vision there is pathos as well as ardor
and beauty. For "Tillie of Bloomsbury," by that redoubtable
patriot and warrior Ian Hay, having completed a triumphant
year in London, has just had a brilliant opening in New York
under the title of "Happy-Go-Lucky." Kind hearts are more
than coronets. The pauper is as good as the prince. But ah,
the prince marries the pauper and all the paupers become
princes, so that the doctrine of their equality need never stand
an ugly test in this best of worlds! And still the parlor Bolshe-
viks rage!
Meanwhile we have, as definite and permanent results of
this movement toward a people's theater, the printed versions
of Mr. Goldring's and Mr. Lawrence's plays. "The Fight for
Freedom" gives a dramatic picture of English society during
the middle of 1918. Captain Michael Henderson, home on seven
days' leave after eighteen unspeakable months in the trenches,
commits a sex atrocity. The Reverend Dean thinks it splendid
and manly that the brave defender of his country is willing to
make Margaret Lambert an honest woman. Margaret has risen
to the point at which she will not be married to a madman to
save her technical honor. But when her radical friend bids her
pity the poor fellow who, like so many in all the armies, has
cracked under an inhuman strain, and turn her hatred toward
those who made the war and kept it going, her middle-class
sentimentality is outraged and her fight for freedom collapses.
The dramatic embodiment of this fable is full of energy. A
voice rings through it, though not always the voice of the
characters. These are sufficiently but not profoundly there and
group themselves in slightly conventional attitudes and pat-
terns: generation against generation, conservative against radi-
cal. The conflict and tendency are constantly guided and in-
terpreted by a choral raissonneur. Yet this adherence of Mr.
Goldring to a proven theatrical pattern of the better kind may
possibly increase the play's chances of an early production and
hence further the spread of the ideas he has at heart. And
since from these ideas and these alone the new art of a new
and freer world can spring, his dramaturgic conventionality has
its ample practical justification to an extent rare in such un-
dertakings.
Superficially, "Touch and Go" may seem less credible and
more confused than 'The Fight for Freedom." Neither Mr.
Lawrence's ideas nor his dramaturgic methods are as firm and
clarified as Mr. Goldring's. The reason is that he is on the
edge of even fresher perceptions and subtler cognitions. His
tone is acrid, his characterization has moments of apparent
irresponsibility, but he cuts deep into the ultimate facts of the
soul's life. In the first scene of the second act there is a
conversation between Gerald Barlow and Annabel Wrath which
recalls Schnitzler in its avoidance of the external pointedness
of conventional dialogue and in its quiet penetration to the true
character of human contacts. Throughout, even in the scenes
that express the turbulence of the industrial struggle, there is
an absence of the falsely symmetrical and a projection of the
rich, impenetrable moods of men that presage the new art of
the theater for which Mr. Goldring can only clear the way. For
in that new art there will be less clash and more "creative
crisis"; there will be less struggle between people as they are
supposed to be or suppose themselves to be, and more dramatic
unfolding to themselves and to others of what they really are.
We are but at the outset of that vast voyage of discovery that
will chart anew the sea of the soul's life. But Mr. Lawrence
has started on that voyage and his play is full of the strange
vistas he has begun to see. Yet we must not underestimate
Mr. Goldring's bright certainty of execution in favor of Mr.
Lawrence's richer if dimmer texture. Neither play is a great
play. To us, at this hour in the development of our theater
and of the society it is to serve and express, both are important
and, indeed, precious.
LUDWTG LEWISOHN
International Relations Section
Why Haiti Has No Budget
AT the session of the Haitian National Assembly on
August 4, the President of the Republic of Haiti and
the Haitian Minister of Finance laid before that body the
course of the American Financial Adviser which had made
it impossible to submit to the Assembly accounts and
budgets in accordance with the Constitution of Haiti and
the Haiti-American Convention. The statement which
follows is taken from the official Haitian gazette, the
Moniteur of August 7.
Message of the President
Gentlemen of the Council of State: On account of unforeseen
circumstances it has not been possible for the Government of
the Republic to present to you in the course of the session of
your high assembly which closes today (August 4) the general
accounts of the receipts and expenditures for 1918-1919 and
the budget for 1920-1921, in accordance with the Constitution.
It is certainly an exceptional case, the gravity of which will
not escape you. You will learn the full details from the report
which the Secretary of Finance and Commerce will submit to
you, in which it will be shown that the responsibility for it does
not fall on the Executive Power. .
In the life of every people there come moments when it must
know how to be resigned and to suffer. Are we facing one of
those moments? The attitude of the Haitian people, calm and
dignified, persuades me that, marching closely with the Gov-
ernment of the Republic, there is no suffering which it is not
disposed to undergo to safeguard and secure the triumph of its
rights. Dartiguenave
Report of the Secretary of Finance and Commerce
Gentlemen of the Council of State: Article 116 of the Con-
stitution prescribes in its first paragraph: "The general ac-
counts and the budgets prescribed by the preceding article must
be submitted to the legislative body by the Secretary of Finance
not later than eight days after the opening of the legislative
session."
And Article 2 of the American-Haitian Convention of Sep-
tember 16, 1915, stipulates in its second paragraph: "The Presi-
dent of Haiti shall appoint, on the nomination of the President
of the United States, a Financial Adviser, who shall be a civil
servant attached to the Ministry of Finance, to whom the Secre-
tary shall lend effective aid in the prosecution of his work.
The Financial Adviser shall work out a system of public ac-
counting, shall aid in increasing the revenues and in their
adjustment to expenditures. . . .
Since February of this year (1920) the secretaries of the
various departments, in order to conform to the letter of Article
116 of the Constitution, and to assure continuity of public ser-
vice in the matter of receipts and expenditures, set to work
at the preparation of the budgets for their departments for
1920-21.
By a dispatch dated March 22, 1920, the Department of
Finance sent the draft budgets to Mr. A. J. Maumus, Acting
Financial Adviser, for preliminary study by that official. But
the Acting Adviser replied to the Department by a letter, of
March 29: "I suggest that, in view of the early return of Mr.
John Mcllhenny, the Financial Adviser, measures be taken to
postpone all discussion regarding the said draft budgets be-
tween the different departments and the Office [of the Financial
Adviser] to permit him to take part in the discussions."
Nevertheless, the regular session was opened on the consti-
tutional date, Monday, April 5, 1920. Mr. John Mcllhenny,
the titular Financial Adviser, absent in the United States since
October, 1919, on a financial mission for the Government, pro-
longed his stay in America, detained no doubt by the insur-
mountable difficulties in the accomplishment of his mission (the
placing of a Haitian loan on the New York market). Since
on the one hand the Adviser could not overcome these difficul-
ties, and on the other hand his presence at Port-au-Prince was
absolutely necessary for the preparation of the budget in con-
formity with the Constitution and the Haitian-American Con-
vention, the Government deemed it essential to ask him to re-
turn to Port-au-Prince for that purpose. The Government in
so doing secured the good offices of the American Legation, and
Mr. Mcllhenny returned from the United States about the first
of June. The Legislature had already been in session almost
two months.
About June 15 the Adviser began the study of the budget
with the secretaries. The conferences lasted about twelve days,
and in that time, after courteous discussions, after some cuts,
modifications, and additions, plans for the following budgets
were agreed upon:
1. Ways and Means
2. Foreign Relations
3. Finance and Commerce
4. Interior
On Monday, July 12, at 3.30, the hour agreed upon between
the ministers and the Adviser, the ministers met to continue
the study of the budget which they wanted to finish quickly
. Between 4 and 4:30 the Secretary of Finance received
a letter from the Adviser which reads as follows:
"I find myself obliged to stop all study of the budget until
certain affairs of considerable importance for the welfare of the
country shall have been finally settled according to the recom-
mendations made by me to the Haitian Government.
"Please accept, Mr. Secretary, the assurance of my highest
consideration, John McIlhenny"
Such an unanticipated and unjustifiable decision on the part
of Mr. Mcllhenny, an official attached to the Ministry of
Finance, caused the whole Government profound surprise and
warranted dissatisfaction. . . .
On July 13 the Department of Finance replied to the Finan-
cial Adviser as follows:
"I beg to acknowledge your letter of July 12, in which you
say, 'I find myself obliged, etc. . . .'
"In taking note of this declaration, the importance and gravity
of which certainly cannot escape you, I can only regret in the
name of the Government:
"1. That you omitted to tell me with the precision which such
an emergency demands what are the affairs of an importance
so considerable for the welfare of the country and the settle-
ment of which, according to the recommendations made by you,
is of such great moment that you can subordinate to that set-
tlement the continuation of the work on the budget?
"2. That you have taken such a serious step without consid-
ering that in so doing you have divested yourself of one of the
essential functions which devolves upon you as Financial Ad-
viser attached to the Department of Finance.
"The preparation of the budget of the state constitutes one
of the principal obligations of those intrusted with it by law,
because the very life of the nation depends upon its elabora-
tion. The Legislature has been in session since April 5 last.
By the Constitution the draft budgets and the general accounts
should be submitted to the legislative body within eight days
after the opening of the session, that is to say by April 13.
The draft budgets were sent to your office on March 22.
"By reason of your absence from the country, the examina-
tion of these drafts was postponed, the acting Financial Ad-
viser not being willing to shoulder the responsibility; we refer
you to his letters of March 29 and of April 17 and 24. Finally
. . . you came back to Port-au-Prince, and after some two
308
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2880
weeks, you began with the secretaries to study the draft budgets.
"The Government therefore experiences a very disagreeable
surprise on reading your letter of July 12. It becomes my
duty to inform you of that disagreeable surprise, to formulate
the legal reservations in the case, and to inform you finally that
you bear the sole responsibility for the failure to present the
budget in due time.
"Fleury Fequiere, Secretary of Finance"
On July 19, Mr. Bailly-Blanchard, the American Minister,
placed in the hands of the President of the Republic a memo-
randum emanating from Mr. Mcllhenny, in which the latter
formulates against the Government complaints sufficient, ac-
cording to him, to explain and justify the discontinuance of the
preparation of the budget, announced in his letter of July 12.
Memorandum of Mr. Mcllhenny
I had instructions from the Department of State of the United
States just before my departure for Haiti, in a passage of a
letter of May 20, to declare to the Haitian Government that it
was necessary to give its immediate and formal approval:
1. To a modification of the Bank Contract agreed upon by
the Department of State and the National City Bank of New
York.
2. To the transfer of the National Bank of the Republic of
Haiti to a new bank registered under the laws of Haiti to be
known as the National Bank of the Republic of Haiti.
3. To the execution of Article 15 of the Contract of With-
drawal, prohibiting the importation and exportation of non-
Haitian money, except that which might be necessary for the
needs of commerce in the opinion of the Financial Adviser.
4. To the immediate vote of a territorial law which has been
submitted to the Department of State of the United States and
which has its approval.
On my arrival in Haiti I visited the President with the Ameri-
can Minister and learned that the modifications of the bank con-
tract and the transfer of the bank had been agreed to and the only
reason why the measure had not been made official was because
the National City Bank and the National Bank of Haiti had
not yet presented to the Government their full powers. He
declared that the Government did not agree to the publication of
a decree executing the Contract of Withdrawal because it did
not consider that the economic condition of the country justified
it at that time. To which I replied that the Government of the
United States expected the execution of Article 15 of the Con-
tract of Withdrawal as a direct and solemn engagement of the
Haitian Government, to which it was a party, and I had in-
structions to insist upon its being put into execution at
once. . . .
The Counter Memoir
To this memorandum the Executive Authority replied by a
counter memoir which read in part as follows:
"The modifications proposed by the Department of
State [of the United States] to the bank contract, studied by
the Haitian Government, gave rise to counter propositions on
the part of the latter, which the Department of State would not
accept. The Haitian Government then accepted these modifica-
tions in nine articles in the form in which they had been con-
cluded and signed at Washington, on Friday, February 6, 1920,
by the Financial Adviser, the Haitian Minister, and the
[Haitian] Secretary of Finance. But when Messrs. Scarpa and
Williams, representing respectively and officially the National
Bank of Haiti and the National City Bank of New York, came
before the Secretary of Finance for his signature to the papers
relative to the transfer of the National Bank of Haiti to the
National City Bank of New York, the Secretary of Finance
experienced a disagreeable surprise in finding out that to Ar-
ticle 9 of the document signed at Washington, February 6,
1920, and closed as stated above, there had been added an
amendment bearing on the prohibition of non-Haitian money.
The Secretary could only decline the responsibility of this added
paragraph of which he had not the slightest knowledge and
which consequently had not been submitted to the Government
for its agreement. It is for this reason alone that the agree-
ment is not signed up to this time The Government does not
even yet know who was the author of this addition to the
document to which its consent had never been asked."
Today, gentlemen, you have come to the end of the regular
session for this year. Four months have run by without the
Government being able to present to you the budget for 1920-
1921. . . . Such are the facts, in brief, that have marked
our relations recently with Mr. Mcllhenny. . . .
Fleury Fequiere, Secretary of Finance
The Businessmen's Protest
THE protest printed below, against Article 15 of the Con-
tract of Withdrawal, was sent to the Haitian Secretary
of Finance on July 30.
The undersigned bankers, merchants, and representatives of
the various branches of the financial and commercial activities
in Haiti have the honor to submit to the high appreciation of
the Secretary of State for Finance the following consideration:
They have been advised from certain sources that pressing
recommendations have been made to the Government of Haiti.
1. That a law be immediately voted by which would be pro-
hibited the importation or exportation of all money not Haitian,
except that quantity of foreign money which, in the opinion of
the Financial Adviser, would be sufficient for the needs of com-
merce.
2. That in the charter of the Banque Nationale de la Re-
publique d'Haiti there be inserted an article giving power to the
Financial Adviser together with the Banque Nationale de la
Republique d'Haiti to take all measures concerning the importa-
tion or exportation of non-Haitian monies.
The undersigned declare that the adoption of such a measure,
under whatever form it may be, would be of a nature generally
contrary to the collective interests of the Haitian people and
the industry of Haiti. It would be dangerous to substitute the
will of a single man, however eminent he might be, however
honorable, however infallible, for a natural law which regulates
the movements of the monetary circulation in a country.
It would be more dangerous yet to introduce in the contract of
the Banque Nationale de la Republique d'Haiti a clause which
would assure this establishment a sort of monopoly in the
foreign money market, which constitutes the principal base of
the operations of high commerce, when it has already the ex-
clusive privilege of emission of bank notes. Such a clause would
make of all other bankers and merchants its humble tributaries,
obeying its law and its caprices. ...
(Signed) The Royal Bank of Canada; American Foreign
Banking Corporation; Haitian American Sugar Co.;
Raporel S.S. Line; P. C. S.; Electric Light Co.; Panama
Line; Ed. Esteve & Co.; Clyde Line; Comptoir Commercial;
Gebara & Co.; Alfred Vieux; V. G. Makhlouf; N. Silvera;
Simmonds Freres; Roberts, Dutton & Co.; West Indies Trad-
ing Co.; J. Fadoul & Co.; R. Brouard; A. de Matteis & Co.;
J. M. Richardson & Co.; Comptoir Francais; H. Dereix; e'.
Robelin; F. Cheriez; I. J. Bigio, and Geo. H. MacFadden.'
"By Order of the American Minister"
CORRESPONDENCE regarding the refusal of the
Financial Adviser of Haiti, an American, but an official
of the Haitian Department of Finance, to pay the salaries
for the month of July, 1920, of the President and certain
other officials of the Haitian Republic, revealing that the
Sept. 11, 1920]
The Nation
309
action was taken by order of the American Minister to
Haiti, without explanation and without authority in the
Haitian Constitution or in the Haiti-American Convention,
was printed in the Moniteur for August 14.
I.
Port-au-Prince, August 2, 1920.
Mr. A. J. Maumus, Receiver General of Customs
In accordance with the suggestion made to the Financial
Adviser on July 24, your office began on the morning of July 30
to pay the salaries for that month to the officials and public
employees at Port-au-Prince.
Nevertheless up to this morning, August 2, no checks have
been delivered to His Excellency the President of the Republic,
the secretaries of the various departments, the state councilors,
and the palace interpreter.
In calling your attention to this fact I ask that you will please
inform me of the reasons for it.
Fleury Fequiere, Secretary of Finance.
II.
Port-au-Prince, August 2, 1920.
To the Secretary of Finance and Commerce
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of
August 2 in which you ask this office to inform you regarding
the reasons for the non-delivery, up to the present time, of the
checks for His Excellency the President of the Republic, for
the departmental secretaries, the state councilors, and the
palace interpreter, for the month of July.
In reply this office hastens to inform you that up to the pres-
ent time it has not been put in possession of the mandates and
orders regarding these payments.
A. J. Maumus, Receiver General.
III.
Port-au-Prince, August 2, 1920.
To the Financial Adviser
The Department of Finance, informed that checks for His
' Excellency the President of the Republic, the departmental
secretaries, the state councilors, and the palace interpreter had
not been delivered up to this morning, August 2, reported the
fact to the Receiver General of Customs asking to be informed
regarding the reasons. The Receiver General replied immedi-
ately that the delay was due to his failure to receive the neces-
sary mandates and orders. But these papers were sent to you
by the Department of Finance on July 21, and were returned
by the payment service of the Department of the Interior on
July 26, a week ago.
I inclose copies of the note from the Department of Finance
to the Receiver General, and of Mr. Maumus's reply.
I should like to believe that bringing this matter to your
attention would be sufficient to remedy it.
Fleury Fequiere, Secretary of Finance.
IV.
Port-au-Prince, August 5, 1920.
To the Secretary of Finance and Commerce
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of
August 2, regarding the delay in payment of the salaries of
the President of the Republic, secretaries, and state councilors.
In reply I have the honor to inform you that the payment
of these salaries has been suspended by order of the American
Minister until further orders are received from him.
J. McIlhenny, Financial Adviser.
Port-au-Prince, August 10, 1920.
To the Financial Adviser
I acknowledge receipt of your note of August 5 in reply to
mine of August 2 asking information regarding the reasons
for your non-payment of the salaries for last July due to His
Excellency the President of the Republic, the secretaries, and
state councilors, and the palace interpreter.
I note the second paragraph of your letter, in which you
say, "In reply, etc."
I do not know by what authority the American Minister can
have given you such instructions or by what authority you
acquiesced. The non-payment of the salaries due the members
of the Government constitutes a confiscation vexatious for them
and for the entire country. It is not the function of this de-
partment to judge the motives which led the American Minister
to take so exceptionally serious a step; but it is the opinion
of the Government that the Financial Adviser, a Haitian official,
was not authorized to acquiesce.
Fleury Fequiere, Secretary of Finance.
VI.
Port-au-Prince, August 5, 1920.
Mr. A. Bailly-Blanchard, American Minister
I have the honor to inform Your Excellency that the offices
of the Financial Adviser and of the Receiver General have not
yet delivered the checks for the July salaries of His Excellency
the President of the Republic, of the secretaries, state council-
ors, and palace interpreter, although all other officials were
paid on July 30.
The Secretary of Finance wrote to the Receiver General ask-
ing information on the subject, and was informed that he had
not received the necessary mandates and orders. The fact of
the non-delivery of the checks and the reply of the Receiver
General were then brought to the attention of the Financial
Adviser, who has not yet replied.
In informing your Legation of this situation, I call the atten-
tion of Your Excellency to this new attitude of the Financial
Adviser, a Haitian official, to the President of the Republic and
the other members of the Government, an attitude which is an
insult to the entire nation.
J. Barau, Secretary of Foreign Affairs.
VII.
Port-au-Prince, August 6, 1920.
Mr. A. Bailly-Blanchard, American Minister
I have the honor to inclose a copy of a note from the Financial
Adviser to the Secretary of Finance, replying to a request for
information regarding the non-payment of checks. .
In his reply the Financial Adviser informs the Department
of Finance that "the payment of these salaries has been sus-
pended by order of the American Minister until further orders
are received from him."
My Government protests against this act of violence which is
an attack upon the dignity of the people and Government of
Haiti.
J. Barau, Secretary of Foreign Affairs.
VIII.
Port-au-Prince, August 6, 1920.
Mr. J. Barau, Secretary of Foreign Affairs
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of Your Excel-
lency's note under date of August 5.
In reply I have to state that the action of the Financial
Adviser therein referred to was taken by direction of this
Legation.
A. Bailly-Blanchard, American Minister.
IX.
Port-au-Prince, August 7, 1920.
Mr. A. Bailly-Blanchard, American Minister
In reply to my letter of August 5 in which I had the honor
to inform Your Excellency of the non-payment of checks, . . .
Your Excellency informs me that it is by direction of the
Legation of the United States that the Financial Adviser acted.
My Government takes note of your declaration.
J. Barau, Secretary of Foreign Affairs.
310
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2880
The Concession of the National City Bank
SIMULTANEOUSLY with the non-payment of the July
salaries of the President and other officials of the
Haitian Republic, the Haitian Minister of Finance received
from the Financial Adviser, an American, nominally a
Haitian official, but acting under instructions from the
American Government, the following letter urging imme-
diate ratification of a modified form of agreement between
the United States Department of State and the National
City Bank of New York. It was widely assumed in Haiti
that this letter supplied the key to the unexplained non-
payment of salaries, ordered by Mr. A. Bailly-Blanchard,
the American Minister. The letter was printed in the
Moniteur for August 14.
Port-au-Prince, August 2, 1920
To the Secretary of Finance
I have the honor to inform you that I have been instructed
by my Government that in view of the continual delay in obtain-
ing the consent of the Haitian Government to the transfer to the
new bank of the modified concession as agreed upon between
the Government of the United States and the National City
Bank, the Government of the United States has agreed to let the
operations of the National Bank of the Republic of Haiti con-
tinue indefinitely on the French contract at present existing,
without amendment.
I desire urgently to draw your attention to the fact that it
would be most desirable in the interest of the Haitian people
that the Government of Haiti should give its immediate con-
sent to the proposed modifications of the contract and to accept
the transfer of the bank rather than see the present contract
continue with its present clauses.
John McIlhenny, Financial Adviser
ALICE KAUSER
1402 BROADWAY
NEW YORK
DRAMATISTS' AGENT— PLAYS
ESTABLISHES 18*1
Motion Picture Department
R. L. GIFFH3N, Associate MaMffer
Kate CHare's Prison Letters, 25c.
They take you with her every step of the way. What she went
through, you can also experience by reading this epoch-making book.
APPEAL TO REASON, GIRARD, KANSAS.
Obey the Laws
Obey the laws of health and you can laugh old age to scorn.
Pyle's Personal Hygiene
tells you what these laws are and how to follow them. It
is more than a personal hygiene; more than a safeguard
against sickness — it is a guide back to vigorous health. —
$2.00.
At Bookstores or
W. B. SAUNDERS COMPANY
BANKS OF NEW YORK
OUR COPYRIGHTED BOOKLET
describing the attractive features of
an investment in the shares of New York's
great banking institutions will be sent free
on request.
VON POLENZ & CO., Inc.
60 Broadway New York
Telepk»ne Bowling Green 4320-4
RATIONAL LIVING
Editor: BENZION LIBER, M.D., D.P.H.
Health Conservation — Social Hygiene — In-
dustrial Hygiene — Personal and Intimate Hy-
giene— Child Hygiene — Plain, Drugless Treat-
ment of Disease — Birth Control — All Truths
from all Medical Schools — Fighting Dishonesty -
in the Healing Professions— Answers to Sub-
scribers' Questions.
Rational Living will be an independent illustrated
magazine devoted to the teaching of rational meth-
ods of living, an educational guide for manual and
mental workers of both sexes. It will teach you
how to live in order to avoid disease, how and what
to eat, how to take care of your home and your
children. It will advise organized labor as to sani-
tary conditions in shops and will study occupational
and professional diseases. It will not be sensational.
It will have in view the plain ordinary people, and
not the extraordinary athlete. It will be edited in
a simple clear English. It will be scientific, but
popular. It will be a work of love for a great cause.
It will take none but reliable advertisements. No
sale of single copies. It will appear in November,
Subscribe now. — Subscription price, until Novem-
ber 15, four dollars a year. Corresponding rates
for shorter periods. Address
RATIONAL LIVING, 61 Hamilton Place, New York City
LABOR
Some of its achievements, and plana fer
the future, are presented In the three
pamphlets:
Reconstruction Programme of the
British Labor Party 15c.
("Towards a Nrw World")
Majority and Minority Reports of Coal
Industry Commission of Great Britain
25c.
Decrees and Constitution of Soviet
Russia 25c.
Get those at your bookshop, sr direct
from
The Nation Press, Inc.
20 Vesey Street
New York
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1920
No. 2881
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 311
EDITORIALS:
"Don't Throw Away Your Vote" 314
Democracy in Banking 315
Emigrants and Immigrants . 316
Our Musical Riches 316
Terpsichore as Missionary 317
NATIONALIZED POWER. By Herbert Hoover 318
SOCIAL REFORMS IN SOVIET RUSSIA. By Henry G. Alsberg 319
POLAND AND THE ENTENTE. By Robert Dell 321
NEW ENGLAND AND THE NOVEL. By Robert Herrick 323
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 325
CORRESPONDENCE 325
FROM AN ISLAND. By Leonora Speyers 326
BOOKS:
Dynamic Symmetry. By David Eugene Smith 326
A Guide to Russian Literature. By Jacob Zeitlin 327
The Household Art. By R. P. Utter 328
A Model for a World Court. By Thomas Reed Powell 329
Sic Transit 329
Books in Brief 330
DRAMA:
An Evening at the Movies. Ludwig Lewisohn 332
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION:
The Zionist National Conference 333
The Future of Palestine 334
Industrial Prospects in Palestine 334
The Anglo-French Oil Agreement 334
Quaker Messages 335
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER LEWIS S. GANNETT
LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Adress: Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising: Swathmore Press, Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
SENATOR MOSES'S triumphant renomination in New
Hampshire has rightly cast down the spirits of the
proponents of the League of Nations. He was to have been
turned down by an indignant rising of Republicans, plus
the newly enfranchised women voters, who were supposed
to be waiting to take revenge upon him for his steadfast
opposition to woman suffrage. The issue was plain, for,
being a "bitter-ender," Senator Moses stuck to his guns —
it will be remembered that he was the first Senator to de-
nounce the Treaty of Versailles not only for the Covenant,
but for its plain violation of the dictates of humanity and
of our national honor, pledged when the armistice was
granted. It should have been easy, therefore, to raise the
cry of pro-German against him. But all the attacks failed;
there was no such rush to punish him as was said to have
marked the defeat of Senator Gore in Oklahoma. All of
Franklin Roosevelt's profound certainty that the woman-
hood of America is for the League proved to be bosh in
New Hampshire, as it is likely to turn out elsewhere. Nat-
urally the Democratic press is more than ever appalled at
the size of the campaign fund the Republican? have tried
to raise — and they themselves would be raising if they could.
IN Georgia Thomas Watson, the "demagogue" and inciter
of bitter racial feuds, found straight-cut opposition to
Wilson and to the whole treaty the road to the greatest
success of his checkered career. Indicted during the war
for his opposition to it, his newspaper suppressed, with the
hatred of the White House and the Department of Justice
centered upon him, he yet polled more votes than his three
opponents combined. The American Legion unitedly at-
tacked him; his war record was daily set forth; the most
powerful newspapers of the State opposed him — still he de-
nounced Wilson, the war, and the treaty; and the electorate
not only nominated Watson to the Senate, but picked ex-
Senator Hardwick to be its next Governor — although Mr.
Hardwick, in addition to his opposition to the war when
Senator, recently had the temerity to defend Martens, the
Bolshevik envoy. As for the defeat of Hoke Smith, it is
well merited. The last survivor in public life of Cleveland's
Cabinets, he never hesitated to prostitute his marked talents
and his intellect to further his advancement. To conquer
in elections he stooped to abuse and vilify the Negro like a
Tillman or a Blease. Probably at heart opposed to the war,
he went along with Mr. Wilson and continued his compro-
mising when the treaty appeared, taking the reservationist
standpoint. In this campaign he tried a final straddle of
half supporting Wilson — to meet his proper reward. His
retirement makes for political honesty and sincerity. Thus
the outcome in Georgia appears to prove the reports that
continually reach us from the South that in no other sec-
tion are Mr. Wilson, his war, and his post-bellum works in
such disfavor.
}N Wisconsin, too, there has been a recovery from the war
madness, for two Republican anti-war Congressmen,
Cooper and Nelson, who lost their seats two years ago, have
won nominations. The metropolitan press announces that
the renomination of Senator Lenroot presages the end —
for the twentieth time — of La Follette's influence in that
State. This seems rather singular in view of the fact that
La Follette's candidate for Governor won the nomination
and that at least three Congressional nominations were
wrested from the regulars by the La Follette-Nonpartisan
League combination, among them Representative Esch, co-
author with Senator Cummins of the railroad law, who was
defeated by an alliance of the forces of the American Fed-
eration of Labor, the Brotherhoods, and the La Follette fol-
lowers. One would think that any man who had achieved
as much as this in one election, when he was himself too
weak or too ill to campaign, might be well content with his
achievement. We are assured that Mr. J. J. Blaine, who
has won the gubernatorial nomination, is — as we were told
of La Follette when first he became Governor — a wild radi-
cal, certain to upset the whole basis of society. We hope
he is radical. We hope that there is at least one Governor
in sight who will dare to do a little thinking, who will break
away from the war's dark reaction and will have some new
ideas and economic theories to advance. As for Senator
Lenroot, his renomination brings no balm to the pro-
312
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2881
Leaguers, for he, too, is a reservationist, whom events may
easily push into a position of greater antagonism, if, for in-
stance, Senator Harding, having boxed the compass once
more, should join Senator Lodge in saying that "we ought
not to accept any covenant which in any way could be made
to carry out Mr. Wilson's purposes."
OUR State Department has seized the moment of Obre-
gon's peaceful election to the presidency of Mexico,
with its promise of more settled conditions, to roil the
waters with what is understood to be a protest against a
continuation of the "confiscatory policy" put into effect
against American oil interests by the Carranza Govern-
ment. This "confiscatory policy" was merely an assertion
of the right of Mexico to control her natural resources in
the interest of Mexicans, or what was once described in cer-
tain famous Fourteen Points by the President of a neigh-
boring republic as "self-determination." After making its
protest, the State Department sought to minimize its im-
portance and convey the impression that it was informal
and required no answer. A dispatch from Mexico City,
however, said that the reason there would be no answer
was because the communication was couched in such terms
that the Mexican Government would not accept or acknowl-
edge it. The State Department would have Mexico under-
stand that she has got to be good — or even better than that.
But it is doubtful if Mexico will be allowed to be good
enough to silence the demand for intervention ; not if Ameri-
can oil interests can help it.
SOME of these European ministers seem to be named to
fit their jobs. Here is Mr. Grabski, Polish Minister of
Finance, coolly inviting the United States to buy more hun-
dred million dollar toys for the Polish baby to smash. "Un-
less the United States has $169,000,000 to throw away," he
is quoted as saying, "she will have to continue patiently
lending financial and economic assistance, and perhaps even
military aid, until the Red menace is entirely crushed. For
the present there is no possibility of an early repayment of
the huge sums we owe the United States." And in the
future, we may ?dd, there is little likelihood of even a de-
ferred repayment. The American people might just as well
write down the various secret advances to Poland as money
staked on a lame horse; and a wise gambler doesn't bet
twice on the same bad ankle even when it looks well ban-
daged. Mr. Grabski's grab will not be successful if our
government gamblers are forced to publish their bets, and
the Republicans have a splendid chance to insist upon pub-
licity. Meanwhile that other aptly-named statesman, Baron
Wrangel, continues wrangling. Apparently he is in serious
difficulties with the Kuban Cossacks. An interesting echo
of his previous wrangling has come to light; the Populaire
of Paris discovers that when Wrangel was intriguing for
leadership under Denikin, the French Government, now his
stoutest supporter, urged Denikin not to confide any impor-
tant post to Wrangel because of his pro-German sympathies !
REVOLUTIONS, in the good old days, were matters of
street barricades and gunpowder and armed attacks
upon town halls and parliament buildings and foreign offices.
Italy is in the throes of something very like a revolution
today, but the revolutionists pay no attention to govern-
ment buildings, seizing instead metal factories and chemical
shops. Their course is significant of the shift of power in
the modern industrial state. These Italian workers realize
that possession of the Parliament building would mean
nothing to them; that if they hold control of the fundamen-
tal economic power, they can make Parliament do their bid-
ding. It is significant, too, that the Italian Government
has not interfered with the movement and that there has
been almost no violence and bloodshed, partly, probably,
because the Government has felt that it could not rely upon
its soldiers, and partly because it has honestly believed that
non-interference was the only path to a peaceful solution.
A national convention of workers' organizations at Milan
has voted to confine the movement to the metal trade and
to the allied industries, experimenting with "cooperatives
of labor" which may serve as a guide for further transfor-
mation. The aim of the struggle, says Signor d'Arragona,
leader of the moderate trade-unionists who triumphed at
Milan, will be "an acknowledgement on the part of the mas-
ters of the principle that their works shall be controlled by
the men's union." The future of the experiment now de-
pends upon two factors: the discipline of the men working
under their own leaders, and the ability of those leaders to
secure coal for the factories. For, in Italy, as throughout
Europe today, coal is king.
FULLY equipped with boundaries, a constitution, a
name, and a dictator — lacking only its membership
card in the League of Nations — the new Italian Regency of
Quarnaro, nee Fiume, has come into being as an independent
state. After the manner of all great authors, D'Annunzio
has dipped boldly into the works of his contemporaries and
his predecessors for the subject-matter of his constitution;
but the style is said to be his own. He has provided, in
terms guaranteed to be poetical, for a military dictator in
time of emergency, for economic discrimination in favor
of the proletariat, for a judiciary chosen from the wisest
of the city fathers, for compulsory military service for men
and women, and has established standards for the aesthetic
guidance of the new state. Ultimately — and here lies the
true significance of the little drama — the Regency hopes to
attach itself to Italy. Will Italy acknowledge its relation-
ship with this new Utopia? The revolutionary movement
would have to proceed some distance, it would seem, to make
such a partnership wholly comfortable; but D'Annunzio will
deserve credit if he succeeds, even by perverse methods, in
bringing the Adriatic question one step nearer to a settle-
ment.
PRESIDENT WILSON has made a wise move, and per-
formed a graceful act as well, in appointing Miss Mabel
T. Boardman a Commissioner of the District of Columbia.
For years past these chief governing positions have gone to
politicians or to worn-out newspaper men, who have ruled
in conjunction with an engineer officer of the army. It has
usually been government by mediocrity in addition to being
government without the consent of the governed. Miss
Boardman's is quite the most distinguished appointment
made in decades. It is not only that women are now to be
recognized in the housekeeping of the District but that Miss
Boardman herself is a most able and experienced executive.
What the Red Cross owed to her in the early days of its re-
organization it would be hard to exaggerate, but from Miss
Boardman herself no one would get an inkling. There has
been no happier omen of what the entrance of women into
Sept. 18, 1920]
The Nation
313
our political life may mean than this — and how easily and
naturally we take the transition! There is no wailing, no
bemoaning the danger to home and to womanhood, nothing
but its acceptance as a normal happening. Yet it seems
only a few years ago that The Nation and other liberal
organs were battling for women's right to a college educa-
tion and every man who favored the suffrage for women
was accused of being in favor of free love and the destruc-
tion of family life. It will not be ten years before women
Senators, Cabinet officials and members of Congress will
seem not ridiculous or dangerous, but a matter of course.
IT costs a lot of money for the American Woolen Company
to run full-page advertisements in the big newspapers
of the big cities of the United States. Employees of the
firm will wish that the money had been used for unem-
ployment benefits; and the general public will see another
chance for lowered prices gone to waste. Breakfast-table
reading of Mr. Wood's ten-point words about his firm's
"faithful employees" and "manifold duties to the public"
will be little consolation to either. The obvious and ad-
mitted fact is that the American Woolen Company, with
enormous profits salted away, was faced with the alterna-
tive of lowering prices or closing its mills until a new de-
mand buoyed up the market. It chose the latter course, and
all the highfalutin, high-paid advertising in the world will
hardly deceive the public. Newspaper readers may forget
the exact percentage of the company's profits, but they are
acutely conscious of the cost of woolen suits; and 40,000
"faithful employees" have for two months faced the problem
of life on nothing a week.
LEON SONIAT POST of the American Legion, in New
Orleans, has been expelled because it sent to the mem-
bers of Congress from Louisiana the following resolution
on the bonus legislation which Legion officers tried to have
passed last winter:
The easy and unscrupulous use of the name of the American
Legion by certain of its leaders to foster such legislation in
Congress without a referendum thereon to the full membership
of the organization has, by creating a false impression of the
unanimous approval in its ranks, operated to the injury of the
Legion's interest and is inconsistent with the high purposes set
forth in the preamble of its constitution.
One reason for the expulsion was that the resolution tended
"to criticize and defame the House of Representatives."
Obviously there is not a word in the resolution to justify
this charge, but it is equally plain that the element in the
Legion that has set out to reduce the services of American
soldiers frcm a patriotic to a cash basis is determined to
stifle any democratic expression of opinion that might inter-
fere with its plans.
SENATOR WILLIAM M. CALDER, of New York, chair-
man of the Senate Committee on Reconstruction, is
quoted as saying that not less than $25,000,000,000 is needed
to put in proper condition what he calls "the basic national
plant" — by which he means railways, public utilities, fac-
tories, and housing. This huge sum, practically equal to the
national debt, represents the estimated loss in efficiency,
earning power, credit, and material comfort which the
nation has suffered in consequence of the war. The most
important need, according to Senator Calder, is for ade-
quate transportation facilities, the lack of which is not only
interfering seriously with the normal course of business
and jeopardizing the distribution of coal, but also hindering
the delivery of building materials upon which the ultimate
relief of the housing shortage in part depends. It is sug-
gested that, in addition to necessary revision of the taxing
system, the Federal government itself should undertake
construction work of all kinds, presumably by lending its
credit in some way to private or corporate enterprises
rather than by constructing buildings or public works for
its own use. We are not enamored of any scheme for the
wholesale use of Federal credit in aid of private enterprises
of any kind, nor is it clear how any considerable extension
of such credit can be made without dangerously increasing
the public debt. Senator Calder has done well, however,
in calling attention to the need of a reconstruction program
for the country — a need which the Wilson Administration,
obsessed by its zeal for a League of Nations and a hand in
world affairs, has persistently neglected.
SAMUEL UNTERMYER says that "nation-wide criminal
combinations and secret agreements in the building
trade are largely accountable for the present intolerable
building conditions; that they are glaringly unlawful and
that they should be broken up and their members should
and can be put in prison where they belong." Maybe so;
but when Mr. Untermyer suggests more governmental inves-
tigation, and declares that the proper remedy for profiteer-
ing in rents is to apply "the same punitive laws as are
applied to other forms of profiteering," we lose heart and
our eye wanders to the next column in the newspaper. If
Mr. Untermyer is right that the lumbermen, cement manu-
facturers, brick manufacturers, and all the other material-
men are making exorbitant profits, Mr. Palmer ought to
put some of them in jail ; but Mr. Palmer's windy but futile
attacks on other forms of profiteering have given us little
faith in the method. Mr. Untermyer's suggestion that sav-
ings banks and insurance companies be required by law to
invest more of their funds in mortgages might help toward
eventual financing of new construction; but the testimony
accumulates that large-scale new construction is imperative
and urgent, and it seems improbable that private specula-
tive capital can be trusted to satisfy the immediate require-
ments.
LOST, strayed, or stolen: Attorney General Palmer;
last heard of at San Francisco July 7. Information
eagerly desired by numerous persons interested. Suitable
reward for recovery.
The approaching Red revolt in America. Last announced
just prior to the nomination of Mr. Cox.
The collapse of the Bolshevik government, announced in
forty-three issues of the New York Times. Large reward
offered by French financiers to anyone producing it.
The broken heart of the world. Notify the White House
by wire (C. O. D.).
The "dominant" campaign issue. Reported to have dis-
appeared last week in New Hampshire and Georgia. Gen-
erous reward for return to Democratic national head-
quarters.
The progressive element in the Republican Party. Send
all information to Hiram W. Johnson, San Francisco.
Senator Harding — strayed from his front porch and be-
lieved to be well beyond his depth. — Advertisement.
314
The Nation
[Vol. ill, No. 2881
< 4
Don't Throw Away Your Vote"
THERE is no older trick in the politician's bag than
the appeal to the perplexed independent not to throw
away his vote for a ticket "that cannot possibly win" — and
none is at times more effective. We are now in the political
doldrums, and this appeal is echoed and reechoed in the
daily press, which seeks to delude people into believing that
there is a real issue between the Republican and Democratic
parties, that, if the so long deluded and betrayed American
electorate will only continue to choose the lesser of two
grave evils, we shall yet have a political Golden Rule. A
vote for a third party which cannot possibly win — that is
the height of stupidity, declares an influential journal.
We must, we are told, decide between Cox and the "wets"
and the crooked bosses who selected him, and Harding and
his gang of Republican reactionaries, with their promise of
war with Mexico and higher tariffs. To make this disgust-
ing choice is, we are assured, to show high intelligence, civic
responsibility, and genuine patriotism. On the other hand
if you fail so to choose, you are a heedless and impractical
idealist, ready to throw away your influence and to see your
vote go for nothing.
The argument is as old as it is shallow, as specious as it
is false. It has been trotted out in every campaign since
the Mugwumps of 1884 committed the unpardonable crime
of bolting the Republican Party, and always with more or
less abuse and contumely for any who refused to be bound
by the acts of politicians in convention assembled. It did
duty when Democrats were seeking to decide between
McKinley and Bryan and a possible third party in 1900.
It has been used every time a new order and a new party
was threatened; it was freely cited in 1912 against the Pro-
gressives when the Republican press still thought that Mr.
Taft had- a chance of reelection. And now when multitudes
are holding their noses in the effort to decide whether to go
to Harding or Cox, or to plump a vote of protest for one of
the minor parties, the old scarecrows of irregularity and
impracticality are brought out once more to induce men to
accept anew the shackles placed upon them by Republican
and Democratic politicians.
Now the falsity of the argument becomes apparent if one
recalls that it was used at the birth of the Republican Party
in 1854. The men who "threw away their votes" for Fre-
mont knew that their chances of electing him were remote,
but they knew that they had a duty to their country to per-
form which made it easy for them to endure the sneers and
railings of the "regular" politicians of their day. They did
not even dare hope that they would win the Congressional
elections of 1858 or the Presidency in 1860. They simply
declined any longer to be parties to that magnificent con-
spiracy against human liberty which was the politics of the
two existing parties. They were ready and willing to be
called "quitters" and "bolters" and "kickers" or anything
else by their adversaries, because they had decided that, the
old parties being too rotten and too false to American ideals
further to associate with, they would stand up and be
counted as just so many "impractical idealists." We have
precisely the same situation today. We are not sure thai-
some of the bellowing politicians are correct when they say
that we are facing the greatest crisis the country has ever
known, but we do know that it is grave enough to make
every patriot search his heart and his conscience and de-
termine to vote neither by rote nor by fear of being called
names nor of his vote's not counting. It is a crisis because
the old crooked, outworn political machines no longer serve,
because a new order is as clearly at hand as it was in 1860.
Shall freemen be deterred from ploughing the lonely furrow
once more for fear that the very men who are perpetrating
the old deceits and frauds shall deem them possessed of
visions?
Never. If the test of "sensible" voting is to cast your
vote where it counts in electing somebody, then only those
who vote for the winning ticket can qualify. The minority
which voted for Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 — did it throw
away its votes? We venture to say that the idealists in the
Progressive Party who voted for the things the platform
stood for, even when they had their doubts about the candi-
date, look back upon that vote as one of the most precious
they ever cast. No. Voting is not the same as betting on a
horse race; the object is not to guess which side has the best
chance of winning and then to jump to that. It is the exer-
cise of the most sacred right of the free man and the free
woman. It is a measure of conscience, a test of manhood
and womanhood, the priceless right of self-expression as to
one's government. To let it be controlled by a vulgar fear
of being in a small minority is to degrade and debase it. To
misuse it by compromising between a Cox and a Harding
when common sense tells that both are unfit for the presi-
dential responsibility is to cheapen and to corrupt it.- It
were better not to use it at all. Indeed, the way voters are
refraining from the polls because they can in no way ex-
press their views and wishes is of the handwriting on the
wall. Those who refrain altogether are far truer than those
who year after year play into the hands of the politicians.
"Of two evils choose neither." That is the sound and
wise principle which ought to govern liberals in this
emergency. The vote of protest is never a vote lost. If it
is the vote of conscience, it ennobles; if it is the genuine
expression of the voter it uplifts the ballot, and throwing
it away on a man and a party for whom the voter has no
respect besmirches it. This year, certainly, the fear of be-
ing lonely at the polls ought to deter nobody. It will be sur-
prising indeed if the Socialists do not cast four million votes.
No one can, of course, estimate the Farmer-Labor votes,
but there will be many in numerous States. But even if
there be few, those who cast them will have nothing to be
ashamed of. In June, 1856, no less a person than Abraham
Lincoln called a mass meeting in aid of the new third party
in his own home town of Springfield. The meeting turned
out to consist of but three persons; Lincoln, his partner
Herndon, and one John Pain. Lincoln smiled and said that
it was larger than he knew it would be. He had known only
that Herndon and he would be there — yet another brave
man had come out ! We quote Lincoln's words — what could be
more fitting to the hour? "While all seems dead, the age
itself is not. It liveth as sure as our Maker liveth. Under
all this seeming want of life and motion the world does
move, nevertheless. Be hopeful, and now let us adjourn and
appeal to the people." The bolters of 1920 — will they not
also do their full share in speeding the day when the founda-
tions of the new order will be rising on the ruins of the old?
Sept. 18, 1920]
The Nation
315
Democracy in Banking
AMONG the most hopeful of all efforts toward the de-
mocratization of industry in America — toward the
control by the worker over the product of his work, and
thus over his life — is the present movement to establish
labor and farmer banks. A number of savings and small
commercial institutions are already in existence, while the
approval of the Treasury Department of the plan of the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers has made it possible
to establish in Cleveland the first national bank to be under-
taken by organized labor. Since then signs have appeared
all over the country of similar movements on the part of
workers. From Philadelphia comes word that the Central
Labor Union has voted to establish a cooperative bank,
while in Chicago, where more than $6,000,000 in trade union
funds are on deposit, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers
and other labor bodies are considering going into the bank-
ing business. Best of all, the Chicago Federation of Labor
has proved the solidarity of its interests with those of the
farmers by a unanimous resolution urging all local unions
to send' deposits to the State-owned Bank of North Dakota
to assist in moving the crops. Several unions have already
done this, and it is reported that a similar movement is
under way in Minneapolis. In Tucson, Arizona, the bank-
ers have joined in the effort to set up the "open shop," and
are reported to be calling loans and refusing credit where
business men take the other side. So labor has decided to
start a bank of its own, and, according to recent reports,
has obtained $19,000 toward a $50,000 fund.
The determination of workers both in cities and on farms
to have their own banks is a move in the right direction.
The bank, in this day, is the economic power behind the
throne. In the last fifty years America has evolved from
a land of free individual enterprise into the most centralized
and autocratic industrialism in the world. As the motive
force of this we often speak glibly of the "money power";
but more important than money power is an energy hardly
realized half a century ago, vastly exploited and inflated
within recent years: credit. And behind credit, and thus
acting as the dynamo of the whole industrial machine, is
the bank. It is well to speak of it in the singular, because
the financial power of the country has gradually passed into
the hands of small groups of whom it is no exaggeration
to say that they wield the most extensive and most arbitrary
authority ever exercised in the world's history. The Comp-
troller of the Currency estimates the "banking power" of
the United States on June 30, 1919, as forty-five billion
dollars. This is three times the banking power of the en-
tire world thirty years ago, and nine times that of our own
country at the same date. By their power to inflate or de-
flate credit in general, the small groups of men who hold the
reins of our financial resources possess an uncanny control
over prices, and, by their determination to grant or with-
hold it in particular instances, they make and unmake busi-
ness. It is not merely the farmer and the wage-earner that
are subject to this regime; the business man outside the
ranks of the controlling few and the smaller bankers, too,
are equally or more helpless.
The present banking control is unnecessarily and extrava-
gantly expensive. According to the Treasury Department's
figures, the national banks of the United States paid an
average dividend of 12 per cent on their capital for the
fiscal year 1919; those of New York City paid 14 per cent
and earned 19 per cent net on their capital and surplus.
Recent statements by Senator Owen that New York bankers
have been lending money at exorbitant rates are corrobo-
rated by the Comptroller of the Currency, who says that as
high as 25 and 30 per cent has been exacted on substantial
amounts. On November 13, last, two or three banks alone
were lending about $50,000,000 at 20 per cent or more. As
late as June these same banks were asking 14 per cent on
millions of dollars.
One reason why banks pay so well, and at such slight
risks to their stockholders, is because the business is done
almost wholly with other people's money. Official figures
of the national banks for the fiscal year 1919 show that
deposits (the public's money) constituted twelve times as
much of the total resources as did capital (the stockholders'
money). Despite its exorbitant cost, our modern banking
system does not serve the community as a whole. Mr.
Frederic C. Howe says:
Credit should be obtainable by any man of character and
ability. A new society would be created if the colossal credit
resources of America . . . were dedicated, as they should
be dedicated, to assist men and to develop the resources of the
country. . . . Unfortunately the control of credit has passed into
the hands of men interested primarily in high finance, in specu-
lation, in the creation of monopolies, in the control of the in-
dustrial life of the people, and in financing foreign countries
rather than their own. The money of the people is used against
the people.
"An English or American bank of today," says Mr. James
Davenport Whelpley in "The Trade of the World," "is noth-
ing more or less than a glorified pawnbroker, who will
cheerfully lend 95 per cent on a gold dollar as security."
The land and credit banks of Europe, before the war, at
least, did for the agriculturist there what has never been
done for the farmer here. The Federal Farm Loan act
was intended to accomplish similar benefits in this country,
but its usefulness was stopped by court proceedings before
it got fairly started; these are still pending. Thus the
American farmer now, as heretofore, has to pay 8 to 10 per
cent for the money necessary to run his business, and can
usually borrow on nothing but unmortgaged real estate or
grain that has reached the stage of storage in an elevator.
Not merely is our present banking system deficient in its
loaning policy, from the standpoint of service to the com-
munity as a whole, but in some of our large cities it is no
longer available to the poor man even as a depository of his
funds. In New York City, for instance, commercial banks
not only do not pay interest on accounts subject to check,
but for some years they have had a rule that a depositor
whose account falls below $200 is charged $1 a month.
There is a wonderful opportunity for cooperation between
farmers and city workers in the banking business. It has
been estimated that the wages of labor amount to twenty-
five billion dollars a year and that the value of farm produce
is over twenty billion dollars. By establishing its own banks
organized labor can obtain facilities now denied to its mem-
bers and extend such facilities to professional and small
business men as well. By lending to farmers labor can, in
all probability, get a higher rate of interest than is now
obtainable and at the same time furnish the agriculturist
with cheaper money than he can get elsewhere. It is an-
other case of cutting out the middleman — the most expen-
sive and domineering middleman in the whole chain.
316
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2881
Emigrants and Immigrants
EMPLOYERS of unskilled labor are reported to be a
good deal concerned over the unsatisfactory state of
both emigration and immigration. While the number of
European immigrants who have entered the United States
during the present year exceeds the number of aliens who
have left the country, the excess is small, and far below the
pre-war average. According to preliminary figures lately
made public, the number of persons, 197,956, admitted at
New York during the first six months of 1920 exceeded by
only 45,419 the number of those who departed. At this rate
the net gain for the year would have been a little over 90,000,
or less than one-sixth of the net gain in 1913, the last
normal year. In the last month, however, a change has taken
place and there has been a great increase in arrivals. About
half of the immigrants now arriving are women and chil-
dren, while many of the men do not belong to the unskilled
wage-earning class.
Over against the number of aliens who are coming
in is to be set the large number who are going out. The
exodus of Poles, Finns, and Bohemians — the movement of
the Poles has recently been checked somewhat by the war —
has been limited only by the ability to obtain passage by
sea, and the departures of Italians and Greeks have been
considerable. Many Russians are reported to be ready to
go, but as the United States refuses to recognize the Soviet
Government or any of its representatives, the Russian work-
ers here are virtually interned. These withdrawals are
practically a dead loss to American industry — a loss which
will be only in small part made good by the prospective ar-
rival of considerable numbers of Syrians, most of whom be-
come peddlers or small tradesmen, or of Polish Jews, or of
Swiss. Irish immigration, which until a few weeks ago was
considerable, has now been frowned upon by Sinn Fein;
and the immigration from other parts of the British Em-
pire, from France, and elsewhere is negligible.
Those aliens who are leaving us are impelled by various
motives. A good many who have made modest fortunes
are returning to their native land to visit relatives or
friends, and not all who go for this reason have any clear
plans for coming back. The war has created new demands
for labor in Europe, and in particular has greatly altered
the status of women as wage-earners. The increased po-
litical importance of labor, joined to the strong nationalistic
ambitions of some of the new states, is not without its in-
fluence. To these European attractions is to be added the
pressure of certain unhappy conditions in this country. The
foreign laborer knows that America is no longer such a
home of liberty as he once imagined it to be. Great sec-
tions of our foreign-born population have for six years been
subjected to suspicion and espionage, coerced into buying
Liberty bonds, and forced to endure official and private sur-
veillance of their churches, schools, and social organizations.
Race riots are only too common, and their victims as a rule
go unredressed. The immigrant knows only too well that,
even if he becomes naturalized, he is pretty certain to con-
tinue to be looked upon as inferior to the native-born Ameri-
cans, and that most so-called Americanization schemes are
only the devices of politicians and employers for insuring a
supply of cheap labor and controlling its votes. He knows,
too, that he can no longer obtain the beer or wine to which
he has long been accustomed, and, resenting the loss of
beverages which he considers a necessity as well as a com-
fort, he finds in it another reason for leaving the country
which has deprived him.
On the other hand, Europe and South America are now
offering strong counter-attractions. The Portuguese, who
for some time have been leaving Portugal in large numbers,
are going to Brazil. Italian labor, which for years has been
flowing into South America, is finding additional and lucra-
tive opportunity in France, where the government is re-
ported to be offering coal as an inducement to Italian coal
miners to emigrate. The demand for sailors in some places
exceeds the supply, while the breaking up of large landed
estates and the establishment of easier -conditions of ac-
quiring and holding land are powerful inducements to the
European farmer class to stay at home. It is the economic
motive, of course, that has always been the strongest factor
in inducing emigration; and now that America has ceased
to be par excellence the land of economic opportunity, open-
ings elsewhere or nearer home have in proportion a greater
attraction. The vision of America as the land of hope will
not last if hopes go unfulfilled too long.
Our Musical Riches
THE musical problem in America is no longer how to "
lure the foreign artist to this country, but what to do
with him after he gets here. There can be no boast behind
this statement, however. It is merely that with Paris freez-
ing, Vienna starving, London financially pressed, and the
German cities outcasts, most of the talent that used to- be
fairly well distributed over those centers is now concen-
trated here. And so we find ourselves possessed of a musical
wealth as fabulous as it is sudden; our pedagogic and sym-
phonic fields enriched by famous old-world teachers and
leaders, whose roots had hitherto seemed to be too deeply
imbedded in European soil ever to be uptorn; our opera
companies spilling over with singers now beyond the means
of the great houses abroad; and our concert lists embrac-
ing the names of almost every virtuoso before the public.
The impetus already derived from this ever fresh and in-
creasing contact with genius is unmistakable. New con-
servatories are springing up everywhere, while those of
established reputation are receiving, for the first time in
their existence, applications from students abroad. Each
of the last few years has seen one or more symphony
orchestras added to the chain that now links the two coasts,
and of these organizations most have been finding it neces-
sary to increase annually not only the number of subscrip-
tion concerts in their home towns, but also the extent of
their tours.
Most amazing, too, has been the progress in operatic
activities. There are the Scotti and San Carlo Opera com-
panies, for instance, which are finding it possible to tour
the country from New York to San Francisco, and from
New Orleans to Vancouver, with principals, orchestra,
scenery, and, in Scotti's case, even chorus, to give grand
opera with competent casts at reasonable prices, and at the
same time to make money ; and this in spite of the increased
cost of railroad transportation and union musicians. Scotti's
productions must be called more than "competent," however,
as he is literally taking the Metropolitan to the people,
offering them the regular Metropolitan casts and conductors,
an orchestra drawn from the Metropolitan and other New
Sept. 18, 1920]
The Nation
317
York symphonic organizations, a well-trained chorus, and
even scenery modeled on that of the Broadway institution —
only in miniature, to meet the stage requirements of the thea-
ters on his route. His first venture, four years ago, met with
financial loss. This year, with tickets ranging in price from
one to five dollars, he not only receives a guaranty to cover
his expenses, but also a goodly share of the profits from
every town that he visits. It is doubtful, though, whether
even Scotti would have met with such quick returns had it
not been for the pioneer work done by Fortuno Gallo and
his San Carlo Opera Company. The story of Gallo's career
is a study in initiative. He first gained some reputation as
a manager by exploiting "Royal" Italian bands throughout
the Middle West at a time when, as he says, the word
"Royal" was still acceptable to the public, when the "brass"
playing of Italians was virtually unknown to this country,
and when Italian musicians were not even admitted to the
unions. Overcoming these obstacles and prejudices, he then
ventured into grand opera, which he was again the first to
carry to this same section of the country. In this he met
with an even greater ignorance, but managed to get a foot-
hold in the various communities by cooperating in benefits
for local charities. That was nine years ago. Today there
is hardly a city either in this country or in Canada that the
San Carlo Company does not visit, and in which it does not
play to capacity houses, as in Rochester recently, where
three thousand people were turned away. Gallo believes
that municipal opera is not far away. Milton Aborn, an-
other manager of long experience, who is now devoting his
energies to organizing local opera companies in divers com-
munities, is even more optimistic, and declares that it is
very near indeed. As a matter of fact, Baltimore, which
went on record as being the first town to maintain a muni-
cipal symphony orchestra, is talking of having municipal
opera this year. All these are signs and symbols of the
times.
If, however, statistics seem more convincing, those of the
coming New York season should prove all-conclusive. For
that metropolis will be called upon to support a preliminary
season of popular-priced grand opera by the San Carlo and
Commonwealth Opera companies, twenty-three weeks of
high-priced opera by the Metropolitan, six by the Chicago
company, and a season of opera comique by the Society of
American Singers. It is scheduled to hear Sunday night
concerts at the Metropolitan, the Lexington, and the Man-
hattan Opera houses, and at the Hippodrome. Its orchestral
activities range between two and three hundred concerts, in-
cluding seventy-five by the National Symphony, sixty by the
Philharmonic, fifty by the New York Symphony, ten by the
Boston, eight by the Philadelphia, three by Toscanini and
his La Scala orchestra, besides those by the Russian and
People's Symphonies and other local organizations. In
chamber music there will be, among others, concerts by the
Flonzaley, the Letz, and the famous London String quartets,
the Elshuco and new Bauer-Thibaud-Casals trios, and the
New York Chamber Music Society; while of vocal and
instrumental recitals there will be no end. To meet all these
musical (as well as preelection) demands, Carnegie Hall,
for the first time in its history, has been booked solidly for
the season. So, too, has Aeolian Hall; and, added to this,
almost every small hall and theater, adaptable to recitals
and within easy access to the public, will be requisitioned
for such purposes. In the meantime the influx from Europe
continues.
Terpsichore as Missionary
THE dancing masters aim to insinuate a dash of pagan-
ism into our villages by tempting the Methodists to
dance a little now and then. Now, Methodists are no worse
than some of the other sectarians when it comes to as-
ceticism in affairs of the toe, though they do have a stricter
official discipline. But everywhere in neighborhoods long
exposed to evangelical orthodoxy some sort of missionary
work is about due. Terpsichore turned missionary! A
good deal of a hussy in her bolder steps, it seems — so the
dancing masters say — that the minx can mince, and she
must. No more bacchantic abandon, naturally; no more
wild feet flying down green forest alleys and out upon the
high lawns; no more white arms beating the joyful wind
or unbound hair streaming in the sun; no more swift em-
braces in the dizzy whirl. The minuet must now be mild,
the schottische sober, the waltz scrupulously denatured.
Terpsichore, by the program of the dancing masters, is
going to subdue herself to the chaste sedateness of the
Wesleyan Wiggle, the Presbyterian Prance, or the Baptist
Bend.
It will be a good thing for all the sectarians who succumb
to the new cheerfulness. If David could dance before the
ark, why not deacons in more secular places? Did not the
daughter of Jephthah and her attendant maidens lift their
paces to the sound of pipe and timbrel when the warriors
came home from their battles? Why, then, may not the
daughters of the Epworth League greet the returning
heroes of the Rainbow Division to the throb of banjo and
ukelele? Not a few tongues have hinted that soldiers home
from France talk too approvingly of the maidens of that
beguiling country, who unite mirth with economy and count
pleasure among the virtues. Our maidens must compete,
and on such occasions it is no dishonor to take a leaf out of
a rival's book. And consider the ministers who have
latterly spent infinite conferences on how to coax the young
men into the churches. They have used brass bands till the
cornet and trombone are nearly as respectable as the organ ;
they have put pep and punch and kick into their sermons till
the Reverend William Sunday sounds like a classic; just at
the moment they are trying to take the trick with films —
picturizing the spicy passages of the Bible and bringing the
great panorama of salvation home to the most casual intelli-
gence. But the dance will outrank them all as pew-filler and
convert-getter — if it is used as the dancing masters hope
and doubtless gracefully pray.
And yet, how about Terpsichore? Her prospects call to
mind the fate of those noble sons of nature who at various
moments in history have been caught up from their native
woods and prairies and tucked into uniforms; or the fate
of the amiable cannibals of the South Seas who fell heir to
civilization and speedily died off under its tender influences.
If she moves with the lead weights of decorum on her eager
limbs she will grow stiff. If she lends her rapture too much
to propaganda she will grow cold. If she lets them exploit
her too much she will turn dry and dusty. Her only hope
is to do as civilization does. Let her study the trader and
the missionary and the young cuckoo in the sparrow's nest.
They will teach her to creep in quietly, make herself at
home, and then by gradual degrees rise up and swallow
everything in sight.
318
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2881
Nationalized Power
By HERBERT HOOVER
THE time has arrived in our national development when
we must have a definite national program in the de-
velopment of our great engineering problems. Our rail and
water transport, our water supplies for irrigation, our
reclamation, the provision of future fuel resources, the de-
velopment and distribution of electrical power, all cry out
for some broad-visioned national guidance. We must create
a national engineering sense of provision for the nation as
a whole. . . . It is our duty as citizens to give voice to these
critical matters of national policy which our daily contact
with this, the fundamentally constructive profession, illumi-
nates to us. Just as our medical associations voice the
necessity of safeguards to national health; as the bar asso-
ciations, of safeguards to our judiciary, so the engineers
should exert themselves in our national engineering policies.
We have none ; but we need some, or the next generation will
face a lower instead of a higher standard of living than ours.
The development of our transportation, fuel, power, and
water under private initiative has been one of the stimuli
that has created the greatness of our people. It has been
easy to compass when the problems were more local and
filled with speculative profits. There, however, arises a time
when this haphazard development must be coordinated in
order to secure its best results to the nation as a whole.
This system has given us a 50 per cent result; if we are to
have 100 per cent we must have a national conception and
national guidance. This last 50 per cent involves problems
beyond individual initiative alone. Not only is individual
initiative insufficient because the problems involve political,
financial, interstate matters beyond corporate ability, but
we have, with practically unanimous consent of the country,
adopted a policy of the limitation of profits in the operation
of public transportation and power and some other utilities,
and, through the pressure of public opinion we are rapidly
coming to a limitation of profit in the development of other
large sections of national resources which tend to become nat-
ural monopolies. While the limitation of these profits makes
for public good, on the other hand they also militate against
individualistic development of national resources and necessi-
tate the cooperation of the community as a whole to secure
initiative for wider development in the national sense.
Certain of our national resources have always been in
national ownership, such as waterways. Certain others,
such as reclamation, irrigation, distribution of water for
power, are rapidly coming under government control. In
others, such as timber, coal, and oil, the possible exhaustion
brings their conservation or provision for the nation's future
into national concern. In our railway problem, national
action has until recently been directed wholly to limitation
of profits. Latterly, it has undertaken to regulate wages
and give some small recognition to the necessity of equip-
ment. But microscopic attention has been given to the
greater problem of how to get more transportation, to get
it so organized as to secure real economic operation in its
broad sense.
We have a long list of such problems. Some of these have
been discussed before the Institute on previous occasions.
* From an addreas before the American Institute of Mining Engineers,
Minneapolis, August 2«, 1920.
During the past year the Institute undertook to look into
the economic situation of this industry as a national whole.
It was demonstrated to be the worst functioning industry
in the country. Owing to seasonal and other irregularities
of demand, the average term of employment in the bitumi-
nous industry is less than 190 days per annum. If this
industry could be operated a normal work year, 125,000
men could be turned to other production. It is an industry
in which 30 per cent more capital is invested than would
otherwise be necessary. The cost of coal to the consumer
and the risks to the operator are greatly increased, and,
above all, it presents a great human problem fraught with
all the terrible misery and strikes and justified discontent
that flow from intermittent employment.
I am not proposing any nationalization of the coal mines ;
far from it. What is required is that we should realize that
with our necessary social view of prohibition of combina-
tion there remains a national problem beyond the solution
of any individual coal operator or any group of operators.
It must have national guidance and national plan for its
solution, a cooperation of great consumers, railways, opera-
tors and miners — but what individual operator can do this?
In respect to our coal supplies again, if we would look
forward to the next generation, we have a problem of con-
servation of immense importance. In this connection, it
has been ably proposed by our members that the national
Government should cooperate in investigating the possibili-
ties of the establishment of a great electrical trunk line
throughout the great power-consuming districts of the
Northeast, and that we should feed into this great power-
road, power generated at the mines and available water
sources, drawing from it at every town and city. The con-
summation of this project means cheaper power to all con-
sumers. It means a great economy in consumption of coal.
It means more regularity in output. It thus means greater
ability to compete in world manufacture. It means great
relief to the railways from expansion. It means an in-
creased standard of living and a decreased cost of living
to a very large section of our population. We have again
much such a problem in providing adequate power re-
sources upon the Pacific Coast, where today hundreds of
thousands of acres of fertile land are practically non-pro-
ducing for lack of pumping power.
Of other problems akin to this, we are confronted through-
out the West with the fact that a large portion of our
average low water supply is already under engagement for
irrigation and power. The time has come when that ex-
pansion of the land available for cultivation, or into more
intensive cultivation, is a factor of mountain storage of
water to increase our stream flows in the low season. We
have thus a storage problem on a scale we have not hitherto
dreamed of, and, again, it is a problem involving cooperation
in financial, economic, distribution, navigation, interstate
questions, in which individual initiative must have. the as-
sistance of the community.
Another series of such problems lies in our oil supplies.
If we are to have a mercantile marine and to maintain our
navy on a basis of equivalent efficiency with foreign navies,
Sept. 18, 1920]
The Nation
319
if we are to maintain the development of the gas engine —
the greatest lift in our standard of living and saving of
labor in fifty years — we are confronted with the necessity
of securing additional oil supplies from outside our own
boundaries. Our own supplies, so far as now known, do not
represent twenty-five years at our present rate of consump-
tion. The Institute many months ago was the first to give
warning to the Federal Government of the gradual absorp-
tion of all of the oil sources of the world by other great
Powers, and that within a short time we should be dependent
upon the good will of these Powers for our necessary oil
supplies. No private individual can compete with foreign
governments in the measures that they are adopting to hog
the resources of the world. This problem again is an engi-
neering problem that requires more than private initiative.
A problem of even more pressing importance than these
is the whole question of transportation. At the present
moment, our inability to move the commodities which we
create is stifling production. It is increasing the cost of
distribution and has placed a tax on the American people
in decreased production and increased cost of distribution
greater than all the taxes imposed by the war.
We have today in Minneapolis ample proof of the frightful
cost imposed upon the farmer, consumer, and public. There
is a premium over freight cost from ten to twenty cents a
bushel for wheat at the mill door compared to wheat in the
elevator a few hundred miles away, solely because cars are
not available. Either the farmer is losing the amount, or
the consumer paying it. Furthermore, to carry the picture
further, the railways, in an endeavor to remedy this, are
diverting cars from the lumber industry. Already certain
mills are partially closed; men are thrown out of employ-
ment in the mills and in the building trades. Is this not
a price in human misery and national efficiency that war-
rants some national concern? It is a problem that does not
lie alone in expansion of railway facilities. It lies also in
the proper expansion of waterways and their coordination
with the railway transportation of the country. We have
been dabbling in the improvement of water transportation
of the United States for a hundred years, and, so far as I
know, never yet have we considered it as a problem requir-
ing complete coordination of the entire transport problem
for the whole country. We have spent enough money im-
proving useless creeks to have made several competent water-
ways. Every congressional district in the United States
has angled for appropriations for carrying mud from one
hole to another as their proper participation in the national
plunder. They have never considered that the taxes taken
from the people as a whole should be devoted to those points
that will benefit the people as a whole.
One result of the policy pursued has been that our water-
ways have been so badly handled that they have not been
able even to compete with the railways, and today, with an
enormous increase in railway rates, we find ourselves utterly
unable to handle the great bulk commodities of the country
at the possible lower charge over our waterways. The open-
ing of the St. Lawrence to ocean-going vessels means five
cents a bushel to every farmer in ten States. Likewise, of
no less importance are our internal waterways.
These projects have a simple result in the engineer's
mind: they make greater production possible with less hu-
man effort ; they increase the standard of life ; they provide
for our children. All of these problems are much akin, and
the time has come when they need some illumination, gui-
dance, cooperation in their solution from the Federal Gov-
ernment. Nor do I mean a vast extension of federal
bureaucracy in federal ownership. If, in the first instance,
through an agency of the central Government, we could
have an adequate study and preparation of plan and method
made of these problems, for engineering development over
the next fifty years, viewed solely in their national aspects,
we would have taken the first step toward the adequate
provision of an increasing standard of living and a lower
cost of living for our descendants.
The second step is to determine that our Government will
be a government of cooperation, limiting profits surely, but
holding to individual initiative as the single hope of human
development. In order that we shall have some central
point in the Federal Government where these problems may
be adequately considered, from which they can be ventilated
for the verdict of public opinion, where the business brains
of the country can be called into conference and cooperation
with the Government, and therefore with the people, the
engineers of the United States have proposed time and
again that a Cabinet department should be established in
Washington, either new or to replace the Interior Depart-
ment, to which should be assigned the whole question of
public works. You are familiar enough with the advantages
of such a department from an everyday administration
point of view, and enormous saving to the Government from
the duplication or competition of the six or seven depart-
ments now engaged in engineering construction work of this
character, but on this occasion I wish to call your attention
to the fact that such a department has become an essential
from the point of view of proper consideration and presen-
tation to the American people of these broader national en-
gineering problems, upon which the next generation must
depend if our country is to march forward.
Social Reforms in Soviet Russia
By HENRY G. ALSBERG
Moscow, August 6
I THINK I have spoken enough about the food question to
give the reader a chance to judge of the Food Depart-
ment's work. The army, it is quite evident, gets sufficient
food. Generally, the rest of the population does not, at
least from Government sources. But nearly everybody gets
the basis of existence, his daily bread, which in Russia is no
longer a mere figure of speech, but a real subject for peti-
tion. Mostly the bread furnished by the Government is not
daily, but drops out once or twice a week. However, this
ration is at any rate a kind of spring-board off which the
average citizen may jump for the rest of his food. It gives
him the strength and courage to hustle for other necessi-
ties. But if the food-getting and distribution department
appears to fail, at least partially, that is by no means due
to its inherent defects. Hampered by fixed prices, without
much manufactured goods to offer the peasant, and with —
in the final event — only the military to help it coax their
products from the peasants, the Government authorities
must be at a distinct disadvantage. Quite conceivably, when
industry and import resume their normal course, the Food
Department will be able to do its work successfully. Again
I wish to point out that terrific external and internal pres-
320
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2881
sure has caused the conflict between town and country, a
conflict perhaps only a few degrees sharper than that be-
tween Vienna and rural Austria.
The Health Department, despite a complete lack of all
medicines, anesthetics, etc., has done remarkably well. So-
viet Russia inherited a terrible scourge of typhus from the
armies of Kolchak, Denikin, and Judenich. But Semashko
thinks the worst is over. A great campaign of popular edu-
cation— conducted by proletarian commissions — and of in-
struction in the army, the restriction of travel on the trains,
the installation of bathing and disinfecting establishments,
are all, Semashko thinks, showing their effect. Here again
in the terrible scarcity of soap — the keenest enemy of typhus
— one stumbles up against the blockade and the war-disor-
ganization. Cholera, through systematic vaccination, has
been reduced to 5,000 cases for all of European Russia.
Smallpox for the same reason has become a negligible
quantity. Tuberculosis, scurvy, day-blindness, being dis-
eases of malnutrition, have naturally increased greatly de-
spite all sorts of popular educational campaigns and special
sanatoriums and rest homes for the people.
So much has been written about education and the care of
children that at present one need simply reiterate that every-
thing possible is being done for the youngsters. But again
you find yourself faced with the war and blockade. Luna-
charsky recently told me that unless school supplies, which
were always imported from abroad, came in soon the whole
educational machine would stop for want of fuel. The fact,
of course, is that owing to the lack of material, lack of
teachers — many of whom are at the wars — lack of available
buildings to accommodate the tremendous increase in the
number of pupils — and many such buildings have to be occu-
pied temporarily for military purposes — the new system does
not function in an ideal fashion. But the sound plan is
there for free popular education of all the children, from
the primary school through the university, with suitable
provision for manual and technical and agricultural train-
ing. There is also a whole department for the education of
adults and persons who wish to obtain a higher university
training, but have not sufficient preparatory knowledge — in
short, a workman's university.
Similarly with the care of children. Despite all mater-
nity hospitals and homes, and children's colonies and special
food for the infants and children, mortality has been on the
increase. Lack of sufficient food and medicines, warmth
and clothes, due to the blockade and war, hit the children
very hard. I quote what Comrade Dan, wife of the Menshe-
viki leader, who is head of a children's help bureau, told a
friend of mine, "We must have help from the outside if we
are to save our children."
The art and theater and amusement departments carry
out their purposes splendidly. You have only to see the
audiences at places of public amusement to recognize that
the proletariat has the orchestra stalls now. Moreover, and
this is quite characteristic of the democracy prevailing in all
departments of the Government, the Proletarian Culture
Commissariat and that of Education are actually working
to make the people take part in all these art enterprises, in
workmen's and peasants' theaters, in choruses and orches-
tras and brass bands, in the painting of pictures and the
making of literature. The participants in the drama not
only act but also conduct the theater and do the stage car-
pentering and scene-painting and shifting themselves. How
many manuscripts have already been submitted from every
part of Russia in the competition for the new revolutionary
international song — manuscripts by quite humble individ-
uals, peasants and shepherds and carpenters!
And here I want to pause a moment to point out again
that despite temporary dictatorship, the whole spirit ani-
mating this great Russian experiment is quite different
from that of the old autocracy. In everything, in every
campaign, for health, amusement, for education, the prole-
tariat is called upon to take its share, to form proletarian
commissions and clubs to carry on the work. The Govern-
ment does not try to exclude the people, but on the contrary
it wants the people to be the chief movers. There are, as it
were, three or four or ten jobs waiting for every capable
man, and twenty activities for every wide-awake commu-
nity.
More amusing, perhaps, than profitable is the question of
the survival of old habits and institutions despite the new
regime. The most striking of these will be reckoned — espe-
cially by the person who stays only a short time in Russia —
the all-prevalent habit of private speculation. Sometimes
the Government issues a general mandate to shut all the
shops, but everybody goes right on buying and selling. The
locus simply removes itself from the shop or booth to the
sidewalk. The people who have to buy food — and that is
practically the whole population — simply have a harder time
making their purchases. The two or three big markets, the
Sukharevka particularly, are jammed from morning till
evening with a crowd of sellers and buyers, and there you
can purchase anything you want from kassa to a diamond
ring. As long as the Government cannot supply all the peo-
ple's needs, just so long retail selling and buying will go on,
but I am inclined to think that the whole retail system will
eventually be discarded with the arrival of peace and plenty.
The institution of bakshish is also rampant. But for-
eigners, especially from such virtuous countries as Great
Britain, are more shocked than they have any right to be by
it. I, who hail from the home of Tammany Hall, and who
have looked upon Rumania without blanching, confess to
viewing Russian graft with a considerable degree of sang-
froid. Perhaps later on I shall be able to write a longer
piece on this amusing subject. Meanwhile, let us remember
that Russia was one of the temples of political and bureau-
cratic corruption in the Czar's time — and that it is abso-
lutely true that many officials of the present Government
have been shot for participation in graft. Can we say the
same for our easy-money politicians?
Of course a considerable element of the people continues
to try to live and have its being as if the era of socialism
hadn't arrived — or at least as if it weren't going to last.
You buy and sell houses, which have been nationalized, in
the open market; you can buy and sell foreign exchange;
there are courts in which you can try cases involving ancient
subjects of litigation, courts which are entirely unofficial
and sub rosa in character. Thousands, nay millions, of peo-
ple still think in the old terms of private property. The
habit is incorrigible. Yet, as long as no new tremendous
fortunes can be piled up and no new accumulations of cap-
ital can be made, as long as the nouveaux riches dare not
wear evidence of their wealth in the shape of fine furs and
silken raiment and precious stones on the bodies of their
women folk, what harm is there in this sport of grown-up
children?
I
Sept. 18, 1920]
The Nation
321
Poland and the Entente
By ROBERT DELL
London, August 26
THE action of the Polish delegates at Minsk in rejecting
all the Russian peace terms shows that the Polish
Government believes itself to be in a position to dictate
terms as a conqueror. That belief will probably turn out
to be mistaken; if the war continues, it is my opinion that
it will end in the defeat of the Poles. Trustworthy in-
formation suggests that the Russian retreat has been con-
ducted in good order and that the accounts given by the
Poles of their successes are greatly exaggerated. But Polish
heads are easily turned and their temporary success has
led the Poles not only to reject the Russian proposals, but
also to demand the creation of new border states out of
Russian territory and the annexation to Poland of Vilna
with the ultimate object of laying hands on the whole of
Lithuania, now an independent state, over which the Rus-
sian Communist Government has no control.
In rejecting the Russian peace terms the Poles have fol-
lowed the advice of the French Government, as semi-offi-
cially announced in the Matin on August 22. But the
French Government is not at all pleased at the Polish terri-
torial demands and has officially remonstrated with the
Polish Government. The Temps had already warned the
Poles in an obviously inspired article on August 21 against
the "dangerous policy of 1772 frontiers." The advice to
reject the Russian peace terms. and the warning against
territorial demands are equally consistent with the Polish
policy of the Quai d'Orsay, which is influenced solely by
regard for supposed French interests. The traditional
French friendship for Poland, of which so much has been
said in the French press of late, did not prevent the French
Government in 1916 from making a secret treaty with
Russia, to which England was a party, by which the Polish
question was declared to be one of Russian internal poli-
tics and the Entente Governments agreed to hand over the
whole of Poland to the Czar. Since the Russian Revolution
restored Polish integrity and independence — for Poland
owes her independence solely to the Russian Revolution — the
policy of the Quai d'Orsay has been to make Poland a strong
military power able to act as a buffer against Communist
Russia on the one hand and Germany on the other. It has
been hoped that Poland might even be strong enough to be
the instrument of the Entente in overthrowing the Russian
Republic and restoring Czarism. Any attempt on the part
of Poland to recover her 1772 frontiers would not fit in with
that policy. The aim of the Quai d'Orsay, and of the group
of Russian Czarist emigres in Paris by whom its policy is
influenced, is to reincorporate the border states in a re-
stored Russian empire. It would not suit them at all that
those states or any of them should be absorbed by Poland.
But, since the Quai d'Orsay and the Russian emigres want
to use Poland as a catspaw, it is essential to their policy
that Poland should be armed to the teeth; hence the advice
to the Polish Government to reject the Russian peace terms,
of which the partial disarmament of Poland is the most
essential. For peace would be useless to Russia without a
great reduction in the Polish army as a guaranty against
another attack. Such a reduction would also be to the real
interest of Poland, for the maintenance of a large army
is a terrible drain on the resources of an impoverished
country. And Poland does not need a large army, unless
for purposes of aggression. Unhappily the Poles, since
they recovered their independence, have embarked on a
policy of aggression, which has earned them the hostility
of all their neighbors — Czechs, Lithuanians, White Russians,
and Ukrainians, no less than that of Communist Russia.
The imperialist policy of the Polish Government has been
severely and rightly blamed in England, but sufficient al-
lowance has not been made for the pressure of the Entente.
The truth is that while the Poles began the war for im-
perialist aims of their own they have continued it chiefly
to oblige the Entente. The Polish invasion of Lithuania
last year on the pretext of liberating it from bolshevist rule
was an imperialist enterprise. The Poles did. not even pre-
tend that the Lithuanians had asked for their help; they
said that the Polish inhabitants of Lithuania, who are in a
small minority, had asked for it. The demand now made
for Vilna shows what the real object of the unsuccessful
aggression was. But in September of last year the Poles
had had enough of war and M. Paderewski, then Prime
Minister, came to Paris and London to inform Clemenceau
and Lloyd George that both he and General Pilsudski were
strongly of opinion that it was impossible for Poland to
continue the war and that peace should be made with Rus-
sia. Clemenceau and Lloyd George insisted on the con-
tinuance of the war and the latter promised M. Paderewski
"the fullest economic and military support of the Entente."
At the end of December Clemenceau made his famous
barbed-wire speech in the French Chamber, in which he de-
clared his opinion that the Poles would beat the Russians
without help, but said that, if they were not strong enough,
he counted on the Czecho-Slovaks, the Rumanians, and others
to go to their aid. Clemenceau added, with truth, that
Lloyd George was in complete agreement with him.
A few months later, however, Mr. Lloyd George, of whom
the Poles have reason to complain, changed his mind and,
when the Polish offensive against Kiev was proposed, he
discouraged it and said that the British Government would
give no assistance to the Poles if they made the offensive.
The French Government, which has been much more con-
sistent in its policy throughout, urged the Poles to make
the offensive. In a recent issue of the Stampa an Italian
officer attached to the Italian Military Mission at Warsaw
described the efforts made by the French Military Mis-
sion there to push Poland into the offensive, to which Gen-
eral Pilsudski seems to have been rather unfavorable. The
object of the French Government and of the Russian emi-
gres in Paris was to use Poland to help Wrangel. General
Pilsudski refused to fall in entirely with their plans and
determined to get something for Poland, if possible. He,
therefore, made an agreement with the Ukrainian adven-
turer, Petlura, who promised concessions to Poland at the
expense of Ukraine. The convenient pretext of liberating
Ukraine from bolshvist rule, which had already served for
Lithuania, was put forward to justify the invasion, but the
Ukrainians, like the Lithuanians, strongly objected to be-
322
The Nation
[Vol. ill, No. 2881
ing "liberated.' When the Polish army was driven back
by the Russians, the Ukrainians formed a volunteer corps
to harass its retreat, as Major Etchegoyen, a French offi-
cer with the Polish army, testified in the Matin of
August 11. The offensive against Kiev was, therefore,
partly a Polish imperialist adventure, but even more an
enterprise of the French Government and the Russian
emigres at the expense of Poland.
The Quai d'Orsay and the Russian emigres are now dis-
satisfied with General Pilsudski, against whom certain
French papers have been conducting a campaign for the last
fortnight. The dissatisfaction was due partly to the failure
of the offensive, partly to the refusal of General Pilsudski
to be a mere tool of Russian reaction. Indeed on August
10 and 11 the Matin became suddenly anti-Polish, evidently
under official inspiration, and seemed to be preparing
French public opinion for the decision arrived at by Lloyd
George and Millerand at Hythe to advise the Polish Govern-
ment to make peace and inform it that it would receive no
further support from the Entente if it rejected the Rus-
sian peace terms, unless they contained anything incom-
patible with the independence of Poland. There is too much
reason to believe that President Wilson's note induced the
French Government to change its mind and to encourage
the Poles to continue the war.
On August 10 the Matin and the Paris New York Herald
published what purported to be a communication of the
State Department at Washington, which represented Mr.
Wilson as hostile to Poland, with the head-line: "The United
States Government takes sides against Poland." The fol-
lowing quotation from the document was given:
The attitude of Russia is that of America in 1776. It is that
of legitimate defense. As for the army, it is called Red or
bolshevist because Lenin is at the head of the Moscow Govern-
ment, but it is not a bolshevist army, it is a Russian army.
The alleged note, according to the Matin, went on to say
that the Russians had no territorial ambitions and there
was no ground for saying that they had any designs against
the sovereignty of Poland. American policy desired to safe-
guard Russian territory until the Russian people had set-
tled its own affairs and hoped that peace and order would
be restored to Russia. The Matin added that the hand of
Mr. Wilson was visible in the note, which had been pub-
lished after a long consultation at the White House be-
tween Mr. Wilson, Mr. Colby, and Mr. Davis. The New
York Herald also attributed the note to Mr. Wilson him-
self, but the Temps the same evening said that it was
founded on a press message from Washington without any
official character.
On the same day the Matin published a long dispatch from
its special correspondent at Hythe, the gist of which was
that the Poles did not seem to wish to go on fighting. One
of the cross-headings in the article was : "La def aillance de
Pilsudski," which may be freely translated : "Pilsudski shows
the white feather." The next day the Matin published the
article by Major Etchegoyen already mentioned, with the
title: "How the Poles have fallen out with all their neigh-
bors." The major described from his own experience the
way in which the aggressive policy of the Poles had made
them generally disliked. On the following evening, August
12, the Temps published the authentic text of the American
note and the tone of the Matin completely changed. On
August 11 it had declared the Poles to be impossible people
who quarreled with everybody; on August 13 it was ready
to defend Poland to the last drop of Polish, Cossack, Ru-
manian, or Hungarian blood. To save its face, it alleged that
the communication published on August 10 was of English
origin. This is quite untrue, for the communication in ques-
tion was unknown in England, where the press did not
understand allusions to it in telegrams from Paris and
Washington.
The truth is that the communication published in the
Matin and the New York Herald on August 10 was semi-
official. This is shown not only by the way in which it ap-
peared in the Matin in the most prominent place on the front
page without any indication of origin, but also by a Reuter
telegram from Washington published in the London papers
on August 16, which spoke of the "action of the French
Foreign office in issuing to the French press an entirely un-
official newspaper article as an official communication of the
United States." No doubt the American Government learned
the origin of the communication from the New York Herald.
My conclusion is that on August 10 the Quai d'Orsay had
decided to throw over Poland, unless the Poles consented to
make peace, and changed its mind on the receipt of the
authentic American note. The recognition of Wrangel on
August 12 was probably a compensation given by Millerand
to members of his Cabinet that reproached him for having
agreed to the decisions of Hythe.
The recognition of Wrangel was a breach of faith on the
part of Millerand, who had agreed at Hythe to take no step*
until it was known whether the Russian peace terms were
acceptable. It made Lloyd George exceedingly angry, espe-
cially as the French Government took the offensive course' of
communicating it to the press before informing the British
Government, so that Lloyd George first learned it from the
papers. Encouraged by the American note the French Gov-
ernment widened the breach with England by advising the
Poles to continue the war. The Poles deliberately, on the
advice of the French Government, delayed the armistice
negotiations until they were ready to make a counter-offen-
sive. Now the situation is complicated by the strange ulti-
matum sent from Lucerne by Mr. Lloyd George and Signor
Giolitti to the Russian Government, which has been taken
generally both in England and France as a sign of another
change of policy on Mr. Lloyd George's part. The members
of the Russian mission have declared their intention of
leaving the country, and the Council of Action representing
British Labor has issued a strong protest and has sent out
notices to the trade unions to prepare for a general strike.
I doubt whether this interpretation is the true one. No
doubt Mr. Lloyd George lost his temper when he received
reports from Poland that the Russians were trying to im-
pose a "workmen's militia" and that partly accounts for the
insulting language of the Lucerne note to Russia. But I
am inclined to think that Mr. Lloyd George and Signor
Giolitti wished to give a purely verbal satisfaction to
M. Millerand in order to be in a strong position to impose
peace on the Poles and resume relations with Russia. The
militia question is of no importance and is already dis-
posed of by the reply of the Russian Government consenting
to withdraw the proposal.
Meanwhile the independence of Poland is threatened from
the West, not from the East — from Paris, not from Moscow.
The Polish Government has been almost set aside. The con-
trol of the Polish army has been taken out of the hands of
the Poles, and the result has been, as the French press
Sept. 18, 1920]
The Nation
323
rightly claims, a "French" victory in every sense of the term.
Emissaries of the French Government, of the Russian
emigres, and of the Vatican are interfering in Polish in-
ternal politics and intriguing against General Pilsudski.
For the Vatican is entirely in agreement with the French
Government in regard to Poland, since it desires a re-
actionary Catholic Power to take the place of the Austrian
Empire. The candidate of the Quai d'Orsay, the Russian
emigres, and the Vatican is M. Dmowski, who is at present
at Posen surrounded by Russian counter-revolutionaries, in-
cluding Bourtzeff, who has arrived from Paris with two
million francs from the French Government, and Savinkoff.
Dangerous to Poland and to Europe as are the imperialist
ambitions of General Pilsudski, M. Dmowski would be far
worse. He is a reactionary clerical and anti-semite, who
would be the tool of the Quai d'Orsay, the Vatican, and the
Russian counter-revolutionaries. His policy would be one
of pogroms and a White Terror at home and continued war
to restore reaction in Russia. He wants, as the Warsaw
correspondent of the Manchester Guardian said in that paper
on August 25, "a great reactionary Russia with a re-
actionary Poland attached to it parasitically — a Slav junker
paradise."
New England and the Novel
By ROBERT HERRICK
THERE have been New Englanders who have written
novels about New England, of course. Witness Haw-
th rne! And Miss Jewett, and Mrs. Freeman, and Mrs.
Deland (men's names seem rarer), and a tapering host of
others. There have also been New Englanders by birth and
tradition, who, having penetrated the unfamiliar wilds below
the Bronx and across the Hudson, have reported what they
found there. If we were to abstract from American litera-
ture— as from American politics and business — all that had
been done for it in various ways by the sons and daughters
and near relatives of New England, there would be a great
void, hard to fill from the contributions of other provinces.
It may be said in passing that the New Englander thrives,
once get him beyond the severities of his own lean dooryard,
and expresses himself with a renewed vigor and freedom of
spirit — just as transplanted to prairie corn lands he once
more begot families of patriarchal proportions and added
weight as well as stature to himself. The transmigrations
and transformations of the Puritan offer an alluring sub-
ject !
Finally, chere is the clear outsider, the stranger who
comes to New England as to a Mecca of the arts and ameni-
ties like the young Howells, and puts down what he sees
there with all the zest of the discoverer. Mark Twain lived
often on the edge of New England, but was not markedly
affected by the circumstance. Howells, on the other hand,
owed much to his chosen country: the dates of his arrival
and departure from Boston inclose his most fertile period,
and the odor of New England lingered long in his fiction
after his departure, almost to the last. There is also some
part of the more direct Henry James, much of Edith Whar-
ton, to be accredited to the New England account, and lastly
must not be forgotten the New Hampshire chronicles of
Winston Churchill, who has adopted New England.
I do not know that it makes much difference whether a
province is immortalized by its own children or by adopted
ones, whether an outsider or an insider gives the final judg-
ment of record, though we are apt to think that the insider
knows us more intimately. Yet who better than Howells of
Ohio discerned the pettinesses as well as the nobilities of
New England? . . . Nor, in fact, do I believe that it
makes a vast difference whether one section of a people gets
itself into the record more abundantly than another. The
era of a puffing sectionalism has long past. Are we about
to witness the end of arrogant nationalisms also?
And yet New England, if no longer possessing an indi-
vidual and distinct pedestal of its own in our national cul-
ture, once arrogated to itself a special place in all things —
and has not forgotten it. The Brahmin type was known by
the superior air. I should say that the superior air — the
consciousness of otherness — was long the most character-
istic mark of New England, and still lingers in remote
corners of Cambridge and Boston, although most grounds
for pretention have so completely vanished. Superiority of
inheritance, of education, of pronunciation, of manners, of
morals, above all! The true New Englander was stamped
by an inward satisfaction that often made him seem prig-
gish, provincial, and odious to the more common person
born beyond the Hudson, below the Bronx. Was it justified?
Is such a pride of past performance ever justified in any
human soul? I doubt it. And I am positive that this su-
periority was never justified by triumphs in fiction, in the
records of imaginative prose that New England has inspired.
There was, of course, Hawthorne, and there one must stop
and take a very long breath before venturing to name at
random the "others." For Hawthorne in some extraordi-
nary way seems to have taken possession of the New Eng-
land scene, to have absorbed in his art its one creative theme
and to have exhausted it (though faithful gleaners still toil
in the field apparently unaware that the sheaves have long
since been garnered and carted to the mill).
Hawthorne's great theme was sin. It is safe to say that it
is the one important theme that New England ever en-
joyed thoroughly. Hawthorne came upon it at the moment
when sin as a theme was ripe for art, when it had most
resonance and appeal, and yet when men began to feel free
to talk about it. It was the appointed time for exploiting
in art that human consciousness of sin which had been accu-
mulating in the race for bitter generations. What is truly
remarkable to my thinking is that Hawthorne, saturated
with Salem and sin as he was, managed to maintain the
artist's aloofness and objectivity toward his theme. Recog-
nizing the possibilities of the situation, he exploited them
to the full. But — and here I am aware that I must scan-
dalize the orthodox — Hawthorne himself never took sin too
seriously. It was for him a matter of art not life. He did
not write tracts — he left that to Mrs. Stowe and all the many
others. He seized upon a superb opportunity in human ma-
terial offered by a sin-terrified community, and he painted
men and women sinning, afraid to sin, repenting of sin,
suffering from sin, punishing sin — yes, more rarely, slyly,
rejoicing and prospering in sin. He got all there was in
sin as a theme, and by and large his product will remain as
much a monument to the power of art to triumph over such
a stubborn and unattractive subject as sin, as a record of
the lights and shadows of a Puritan civilization. Haw-
thorne's work is preserved in the amber of his objective art,
while the efforts of the legion who gleaned in his footsteps
are already showing the black shadows and little more.
324
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2881
For there have been, naturally, many "others," working
diligently in this field of sin. In fact sin has cursed the
imagination of the New England novelist. Even the out-
sider of healthier inheritance falls under the evil spell of
the common preoccupation with sin, and a kindly, humorous
man like Howells, an honest and robust writer like Mr.
Churchill, take to prodding the human conscience and re-
cording its sickly writhings as soon as they feel the east
wind coming up across Massachusetts Bay. The output
from New England might be labeled inclusively "Studies in
Sin and Its After Effects." If old memories do not betray
me, Mary Wilkins Freeman did them best, in a grim, un-
sentimental way that had a faintly Continental flavor. But
her method was too brittle : her pictures fell apart into epi-
sodes. It was, too, the weakened, anemic second generation
of sin that she dealt with, and she launched into no epics.
Latterly in the hands of lesser folk the great theme has
degenerated from sin to conduct and manners. The stinging
consciousness of sin, which lent dignity to the earlier lite-
rature, became a morbid anxiety about appearances, and the
artist's effort, what might be called a taste for spiritual
window dressing.
But is sin in itself, unrelieved, a good and sufficient theme
for a vigorous art? Even with a Hawthorne and a George
Eliot in mind I doubt it. Is man living with a sense of sin
sufficiently large, varied, and noble a subject to offer the
artist that spiritual ecstasy which must enter into the crea-
tion of all enduring art? Looking over the result of a too
intense preoccupation with this gloomy theme in New Eng-
land, one feels that man — or woman — viewed solely as a
sinning human animal is lacking in sustained interest.
And in those later manifestations of conduct and manners
the substance becomes the ghost of a ghost in relation to
human life. It is not until the Puritan, happily escaped
from the too intolerable consciousness of sin, permits him-
self to look abroad and discover smiling landscapes, to
realize that after all life has its amenities as well as its
austerities, its unclouded, unsinning moments, that the crea-
tive spirit rises once more in his breast and he resumes his
song. In those more spacious worlds that open to his vision
both within and without, sin sinks to its proper perspective
in the whole host of human impulses and no longer gloomily
bullies the soul of the artist.
And yet New England on the face of it was a fit and
proper field for large fiction. Why did not her artists strug-
gle free from the obsession with sin? When her literature
degenerated into a discussion of conduct and manners, why
was it not more invigorating, more cosmopolitan, more
national? A homogeneous province, this corner of the
aging New World, yet with sufficient diversity physical and
social to offer those shades of character and environment
necessary for the artist, sufficiently contrasted between sea
and hill, town and city, and lived in for nearly three hundred
years by one of the purest races left on the earth in matter
of blood descent. Surely Hardy's England offered nothing
more promising, nor Trollope's. Balzac and Zola and Tolstoy
had richer inheritances, to be sure, but did Goethe or Ibsen
or Strindberg? . . . It would not be easy to find a more
appealing country than New England, with sweeter, homelier
memories, intimately mingled with the lives of generations
of men — a land not flowing with milk and honey, but full
of pungent associations, and ripe for the seer's vision. . . .
Destined to become a huge vacation camp and a machine
shop filled with alien labor!
For a while New England seemed eager to grasp her rich
heritage, to become the leader of that material expansion
which swept the nation after the Civil War. For a brief
generation New England participated in the riot of exploi-
tation. Then swiftly her leadership, financial and economic,
faded away. The control of her own enterprises fell from
nerveless Brahmin hands, and New England relapsed into
the passivity of four per cents, from which she has never
tried to reawaken. What happened in State Street merely
foreshadowed what was happening inwardly, spiritually, to
old New England. She was withering. In a world that had
apparently thrown off the burden of sin and was rioting
forth to joyous enterprises of possession and exploration
(which must lead inevitably to new conflicts and new trage-
dies) New England had nothing to offer but — Mugwumpery.
The sturdier members of the community were irresistibly
drawn by the magnet of the new West, by the pioneer lure
that had drawn their fathers across the Atlantic. They
sallied forth to conquests elsewhere, and wherever and what-
ever of American achievement there has been since the
Civil War, high on the monuments will be found New Eng-
land names. But for the homeland the term "abandoned
farm" was being coined, to which might have been added
the equally damnatory designation, "anemic town." New
England in sad fact became the shell of itself, and art does
not flourish in a shell among a withering people. State
Street surrendered its railroads, its mines, its great tele-
phone property, and other material assets to bolder, more
grasping hands, and New England became a small province
of the financial world, inhabited by respectable investors
(who kept their stocks and bonds long after the buccaneer
outsiders had robbed them of the substance of their prop-
erties). And the full irony of destiny is now working: in
that part of our nation which braved the wilds to worship
God freely, that first raised the standard of emancipation
for human slaves, that led the young republic to higher, finer
things, a Henry Cabot Lodge is the prophet, snarling piti-
fully against the future, standing guard over the four per
cents and the ancient memories. And a commonplace gov-
ernor asks us to "Have Faith in Massachusetts" ! For what
pray, should we have faith in Massachusetts?
New England preserved her families, her four per cents,
and her pretensions to culture. For somehow "culture"
lives on in a barren soil from which life and art have long
since fled in despair. Boston still cherished the illusion of
intellectual leadership though its books were published in
New York and its plays made on Broadway or in London.
But what economic law might have spared in its inexorable
working — an experimenting and expressing spirit — the Back
Bay and Cambridge between them have contrived utterly to
extirpate. A record of this lamentable fact has been made
recently in that extraordinary performance in unconscious
revelation, "The Education of Henry Adams." The one
unmentioned inference, the one unmistakable fact that
stares out at the New Englander from every page of that
confession and self-appraisement is sterility — spiritual im-
potence, so much more devastating than physical. And
the Back Bay does not even see it! It is complacent or
proud of the performance, which exposes to their children's
children the secret of their futility. Where the Adamses
once struggled and ruled — and incidentally believed in God
— their impotent descendant theorizes charmingly and wittily
about a universe that somehow no longer seems to offer
opportunity for an Adams. Of the new surge of impulses in
Sept. 18, 1920]
The Nation
325
our America he was wholly oblivious, though he lived in
what he judged to be the local center, a short block from
the White House, and journeyed back from time to time to
that Europe which was still to him the sole fount of in-
spiration.
It is a final word. Once read and understood — as only a
New Englander who has had dim perceptions of the an-
cestral blight within his own veins can understand it — this
revelation is the writing on the tomb. Thus nature in her
fashion has completed the circuit and grounded the human
wire. It is a far cry from the agitations about sin. This
product of the culture of Cambridge and the Back Bay,
descendant of the grim Puritan line, no longer has the invi-
tation or the capacity to sin.
It may appear superflous after thus lifting the burial
cloths from the dead to peer into the future. But it is im-
possible for one whose people lived in the old homesteads
and now lie buried on the country hillsides of New England
not to wonder and speculate about that future. Out of the
aristocratic mansions of Salem and Newburyport and the
weathered farm houses along the roads now peer the
swarthy faces of aliens of many races. Even in those stony
fields so laboriously cleared from the wilderness by the
forefathers the Greek, the Pole, the Russian plow and
reap. New England industrially at any rate is a lost
province. Its own people are a mere handful of its busy,
increasing millions: the rest are strangers, in mill, factory,
farm — strangers with strange instincts in their blood. The
bareheaded Italian still seems odd in our narrow streets.
The soft Levantine accent sounds out of place in colonial
rooms. The bearded Pole looks queer in the meadow pasture,
the infiltrating Jew absurd in the old corner store. But
these oddities of contrast will quickly disappear. For these
aliens have inherited the land and are literally making it
their own, through no fault of theirs. What they will do
with it, what they will think and say about life when they
are ripe for expression — not for another generation at
least — no man can tell. But of one thing we may be sure:
they will not be cursed with the consciousness of sin, and
their literature whatever it may contain will not be based
on the one old theme. If after they have come up out of
bondage in mill and field they can sing joyously, if they can
infuse into their mixed heritage the one ingredient that the
old New Englander could never assimilate, joy, and cele-
brate a vigorous and rejoicing New England — then our
world will, indeed, have a new wine in an old bottle — and
possibly a rare one.
But the day of ghosts has passed forever.
In the Driftway
THE Drifter patriotically paid fifteen cents to the Local
Chapter of the D. A. R. for the privilege of entering
a sweet little, neat little house entitled "Historical So-
ciety" in the hope of finding therein a short "History of
the Vineyard," for there is something alluring about the
age-old, complacent village of Edgartown and its inhabi-
tants of ancient lineage that makes one wonder why, whence,
and wherefore. The Drifter didn't find the History, but
was recommended to Bank's History, 2 Vols., $5.00, to be
had free, however, at the little, brick, "colonial" library
that is so tasteful and modest, so pathetically modern. Per-
haps some day he will peruse those volumes. But in the
meantime he allows himself to be led about by a young lady
with a cleft palate who was intimate with the daughters
of some of the old portraits, and who would chatter about
the cradle fired upon by the British — how disloyal to men-
tion such deeds of our late allies! — and about the bonnets
and the hoods of the Mayhews, the guns of the Chadwicks,
and Madame Nordica's collection [a Norton of Edgartown
off stage], when all the time the Drifter wanted to read the
paper about Lincoln's assassination and the messages from
Jeff Davis to his people, and the account of the town of
Katama, and of the West Tisbury township. And as the
Drifter passed on with a sigh, he caught sight of a portrait
of a fine old citizen, and suddenly the cloud behind the
silver lining of this quaint and lovable spot was revealed in
that temple — for it was the image of the town simpleton.
The town simpleton? In nearly every house you find one
lurking — apologized for quietly by a look or a word by the
mother with the soft, cultivated voice and the refined, pure
American face. Too pure, the Drifter fears — for the island
intermarriage has not quite been saved by the fine healthy
Portuguese fishing colony that has sprung up on its shores.
And so the Drifter sighed his sigh, and went his way. And
as he went he thought a little about ancient lineage and
purity of blood and alien invasions. And he wondered.
The Drifter
Correspondence
Olympian Error in the A. P.
To the Editor of The- Nation :
Sir: Your journal is something of a "journal of Journalists,"
therefore I am writing you to ask you to call public attention
to a most inexact, unscholarly, and impossible use of the word
"Olympiad" which I notice has become the current usage in
respect to the Olympic Games, so-called. Thus the Associated
Press dispatch reads: "The Americans excel in the Olympiad."
This is not correct diction. The word Olympiad denotes the
period of time comprehended between the holding of the games,
and was used by the Greeks to fix dates. An "Olympiad" is
therefore a unit of time, not a general name for a series of
games or sports. It would be deplorable if this barbarism
should become fixed usage in America.
Baltimore, August 18 Oscar Woodward Zeigler
8 Per Cent Ale and 8 Cent Milk
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: In your last I read your article on milk. Did it ever
occur to you that prohibition has brought about higher prices
of milk, as practically all dairies on Long Island and within a
radius of ten to twenty miles of large cities have gone out of
business because they could not purchase cheap brewers' grain,
an excellent feed for milk cows. Also that prohibition brought
our sugar imports up to seven and a half billion pounds. Most
of this sugar is used in homes to make strong drink. Would
not ales of low alcoholic content bring a big revenue to Uncle
Sam, give us a large amount of fine cheap cattle feed, reduce
the price of milk and sugar, keep that money in our country,
and you could again buy healthy fresh milk in New York for
ten cents a quart? That would mean much to the children.
Every large city could have herds of fine cows — New York
could have a herd in Central Park and one in Bronx Park — the
brewers would gladly furnish the feed cheap and our hospitals
and poor could purchase pure, fresh milk for eight cents a
quart. Does not this merit your attention?
New York, August 10 Armin
326
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2881
From an Island
By LEONORA SPEYER
Sea-Fog
The summer day draws the grayness closer
And shuts its shining eyes,
To the crooning of the horn.
Gulls flap unevenly through the muffled hours,
Spaces listen in hiding.
And the horn,
Like an old nurse,
Croons on in wordless monotone,
"Ooh— ooh— ooh— "
Bell-Buoys
Out in the dim harbor
I hear the sound of bells:
Out on the gray-blue meadows of the sea
I think mild water-cattle graze
Among the ripples.
Swallows
They dip their wings in the sunset,
They dash against the air
As if to break themselves upon its stillness:
In every movement, too swift to count,
Is a revelry of indecision,
A furtive delight in trees they do not desire
And in long grasses that shall not know their weight.
They hover and lean toward the meadow
With little edged cries,
And then,
As if frightened at the earth's nearness,
They seek the high austerity of evening-sky
And swirl into its depth.
Books
Dynamic Symmetry
Dynamic Symmetry. The Greek Vase. By Jay Hambidge. Yale
University Press.
T^VER since the Pythagoreans, in the fifth century B. a,
*-J succeeded in dividing a line-segment so that the rectangle
of the whole and one of the parts was equal to the square on
the other part, their problem has attracted the attention and
maintained the interest of the mathematical world. A line-seg-
ment 5 inches long, divided approximately in this way, would
have as the lengths of its two parts 2 inches and 3 inches.
Taking closer approximations, a line-segment is so divided when
we cut it in the ratio 5 to 8, 8 to 13, or 13 to 21. Speaking
precisely, the ratio is that of (-y'S-l) to 2. This division of
a line has gone by various names, such as "divine proportion"
and "extreme and mean ratio"; but the favorite for the last
hundred years has been "the golden section."
Aside from the mathematical interest involved in the prob-
lem and in such applications as that relating to the construc-
tion of the regular decagon, two other lines of interest have
developed during the many centuries which have elapsed since
the Greek geometers discovered their solution. One of these
connects the "golden section" with forms found in nature, such
as the fern leaf, the nautilus, and those vegetable products in
which the regular pentagon occurs. It also has been connected
with the arrangement of leaves about a stalk; in general it
seems to rank with axial symmetry as one of nature's favorite
basal forms.
The second line of interest relating to the sectio aurea, to
take the Latin form of the name, is the one which connects
the idea with art, in particular with architecture, painting, and
the plastic arts. This was first considered, in a work of any
importance, by an Italian mathematician, Pietro della - Fran-
cesca, toward the close of the fifteenth century. His manu-
script was extensively used without credit, after the manner
of the time, by Fra Luca di Borgo San Sepolcro, whose family
name was Pacioli, in preparing a work which he published in
1509. This work was entitled De diuina proportione epistola,
and it considered the relation of the "golden section" to paint-
ing, sculpture, architecture, and other branches of art. So
closely was this work connected with aesthetics that, so the
legend runs, the geometric drawings for it were made by none
other than Leonardo da Vinci himself.
From that time until the present the element of the "golden
section" has been recognized as important in all branches of
art in which pleasing proportion of line plays any part. The
literature upon the subject is extensive, not only in works on
art but in those on psychology and even in those relating to
industry.
What Mr. Hambidge has done is to show how the "golden
section" appears in the designs for certain Greek vases not
heretofore studied. He also shows how such incommensurable
lines as the diagonal and the sides of certain rectangles, in-
cluding squares, enter into the plans of works of this kind.
With these ideas the world of art has long been more or less"
familiar, and the works involving the plans and measurements
of works of Greek art are very numerous. What seems to
distinguish this particular study is the effort, apparently quite
subconsciously made, to cover the whole matter with an air of
mystery. This has been done by the familiar device, prehis-
toric in origin and perennial in its growth, of creating a new
vocabulary. No one who studies the history of philosophy, of
medicine, of law, of theology, or of modern education, can fail
to be impressed with the fact that the clothing of perfectly com-
monplace ideas in an unfamiliar linguistic garb is a potent
method of attracting attention and of laying claim to discovery.
Such a plan is always defended by the assertion that a tech-
nical vocabulary is necessary, an assertion that is usually with-
out much justification.
The reader who opens Mr. Hambidge's book meets on the
frontispiece "a theme in root-two" and at once feels his igno-
rance. He looks on the title-page and sees "Dynamic Sym-
metry," and wonders. He learns in the "Foreword" that "static
symmetry" is employed most naturally by artists. He finds
that the author has created a special meaning for an ancient
method of mathematics known as the "rule of three." He sees
that this idea is legitimately connected with a logarithmic
spiral which the author makes no attempt to explain. He then
comes upon "radii vectors" which, if he is a mathematical
reader, will be understood, but which will otherwise stand
merely as a piece of mixed Latin and English.
After leading his reader thus far, the author drops the
curve and returns to the rectilinear framework on which it is
formed and which could have been better reached without any
confusion of terms. He then introduces the term "reciprocal
rectangle," without definition, and states that the square root
of two is an "indeterminate fraction," by which he means that
this perfectly determinate expression has no common measure
with unity — that it is what a mathematician might call either
an irrational number or an incommensurable number. The
statement is next made that "there exists a series of rectangles
whose sides are divided into equal parts by the perpendicular
to the diagonal," which is perfectly true, but which is so ob-
Sept. 18, 1920]
The Nation
327
scured by the preceding terminology and the complicated steps
which have led up to it as to be unintelligible to all except those
whose memory of elementary mathematics enables them to dis-
card the non-essentials and see the simple result at which the
author has arrived. In order to mystify the reader still further
the author now calls this figure a "root-two rectangle," mean-
ing simply that its form is such that if the width is 1 the length
is "v/27 In a similar way he uses the terms "root-three rec-
tangle," "root-four rectangle," and so on. Here he pauses to
say that Fibonacci was "the man who introduced into Europe
the Arabic system of notation," whereas any historian could
have told him that these numerals were known in that part of
the world more than two centuries earlier. He also tells what
Gerard (by which name he refers to Albert Girard) did for a
certain series of numbers — which has no special bearing upon
the matter in hand.
The author now proceeds to discuss a certain form of rec-
tangle which he shows is found in the study of leaf distribution
in plants, that in which the width is 1 and the length is %
(■\/5-l), although this precise relation is not stated in the
present connection. It is merely the "golden section" ratio,
and it could have been set forth much more clearly and in much
briefer space. Such a rectangle has certain interesting geo-
metric properties, and in one of these the author feels that he
sees a reason for calling it "the rectangle of the whirling
squares," thus adding to the difficulties of the reader and con-
tributing nothing whatever to the subject in hand.
Thus far the reader will have finished Chapter I, and he
may well pause and consider the situation. He has learned that
there are "two types of symmetry or proportion, one of which
is possessed of qualities of activity, the other of passivity."
What these types are he does not know, and why one is called
active and the other passive he is not told. There seems to be
no good reason, and so he proceeds to learn that something is
to be called "dynamic symmetry." Through a maze he is led
to a very simple rectangle which can be formed by taking the
side of any square for its width and the diagonal of that square
for its length; for his convenience he might much better call
this "rectangle A" than use the author's "root-two rectangle."
Such a figure has various numerical properties, and is met
not infrequently in art.
The reader now learns about the mysterious rectangle which
is known as "the rectangle of the whirling squares." It is
really nothing but a rectangle formed in this simple manner:
Take the side of a regular decagon as the width of the rec-
tangle, and the radius of that decagon as the length. Such a
rectangle could easily be drawn; it could be designated as
"type D"; such of its properties as are to be used could be
set forth briefly, and its relation to the "golden section" could
be explained in two or three lines.
It does not seem desirable to consider the work in further
detail. Stripped of its mystery and set forth in simple lan-
guage it would have been an interesting work. The care taken
in drawing the figures and in making the measurements has
been great. The reader will regret the minute letters that
appear in the photographic reductions, though if he has not
heretofore considered the case of certain incommensurable lines
in art he will find much in these drawings to stimulate him. But
that anything has been gained by taking a few perfectly simple
geometric propositions and making them well-nigh unintelligi-
ble to the average reader, and particularly to the artist who is
the one to profit by the relations set forth, is not merely open to
doubt, — it can safely be denied in no uncertain terms, and none
the less uncertain because this particular treatise has been
highly praised in many quarters.
It would be superfluous to speak of the lack of care in the final
work upon the text, but it must be a matter of regret to a
scholar like Professor Archibald that he did not personally read
the proof of that part of the appendix which contains his valu-
able historical study. David Eugene Smith
A Guide to Russian Literature
A Guide to Russian Literature (1820-1917). By Moissaye J.
Olgin. Harcourt, Brace and Howe,
nn HE interpretation of Russian literaure for the English-
* reading public has hitherto suffered from a twofold limita-
tion; it has been the work of non-Russians, and it has been the
work of literary students inadequately grounded in the social
and political problems of the country. Waliszewski the Galli-
cized Pole, Bruckner the German, and Maurice Baring the Eng-
lishman have provided us with our critical perspective. In-
evitably each man, viewing the field from his own angle of
vision, has selected and proportioned the materials in accord-
ance with the artistic and psychological standards of his coun-
try. His history carries the imprint of the national character,
as well as of his own individual bias. When literatures are as
closely allied as are those of Western Europe, the ordinary
process of transmission is fairly adequate, especially as it is
corrected by the existence of a certain degree of first-hand
familiarity with the foreign literature in its original form.
In the case of Russian there is not only a complete unacquaint-
ance with the language to act as a fence to the understanding
of the reader, but there is an estranging difference in the motive
power which created the chief literary manifestations of the
nineteenth century and hence in the basis of critical valuation.
In no European country have the political, the social, and the
economic problems been so direct a concern of the literary
artist, the line between publicist and poet so indistinct. No-
where is a plainer force attached to the much-used phrase about
literature and life. In Russia one cannot set up as a critic of
literature without first having qualified as a critic of society.
Literature for its own sake, the expression of an individualistic,
self-justifying search for beauty, has its talented exponents, but
it is only in the last generation that the aesthetic hierophants
of the cult of personality have made their voices distinctly
heard. Russian life and thought are what they are at this
moment because of the writing of poets like Pushkin, Lermon-
tov, and Nekrasov, of critics like Byelinsky, of publicists like
Chernishevsky, Pisarev, and Mikhailovsky, and of socially-
conscious novelists like Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gorky.
A reader of English may now follow the Russian approach
to literature under the excellent guidance of Mr. Olgin's
volume. Mr. Olgin combines an initiate's grasp of the political
and social background of his country with an intense and
catholic appreciation of its literature, and his command of
incisive and pictorial English might be envied by writers to
whom the tongue is native. He opens up attractive new
stretches, although, alas, it is impossible to explore the pros-
pects which he points to. Much of the literature which he
describes remains indefinitely out of reach. The poets in par-
ticular, whether of the classical or of the modernist school,
will scarcely ever be anything but names; attempts to render
them into English have thus far resulted in sad prose. Mr.
Olgin evidently makes no point of regarding the limited re-
sources of those who do not read Russian, his idea being to
present the literature that he considers vital for an under-
standing of the present tendencies in the life and thought of
the people. On this principle his selection of writers and pro-
portioning of space can be accounted for. The outstanding
figures whose work is familiar to the western world are treated
at no greater length than many writers whose very names have
never passed beyond the confines of their speech. Tolstoy and
Turgenev get no fuller discussion than Lyeskov or Sergeyev-
Tzensky. The large emphasis on the contemporary generation,
to which half the volume is devoted, and the omission of older
writers whose importance has dwindled to the merely historical,
serve further to distinguish the book as a guide to what is now
living and active in Russian literature. In other respects, too,
the presentation disregards conventional methods. The detached
328
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2881
treatment of the individual authors with a descriptive account
of their more important works, almost in the fashion of a
catalogue, gives a mechanical air to the arrangement of the
book, but it is not unsuited to the purposes of a guide. Not
only does it direct the inquirer precisely to what he needs to
read, but the discussion of movements and tendencies is thereby
simplified to advantage. Whatever may be true of the arrange-
ment of material, however, there is nothing mechanical about
the discussion itself. Mr. Olgin writes with zestful enjoyment
and fervent appreciation; if to some readers his appreciation
should seem too uniform, he can again plead a guide's duty of
impartiality. From the same motive he steers wide of contro-
versial judgments in his individual estimates. The introductions
to the three divisions in which he groups his materials are
admirable in their expository compression, in their lucid revela-
tion of intellectual and social clues to literary manifestations.
The only thing we are inclined to complain of in Mr. Olgin
is his excessive modesty. The abundant comments by authori-
tative Russian critics with which he supplements his own de-
scriptions would in a book by an alien critic be very instructive;
here their effect is, as a rule, one of redundancy. There is also
a fault of omission which the publishers would do well to
correct in a second edition: a list of available English transla-
tions is an obvious desideratum in a book like this, especially
as it is destined to a long period of usefulness.
Jacob Zeitlin
The Household Art
The Practical Book of Interior Decoration. By Harold Donald-
son Eberlein, Abbot McClure, and Edward Stratton Holloway.
J. B. Lippincott Company.
IT is safe to say that no human art is much older than that
which today, for better or for worse, we call interior decora-
tion. Indeed, from some of the monkey tricks which survive in
it, one might guess that it is older than the human race. The
geologist estimates its age from elementary sketches in line and
color on the walls of once inhabited caves. Biologist and his-
torian study it for its records of the beginnings of human life,
and from cave pictures and the decoration of the first household
utensils down through Greek vases and Pompeian wall paintings
they read in it the history of civilization. It is no less universal
than ancient. Probably no human being ever had a dwelling-
place for more than a night or two without, in jest or earnest,
adding something to its interior to gratify the eye. If everyone
who practices the art wished to read about it, the subject would
be the publisher's best friend. Certainly many do, and house-
hold magazines spread before us in periodic abundance pages of
text and illustration for our guidance — fairly safe guides now-
a-days; atrocities are still occasionally perpetrated, as they were
frequently in the past, but most of the magazines play safe for
mediocrity. The horrors are now largely relegated to the house-
hold page of the Sunday newspaper, where the blind lead the
blind and without censor or censure exchange directions for
crocheting "peacock tidies" and for making gilt picture frames
of empty spools.
If peacock tidies and insurance calendars gratify a man's
(it is not always the woman's) taste, wherein does he differ in
satisfaction from one whose taste is gratified by an Adam draw-
ing-room with Sheraton furniture? One generation prefers
Adam and Sheraton, another indulges in monumental black
walnut, haircloth, wax flowers under bell-glass, colossal crayon
"enlargements," lambrequins, and Felicia Hemans's poems in
padded alligator skin on the center table. Both indeed are grati-
fied, but probably neither is satisfied. The conundrum of the
workshops is the same to both, and the Devil whoops as he
whooped of old. If they are sincere they are dealing with art,
and art inevitably aspires. Probably if the case came to judg-
ment, not even the proprietor of the black walnut and glass
flowers would deny that Adam and Sheraton had aspired to
something nearer the unseen common goal. Both had the satis-
faction of reaching humanly near an ideal, but in the experience
of art ideals humanly approached are but resting-places. He
who rests with lambrequins and crayon enlargements can tarry
but a night, for he has a devious way to go to reach such sta-
tions as Adam and Sheraton via neo-Grand Rapids and late East
Aurora. As a rule he will recognize a short cut when he sees
it, and it is missionary work to show him one.
Such is the function of "The Practical Book of Interior Deco-
ration." Few know so much that they may not get at least a
hint or two from it. He who knows nothing about art but is
certain that he knows what he likes may learn why he likes it,
or hear of something else he likes better; if he is interested
enough in the subject to read the book through he will either
support his taste by building a foundation under it, or it will
fall and he will erect something in its place based on sound
judgment. The reader with no taste at all stands a fair chance
to form one if he will read with attention. The one person who
will get nothing from the book is he who wishes to know how
to make an arm-chair of an old barrel or a rustic sofa from last
year's bean-poles. It does not tell how to do such things, nor
yet "how to furnish the living-room." But it does detail the
ways in which many beautiful rooms have been decorated and
furnished. One of the valuable contributions it makes to the
equipment of the ordinary reader is a history of the art for the
last four centuries in four countries where its history is richest,
England, France, Italy, and Spain, a history such as he could
hardly put together for himself and have on his shelves save at
the expense of many volumes. It includes a discussion of Renais-
sance, Baroque, Rococo, and Neo-Classic decoration in each of
the countries named, illustrated by a convenient reference chart
indicating the characteristic manifestation of each system and
the period of its appearance in each of the countries — a leading
and kindly light in a complicated maze. This historical material
is in itself a foundation of taste, or a justification to him who
has it but knows not whence or how, and the many fine old
interiors shown in the numerous plates and illustrations are able
teachers of the art. All this amply prepares the reader for the
explanation in Part II of the modern practice, and makes clear
whence the principles are drawn and how they are applied. It
is sound teaching, for however plain it may be that the authors
have tastes and opinions of their own, they attempt to show us
not what we ought to like whether we like it or not but rather
what the resources of the art are for obtaining such effects as we
wish. The extremist will find here everything he needs except
encouragement; he who is anxious to have his rooms express his
individuality learns that the art cannot deny him expression, and
may even afford him revelation or betrayal.
The chapter on Color and Color Schemes is a welcome and lucid
simplification of a subject which commonly gives rise to endless
complications and subtleties. From the exposition of the Mod-
ern Movement one may learn to distinguish its elements from
various neat and gaudy designs emanating in spirit if not in
body from Vienna and Berlin, as well as to know Peasant and
Cottage styles of furniture from Mission and Elbert Hubbard
types. The Modern Movement is defined as the attempt to
"teach use, convenience, and beauty by way of simplicity and
balance on the one hand and fine, frank, cheerful color on the
other."
The book is valuable in every way except as literature. One
reads it with pleasure in the subject, but not with pleasure in
the book. It is a pity, too, for the subject has made literature-
many interiors in the best manner shine in the pages of English
letters; to quote them would be to harmonize the text with the
plates and lend grace to many a graceless chapter. Not every
chapter is graceless; one or another of the three authors has
notions of ease in another art than his own. But there are
pockets of dry meal in the dough which do not make the book a
whit more practical than it would have been if the whole were
blended. R. p. Utter
Sept. 18, 1920]
The Nation
329
A Model for a World Court
Judicial Settlement of Controversies Between States of the
American Union. Edited by James Brown Scott. The Car-
negie Endowment for International Peace.
THE choice before the world in 1919 finds something of a
parallel in that before the thirteen American States in 1787.
They turned to a new sort of super-government with supreme
legislative, executive, and judicial authority over certain com-
mon interests. To the new central judicial body was given juris-
diction over controversies between the States and over a variety
of other disputes in which more than one State was interested.
The American experiment has proved something of a success in
the way of composing differences between the States. There
was, it is true, a season of hard sledding when bullets took the
place of briefs ; but after a few years of trial by battle trial by
argument was resumed. In the belief that "what forty-eight
States of the American Union do, a like number of states form-
ing the Society of Nations can also do," the secretary of the Car-
negie Endowment for International Peace has fathered the
printing of the volumes under review. The material covers the
American experience of judicial settlement of quarrels between
States which in many respects are independent and sovereign.
Two large volumes printed in America give verbatim the official
reports of all the cases in which a State has sued a State. The
chief characteristic of the editing is its absence. A third vol-
ume, printed in England and called "an analysis," rehashes the
material already given. Some is omitted and some turned into
indirect discourse; but "otherwise," says the preface, each case
is allowed "to tell its story in the language of the Court and of
the Judge delivering its opinion." The grapes are pressed too
gently to yield much juice, and adequate precautions are taken
against fermentation.
Fortunately the Carnegie Endowment can afford the wanton
waste of money which this unexpurgated copying involves. Yet
it might be thought that for art's sake it would prefer to put its
editing into more competent and conscientious hands. It would
have taken so little thought to omit the thirty pages given to a
survey of the boundary line between Missouri and Iowa.
"Brushy branch," "wet swale," "rolling prairie," "sparse timber"
are reported mile by mile for one hundred and fifty miles. Sim-
ilar follies abound. What illumination can world organizers
extract from several hundred pages of such topographical de-
tails? The only thing worth telling is the fact that the Supreme
Court fixed the boundary. The absence of any classification
enhances the uselessness of the volumes. Suits involving claims
for money are not segregated from suits over boundaries.
Questions of jurisdiction and of the enforcement of decrees are
not separated from the mass. Opinions on different aspects of
the same controversy are not grouped together. The only order
is the order of time. This gives us a crazy-quilt with patches of
different controversies put on helter-skelter according to the
whims of the calendar of the court. In the "analysis" a few
uninforming headings are introduced at aesthetic intervals on
the title page, but their appeal is only to the eye. All we have
is a pile of bricks, with no semblance of a structure. Yet one
exception to the absence of editing is to be noted. This seems to
spring from the heart rather than from the head. A kindly
instinct to let bygones be bygones pauses at the Declaration of
Independence. It compromises by leaving out the unkind re-
marks about George III and his doings. Perhaps caution was
blended with kindness. It may have been felt that this is no
time to speak of self-determination and the right of revolution.
Nothing offensive or dangerous appears to have been discovered
in the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, for these
are boldly printed in full. Those who have occasion to read them
or to refer to the cases which have passed on disputes between
the States will find it convenient to have the material accessible
in two big books. Some few scholars may be saved a little
physical effort by Dr. Scott's compilation. This is, however,
all that can be said in favor of this pretentious performance.
Even without these shortcomings the work would serve but
slightly the object for which it was designed. It shows that
boundary disputes and claims for money can be submitted to an
international tribunal for adjudication. We knew that before.
Nations have done it. Such issues between nations are the least
difficult to settle. They are minor matters when compared with
the other discords that lead to diplomatic parley or to war. So
the settlement by the Supreme Court of controversies formally
between States is but a fraction of our American experience in
resolving the conflicting interests of the States by lawsuits
rather than by other forms of friction. Suits between indi-
viduals often involve disputes in which States would intervene
if they were without a common superior. The commerce clause
prevents a State from imposing a tariff on the products of a
neighbor. It requires from each fair treatment of the commer-
cial interests of the others. The Fourteenth Amendment keeps
the States from poaching on the preserves of their sisters. The
privileges and immunities clause saves citizens of one State from
being treated as aliens in another. These constitutional clauses
are invoked by private litigants. If the injury resented were
done by Mexico rather than by Ohio or Texas, a protest from the
State Department would be apt to ensue. The judicial decisions
in such controversies demand inclusion in any picture that pro-
fesses to paint the Supreme Court as a model for a World Court.
Above all, the powers possessed by Congress are a potent force
in keeping the States from each other's throats. Without these
powers of Congress and these constitutional limitations on the
States, the authority of the Supreme Court over States as liti-
gants would leave the situation from Maine to California but
little different from the international anarchy which some are
seeking to end. By abstracting from its setting the material he
presents, Dr. Scott offers a delusive palliative to a sick and suf-
fering world. He would have done better had he done nothing.
Thomas Reed Powell
Sic Transit
The Book of Susan. By Lee Wilson Dodd. E. P. Dutton and
Company.
Flappers and Philosophers. By F. Scott Fitzgerald. Charles
Scribner's Sons.
HP HE part of a devil's advocate is not an amusing one to play.
*■ It seems ungrateful to find fault with an American novel
that is being praised by good judges and that is the work of an
unmistakably gifted and cultivated man of letters. Mr. Dodd's
style is in another world from the gritty slovenliness of the
average story; the earlier part of his book is filled with ripe
and intense characterizations; the interpolated passages of
criticism and verse are mellow and delightful. But the fable of
the book is the fable of "Daddy Longlegs," not only in fact but,
beneath all appearances of intellectual subtlety and integrity,
in tendency and spirit. You do not suspect that at once. The
Birch Street environment of Susan's childhood is rendered with
very sharp and honest exactness. Nor does any sentimental lapse
interfere with the transferring of the little waif to the home and
the affections of Ambrose Hunt, who is neither bachelor, hus-
band, nor widower. But very soon, though the catastrophe is
meticulously veiled by Mr. Dodd's culture and his ingratiating
manner, the inner structure of the book crumbles and sinks into
a pool of treacle. Susan is entirely too remarkable to be both
true and agreeable. She never deviates into the undistinguished;
she is a modern infant super-phenomenon. Yet her frankness
is only an excess of conventional refinement guarding its
cloistered sensibilities by a new set of gestures and pretenses.
The brief interlude of the emergence of Mrs. Hunt, her sudden
psychical turn-about, and her obliging demise complete the with-
drawal of one's confidence from Mr. Dodd. One is not astonished
after that to have the war burst in all gold and glory and legend
330
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2881
and to see Ambrose and his Susan melt into each other's arms
somewhere in France.
Mr. Dodd is, of course, too much the scholar and thinker not
to be dimly aware of some of the very soft spots in his narrative.
Ambrose Hunt, with his radical tongue and his Philistine soul,
comes in for very deft little stings and pricks of irony. But if
Mr. Dodd meant to play fair with him, with us, and with the
admirably characteristic American problem involved, why did
he kill poor Gertrude Hunt? Why does he not let Hunt fight out
his fight and triumph or go under, or else shirk his drama and
retire to his studies? No book is fundamentally honest in
which a man's fate is decided by a happy or an unhappy acci-
dent. The reply that it happens in life is pointless. The
artistic interpretation of life must be based on its inherent and
permanent nature. An accident stops the story, but does not
end it. Why raise the interesting issue of Hunt's divided mind
if Gertrude is to die? She seems notably healthy during her
single appearance. Why portray the struggle of Susan, if it
was to dissolve for good in a fleeting exaltation of mood? If
lightning strikes you, your story is not ended; it remains an
eternal fragment. These are mere commonplaces. That one
has to urge them brings out the structural feebleness of Mr.
Dodd's novel and the intellectual irresponsibility of those who
praise it unreservedly. We understand the temptation to such
praise. Much of our fiction is incurably common in workman-
ship. A book obviously written by an artist and a scholar makes
a very special appeal. But what if, before its end, he yields to
every vulgar snare and fortifit" every vulgar folly? We can
only hope that Mr. Dodd will soon give us another novel in which
his grace of style and temper shall serve to express an austerer
strain of thought and imagination — ansterer because it is truer
and truer because it does not compromise.
"Flappers and Philosophers" is a far more melancholy spec-
tacle than "The Book of Susan." We were among the first to
welcome the richness, the verve, the promise of Mr. Fitzgerald's
"This Side of Paradise." We were not blind to his essential im-
maturity of outlook and, therefore, were a little astonished at
Professor Phelps's certainty that he would "go far." Alas, he
has gone far. He has gone from the polished literary dexterity
of his first book to the manner of writing that makes "lay" an
intransitive verb and zestfully employs that indescribable par-
ticle "onto." No, this is not pedantry. An illiterate genius can
afford such luxuries. In him they argue no insensitiveness or
ugly haste or careless drifting with the crowd. Mr. Fitzgerald
is a university-bred man and seemed to be a poet. The substance
of the eight stories in his volume is in harmony with his new
manner. They have a rather ghastly rattle of movement that
apes energy and a hectic straining after emotion that apes in-
tensity. The surface is unnaturally taut; the substance beneath
is slack and withered as by a premature old age. The Offshore
Pirate is on the level of a musical comedy "book"; The Ice
Palace and Benediction are falsely effective bits of senti-
mentality; Head and Shoulders is sheer trickery — a prestidigita-
tor's "stunt" in writing. The Cut Glass Bowl and Bernice Bobs
Her Hair touch human nature and the course of life more
closely. But both share the ugly hardness of the book's title.
This hardness is the hardness of neither austerity nor disillu-
sion; it is neither ascetic nor cynical. It is merely harsh and
flippant.
What has happened to Mr. Fitzgerald? His first book has had
a well-merited success. Did he retire, after a very proper
interval of gaiety, to his study in order to write a deeper,
richer, riper book? Unhappily we are in an environment where
only failure can save the soul of youth. In "This Side of Para-
dise" there was both gold and dross. Instead of wringing his
art, in Mr. Hergesheimer's fine expression, free of all dross,
Mr. Fitzgerald proceeded to cultivate it and to sell it to the
Saturday Evening Post. Why write good books? You have to
sell something like five thousand copies to earn the price of one
story. Sic transit gloria art is.
Books in Brief
REVOLUTIONS are never the simple things they commonly
set out to be. The more thoroughly they accomplish their
immediate purpose, the more certainly unforeseen programs
lift themselves above the horizon demanding fulfilment. That
the democratic revolution, implying as it does the greatest
upheaval in social history, should clarify its program slowly,
was inevitable. But since 1914 current democratic thought has
been shifting its emphasis more rapidly, envisaging ends that
were not foreseen in pre-war days. In those remote times the
Marxian collectivists were in full possession of the field. In
England the Fabians were the counseling force — driving would
be too strong a word — and the Syndicalists were scarcely heard
of. But the gentle moon of Fabianism has set, and bureau-
cratic collectivism is on the scrap-heap. They failed because
of the inadequacy of their programs to democratic ends. Prod-
ucts of a machine age, they worshiped a machine regimen-
tation of society, forgetful of the fact that democracy is not a
program but is of the spirit, and that the sole test of a demo-
cratic society is the free flowering of individual men and women.
This is the vital truth that gives significance to a delightful
book by Richard Roberts, a cultivated Welsh clergyman who
supplements a catholic British outlook with a knowledge of
America. "The Unfinished Programme of Democracy"
(Huebsch) lays emphasis upon the ethical objective of democ-
racy, holding that the ultimate goal is not material prosperity
— although such prosperity doubtless will result from the de-
mocratization of economics — but the creation of a social en-
vironment that will stimulate the largest cultural development.
The beginning and the end of the democratic purpose lie in
freedom and fellowship. Mr. Roberts over-modestly makes little
claim to originality, but he gives evidence of wide reading and
intelligent meditation. Much social literature from Ruskin and
Morris to Hobhouse, Bertrand Russell, and G. D. H. Cole has
passed through his mind and taken fresh meaning, and the most
widely read will enjoy the book for the fine, undogmatic intelli-
gence which marks his examination of fundamental principles.
His main conclusions are essentially at one with those of the
English Guildmen. He reflects the Guild reaction against the
collectivistic ideal of bureaucratic centralization and ultimate
preoccupation with the economic. "The task of democracy,"
he insists, "is that of destroying individualism and of cultivat-
ing individuality." This task, with all such coordinate ends as
the redemption of work and the spread of fellowship, can be
accomplished only by more democracy. Revolutionaries hitherto
have been too much engrossed with the immediate question of
the title-deeds to our economic machinery. A shift of ownership
is necessary; property for power rather than for use must be
socialized; but a saving democratic spirit in the daily conduct
of work is much more necessary. In order to bring this about
the traditional conception of the sovereign state and its relations
to society must come in for an overhauling. In his political
philosophy Mr. Roberts follows the National Guildmen into the
camp of what to an American seems a neo-Jeffersonianism. It
was Jefferson who taught Americans of a hundred years ago
the danger of that "state omnicompetency" which brings so
many evils in its train, as well as the saving virtue of those
social contacts and sympathies which are humanizing to free
men. To Mr. Roberts this "sociability" is the essence of de-
mocracy. The system of profitism "has largely kept mankind
in a state of arrested development"; it has subordinated the
entire household to the kitchen; and the final test of a rational
democratic society is the question whether it is able to solve
the problem of a due subordination of the kitchen to the living
rooms. The book is both refreshing and heartening and de-
serves a wide reading, not only for the soundness of its ideas
but for the distinction and charm of its temper, and the vivid-
ness of its style.
Sept. 18, 1920]
The Nation
331
T N the British mind of Mr. C. Brunsdon Fletcher three books
* are necessary for showing Germany's unfitness to receive
back her South Sea island possessions. "Stevenson's Germany:
the Case against Germany in the Pacific" (Scribner's) , the
third and last of the three, builds around Robert Louis Steven-
son's "Footnote to History" an argument against Germany's
return to Samoa or elsewhere. It is clear that Samoa suffered
from German exploitation — but so has the South Sea suffered
from white exploitation generally; and Stevenson knew, among
other things which Mr. Fletcher does not stress, that the
British themselves were not the least of the exploiters, though
they were certainly not the worst.
WHEN the doctors of Lille induced the French Academy
of Medicine to resolve never again to participate in any
international congress in which sat German colleagues who had
not denounced the acts of the German Government, they prob-
ably had small suspicion that their resolution would lead to a
German study of the German data regarding German atrocities
in Lille. Dr. Erik Schlesinger, the distinguished Berlin nerve
specialist, read the vibrant protest of Dr. Calmette of the
Pasteur Institute of Lille to the Berlin Medical Society. The
Berlin doctors held that the allegations required investigation
by historians rather than by doctors and refused to take any
action. Dr. Schlesinger then, together with Fraulein Walburga
Geiger of the Department of Labor, Max Hodann of the League
of Nations Society, and Dr. Elisabeth Rotten of the Allied
Prisoners Relief work, instituted their own investigation, and
the damning result is laid before their countrymen in "Lille"
(Berlin: Hans Robert Engelmann), a compact seventy-page
pamphlet consisting of Dr. Calmette's protest before his French
colleagues and of the official orders and data discovered in the
files of the German War Department. They reveal the Prus-
sian mind at its cold mechanical worst, systematically execut-
ing the doctrine of military necessity, not so much with con-
scious brutality as with inhuman logic. A few of Dr. Cal-
mette's charges seem less brutally unnecessary when seen in
relation to their backgrounds; most of them, the deportations
especially, seem perhaps even worse. The collation is an amende
d'honneur, and Dr. Schlesinger and his colleagues deserve the
highest praise for an unpleasant task well done. They promise
sequels enlightening their fellow-Germans on other matters well
known abroad; it will be interesting to see whether a similar
series of monographs on the Baralong affair, and the alien
property custodians, is forthcoming from the Allied side.
A MONG the tasks of reconstruction one task is so simple that
** it is sometimes overlooked in the conflicts now raging and
yet so important that it must not be overlooked no matter what
else happens: that of rebuilding the houses in the devastated
regions and reestablishing the industries immediately necessary
for subsistence. Corinna Haven Smith and Caroline R. Hill
in "Rising Above the Ruins in France" (Putnams) offer a sen-
sible and unadorned account of the visits the two made in the
Departments of the Marne, the Somme, the Aisne, the Nord,
and Pas de Calais, immediately after the armistice, on behalf
of the Children of the Frontier. They report from hearsay a
good many things about the German occupation that have often
been told; some of their statistics have already become old-
fashioned, so rapidly does the work of rehabilitation go on.
But when they speak of conditions actually witnessed they
speak with the natural authority of sincerity and lucidity.
And beneath their pictures of these ruined towns and farms
appears the moving spectacle of plain men and women tena-
ciously clinging to their native soil and beginning a new life
with a vitality which not even this war could extinguish. The
book takes a particular value from the large number of photo-
graphs with which it is enriched and which supplement the
text to a degree unusual in the many records of amateur ob-
servers with which the market has been glutted.
BRENTANO'S
Retail Book Department
Fifth Avenue and 27th Street, New York City
BOOKS ON PRESENT DAY TOPICS
Our Economic and Other Problems
By Otto H. Kahn $4.00
What must be done to set the world again on its feet
financially? Mr. Kahn makes a brilliant contribution
to this baffling problem. He discusses the railroads
constructively, he exposes the fallacies of an ill-
designed taxation, and he lays bare the fundamentals
of our economic structure.
The New Unionism
By J. M. Budish and George Soule $3.00
Workers in the clothing industries, largely of foreign
birth, have progressed inside of twenty years from the
worst sweatshop conditions to a leading position in
American organized labor. The story of how this was
accomplished is not only dramatic in itself, but illus-
trates the growth of a new type of unionism. This
account of its origin, its structure and methods, its
remarkable programs for adult education and its con-
tribution to modern democracy, written in collabora-
tion by a trade-union official and by the former labor
editor of the New York Evening Post, will attract
the general reader, as well as all who are interested in
the labor movement.
The Foreign Trade of the United States, Its
Character, Organization, and Methods
By Thos. F. Ford and L. Cummings Ford, with an
Introduction by William L. Saunders, President
American Manufacturers' Export Association $3.00
The principles underlying foreign commerce are ex-
cellently handled in this book — a book that will give
one valuable information whenever it is read or when-
ever it is used for reference. For the inexperienced,
the student, or the beginner, it should be invaluable.
Is Violence the Way Out of Our Industrial
Disputes?
By John Haynes Holmes $1.25
In the industrial, as in the international field, it offers
in the author's judgment the only way of escape from
the sufferings we now endure.
Looking Forward
By Charles F. Higham $2.00
"A very clear and easily read exposition of the imme-
diate future confronting our science of publicity. . . .
A constructive analysis of the means at our disposal
for harnessing the tremendous force of public opinion."
A New Robinson Crusoe
By Gilson Gardner $1.25
Robinson Crusoe with most of the classic incidents
intact. Retold in the spirit of modern industrial
society and with all the new-won lessons of modern
economic life. "Economics" is no longer a forbidden
word; this book is a fascinating introduction to the
science.
Postage Additional
^zzzssr
BRENTANCTS
Retail Book Department
Fifth Areaue and 27th Street
New Y#rk City
332
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2881
Drama
An Evening at the Movies
TO criticize the movies may seem to have fallen low indeed.
But Mr. D. W. Griffith, superman of the "photoplay," in-
vites you with a gesture of quite regal courtesy. "Here," he
seems to say, "is a thing that has little in common with your
quarter show around the corner; here is, if anywhere, the un-
heard of and incomparable." You go and find yourself in the
midst of a sufficiently intense experience of life, if not of art.
All that depresses and discourages you in certain characteristic
moods of your countrymen is here: the moral littleness and the
physical magnificence, the intellectual sloth and the mechanical
speed. The contrast that meets you is not the ancient and
tragic one between grandeur and mortality; it is a quaint and
new one between grandeur and silliness. But do not fancy Mr.
Griffith a Barnum, a knowing fakir on an heroic scale. He
creates or rather assembles his spectacles within the mood to
which they are to appeal; he himself throbs and yells and hisses
the villain with that vast audience which is stirred and shaken
by these racing pictures as it could never be by the passion of
Medea or the piteousness of Lear.
He has taken the tawdry old fable of "Way Down East" — the
betrayal, the mock marriage, the villain's downfall, the happy
ending — and left it, in all essentials, precisely what it was.
The written legends on the screen that interpret the action in
a style of inimitably stale sugariness serve but to intensify
the coarse and blundering insufficiency of the moral involved.
These hectic appeals to the mob in favor of conventions as stiff
as granite and as merciless as gangrene are powerfully cal-
culated to tighten thongs that even now often cut to the very
heart and to increase the already dreadful sum of social in-
tolerance and festering pain. For in the applause of these audi-
ences there is not only satisfaction; there is menace. Ten thou-
sand people, an hundred thousand people, will, sooner or later,
leave a theater after this picture and go out into the world
determined to make the ideals of Mr. Griffith prevail. Woe to
a neighbor, a friend, a kinsman who shall choose to lead his life
upon another plan ! Against this propaganda poets and philoso-
phers are as powerless as a child trying to batter down a door
of oak.
They are the more powerless because the manager with a
craftiness that, on this scale, has in it something grandiose,
drives home his moral by the sharpest, the most intimate, the
most unashamed appeals. A son dances a simple old country
dance with his mother and, with a grave and tender courtesy,
kisses her faded cheek. Dusk falls over two young lovers in an
orchard. Apple blossoms sway in the breeze. Behind the
screen well-modulated choral voices sing an old-fashioned ditty
that brings back to every American those scenes of his earlier
years from which no man can withhold a faint tenderness.
Our youth does tug at our hearts. If the steady and disciplined
mind recognizes, however austerely, the natural power of such
things, consider how those unschooled characters go down be-
fore so vividly real and beautiful a presentation of them. They
are ensnared by what is not the worst within them, and driven
forth by their very pieties to persecute and to traduce their
fellowmen. Who is so base that, having seen this picture, he
will not battle for the security, the permanence, the sanctity of
— well, of everything exactly as it is?
Mr. Griffith's "elaboration" of the story is purely scenic in
kind. Not to praise his work in this respect would be an empty
affectation. Life is here in great beauty and in great abun-
dance. The gorgeous ball in the prologue, the barn-dance, the
farm-yards, the sleigh-rides are all excellent. The directing,
especially in the barn-dance scene, is superb. No stage man-
ager has ever created a fuller sense of the authentic rhythm and
thrill and abandon of reality. All the group scenes, indeed,
are magnificently done. There is in them a union of strength
and elasticity that required both insight and imagination to
produce. Wherever no moral ideas intrude, wherever neither
straight thinking nor clean feeling was to be done, wherever
the scene has no significance beyond its physical aspect and
movement, Mr. Griffith and his actors have both grace and power.
It follows that the picture reaches its highest point where na-
ture and naked physical danger are to be shown. When the
heroine's past is discovered, the squire drives her — like Hazel
Kirke — out into the storm and the night. The scene is exces-
sively silly and mawkish. But he does not drive her out, re-
member, into a storm of paper from the wings. It is an au-
thentic blizzard in the forests of Vermont. The girl flees to
the frozen Connecticut river. But the ice cracks and is riven
and, lying on a floe, she is driven toward the thundering falls.
The hero follows her and saves her 'at the last moment. A
shabby old trick! But the feigning is reduced to a minimum.
A large engineering staff worked for two months to force nature
itself to enact this scene. The whirling storm, the icy water,
the racing floes are actually there. It is not art, but it is mag-
nificent.
Anthropologists tell us that in primitive society the violator
of a taboo is the central object of vengeance. Yet when trained
observers question members of the tribes as to the reason for
any particular taboo, primitive man cannot even comprehend
the nature of that question. His whole concern is with the how,
never with the why of his tribal customs. In the foreground
of his consciousness is always the will, never the reason. In the
face of nature he is agile, skilful, and intrepid; before the uses
of his tribe or phratry he is a shivering and unthinking slave.
The parallel is, at least, instructive. Mr. Griffith and his kind
harness rivers and play with storms in order to tell the tribe
what it already most potently believes, and to fortify its already
over-active and perilously blind volitions. In this vicarious
affirmation of its will the audience feels something that ap-
proaches ecstasy, as it also does in witnessing the contest be-
tween men and the primordial forces of the earth.
There are secondary sources of pleasure. Miss Gish is an
extremely gifted young woman. The art of reproducing the
exact gesture and facial expression of life could not well go
further. She was present in a box on this first showing of the
picture and received a deserved ovation. Yet were she to act
the part of Nora Helmer, as she so exquisitely could, these
audiences would turn from her in hot and angry contempt.
Her art, as such, is nothing to them. They only know that she
violated no taboo. Ludwig Lewisohn
Just Published
No. 68. Illustrated Catalogue of
Rare Books in Beautiful Old Bindings
The DR. R. T. JUPP COLLECTION of
MSS., AUTOGRAPHS, BOOKS, etc., etc., by or relating to
CHARLES DICKENS
The Collection of Relics of the Original Dora of DAVID COPPERFIELD
BOOKS ON THE FINE ARTS, SPORT
and an extensive collection of BOOKS ON SHORTHAND
Fine Seti of Fir«t Editions of CHARLES LEVER, GEORGE MEREDITH
and CAPTAIN MARRYAT, GOULD'S BIRDS of AUSTRALIA, etc.
Post free from
HENRY SOTHERAN & CO.
Booksellers to the King
43, Piccadilly, W. 1,
or. 140 Strand. W. C. 2.
Cable Address; Bookmen. London London, England.
International Relations Section
The Zionist National Conference
J fllHE following account of the resolutions adopted by the
X Zionist National Conference on July 19, over which
Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis presided, is re-
printed from Palestine (Manchester), the organ of the
British Palestine Committee, for July 31.
The Zionist Annual Conference opened in London at the Me-
morial Hall on July 7, and closed exactly at midnight on July 22.
Not all the sittings were open to the public, a full week being
devoted to work in Committee. In all, nearly 300 delegates were
present from various lands, including over forty from America.
Such distant countries as the Argentine, Persia, Siberia, South
Africa, and New Zealand were represented, together with the
Caucasus, Tunis, Egypt, and practically all the new European
states. The labor element and the Mizrachi (orthodox) section
were both in strength. Mr. Justice Brandeis, of the American
Supreme Court, was elected President of the Conference, and a
statement of general conditions by Dr. Weizmann, Mr. Sokolow,
and Mr. Ussishkin, of the Zionist Commission, was followed by
a general debate, after which the following eight committees
took up their tasks, viz.: Political, Palestine Work, Palestine
Finance, Culture and Education, Organization, Finance of Or-
ganization, National Work in the Diaspora, and the question of
convening a world Jewish congress. When the public sittings
were resumed on Monday, July 19, the following resolutions
were adopted:
Land Policy
The fundamental principle of Zionist land policy is that all
land on which Jewish colonization takes place should eventually
become the common property of the Jewish people. The Execu-
tive is called upon to do all in its power to carry this principle
into effect.
The organ for carrying out Jewish land policy in town and
country is the Jewish National Fund. The objects of this body
are: To use the voluntary contributions received from the
Jewish people in making the land of Palestine the common
property of the Jewish people; to give out the land exclusively
on hereditary leasehold and on hereditary building-right; to
assist the settlement on their own farms of Jewish agricultural
workers; to see that the ground is worked, and to combat specu-
lation; to safeguard Jewish labor. The credit resources of the
Zionist Organizations are to be placed, in the first instance, at
the service of such settlers as undertake to comply with the
principles of the Jewish National Fund.
In order to give the Jewish National Fund a dominating
position in the purchase of land, adequate means must always
be placed at its disposal. In order to enlarge its sphere of
operation, the Jewish National Fund shall raise loans, of which
the interest and sinking fund are to be paid off through its
leasehold rentals. The Jewish National Fund shall be entitled,
even in disregard of the obligation it has hitherto been under,
to set aside certain sums for reserve, to invest the whole of its
funds, without any restrictions, in Palestine. The land policy
of the Jewish National Fund must be encouraged by means of
credit institutes for agricultural and urban property.
Land purchase in Palestine shall be centralized in the hands
of an officially recognized institution under the control of the
Zionist Organization.
In order to bring large portions of the land of Palestine into
Jewish possession as rapidly as possible, the Jewish National
Fund shall devise means by which, alongside of the capital of
the Jewish National Fund itself, private capital can also be
utilized for the purchase of land under conditions which will
assure the subsequent transference of land so bought into the
national possession.
Colonization
The aim of national colonization is the settlement of Jewish
farmers cultivating the land themselves.
Only workers who have been successfully tested by long ex-
perience, and Jews who were working farmers in the Galuth
should be assisted to settle. Workers who have acquired agri-
cultural knowledge in the Galuth should gain adequate working
experience in the country before they are assisted to settle.
Special attention should be given to the wife's suitability for
settlement.
For the purpose of settlement and the preparation of settle-
ments large, contiguous areas should as far as possible be se-
cured by the Zionist Organization, even if improvement and
sanitation are required.
The settlement of candidates possessing capital shall be fur-
thered, provided they cultivate the land themselves.
Public works may not be carried out by the Zionist Organi-
zation except with a view to public utility and national economy.
The Jewish National Fund should undertake the improvement
of its land, limiting its activity to the work requisite for render-
ing the soil fit for cultivation.
The Zionist Organization shall cooperate with workers' insti-
tutions dealing with the provision of employment, cooperation,
education, medical aid, mutual credit, and the organization of
the immigration of active workers.
Sanitation
The Annual Conference hereby decides that a health office be
established as a department of the supreme Zionist authority in
Palestine. All medical and sanitary work should be concen-
trated in the hands of this health office. For the carrying out
of this work, a special budget for sanitation should be allocated
from the general budget for Palestine work. This budget for
sanitation should comprise all individual budgets of every organ-
ization for medical and sanitary work in Palestine.
Immigration
The organization and regulation of immigration into Palestine
shall be intrusted to the Central Immigration Office to be estab-
lished forthwith in Palestine. The Central Office may establish
port bureaus in the most important ports and, when necessary,
assign certain central functions to the Palestine offices of the
various countries.
Those immigrants who are considered necessary for the recon-
struction of Palestine, and are not in a position to pay the whole
of their traveling expenses themselves, shall receive loans from
the immigration offices.
Apart from these general questions, the matters of education,
both in Palestine and other lands, were discussed and funds
apportioned. The establishment of a foundation fund of £25,-
000,000 was also agreed upon, and a number of large subscrip-
tions, including three of £20,000 each, was announced. It was
also decided to take steps to convene a world Jewish congress
which shall be the authoritative body to speak and act on behalf
of the Jewish people in all national affairs. On the political
side resolutions were unanimously adopted expressing thanks
for the San Remo decision, and also solemnly declaring the
determination of the Jewish people to live in peace and friend-
ship with the non-Jewish population in its national home. This
latter resolution further expressed the conviction that the recon-
struction of the Jewish national home will provide all sections
of the population, especially the productive classes, with the
opportunity for their free development in every department of
life.
At the final sitting a new constitution was accepted. To
enable this to be done the members of the Executive Council,
who can only be elected by the Zionist Congress, placed their
resignations at the disposal of the Conference, thus giving the
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2881
latter a free hand. The result was the selection of Mr. Justice
Brandeis as Honorary President, Dr. Weizmann as President,
and Mr. Sokolow as Chairman of the Executive, with power to
select the heads of the departments, who, with them, will form
the Executive of the Organization. In addition, a Board of
Trustees was appointed, composed of Sir Alfred Mond, M. P.,
Lord Rothschild, and Mr. Bernard Flexner, of America, whose
duties will be to see that the money of the Organization shall
be properly applied to the purposes and in the amounts which
the Executive may decide. The Trustees are to arrange for a
monthly audit, and make reports at least once a year. It was
further decided to establish an economic council for the purpose
of advancing the development of Palestine. It is to be com-
posed of men well known in the financial and business world in
this and other countries, and also of representatives of the Zion-
ist Organization. This council is thus to be the medium of
collaboration with those Jews who are not members of the
Zionist Organization, but are ready to cooperate in the recon-
struction of Palestine.
The Future of Palestine
SIR HERBERT SAMUEL, who has left England to take
up his duties as British High Commissioner of
Palestine, issued the following statement to the press before
his departure.
. . . Complete religious liberty will be maintained in Pales-
tine. The places sacred to the great religions will remain in the
control of the adherents of those religions. A civilian adminis-
tration for the country will be at once established. The higher
ranks will consist of British officials of ability and experience.
The other ranks will be open to the local population irrespective
of creed. Order will be firmly enforced. The economic develop-
ment of the country will be actively promoted.
In accordance with the decision of the Allied and Associated
Powers, measures will be adopted to reconstruct the Jewish
national home in Palestine. The yearnings of the Jewish people
for 2,000 years, of which the modern Zionist movement is the
latest expression, will at last be realized. The steps taken to
this end will be consistent with a scrupulous respect for the
rights of the present non-Jewish inhabitants. The country has
room for a larger population than it now contains, and Palestine
properly provided with roads, railways, harbors, and electric
power, with the soil more highly cultivated, the waste lands re-
claimed, forests planted, and malaria extirpated, with town and
village industries encouraged, can maintain a large additional
population not only without hurt, but on the contrary, with much
advantage to the present inhabitants. Immigration of the char-
acter that is needed will be admitted into the country in propor-
tion as its development allows employment to be found.
Above all, educational and spiritual influences will be fos-
tered in the hope that once more there may radiate from the
Holy Land moral forces of service to mankind. These are the
purposes which, under the high superintendence of the League of
Nations, the British Government, in the exercise of its mandate
for Palestine, will seek to promote.
Industrial Prospects in Palestine
THE Central Bureau of the Zionist Organization, through
its Trade and Industry Department, has issued a
pamphlet from which the following summary of industrial
prospects in Palestine is reprinted.
A survey of industry, handicraft, and commerce in Palestine
will show that there is no prospect of the country's becoming in
the near future one of the homes of large-scale industry. The
natural qualities of the region and the peculiar mentality of the
Jewish population are alike better fitted to promote the growth
of small-scale industry. Industrial development in Palestine
must be deliberately guided in conformity with these considera-
tions.
One of the first requisites for the furtherance of industry
and commerce in Palestine is the foundation of a bank with
ample capital, a bank for commerce and industry. The aims
of this institution should be in the first place to found great
undertakings, such as those for the utilization of all the water
supplies of the country for irrigation and as sources of energy;
the establishment of centers for overland trade; the foundation
of enterprises for town lighting; tramway and railway develop-
ment; the building of docks; the encouragement of mining enter-
prise; the promotion of companies to carry on the various in-
dustries suitable for the country. .
The next requirement is an improvement in transport con-
ditions to facilitate the import of the principal raw materials
for the developing industries and the export of the products,
and to put an end to the evils prevailing to-day, when inland
transport over quite a brief stretch is often costlier then marine
transport for several thousand miles. A steam navigation com-
pany must be founded, or in default of this, special agreements
must be made as to freights with the existing steamship lines.
Of primary importance are the proper development of the Pales-
tinian railway system and the prolongation of the local railway
lines to effect junctions with neighboring systems, so that
favorable tariffs may be obtained for the transport of various
goods. These railway enterprises must be undertaken by the
Jewish Society for the Colonization and Reconstruction of Pales-
tine, for only upon this condition will the work of colonization
be carried out methodically in such a way as to further the,
development of industry and agriculture, while under these
auspices the railway construction works and the staffing of the
railways will from the very first provide employment for thou-
sands of the new settlers.
For the facilitation of transport, highways must be built
throughout the country, roads good enough for motor traffic
as well as for other wheeled vehicles. Great storehouses must
be constructed, with silos for cereals and cold storage for perish-
able goods. At the same time care must be taken to encourage
the supply of such raw materials as are requisite for the new
Palestinian industries. Those not procurable locally and the
necessary exotic foodstuffs in addition, must be obtained in
sufficient quantities and at advantageous prices from the best
sources of supply and stored in the warehouses. These ware-
houses will serve also for the storage of goods for export. Ex-
tremely valuable institutions will be (1) a museum for com-
merce and industry displaying all the products manufactured in
the east, showing the raw materials from which these are made
and the most modern appliances used in their manufacture and
(2) a laboratory for the chemical and technical study of raw
materials, building materials, etc.
A technical school with a commercial section would help
greatly in the promotion of industrial development. . . . The
school must be adapted to the peculiar requirements of Syria
and the East. The pupils should receive such a training, in-
cluding a knowledge of the requisite languages, as will enable
them to secure occupation in Palestine and elsewhere in the East.
The Anglo-French Oil Agreement
THE agreement between M. Berthelot, of the French For-
eign Office, and Sir John Cadman, director in charge
of the British Petroleum Department, regarding petroleum,
was confirmed at San Remo by Mr. Lloyd George and M.
Millerand on July 25. The agreement, while it is now
between France and Great Britain, is understood not to
preclude the admittance of other countries in a similar com-
.
Sept. 18, 1920]
The Nation
335
bination. The text, reprinted from the Manchester Guar-
dian for July 24, follows.
Rumania. The British and French Governments shall sup-
port their representative nationals in any common negotiations
to be entered into with the Government of Rumania for
1. The acquisition of oil concessions, shares, or other interests
belonging to former enemy subjects or bodies in Rumania which
have been sequestrated, e. g., the Steaua Romana Concordia Vega,
etc., which constituted in that country the oil groups of the
Deutsche Bank and of the Disconto Gesellschaft, together with
any other interests that may be obtainable.
2. Concessions over oil lands belonging to the Rumanian state.
All shares belonging to former enemy concessions which can
be secured and all other advantages derived from these negotia-
tions shall be divided, 50 per cent to British interests and 50
per cent to French interests. It is understood that in the com-
pany or companies to be formed to undertake the management
and the exploitation of the said shares, concessions, and other
advantages the two countries shall have the same proportion of
50 per cent in all capital subscribed as well as in representatives
on the board and voting power.
Territories of the late Russian Empire. In the territories
which belonged to the late Russian Empire the two Governments
will give their joint support to their respective nationals in their
joint efforts to obtain petroleum concessions and facilities to
export and to arrange delivery of petroleum supplies.
Mesopotamia. The British Government undertakes to grant
to the French Government or its nominee 25 per cent of the net
output of crude oil at current market rates which his Majesty's
Government may secure from the Mesopotamian oil fields, in the
event of their being developed by government action; or in the
event of a private petroleum company being used to develop the
Mesopotamian oil fields the British Government will place at
the disposal of the French Government a share of 25 per cent in
such company, the price to be paid for such participation to be
no more than that paid by any of the other participants to the
said petroleum company. It is also understood that the said
petroleum company shall be under permanent British control.
It is agreed that should the private petroleum company be
constituted as aforesaid the native Government or other native
interests shall be allowed, if they so desire, to participate up to
a maximum of 20 per cent of the share capital of the said com-
pany. The French shall contribute one-half of the first 10 per
cent of such native participation, and the additional participa-
tion shall be provided by each participant in proportion to his
holding.
The British Government agree to support arrangements by
which the French Government may procure from the Anglo-
Persian Company supplies of oil which may be piped from
Persia to the Mediterranean through any pipeline which may
have been constructed within the French mandated territory and
in regard to which France has given special facilities up to the
extent of 25 per cent of the oil so piped on such terms and con-
ditions as may be mutually agreed upon between the French
Government and the Anglo-Persian Company.
In consideration of the above-mentioned arrangements the
French Government shall agree, if it is desired and as soon as
application is made, to the construction of these separate pipe-
lines and railways necessary for their construction and mainte-
nance and for the transport of oil from Mesopotamia and Persia
through French spheres of influence to a port or ports on the
Eastern Mediterranean. The port or ports shall be chosen in
agreement between the two Governments. Should such pipeline
and railways cross territory within a French sphere of influence
France undertakes to give every facility for the rights of cross-
ing without any royalty or way-leaves on the oil transported.
Nevertheless, compensation shall be payable to the landowners
for the surface occupied. In the same way France will give
facilities at the terminal port for the acquisition of the land
necessary for the erection of depots, railways, refineries, load-
ing wharves, etc. Oil thus exported shall be exempt from ex-
port and transit dues. The material necessary for the con-
struction of the pipelines, railways, refineries, and other equip-
ment shall also be free from import duties and way-leaves.
Should the said petroleum company desire to lay a pipeline
and a railway to the Persian Gulf the British Government will
use its good offices to secure similar facilities for that purpose.
North Africa and Other Colonies. The French Govern-
ment will give facilities to any Franco-British group or groups
of good standing which furnish the necessary guaranties and
comply with French laws for the acquisition of oil concessions
in the French colonies, protectorates, and zones of influence,
including Algeria, Tunis, and Morocco. It should be noted that
the French Parliament has resolved that groups so formed must
contain at least 67 per cent French interests.
The French Government will facilitate the granting of any
concessions in Algeria which are now under consideration as
soon as the applicants have complied with all the requirements
of the French laws.
British Crown Colonies. In so far as existing regulations
allow, the British Government will give to French subjects who
may wish to prospect and exploit petroliferous lands in the
Crown colonies similar advantages to those which France is
granting to British subjects in the French colonies.
It is added that nothing in this agreement shall apply to con-
cessions which may be the subject of negotiations initiated by
French or British interests.
Quaker Messages
THE first World Conference of the Religious Society of
Friends (Quakers) held at London, August 12-20,
1920, was attended by delegates from Australia, Austria,
Canada, China, Denmark, France, Great Britain, India,
Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South
Africa, Syria, and the United States. It adopted messages
to the Council of Action of the British Labor Party, to the
people of Ireland, to the governments of the various nations,
and to the Council and Assembly of the League of Nations.
To Labor's Council of Action
A representative Conference of about a thousand members
of the Society of Friends, sometimes called Quakers, from many
countries of the world, has been meeting at Devonshire House,
London, from August 12 to 20, 1920.
It has been considering Christ's teaching in its relation to
war, whether between nations or between classes within a
nation, and also to our industrial system, which is at present
based largely upon personal gain rather than upon service to the
community.
We believe in the value of spiritual forces in human affairs,
and are convinced that goodwill, fellowship, and mutual trust
are the effective means to progress, and that to this end armed
force is futile.
We are thankful for the impulse towards peace in the labor
movement throughout the country. How far the methods con-
templated by your Council are such as we could indorse, we do
not presume to judge, but we have observed your efforts towards
peace with Russia with grateful sympathy.
We wish to support you in your endeavors to give expression
to the true brotherhood of all men, by such means as are in
accord with the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.
To the People of Ireland
This international conference of members of the Society of
Friends gathered from all parts of the world has been deeply
moved by the present tragic situation in Ireland. Our hearts go
out in prayer and sympathy for the Irish people. . . .
336
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2881
Without entering into the political issues involved, we desire
to express our conviction that the withdrawal of all coercion
and violence against Ireland or against any part of Ireland and
the cessation of acts of violence by all sections of the Irish
people are essential if a lasting reconciliation within Ireland and
between the peoples of Great Britain and Ireland is to be
secured. We believe such a reconciliation to be an urgent need
not only for the peoples of these two countries but for the world
as a whole.
The power of God is greater than the forces of evil, and we
feel that in this tragic hour, so full of misery and despair the
world over, there is a call to Great Britain and Ireland, by the
exercise of trust in God and in that something of God which is
in all men to triumph over hatred and injustice.
To the Governments
This Conference of more than one thousand members of the
Religious Society of Friends from all over the world is deeply
impressed by the unsettled state of Europe as the outcome of
the war, and by the imminent danger of general chaos and ruin.
It believes that among the essential conditions of a real settle-
ment are:
1. The immediate cessation of the war between Russia and
Poland, the abandonment of all support, whether direct or indi-
rect, for attacks on the Government of Russia, and the resump-
tion of normal relations with that country.
2. The speedy reestablishment of the economic life of the
nations of Central Europe, through an international commission
on which all the states concerned should be represented, as they
were on the Danube Commission. The experience of our relief
workers on the continent of Europe convinces us that this is a
measure of extreme urgency.
3. The remodeling of the League of Nations and the inclusion
therein at the earliest possible moment of Germany, Austria,
and Russia, and any other nations, large or small, that wish to
come in. The inclosed copy of a memorial to the Council and
Assembly of the League of Nations indicates the lines along
which the Conference considers it necessary to make amend-
ments.
4. The abolition of compulsory military training; and general
disarmament among all the nations as essential for the removal
of fear, the reestablishment of peaceful industry, and the recon-
struction of the life of the world on the Christian basis of co-
operation and goodwill.
To the League of Nations
. . . It is our conviction that far-reaching changes in the
structure of the League must be effected if it is to be capable
of development towards the end we have stated. Amongst these
are the following:
1. All nations should be given at once the opportunity to enter
the League as full members.
2. The constitution should be more fully representative of the
peoples themselves and the possibility of the dictatorship of a
small group of nations should be removed.
3. The threat of armed force or economic blockade should be
eliminated. The peace we seek cannot rest on fear.
4. It should be possible to reach decisions and to make amend-
ments of any kind without waiting for absolute unanimity.
While to yourselves and to us it must be apparent that many
other amendments are needed in order to perfect this instrument,
we hope that such amendments as indicated might be made
effective at an early date. Should this be accomplished we
should indeed rejoice that the League had been formed and
should have reason to expect that it would be a potent means
towards establishing on earth the Kingdom of God.
As a most promising investment we recommend
on
German
nd Marks
and other foreign exchanges and securities.
We make remittances to all parts of the world in
large and small amounts at lowest rates.
As a safe and non-fluctuating investment we offer
First Mortgage Real Estate Gold Bonds
secured by improved Chicago property.
Our experience of 35 years in the Amer-
ican and European banking business, our
financial strength, our first class banking
connections all over the world, and the large
volume of business we transact, enable us to
give best service at lowest prices.
Special circulars "Foreign Bonds and Exchange,"
our pamphlet "German Bonds," descriptions of our
Bond Issues free on request.
Mail bank draft, money order or certified check with order.
WOLLENBERGER&CO.
Investment Bankers
105 So. La Salle Street
CHICAGO
Registration at
THE NEW SCHOOL FOR
SOCIAL RESEARCH
will begin October first
Courses in
History, Economics
Anthropology, Psychology
Current Political Thinking
Statistics
The purpose of the school is
to develop a scientific attitude toward current political,
social and economic problems through research, lec-
tures and discussion. Exceptional opportunities for
research by qualified students.
Late afternoon and evening classes
For catalogue address the school
465-9 West 23d Street Telephone Chelsea 1386
New York
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1920
No. 2882
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 337
EDITORIALS:
No War With England 340
Mr. Root's World Court 341
The Other France 342
Front Porching With Harding 342
Again the Literary Censor 343
THE FARMER-LABOR CAMPAIGN. By Charles Patrick Sweeney 344
SELF-DETERMINING HAITI. IV. THE HAITIAN PEOPLE. By
James Weldon Johnson 345
A NOTE ON COMEDY. By Louis Crocker 347
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 348
CORRESPONDENCE S49
BOOKS:
Eternal Africa. By W. E. Burghardt Du Bois 350
Short Story Art and Artifice 852
Books in Brief 354
DRAMA :
Triflers and Playwrights. By Ludwig Lewisohn 354
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION:
The British Labor Delegation 355
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER LEWIS S. GANNETT
LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Ratis — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexiee; to Canada, $6. SO, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.80.
THE NATION, 26 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising: Swarthmore Press Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
AT this writing it appears that the explosion in Wall
Street was either the act of a single criminal fanatic
or the deliberate conspiracy of a group. In either case cen-
sure and denunciation must be unqualified. If it was the act
of an anarchist or anarchists, its stupidity is exceeded only
by its criminality. Every forward movement will suffer
from the act; every reactionary force will be strengthened
by it. This country will never be made over by any such
means. Just when we have had the clearest illustration the
world has ever witnessed of the futility of the policy of
seeking to establish might and right by force, it is the sad-
dest of commentaries that there are still men so misguided
as to believe that anything can be accomplished by murder
in any fashion. Bomb-throwers fortify and strengthen the
system they attack. Anybody who reads history knows that
nothing worth while was ever achieved this way; events all
over the world are proving that only by avoiding bloodshed
and violence can the world truly advance. The doctrine of
reforming others and changing opinions by "force without
stint" only makes the condition of humanity worse.
THAT this tragedy will have far-reaching effects in
stimulating reaction in America there can be no ques-
tion. It will bring the lawless Attorney-General into the
foreground again and result in terrorist measures that will
in turn be only too likely to produce reprisals. Directly
after the occurrence it was announced that it would mean
the immediate reexpulsion from the New York Legislature
of the five Socialist Assemblymen who were reelected on
the very day the explosion took place, by largely increased
votes, over the fusionists who sought to encompass their
defeat by uniting the Republicans and Democrats in their
districts. Yet this rejection of men legally elected, merely
because their opinions are distasteful .to the Republican
bosses, is the surest way to encourage those who believe in
violent revolution. Speaker Sweet and his associates were
warned that their act would increase the Socialist vote,
and the warning has come true. A second rejection of
these men may mean not five Socialists in Albany but fifteen
— a sixth candidate came close to election in a district in
which the Socialists have figured but slightly heretofore.
The Government must and will exert its power to uphold
public order, but it must not make the mistake again of
suppressing opinion or forbidding its free expression. As
ex-Senator Beveridge so admirably put it before the Ameri-
can Bar Association, ruthless suppression means giving
"to proscribed words wings of fire." Above all else the
Government itself must be calm and law-abiding.
ITALY is in a fair way to establish as significant a revo-
lutionary precedent as the Russian. The workers calmly
seized the metal factories, keys to the industrial power of
the nation, then told the Government what they wanted, and
the Government, according to the cable dispatches, is grant-
ing what they ask. Their wage demands are secondary;
their primary demand is joint control of the direction of
industry. And it is no mere radical fringe of the working
class of Italy which makes these demands; the Catholic
People's Party barely lags behind the Socialists, and the
considerable anarchist group led by the veteran agi-
tator Malatesta goes farther still. The Prime Minister
himself, seventy-eight-year-old Giolitti, who in all his de-
cades of political activity never was a Socialist or a member
of the extreme Left, accepts the workers' point of view. "It
is no longer possible to uphold the principle that in a great
industry there must be one single chief in command," he
says, "while thousands of dependents must obey with no
guaranty of control over the activities of the chief himself."
The Italian Parliament is to be called into special session to
legalize the new status of the workers in industry, and
newspaper reports indicate that the "control" which is to
be put into the workers' hands will cover "the whole financial
as well as technical field of industry." This is an extraordi-
nary, astounding, and far-reaching revolution, without bar-
ricades or bloodshed, revolution aided and abetted by a Gov-
ernment which, though anti-Socialist, is awake to the
kaleidoscopic period through which Italy and Europe are
passing. How little our newspapers have prepared us to
understand it!
HAITI is getting into the newspaper headlines at last,
and administration officials reply to criticism by de-
claring that criticism is "cheap." Secretary Daniels re-
sponds to Senator Harding's charge that thousands of
338
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2882
Haitians have been killed by expressing surprise "that a
Senator of the United States should give currency to so
unjust a reflection upon the brave and patriotic members
of the Marine Corps on duty in Haiti." The fact that three
thousand Haitians have been killed remains, Mr. Secretary ;
and it is not the brave and loyal members of the Marine
Corps, who obeyed orders, who will have to bear the blame,
but their superiors who gave the orders. It will not do to
talk about the menace of the Germans in Haiti; too much
has been forced on that republic by American guns since
all threat of German penetration was removed. Nor will the
country be satisfied with reports by officers of the Marine
Corps itself, nor even with the report of so able and honest
an officer as Admiral Knapp, who, as captain of the flagship
Olympia, gave the orders which dissolved the Dominican
Parliament and removed the ministers of the Dominican
Government. Such reports are predestined to be mere coats
of whitewash. Nothing short of a bipartisan Congressional
investigation will do. Meanwhile, to those who seek the
facts, we commend a reading of the issues of The Nation
for February 21, July 10 and 17, August 28, and September
4, 11, and 18.
tsrr\ HE fate of Germany is in large measure in the hands
A of the Allied nations and the United States. . . .
The policy of destruction is bound to bring interminable
trouble to the rest of Europe. Putting first, as is just, the
interests of France and her Allies, I believe that the best
chance for the peace of the world lies in the policy of
cooperation — in the Allies and the United States helping
Germany to remain a united nation and to regain her
prosperity." Such is the verdict of Paul D. Cravath, one
of New York's ablest lawyers and one of the most intense
partisans of the Allies during the war, on his return from
a visit to Germany. His impressions agree with those of
Ludwig Nissen, a letter from whom we print in the "Corre-
spondence" columns of this issue. Both dwell upon the need of
food, the mass undernourishment in Germany; both predict
that next winter will be the worst winter for Germans;
both feel that the treaty should be revised ; and both believe
that Germany can escape anarchy and chaos if the Allies —
and that means largely America — will help her with food
and raw materials. "I think," says Mr. Cravath, "the
remedy against bolshevism in Germany is largely in the
hands of the Allies." It is encouraging that such a sane
and wholesome doctrine of international cooperation is
making headway; it is to be hoped that it will leak into
Paris and Washington.
THE London Daily Herald has refused an offer of Russian
money. We congratulate it; we only wish it had not
considered acceptance. And we regret profoundly that the
Russians offered it. In one sense the offer might be viewed
as such a friendly pledge of international solidarity as moved
the German Socialists to assist when Jaures founded
I'Humanite in Paris; but when Britain is only half emerged
from virtual war upon Soviet Russia and the Bolshevists are
seeking peace the offer inevitably looked rather like a pay-
ment for service to be rendered. The very suggestion of
subsidy weakens the fine service of the Daily Herald to the
cause of European peace. The Russians, whose foreign
policy toward the Baltic states, toward China, and even to-
ward the hostile Entente Powers, has been remarkable for
its enlightened generosity, seem to have taken a turn toward
interference in the domestic affairs of other countries. The
conditions for admission of western Socialist parties to the
Third Internationale instance a dictatorial attitude which
will inevitably be resented by those parties and must check
the growing unity of spirit which had made European labor
the most potent liberal force on a reactionary continent.
Absolute acceptance of all decisions of the Executive Com-
mittee of the Third Internationale is asked, strenuous cen-
tralization, active propaganda to break up the old Trade
Union Internationale, disregard of bourgeois law, change
of name from Socialist to Communist Party; and there are
other less intrusive requirements. The split in the old labor
Internationale was a tragedy caused by the abdication of the
old leaders; now unity seems farther off than ever, and the
blame for it must rest largely with the Bolsheviki.
WE sometimes forget that we are still at war with Ger-
many. The Germans, however, are not permitted to
forget it — it is still a crime to fly a German flag within the
zone of American occupation on the Rhine. The Frankfurter
Zeitung reprints the following notice from an administra-
tive gazette in the American zone:
Headquarters of the American Forces in Germany.
Bureau of Civil Affairs.
Coblenz, Germany, July 6, 1920
Information for all O. C. C. A.'s.
Subject: Flying of German national flags.
1. The question of the flying of German national flags in the-
American occupied zone was discussed by the High Inter-Allied
Rhineland Commission on June 28, 1920.
2. The legal adviser of the American forces in Germany has
reached the following decision: "Until a definitive state of peace
between the United States and Germany comes to pass, the
flying of German national flags should be prohibited within the
zone occupied under our command. In that territory our rights
rule and our will is the highest law. The flag of a nation is a
visible sign or symbol of government. It should be an indis-
cretion for any German office here, with the exception of admin-
istrative offices acting with our authorization, to fly a German
national flag. There is nothing in the armistice agreement indi-
cating such permission, and it should not be allowed.
3. The Commanding General adds the following remark:
"The Germans in the occupied region should know very well that
they are not permitted to fly either the old German flag or the
flag of the new German republic. This must be respected in
the American zone."
R. P. Hall, Acting 0. C. C. A.
Comment on such bullying seems superfluous.
THE war is over and it is high time that the old facili-
ties of passportless travel should be reestablished.
Latter-day passports, being a source of revenue and an op-
portunity for the exercise of petty power, may last long.
But it is heartening to read that R. B. Mahany, Acting
Secretary of the Department of Labor, has ruled that aliens
shall not be barred from this country because of religious
belief or pacifist principles. A Canadian member of the
pacifist International Bible Students' Association sought
to enter to attend a convention of that organization in the
United States ; Mr. Mahany ruled that he should be admitted.
"The United States was founded on the principles of both
civil and religious liberty, principles which are the founda-
tion of American government," he declared. That sounds
like the good old-fashioned common sense which we used to
call Americanism before the war.
Sept. 25, 1920]
The Nation
339
A LETTER by Mr. Charles Nagel— which The Nation
prints in this issue — takes exception to our position
that a ballot for either Cox or Harding is wasted and that
the best course for the independent in the coming election
is to vote one of the minor party tickets. With Mr. Nagel's
contention that the Democrats richly deserve defeat we
agree unqualifiedly. But do the Republicans deserve vic-
tory? Was it not Republican reaction and failure to meet
living issues that first placed and then kept Mr. Wilson in
the White House? Nor have eight years of the most tre-
mendous evolution the world has ever seen taught the Re-
publicans anything. The same Old Guard, the same old
gang, with its principles of pelf and privilege, is still in
control. Harding's nomination strikingly testified to its un-
enlightened and unabashed effrontery. Imperative as it is
to "oust the dynasty," as Mr. Nagel urges, and to relegate
to obscurity Palmer and Burleson, two of the most sinister
figures in our public life for a generation, is salvation any
more likely under Penrose and Barnes? Is political pro-
gress in this country eternally to consist of election by
disgust? Is the quadrennial expression of a sovereign peo-
ple to be solely a negative registration of distrust, disap-
pointment, and disillusionment? The time to break sharply
from so hopeless an outlook is now, when the essential dif-
ferences between the two parties have never been slighter,
nor the need for new vision and new leadership more im-
perative. In contemplating the sham battle between the two
major parties, the position of the protesting liberal has
this redeeming feature: while a disinterested participant,
he can rejoice heartily, should Harding win, at the defeat
of the Democrats; and if Cox be elected, at the Republi-
cans' downfall. Meanwhile, in "throwing away his vote"
for Christensen or Debs, he is doing his part in bringing
about a change in a system which has ceased to serve.
VARIOUS palliatives that have been - suggested for re-
lieving the housing shortage in America must appar-
ently be rejected upon closer scrutiny. The proposal to
exempt real estate mortgage interest from State and Fed-
eral taxes, for instance, is adversely criticized by the City
Club of New York on what seem to be sound grounds. Since
the proposal contemplates inclusion of mortgages on existing
as well as on future building, and on commercial as well as
residential structures, it is apparent that much revenue
would be lost in return for rather unimportant assistance
to only a small amount of new residential construction.
John J. Murphy, formerly Tenement House Commissioner
of New York City, demolishes the proposal to increase hous-
ing facilities by adding an extra story to existing five or
six-floor apartment houses. Without excessive costs, he
says, this would involve removing the roofs and dispos-
sessing all tenants now occupying the top floors.
MEANWHILE professional opinion seems to be looking
more and more to the government, State or munici-
pal, to take hold of the problem. In the memorandum above
quoted the City Club approves the proposal of the New York
Reconstruction Commission for a constitutional amendment
which would permit the State to extend its credit on a large
scale at low rates to limited-dividend companies or individ-
uals to build houses of prescribed standards and controlled
rents. The City Club also backs the suggestion for an
enabling act permitting cities to go into the housing busi-
ness. This would give quicker relief than the slow process
of constitutional amendment, while the Health Commissioner
of New York City would seek even more immediate help by
getting from the Legislature the right to take over all
vacant housing facilities. Architects are more and more
persuaded, it appears, that the profits system is no longer
to be depended upon to supply the masses with homes. We
quoted recently the opinion of the Philadelphia chapter of
the American Institute of Architects to that effect. Mr.
Charles Harris Whitaker, editor of the Journal of the
American Institute of Architects, adds his voice to this
view. He proposes that cities buy tracts of land, make
direct contracts with the building unions, and organize the
materials business so as to cut out excess profits.
WHETHER the huge Republican majority in Maine
clearly forecasts Mr. Harding's victory or not, it
was a glorious victory for the Republicans, and utterly dis-
poses of the contention that the newly-enfranchised women
favor the League of Nations. The Democrats may make
any excuse they please, but the fact is that the League of
Nations was a controlling issue, that some of the best Demo-
cratic campaigners toured the State, and that Franklin
Roosevelt was sure the women were coming over to the
Democratic side. The result was a Republican majority of
66,037, and this in the face of a torrential rain. It is, of
course, easy for the New York World to remind the Re-
publicans that Maine went Republican in the State contest
of 1916, only to vote Democratic in the presidential election.
No election is won until it is won, and anything may happen
between now and election day. But if ever a candidate was
entitled to consider himself elected in advance, Mr. Hard-
ing is. Indeed the indications are for a rising tide, not of
approval of the Republican candidate, but of intense dislike
of the Democrats. There is the widest desire to express
popular disapproval of Woodrow Wilson, and the men who
denounce or would amend the treaty are the ones who have
been winning in the recent elections. Not only is the
Democratic Party destitute of organization and of driving
power; it is disintegrating, as in Connecticut and Maine, or
is being captured by the Nonpartisan League, as a Montana
and Colorado.
A TEMPORARY injunction was granted last week by
the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia for-
bidding officers of the United Mine Workers of America
to attempt the organization of miners in the southern part
of the State. According to an Associated Press dispatch,
the injunction, issued on petition of various coal companies,
restrains "attempts on the part of union officials to induce
miners in this field to break what the companies allege is
a contract of employment." Without going into the ethics
of breaking a contract, it may be said unqualifiedly that
an injunction to enforce a contract is a new and wholly
unwarranted judicial doctrine, exceeding in its lawlessness
even the decision of United States Judge A. B. Anderson
in Indianapolis last winter. The established law of con-
tracts is that in case of violation the aggrieved party may
seek redress by a civil suit for damages; he has no other
recourse. The order of this West Virginia tribunal, if
correctly reported, is contempt of court in the widest sense,
because it saps public confidence in the integrity of our
whole judicial system.
340
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2882
No War With England
IT is because they believe that war between England and
the United States would be the greatest calamity which
could befall the civilized world, and because they feel that
the two countries are rapidly drifting apart, that the editors
of The Nation have invited one hundred of their fellow-
citizens to form a committee to investigate, through a com-
mission, the charges and counter-charges of atrocities in
Ireland. The case of Mayor MacSwiney and the other hun-
ger strikers has stirred this country profoundly. So con-
servative a newspaper as the Chicago Tribune declares that
the "Irish situation seriously involves the United States, and
the case of MacSwiney is the Irish question just now at its
highest point of drama." This, the most powerful news-
paper of the Middle West, declares that if MacSwiney
starves to death this blunder "might conceivably affect the
peace of the world." The words are ominously like those
used by President McKinley and the interventionists in
Cuba in 1898, who maintained that the United States could
not tolerate such terrible conditions at its door.
That the procedure The Nation has suggested is unusual
we admit. But unusual conditions call for unusual methods,
and in view of the failures of governments everywhere to
prevent existing wars and to establish peace, it is high time
for citizens to get together to do what they can. The Brit-
ish labor forces have just prevented their country's going
to war with Russia. On this side of the ocean it is a just
charge that lovers of peace too often fail to move until it is
too late — until war is actually at hand. If the proposed
commission can establish the facts, so that the United
States may know exactly where the truth lies, we believe
that it will be so great a service in clearing the atmosphere
that we shall not be disturbed by the charge of improper
interference in the concerns of another nation. As a mat-
ter of fact, the concerns of every other nation, even their
internal affairs, as in the case of Russia, profoundly affect
the rest of the world; this, the war has once more clearly
demonstrated. The editors of The Nation are moreover
quite well aware that we live in glass houses; that we have
our unsolved Ne^ro problem; that our record in Haiti and
Santo Domingo is wickedly imperialistic, and that we have
done to death three thousand Haitian men, women, and
children who did us no wrong. If the procedure that we
are suggesting in the matter of removing one of the great
causes of irritation between England and the United Stateg
is successful, we would welcome an inquiry by Englishmen,
under the auspices, say, of the Labor Party, into our Carib-
bean venture.
With a view to constituting a non-partisan Committee of
One Hundred on Ireland, The Nation has sent the following
telegram to a list of representative Americans:
The struggle between Great Britain and Ireland which has
gone on for many months with increasing use of armed force by
both parties is widely reported to be accompanied by atrocities
planned by British Government and answered in kind by Irish
people. One grave result is rapid growth of anti-British feeling
which seriously threatens unspeakable calamity of war between
United States and Great Britain and endangers peace of the
world. In the interest of peace and international friendship the
editors of The Nation earnestly invite you to serve as member
nonpartisan committee of representative Americans with power
to add to their number who shall designate a select commission to
sit at Washington or elsewhere for impartial investigation of
reported atrocities in Ireland regarding which the British Am-
bassador and Professor De Valera and others shall be invited to
submit evidence. Proposal does not contemplate any recom-
mendations regarding future relations between Great Britain
and Ireland.
Up to the time of going to press acceptances had been re-
ceived as follows:
United States Senators Ashurst, Arizona; Johnson, California;
Phelan, California; Spencer, Missouri; Walsh, Massachusetts.
Representatives Mason, Illinois; McArthur, Oregon; Randall,
Wisconsin; Sherwood, Ohio; Voight, Wisconsin.
. Governors Campbell, Arizona; Carey, Wyoming; Frazier,
North Dakota.
Mayors Gillen, Newark; Hague, Jersey City; Hayes, Vicks-
burg, Miss.; Herman, Newport, Ky. ; Hoan, Milwaukee; Mar-
shal, St. Joseph, Mo.; McCavitt, Anaconda, Mont.; Quigley,
New Britain, Conn.; Quinn, Cambridge, Mass.; Schrieber, To-
ledo; Smith, Omaha; Sullivan Worcester.
The President of the Board of Aldermen of New York City, F.
H. LaGuardia.
The Rev. Edward C. L. Adams, Columbia, S. C; Jane Ad-
dams, Hull House, Chicago; Judge Charles F. Amidon, U. S.
District Court, Fargo, N. D. ; Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Washing-
ton, D. C; William Harman Black, former member National War
Labor Board; Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, New York City;
Miss Lucy Branham, Baltimore; J. M. Budish, United Cloth Hat
and Cap Makers of America ; Bishop Byrne, Galveston ; J. J. Cas'-
tellini, Cincinnati; Parley P. Christensen, Presidential candidate
Farmer-Labor Party; George W. Coleman, Boston; Martin Con-
boy, former Director of the Draft, New York City; Professor
Horace A. Eaton, Syracuse University; Maurice F. Egan, for-
mer minister to Denmark; John L. Elliott, Hudson Guild, New
York City; Professor Irving Fisher, Yale University; former
Governor J. W. Folk of Missouri; Mrs. Andre Fouilhoux, Short
Hills, N. J.; Royal W. France, New York City; Gilson Gardner,
Washington, D. C. ; Arthur Gleason, New York City ; James H.
Graham, Springfield, 111.; Dr. Gillette Hayden, Columbus, Ohio;
Professor Carlton J. H. Hayes, Columbia University; William
Randolph Hearst, New York City; Morris Hillquit, New York-
City; Judge George Holmes, Omaha; the Rev. John Haynes
Holmes, New York City; Richard R. Kilroy, Anaconda Standard;
George W. Kirchwey, former Dean of the Columbia University
Law School; Owen R. Lovejoy, National Child Labor Committee,
N«w York City; Professor Robert Morss Lovett, University of
Chicago; Miss Hazel MacKaye, New York City; Dudley Field
Malone, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, New York
City; James Maurer, Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor;
Allen McCurdy, New York City; Mrs. Agnes H. Morey, Brook-
line, Mass.; John E. Milholland, New York City; A. P. Moore,
Pittsburgh Leader; Mrs. William F. Murray, Catskill, N. Y.;
President William A. Neilson, Smith College; Professor William
A. Nitze, University of Chicago; Daniel C. O'Flaherty, Rich-
mond; M. O'Neill, Akron, Ohio; the Rev. Watson L. Philips,
Ansonia, Conn.; Captain Julius C. Peyser, Washington, D. C;
Amos Pinchot, New York City; the Rev. Levi M. Powers, Wash-
ington, D. C; Mrs. James Rector, Columbus, Ohio; Raymond
Robins, Chicago; Gilbert E. Roe, New York City; Mrs. John
Rogers, Jr., New York City; the Rev. John A. Ryan, Catholic
University, Washington, D. C; Professor Ferdinand Schevill,
University of Chicago; Rose Schneidermann, Woman's Trade
Union League; R. O. Sharon, Peoria, 111.; Emma Steghagen,
Woman's Trade Union League; Miss Doris Stevens, Croton,
N. Y.; Norman Thomas, New York City; former Senator James
K. Vardaman, Jackson, Miss.; Mrs. Henry Villard, New York;
William Allen White, Emporia Gazette.
Sept. 25, 1920]
The Nation
341
Mr. Root's World Court
THE long-expected proposals for the new world court
upon which Mr. Elihu Root and other distinguished
personages have been working for months past, at the invi-
tation of the League of Nations, were published last week.
Let it be said at once that, defective and unsatisfactory as
the plan as a whole is, it yet marks a step forward over the
Hague Tribunal for Arbitration, whose existence, on its
present basis, was practically terminated by the war. Every
time that the nations can be got to consider that supreme
court of the world, for which humanity hungers, it means
an advance. It must in justice also be said that Mr. Root
and his associates have worked out well the judicial ma-
chinery and forms, the method of selection of the judges
and their functions, and their relation to the causes which
may come before them. Those trusting persons who are
willing to accept the League of Nations while recognizing
its manifest faults and weaknesses, in the confiding hope
that it will be possible to reform it from within, as the
present Constitution of the United States succeeded the
loose and weak Articles of Confederation, will doubtless hail
this new court proposal as a satisfactory half-loaf.
Emphatically must it be declared, however, that this is
not a real court which is being offered to us, nor one that
gives adequate hope of exercising a more determining influ-
ence upon the affairs of nations than did the Hague Tribunal
which is now suspended. The reason for this is simple
enough. The proposed court is the creature of the Covenant
of the League of Nations, and it cannot rise above the source
of its existence. Article 14 of the Covenant dooms the court
to innocuous desuetude by the very language which consti-
tutes it: "The court shall be competent to hear and deter-
mine any dispute of an international character which the
parties thereto submit to it." In other words, this court will
have no jurisdiction unless all parties to a dispute consent
thereto. It is without the power itself to issue a summons
to contending parties or to enter an order ; indeed, an Ameri-
can justice of the peace has today more inherent power and
jurisdiction than this proposed court. And, if we turn to
Article 15 of the Covenant, we find that it is there provided
that "any party to a dispute may effect such submission
[to the Council] by giving notice of the existence of the
dispute to the Secretary-General, who will make all neces-
sary arrangements for a full investigation and consideration
thereof." That is to say, any nation which is a party to a
dispute, if it decides to bring that dispute to the attention
of the League at all — and it does not have to — can utterly
ignore the court and by the mere giving of a notice compel a
hearing of the dispute before the Council of the League.
This is in accordance with the fundamental idea of the
whole Covenant — that a group of four or five men in the
Council shall dominate the affairs of the world.
Let us see what would happen in the case of the dispute
between China and Japan over Shantung. China might call
upon Japan to present the case of Shantung to the proposed
court. Japan, using her undoubted rights, could bring the
case automatically before the Council by simply ignoring the
court and giving the required notice to the Secretary-Gen-
eral of the League of Nations. What, then, is the situation?
In the Council Japan, in order to defeat China's just claims,
need obtain only one vote, since the Council's decisions must
be unanimous, and that she now possesses. Moreover, as
the Council is now constituted, three permanent members
of it, Italy, France, and Great Britain, are already com-
mitted to the award of Shantung to Japan. It is true that
China might take her case to the Assembly, but with the
dominating power of Great Britain in that Assembly there
would be slight chance for her. The true supreme court
of the world must be established in another way — by all the
nations of the world getting together in conference and
voluntarily submitting themselves and all their disputes,
present and future, to the jurisdiction of that court. Again,
we do not believe that the court which is to survive and pass
upon the disputes of nations can be established solely by the
chief victors in the late war.
Perhaps the very worst feature of the proposed court lies
in the fact that it will be within the power of a nation, just
as it is now, to determine whether a controversy is jus-
ticiable or not. Just as long as this vicious discrimination
between disputes is made, just so long will any such court
be powerless and the League unable to stop international
conflicts. Most of the wars of the past have arisen out of
so-called non-justiciable disputes. When such a quarrel
arises the new court will have no power to hale one party
or the other before it, and if the disputants intend to fight
the matter out nothing can prevent them unless the Council
of the League takes immediate cognizance and threatens the
aroused nations with war and economic blockade. The like-
lihood of the Council's doing this in a case of so-called
national honor is of the slightest.
Take the Vera Cruz incident, for instance. The United
States claimed that its sacred honor was involved by the in-
sult to its flag, and it demanded an apology which it did not
receive. Our forces then attacked the inhabitants of Vera
Cruz, killing 400 men, women, and children. Under the
existing code of national conduct, our quarrel with Mexico
was a non-justiciable dispute. The proposed court would
have had no jurisdiction over it; the Council of the League
which permitted Poland to undertake an aggressive war
upon Russia would hardly have undertaken to dictate to the
United States that it should not occupy a Mexican city to
enforce its will.
That there is no mention in the plan proposed by Mr. Root
of any armed force to put into effect the decrees of the court
is good. It is the intention, of course, of the founders of
the League to have such a force, but there are men, like
Senator Knox, who believe such display will no more be
necessary for the supreme court of the world than it has
been for the Supreme Court of the United States.
Five great steps forward must be taken simultaneously
with the creation of any court if it is to endure and play
its destined role: first, the distinction between justiciable
and non-justiciable disputes must be wiped out; second, the
court must have power to intervene, and to intervene at all
times — the proposed court is to sit only during part of the
year; third, there must be immediate international disarma-
ment as the most vital step toward safeguarding the court
and the peace of the world; fourth, the careful codifica-
tion of international law must be begun by a group of jurists
in international conference; and, finally and most impor-
tant, there must be an outlawry of war itself. We consider
it a happy omen that Senator Harding has used the term
"outlawry of war" in a recent speech. It is entirely as prac-
tical as was the outlawing of the duel, and like disarmament
it could probably have been obtained at Paris but for the
flinching of one man — Woodrow Wilson.
342
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2882
The Other France
THERE are two Frances, as there are two Englands,
and two Italys, and two Germanys — at least two. The
France that speaks officially in the name of the French
people today — the France of Millerand and Gouraud and
Weygand and Foch, the France of bemedaled generals,
and bespangled oratory, and bemuddled dreams of Napole-
onic empire, the France of the Czar's bond issue and the
Comite des Forges — that France has become the inheritor
of the Prussian mantle. It is the hearthstone of reaction
in Europe today, the nursery of counter-revolutionary con-
spiracies among exiled dukes and financiers, the hope of
the Hungarian dictator Horthy, of the Cossack bandit-chief
Wrangel, and of the Polish imperialist Dmowski; the great
obstacle to European reconstruction.
That France is not the France which made the word
"France" an inspiration, a symbol of high idealism, of intel-
lectual achievement, of generous emotion, in past years.
The war hushed the voice of the other France, though with-
out silencing it; and the psychology of sudden, overwhelm-
ing victory, following years of depression and invasion, and
the weary after-war spirit of "je-m'en-fichisme," drowned
it beneath the cacophonies of guns and drums. But Romain
Rolland never abandoned his vision across and above the
battle; Henri Barbusse wrote the great human epic of the
war; lesser voices of no mean caliber have spoken bravely
and well — Georges Duhamel, Leon Werth, Jules Romains,
Marcel Martinet, and others. In these latter years Anatole
France, who more truly than Clemenceau deserves the title
of the grand old man of France, has reexpressed the spirit
of an elder and a finer France.
Anatole France, for all the serene detachment of his
Epicurean garden at Tours, dreads the ruin which the be-
medaled France has wrought his country and Europe. "I
am sad," he tells an interviewer. "The future of Europe is
black. The only hope is internationalism, but the war has
left nationalism triumphant." And in VHumanite he writes
pathetically :
It is appalling to regard the position of France as she was
during the war and as she is today. A hundred peoples, at the
call of France, came together from the ends of the earth, to
"destroy" Germany. What have we done with our Allies?
What has become of our friendships? Not one is left. We'have
worn them all out by our proud and moody ways, by that belli-
cose ardor which has so surprisingly survived the long and
cruel war. First America suffered our sarcasms when she
brought to us a political conception different from our own —
and nothing of which survives in the treaties. Then we quar-
reled sharply with our Latin sister. Then we alienated the
states of the East. Then, exasperated by our great financial
embarrassments and by the difficulty of applying an ill-made
treaty, we got ourselves into more disagreements with England
than the public has ever known. I do not judge the conduct
of our Allies and do not bind myself to approve it. I only note
that the policy of the capitalists, soldiers, and diplomats who
govern us was neither adroit nor successful.
Our position was difficult. The recognition of Wrangel now
renders it terrible. Here we are, alone at last. For after this
diplomatic coup d'etat, what remains of the Franco-British
Entente? We are alone. . . .
To what new dangers and unknown disasters will this course
lead to which our retrograde Parliament and its reactionary
government have condemned us? Are we being led into a new
war with Soviet Russia? Our fears are greater because peace
is not defended in France as it is in England by a working class
able to make its voice heard in the councils of Empire. Labor
has no influence upon our Government. And yet to assure the
threatened peace, the peace which capitalists and soldiers fight
and weary ignorant bourgeois betray, we can count only on the
working class. . . .
Today the working class holds in its hands the salvation
of France, the salvation of Europe, the salvation of the world.
The situation is terrible. With profound emotion, in a voice
weakened by age but deepened by passion for the public good,
I cry, "Frenchmen, save the peace of the world."
Anatole France's appeal goes almost unheard. The shrill,
revengeful voices of Tardieu, Loucheur, and Poincare domi-
nate the French councils of state. Millerand has even
abandoned the policy adopted at Spa of discussing repara-
tion problems with German experts, and reverted to the
policy of dictation — aided and abetted by our own State
Department. Perhaps for a time we must abandon hope
of finding in the political expression of France the things
which have made "France" a name to conjure with. Mille-
rand's France we must combat; but let us not forget that
there is and always will be another, vastly different, nobler,
more beautiful France.
Front Porching With Harding
From Our Special Correspondent at the Front (Porch)
SENATOR HARDING rose early this morning and dis-
played his stalwart Americanism by washing, shaving,
and putting on his clothes. He then sat down to breakfast,
which he ate in true democratic fashion with knife, fork,
and spoon. It is little touches like this which reveal the
Senator's kinship with the common people and endear him
to the masses. The first appointment on the Porch was with
a delegation from the Dairymen's Association of Hokamazoo,
with each member of which the Senator shook hands cor-
dially. In every instance he extended his right hand, there-
by exhibiting that delicate tact which has made him so suc-
cessful in his relations with men.
"I feel like one of you," the Senator said gracefully. "All
my life I have eaten butter and drunk milk, and thus have
gained a close personal insight into your problems and needs.
One of the things this nation must do is to keep the boys
and girls on the farms. In order to accomplish this, the
farmer must be made prosperous and contented. Without
wearying you at this moment with details, I want to say
that my plan for meeting this problem is to see that the
farmer gets fair prices for his produce, that the wholesaler
and retailer get just compensation for distributing it, and
that the consumer is able to buy at equitable prices."
Senator Harding's courageous reference to the rights of
the consumer in the presence of men who were presumably
interested chiefly in better prices for their products was
one of those characteristic strokes of bravery which win
him friends every day because of his sheer honesty and
unmistakable independence. As the dairymen filed down
the steps of the Porch, another delegation was already wait-
ing to be received, but the Senator found time in between to
wave his hand genially to a friend who was passing, and to
say "Excuse me" to one of the dairymen whose foot he acci-
dentally stepped on. One of the secrets of his success is
that, no matter how busy, Senator Harding always finds
time for little kindnesses like these.
Sept. 25, 1920]
The Nation
343
The meeting which followed, with a committee from the
Brotherhood of Railway Baggage-Smashers, brought out
clearly the Senator's skill in meeting hostile criticism and in
answering difficult questions fairly and squarely. "Mr.
Harding," said the spokesman of the committee almost im-
mediately, "do you believe in the union shop?"
"Our whole industrial fabric must be considered in an-
swering that question," the Senator replied. "I do not
believe in setting class against class, but in bringing all the
forces of our country into cooperation. That involves the
development of a general program in which the point you
raise will naturally be settled along with others."
"How do you propose to lower the cost of living?"
"Ah, there you raise an acute question. We must safe-
guard the producer, on the one hand, and relieve the general
public on the other. In a general way I favor any legisla-
tion toward that end, but would want to study the probable
effect before approving a particular measure."
"He means he'll have to ask Penrose and Lodge," said
somebody sotto voce, while another voice asked aloud : "Mr.
Harding, do you believe that two and two make four?"
Here was an obvious attempt to heckle him — a crisis that
demanded resourcefulness and decision — and Senator Hard-
ing proved his mettle in the reply that shot, resolute and un-
flinching, from his lips: "While sympathizing in a general
way with the principle, I would want to consider carefully
the circumstances. It depends, I think, on what two and two
you have in mind."
Again the Literary Censor
" T URGEN AND THE CENSOR," the report of the
%J Emergency Committee Organized to Protest against
the Suppression of James Branch Cabell's "Jurgen," con-
tains a full account of the proceedings taken against this
book, with lists of the signers of the protest, which include
many of the most important men and women writers in the
United States; with letters from several of them and from
Mr. Cabell and Mr. Sumner; and with notes on the laws of
New York State and the United States in regard to "offen-
sive, lewd, lascivious, and indecent" books. Although the
case has not finally come to trial, and it is, of course, not yet
certain what the verdict will be on the book, there can be no
question as to the verdict which the Society for the Suppres-
sion of Vice and the State and Federal codes have already
pronounced on themselves. The society is pitiably sincere
and unutterably stupid. The codes are muddled and sloppy.
Presumably nothing can be gained by pointing another
finger of wrath or scorn at the society. Its instigating and
active members unite to a hundred per cent of moralistic
zeal another hundred per cent of the fanaticism which sends
men to the pillory for their opinions — we are not sure that
the society would go on to the stake. Mr. Sumner's letter
makes plain that he thinks of the society as exercising a
noble impartiality when it proceeds against a considered
work of art with the same firm tread as when it goes after
a vender of pornographic pictures. But we should be will-
ing to wager a considerable sum that the society would
hesitate rather longer before invading, say, the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, where the nude human figure, we are in-
formed, is exposed in great abundance, and without charge,
to all who want to come to see it, than before invading the
shop of some small stationer who might offer photographs
of certain of those very masterpieces to any who would pay
money for them. As it happens, the battle over the nude in
art was fought out long ago, and even the Society for the
Suppression of Vice has now learned to keep its preposterous
hands off when they belong off. The society is blind enough
on ordinary occasions, but it knows a vested interest when
it sees one. And so with regard to the theater. If the
Broadway stage is not organized to stir and encourage the
sexual emotions, then nothing on earth is. But here the
Society for the Suppression of Vice, though acute enough
to smell out novelties, never touches the traditional and
established forms of temptation.
So, also, with regard to books. Standard authors in
standard places : these the society leaves unmolested. But it
will not have standard authors paraded any more than it can
help. Nor — and this is the worst of the whole matter —
will it allow any contemporary writer to aim at becoming
a standard author unless he does it in the literary fashion
the society approves, or unless he steals, like George Moore,
carefully upon the world under the veil of limited editions,
expensive and subscribed for. The society claims, of course,
with respect to pictures and standard authors, to be guided
by notions of fitness and intention — that is, to allow works
of art "to occupy the select place which art has chosen
for her abode" and to make no attacks upon "standard
literature for literary persons and students." But when it
comes to literature still in the making it falls with deadly
accuracy upon a work of art like "Jurgen" and refuses to
see that the intention of the author and the sophisticated
nature of the book ought to be taken into account at all.
"Jurgen" is not a vested interest.
Well, the Society for the Suppression of Vice will go on
bungling in its well-intentioned absurdity as long as the law
lets it. There are always such persons. But there do not
need to be such laws. What bothers most decent people about
the whole affair is the feeling that without the law there is
no way of protecting the young from corruption by mer-
cenary creatures who put beauty to base uses. One eminent
author writes to the Emergency Committee: "The Soc.
for the Suppression of Vice is probably making a fool of
itself — as it has done on more than one occasion. But I
am old enough to feel very grateful to it for the cleansing
of the news-stands of N. Y. from what they were fifty
years ago." This is really too much like saying that while
we are killing off mosquitoes we might as well kill off hum-
ming-birds too, because here and there respectable citizens
exist who cannot tell the difference between a mosquito and a
humming-bird. There is a difference; and there is a differ-
ence between "Jurgen" and merely nasty books. There is
no possible reason why the law should be so drawn as to
admit no distinctions. If an art gallery is privileged, so is
a serious performance like "Jurgen." What if the immature
or the senile discover it and snicker? They do exactly the
same thing before hundreds of pictures and statues in the
"select place which art has chosen for her abode." Dozens
of juries could be found to convict any art gallery or any
library in the country of having in its possession objects
which might be used to promote "offensive, lewd, lascivious,
and indecent" conduct; but prosecutors make distinctions
upon the ground of intention and dignity and actual in-
fluence. The harm that may be done to the immature or the
senile, even the law knows, is more than overbalanced by thp
good which beauty and honesty do to the public at large.
344
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2882
The Farmer-Labor Campaign
By CHARLES PATRICK SWEENEY
IN these days when democracy is spoken so lightly as a
word, and much less often followed as a custom, it should
be refreshing to discover a political party which has en-
deavored to adopt it as a rule and a practice. While the
Democrats and Republicans charge each other with being
financed in Wall Street and of sending the "boys" to inter-
national bankers after money, the Farmer-Labor Party is
financed solely by its rank and file membership, believing
that ideals worth voting for are also worth paying some-
thing to get others to vote for. And herein lies one great
reason why the party has not the ghost of a show to pile
up a large vote in the November elections, as well as why
it is the hope of patient men and women throughout the
country that the new party may become a permanent insti-
tution in American political life.
It really makes no essential difference if the Farmer-Labor
Party carries five States or one State or none at the elec-
tions. Nobody expects it to win. The decisiveness of its
defeat this year might be considered as of slight importance
in political calculations. Up to date no great enthusiasm
over developments is warranted. Some newspapers will even
ignore the party during the campaign, and not necessarily
by any means through a sinister purpose to "suppress"
legitimate news, but merely because in the life of the
average newspaper owner or editor the Farmer-Labor Party
will appear as one of the invariable small-fry "also ran"
efforts that are seen every four years. But the Farmer-
Labor Party is entitled to serious consideration, because a
great many people are interested in it and because, irre-
spective of the vote it gets in November, it looks to many
people throughout the country as the beginning of some-
thing in the beyond — say four years beyond — when Mr.
Harding, possibly, will ask the people of the country to
recall how much more tenderly their welfare was guarded
by the Republicans than by the Democrats. By that time,
in many minds, so many people will have been awakened to
the futility of cat-and-mouse politics and so many new
political alignments will have been made in various States
that the Farmer-Labor Party may well be the party of real
opposition and the medium of progressive political opinion.
By that time, the Farmer-Labor Party expects also to have
a war chest, a great dues-paying membership, and an
efficient organization.
Whether you believe it or not, or whether your newspaper
lets you know it or not, the United States is in a process of
what the prohibition commissioner might let you call
political refermentation. Things are happening. One day
there is a political revolution in the State of Montana.
Another day a most amazing victory at the polls for what
the Denver Post calls "Reds" in Colorado. Again, organ-
ized labor in Texas swamps ex-Senator Bailey's effort to be
Governor, despite the "100 Per Cent American" — and two
hundred per cent anti-labor — full page advertisements about
the perils of Gompersism. Mr. Esch, of Esch-Cummins
Bill fame, gets a severe defeat in his effort for renomina-
tion in Wisconsin. Within two years, ten daily papers
devoted to the interests of workers find audiences in the
country and become definitely established. A press service
aiming to knit together the labor press of the country and
offset what it considers the bias of existing news agencies
gets away to a flying start and now boasts a membership of
seventy daily and weekly papers. Up in North Dakota the
State Bank prospers as do the farmers under what the
New York Times calls socialism, and the Chicago Federation
of Labor decides to deposit its funds in said State Bank,
until Chicago labor can run a bank of its own.
Those who are most conspicuous in their espousal of the
Farmer-Labor Party know that in the light of the present
campaign alone it is a pathetic picture. But they also know
that it is not to be considered in the light of on© single
campaign. They reckon its birth along with other very
significant developments in human affairs. They see it as
an educational and inspirational force in American life, the
kind of a force that is cumulative, and the developments of
which may be far-reaching. They know that the indorse-
ment of seven State Federations of Labor, heretofore almost
uniformly Democratic in their political expressions, indi-
cates a strong sentiment of sympathy.* They know that
when the United Mine Workers of America indorse the idea
of a labor party although their president, John Lewis, is a
Republican and William Green, their treasurer, a Democrat,
there is a new political orientation among the rank and file.'
These men see in the west-born rebellion against the two-
party system the field for a new political experiment. To
quote Robert M. Buck, editor of the New Majority, organ of
the party :
The old political parties have she people fooled into regarding
themselves as consumers. Every man who works for a living
and who thinks of himself as a consumer is a victim of this
subtle deception. There is no hope for him so long as he
believes consuming to be his fundamental status in the com-
munity. There is hope for him when he realizes that he is a
producer. We are out to dissipate this widespread misconcep-
tion and to induce the hand and brain workers and the farmers
to see that the important thing to think about is how much they
produce and how much they get out of what they produce — and
who gets the rest. It's a slow process, but it's a sure process
It's the kind of a process that cannot be beaten in the long run.
A single campaign is important only in that it lays the founda-
tion for or adds new impetus to the movement. The foundation
for a party of producers is laid now. The votes cast for the
Farmer-Labor Party in November will be important only as
they afford us a chart for our immediately future efforts.
Says Mr. Christensen, the candidate:
Any time a man asks you to join a political party or to
support a political party without asking you for your campaign
contribution as well, call a cop and have him pinched. He's
working for somebody else than you and he's trying to get you
to harm yourself.
It is not significant that the voters of the country have not
fallen over each other in their eagerness to take Mr. Chris-
tensen's tip and invest in the Farmer-Labor Party. The
voters of the country have not received the tip, nor will
they, until Congress sees fit to adopt the suggestion Mr.
Christensen made to the Kenyon Committee investigating
campaign expenditures in Chicago : that Congress guarantee
all political parties equal opportunity to present their re-
* Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Washington.
Sept. 25, 1920]
The Nation
345
spective attitudes on all issues to the people during presi-
dential campaigns. The method suggested — and it is worthy
of serious consideration — is the purchase by the Government
of sufficient space in the two largest papers in each city —
one morning and one evening — to give the national com-
mittee of each party one column each day in which to pre-
sent its case. Were this chance afforded all political parties
the campaign would probably not be so dull and the outlook
so hopeless.
Getting a party started will always be a gigantic under-
taking, especially for one depending entirely upon small indi-
vidual contributions of thousands of scattered working people.
The mere task of initial organization of the Farmer-Labor
Party has been formidable, and it must be stated in absolute
frankness that, regarding the effort in the light of im-
mediate campaign necessities, the poorest kind of a start has
been made. Whereas a Republican or Democratic campaign
may be said to start two years before election, with a
highly-geared and well-organized machinery that can lite-
rally be set in motion by the pressing of a button, a large
part of the Farmer-Labor Party task, starting as it did late
in July, consisted of finding out just who was for and who
against such a movement. With so hectic and inevitably so
stormy an evolution, chaos was for a time almost unavoid-
able. There is not, for instance, even today, a well-recogniz-
able national committee, and many States actually have no
national committeemen. There has not been a meeting of
even those national committeemen who do exist, since the
Chicago convention. There is, however, a sub-committee,
on strategy and operation, that has been designated to direct
the party's effort in the present campaign. It might appear
a bit ridiculous to say that the national committee of a
political party has not had a meeting during a political
campaign, but when you ask you will discover that the Re-
publican National Committee and the Democratic National
Committee have also delegated their authority to small
groups who are running things. The Farmer-Labor Party's
directing committee is now formulating plans for last-
minute action. Needless to say the lack of money and the
lack of organization are bound to show in the result in
November. For instance, just to get one circular con-
taining the platform of the party and something about its
candidates to the 30,000,000 voters of the country — obviously
a more essential undertaking than for the established
parties, the principles of which are known and which benefit
moreover by columns of free newspaper publicity — would
cost at least $1,500,000. And one circular is nothing ! This
is rather exasperating to a group of men and women en-
deavoring to find sufficient funds merely to get the party
ticket on the ballot in the various States. Indeed the greater
part of the money and effort hitherto has been expended for
that essential, yet elementary, purpose. For the present the
Farmer-Labor Party strength depends upon what it believes
to be the soundness of its doctrines, the increasing drift
toward them by awakening groups, and the wide-spread
disgust with the old parties' avoidance of vital issues to
register an emphatic vote of protest, and to consider that
vote a deposit in the bank of a new political structure. No
one can foretell what the future will bring. Certain it is
that there is an intense longing on the part of a majority of
Americans, though they may differ among themselves in
shades of progressiveness, liberalism, or, if you will, radical-
ism, for a new middle-of-the-road party, a party based on
action, not piffle, on constructive effort rather than on
worn-out shibboleths. The Farmer-Labor Party offers this
nucleus, perhaps, to be profoundly altered in the coming
years, but at least raising a new beacon in the present be-
wildering twilight. No one for a moment expects Mr. Chris-
tensen to be elected. If he carries a single State it will be a
triumph. But no one, be he ever so reactionary or blind to
the trend of events, could peer, be it ever so slightly, be-
neath the surface and not hear the rumbling of the rising
tide. Evolutionary, of course, radical, yes — radical as were
George Washington and Patrick Henry in their time — and
as American.
Self- Determining Haiti
IV. THE HAITIAN PEOPLE
By JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
THE first sight of Port-au-Prince is perhaps most star-
tling to the experienced Latin-American traveler.
Caribbean cities are of the Spanish-American type — build-
ings square and squat, built generally around a court, with
residences and business houses scarcely interdistinguishable.
Port-au-Prince is rather a city of the French or Italian
Riviera. Across the bay of deepest blue the purple moun-
tains of Gonave loom against the Western sky, rivaling the
bay's azure depths. Back of the business section, spread-
ing around the bay's great sweep and well into the plain
beyond, rise the green hills with their white residences.
The residential section spreads over the slopes and into the
mountain tiers. High up are the homes of the well-to-do,
beautiful villas set in green gardens relieved by the flaming
crimson of the poinsettia. Despite the imposing mountains
a man-made edifice dominates the scene. From the center of
the city the great Gothic cathedral lifts its spires above the
tranquil city. Well-paved and clean, the city prolongs the
thrill of its first unfolding. Cosmopolitan yet quaint, with
an old-world atmosphere yet a charm of its own, one gets
throughout the feeling of continental European life. In
the hotels and cafes the affairs of the world are heard dis-
cussed in several languages. The cuisine and service are
not only excellent but inexpensive. At the Cafe Dereix,
cool and scrupulously clean, dinner from hors d'oeuvres to
glaces, with wine, of course, recalling the famous ante-
bellum hostelries of New York and Paris, may be had for
six gourdes [$1.25].
A drive of two hours around Port-au-Prince, through the
newer section of brick and concrete buildings, past the
cathedral erected from 1903 to 1912, along the Champ de
Mars where the new presidential palace stands, up into the
Peu de Choses section where the hundreds of beautiful villas
and grounds of the well-to-do are situated, permanently
dispels any lingering question that the Haitians have been
retrograding during the 116 years of their independence.
In the lower city, along the water's edge, around the
market and in the Rue Republicaine, is the "local color."
The long rows of wooden shanties, the curious little booths
around the market, filled with jabbering venders and with
scantily clad children, magnificent in body, running in and
out, are no less picturesque and no more primitive, no
humbler, yet cleaner, than similar quarters in Naples, in
Lisbon, in Marseilles, and more justifiable than the great
slums of civilization's centers — London and New York,
346
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2882
which are totally without aesthetic redemption. But it is
only the modernists in history who are willing to look at
the masses as factors in the life and development of the
country, and in its history. For Haitian history, like his-
tory the world over, has for the last century been that of
cultured and educated groups. To know Haitian life one
must have the privilege of being received as a guest in the
houses of these latter, and they live in beautiful houses.
The majority have been educated in France; they are cul-
tured, brilliant conversationally, and thoroughly enjoy their
social life. The women dress well. Many are beautiful
and all vivacious and chic. Cultivated people from any
part of the world would feel at home in the best Haitian
society. If our guest were to enter to the Cercle Bellevue,
the leading club of Port-au-Prince, he would find the
courteous, friendly atmosphere of a men's club; he would
hear varying shades of opinion on public questions, and
could scarcely fail to be impressed by the thorough knowl-
edge of world affairs possessed by the intelligent Haitian.
Nor would his encounters be only with people who have
culture and savoir vivre; he would meet the Haitian intel-
lectuals— poets, essayists, novelists, historians, critics. Take
for example such a writer as Fernand Hibbert. An English
authority says of him, "His essays are worthy of the pen of
Anatole France or Pierre Loti." And there is Georges
Sylvaine, poet and essayist, conferencier at the Sorbonne,
where his address was received with acclaim, author of
books crowned by the French Academy, and an Officer of
the Legion d'Honneur. Hibbert and Sylvaine are only two
among a dozen or more contemporary Haitian men of let-
ters whose work may be measured by world standards. Two
names that stand out preeminently in Haitian literature are
Oswald Durand, the national poet, who died a few years ago,
and Damocles Vieux. These people, educated, cultured, and
intellectual, are not accidental and sporadic offshoots of the
Haitian people; they are the Haitian people and they are a
demonstration of its inherent potentialities.
However, Port-au-Prince is not all of Haiti. Other cities
are smaller replicas, and fully as interesting are the people
of the country districts. Perhaps the deepest impression
on the observant visitor is made by the country women.
Magnificent as they file along the country roads by scores
and by hundreds on their way to the town markets, with
white or colored turbaned heads, gold-looped-ringed ears,
they stride along straight and lithe, almost haughtily, carry-
ing themselves like so many Queens of Sheba. The Haitian
country people are kind-hearted, hospitable, and polite, sel-
dom stupid but rather, quick-witted and imaginative. Fond
of music, with a profound sense of beauty and harmony,
they live simply but wholesomely. Their cabins rarely con-
sist of only one room, the humblest having two or three,
with a little shed front and back, a front and rear entrance,
and plenty of windows. An aesthetic touch is never lacking
— a flowering hedge or an arbor with trained vines bearing
gorgeous colored blossoms. There is no comparison between
the neat plastered-wall, thatched-roof cabin of the Haitian
peasant and the traditional log hut of the South or the
shanty of the more wretched American suburbs. The most
notable feature about the Haitian cabin is its invariable
cleanliness. At daylight the country people are up and
about, the women begin their sweeping till the earthen or
pebble-paved floor of the cabin is clean as can be. Then the
yards around the cabin are vigorously attacked. In fact,
nowhere in the country districts of Haiti does one find the
filth and squalor which may be seen in any backwoods town
in our own South. Cleanliness is a habit and a dirty
Haitian is a rare exception. The garments even of the men
who work on the wharves, mended and patched until little
of the original cloth is visible, give evidence of periodical
washing. The writer recalls a remark made by Mr. E. P.
Pawley, an American, who conducts one of the largest busi-
ness enterprises in Haiti. He said that the Haitians were
an exceptionally clean people, that statistics showed that
Haiti imported more soap per capita than any country in
the world, and added, "They use it, too." Three of the
largest soap manufactories in the United States maintain
headquarters at Port-au-Prince.
The masses of the Haitian people are splendid material
for the building of a nation. They are not lazy; on the
contrary, they are industrious and thrifty. Some observers
mistakenly confound primitive methods with indolence.
Anyone who travels Haitian roads is struck by the hundreds
and even thousands of women, boys, and girls filing along
mile after mile with their farm and garden produce on
their heads or loaded on the backs of animals. With modern
facilities', they could market their produce much more effi-
ciently and with far less effort. But lacking them they are
willing to walk and carry. For a woman to walk five to ten
miles with a great load of produce on her head which may
barely realize her a dollar is doubtless primitive, and a
wasteful expenditure of energy, but it is not a sign of
laziness. Haiti's great handicap has been not that her
masses are degraded or lazy or immoral. It is that they are,
ignorant, due not so much to mental limitations as to en-
forced illiteracy. There is a specific reason for this. Some-
how the French language, in the French-American colonial
settlements containing a Negro population, divided itself
into two branches, French and Creole. This is true of
Louisiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and also of Haiti.
Creole is an Africanized French and must not be thought of
as a mere dialect. The French-speaking person cannot un-
derstand Creole, excepting a few words, unless he learns it.
Creole is a distinct tongue, a graphic and very expressive
language. Many of its constructions follow closely the
African idioms. For example, in forming the superlative of
greatness, one says in Creole, "He is great among great
men," and a merchant woman, following the native idiom,
will say, "You do not wish anything beautiful if you
do not buy this." The upper Haitian class, approximately
500,000, speak and know French, while the masses, prob-
ably more than 2,000,000 speak only Creole. Haitian Creole
is grammatically constructed, but has not to any general
extent been reduced to writing. Therefore, these masses
have no means of receiving or communicating thoughts
through the written word. They have no books to read.
They cannot read the newspapers. The children of the
masses study French for a few years in school, but it never
becomes their every-day language. In order to abolish
Haitian illiteracy, Creole must be made a printed as well as
a spoken language. The failure to undertake this problem
is the worst indictment against the Haitian Government.
This matter of language proves a handicap to Haiti in
another manner. It isolates her from her sister republics.
All of the Latin-American republics except Brazil speak
Spanish and enjoy an intercourse with the outside world
denied Haiti. Dramatic and musical companies from Spain,
from Mexico and from the Argentine annually tour all of
the Spanish-speaking republics. Haiti is deprived of all
Sept. 25, 1920]
The Nation
347
such instruction and entertainment from the outside world
because it is not profitable for French companies to visit
the three or four French-speaking islands in the Western
Hemisphere.
Much stress has been laid on the bloody history of Haiti
and its numerous revolutions. Haitian history has been all
too bloody, but so has that of every other country, and the
bloodiness of the Haitian revolutions has of late been unduly
magnified. A writer might visit our own country and clip
from our daily press accounts of murders, robberies on
the principal streets of our larger cities, strike violence,
race riots, lynchings, and burnings at the stake of human
beings, and write a book to prove that life is absolutely
unsafe in the United States. The seriousness of the fre-
quent Latin-American revolutions has been greatly over-
emphasized. The writer has been in the midst of three of
these revolutions and must confess that the treatment given
them on our comic opera stage is very little farther removed
from the truth than the treatment which is given in the
daily newspapers. Not nearly so bloody as reported, their
interference with people not in politics is almost negligible.
Nor should it be forgotten that in almost every instance the
revolution is due to the plotting of foreigners backed up by
their Governments. No less an authority than Mr. John H.
Allen, vice-president of the National City Bank of New
York, writing on Haiti in the May number of The Americas,
the National City Bank organ, who says, "It is no secret
that the revolutions were financed by foreigners and were
profitable speculations."
In this matter of change of government by revolution,
Haiti must not be compared with the United States or with
England; it must be compared with other Latin American
republics. When it is compared with our next door neigh-
bor, Mexico, it will be found that the Government of Haiti
has been more stable and that the country has experienced
less bloodshed and anarchy. And it must never be forgot-
ten that throughout not an American or other foreigner has
been killed, injured or, as far as can be ascertained, even
molested. In Haiti's 116 years of independence, there have
been twenty-five presidents and twenty-five different ad-
ministrations. In Mexico, during its 99 years of indepen-
dence, there have been forty-seven rulers and eighty-seven
administrations. "Graft" has been plentiful, shocking at
times, but who in America, where the Tammany machines
and the municipal rings are notorious, will dare to point the
finger of scorn at Haiti in this connection.
And this is the people whose "inferiority," whose "retro-
gression," whose "savagery," is advanced as a justification
for intervention — for the ruthless slaughter of three thou-
sand of its practically defenseless sons, with the death of a
score of our own boys, for the utterly selfish exploitation
of the country by American big finance, for the destruction
of America's most precious heritage — her traditional fair
play, her sense of justice, her aid to the oppressed. "In-
feriority" always was the excuse of ruthless imperialism
until the Germans invaded Belgium, when it became "mili-
tary necessity." In the case of Haiti there is not the slight-
est vestige of any of the traditional justifications, unwar-
ranted as these generally are, and no amount of misrep-
resentation in an era when propaganda and censorship have
had their heyday, no amount of slander, even in a country
deeply prejudiced where color is involved, will longer serve
to obscure to the conscience of America the eternal shame
of its last five years in Haiti. Fiat justitia, mat coelum!
A Note on Comedy
By LOUIS CROCKER
THE pleasure that men take in comedy arises from their
feeling of superiority to the persons involved in the
comic action. The Athenian who laughed with Aristophanes
over the predicament of the hungry gods, the contemporary
New Yorker who laughs over a comedian blundering into the
wrong bedroom, are stirred by an identical emotion. The
difference in the intellectual character of the two inheres in
the nature of the stimulus by which the emotion is in each
case aroused. In the former the pleasure was conditioned
in a high and arduous activity of the mind ; in the latter it
arises from a momentary and accidental superiority of
situation. High and low comedy are dependent in all ages
upon the temper of the auditor whose pleasurable emotion
of superiority must be awakened. He who has brought a
critical attitude of mind to bear upon the institutions and
the ways of men will cooperate with the creative activity of
a faculty which he himself possesses and has exercised; he
to whom all criticism is alien can evidently find no causes for
superiority within himself and must be flattered by the sight
of physical mishaps and confusions which, for the moment,
are not his own. Pure comedy, in brief, and that comedy
of physical intrigue which is commonly called farce, cannot
from the nature of things differ in the effect they strive to
produce. But they must adapt their methods of attaining
this common end to the character of the spectator whose
emotions they desire to touch.
It follows that pure comedy is rare. Historically we find
it flourishing in small, compact, and like-minded groups:
the free citizens of Athens, the fashionables of Paris and
London who applauded Moliere and Congreve. But in all
three instances the reign of pure comedy was brief, and in
the latter two precarious and artificial at best. With the
loss of Athenian freedom, intrigue took the place of social
and moral criticism; no later poet dared, as Aristophanes
had done in "The Acharnians," to deride warlikeless in the
midst of war. In the New Comedy public affairs and moral
criticism disappeared from the Attic stage. In Rome there
was no audience for pure comedy. Its function was exer-
cised by the satirists alone, precisely as a larger and nobler
comic force lives in the satires of Dryden than in the plays
of Congreve. Nor should it be forgotten that Moliere him-
self derives from a tradition of farce which reaches, through
its Italian origin, to Latin comedy and the New Comedy of
Greece, and that the greater number of his own pieces de-
pends for effectiveness on the accidents and complications of
intrigue. When he rose above this subject matter and
sought the true sources of comic power and appeal in
"L'Ecole des Femmes" and "Tartuffe," he aroused among the
uncritical a hatred which pursued him beyond the grave.
The modern theater, which must address itself primarily
to that bulwark of things as they are, the contented middle
classes, is, necessarily, a bleak enough place for the spirit
of comedy. These audiences will scarcely experience a
pleasurable feeling of superiority at the comic exposure of
their favorite delusions. Hence Shaw is not popular on the
stage; a strong comic talent, like Henri Lavedan's, begins
by directing its arrows at those grosser vices which its audi-
ence also abhors and then sinks into melodrama; isolated
exceptions, such as the success of Hauptmann's massive
348
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2882
satire of bureaucratic tyranny in "The Beaver Coat,"
scarcely mitigate the loneliness of comedy on the stage of
our time. The comic spirit which once sought refuge in
satire now seeks it in the novel — that great, inclusive form
of art which can always find the single mind to which its
speech is articulate.
But since men still desire to laugh in the theater, there
has arisen out of a long and complicated tradition the senti-
mental comedy. Here the basic action is pseudo-realistic
and emotional. Into it are brought, however, odd and absurd
characters whose function is the same as that of Shakes-
peare's Fools in tragedy. They break the tension and release
the pleasurable feeling of superiority. More often, how-
ever, they encroach largely on the sentimental action, and
then we have the most popular form of theatrical entertain-
ment among us — a reckless mixture of melodrama and farce.
And this form caters, beyond all others, to its huge audi-
ence's will te superiority. Men and women laugh at the
fools whom they despise, at the villains whose discomfiture
vindicates their peculiar sense of social and moral values;
they laugh with the heroes in whom those values are em-
bodied and unfailingly triumphant.
From such facile methods pure comedy averts its face.
It, too, arouses laughter; it, too, releases the pleasurable
emotion of superiority. But it demands a superiority that
is hard won and possessed by few. It is profoundly con-
cerned with the intellect that has in very truth risen above
the common follies and group delusions of mankind ; it seeks
its fellowship among those who share its perceptions or are
prepared to share them. It demands not only moral and
intellectual freedom in its audience; it demands a society
in which that freedom can be exercised. It cannot flourish,
as the central example of Attic comedy illustrates, except
in a polity where art and speech are free. And any one who
reflects on the shifting panorama of political institutions
will realize at once how few have been the times and places
in history in which, even given a critically minded audience,
the comic dramatist could have spoken to that audience in a
public playhouse.
The immediate example in our own period is that of Ber-
nard Shaw. Whatever the ultimate value of his plays may
be, he is to us the truest representative of the comic spirit.
Some of his plays have, on occasion, quite frankly been
removed from the stage by the police power; none are truly
popular except in the study. The bourgeois audiences who
at times witness their performance have set up between
themselves and Shaw the protective fiction that he is a high-
class clown. Since they cannot, in self-defense, laugh with
him, they attempt to laugh at him, and thus save their
pleasure and their reputation for cleverness at once. True
comedy, in a word, is a test both of the inner freedom of
the mind and of the outer freedom of the society in which
men live. Its life has always been brief and hazardous.
Nor is it likely to flourish unless the liberties of mankind
are achieved in a new measure and with a new intensity.
For the great comic dramatist, if he would gain the most
modest success, must gather in a single theater as many
free minds in a free state as Lucian or Swift or Heine seek
out and make their own in a whole generation.
In the Driftway
Beginning with its first issue in October, The Nation
will change its publication day from Saturday to
Wednesday.
THERE were so many policemen about Madison Square
that the Drifter left his perch atop the bus to inquire
why. "Some sort of Bolsheviki meeting in the Garden," a
bluecoat informed him. "No, no trouble yet; but we watch
them furriners." The Drifter headed forthwith for the
Garden; he discovered that there was a meeting to raise
money for medical relief for Soviet Russia. The immense
hall was packed as the Drifter had not seen it packed for a
Presidential candidate in a Presidential year. Young Rus-
sians were policing the aisles and herding late-comers to the
topmost gallery, but the Drifter eluded them long enough
to persuade himself that the policeman was right: it was
a crowd of furriners. And they were mostly young, with
the eager, inquiring, believing faces of the youth of New
York's East Side. Such meetings as this were church to
them, the Drifter meditated. Here they voiced their
idealism and aspiration and inhaled inspiration.
THE Drifter found himself cornered at the foot of the
gallery stairs, when he recalled a ruse that had worked
before. With dignity he whispered the magic word "Press,"
and was separated from the gallery herd and ushered to the
front. Once more the Drifter's eye wandered across the sea
of foreign faces. Beneath the speakers' stand it fell upon
an alien to the crowd, a gray-haired, benevolently fishy-eyed
plain-clothes man — the lines of his tobacco-chewing face
irresistibly reminding the Drifter of Mr. Harding. Through
all the delirious waves of cheering and all the surly tides
of boos, that face remained impassive, the monotonous chew,
chew, chew never varying for a second — an unmistakably
American face. The crowd booed mention of Poland, of
Lloyd George, of the American Federation of Labor; it
cheered lustily the name of Debs; it burst into tumultuous
applause when Dudley Field Malone called the Government
of the United States "the most reactionary force in the
world today." It was clear that though the crowd might
read newspapers, it thought its own thoughts, and it was not
made up of men who mistook Czecho-Slovakia for a break-
fast food. But its real moment came when the Soviet Am-
bassador, Mr. Martens, was introduced. A little, almost
painfully shy man stood up, and smiled like a bashful school-
girl. But the crowd went wild — not as furriners, but as an
American crowd goes wild. It had not lived in America
without learning something. It clapped; it stamped; it
cheered; it tore its newspapers into scraps and tossed them
into the air; it threw its straw hats roof wards, balcony-
wards, platformwards, and it refused to be silenced despite
all the efforts of the speakers for twelve long minutes —
until suddenly, from the middle of the hall, a high clear
woman's voice imposed itself on the tumult, made itself
heard, resounded in stillness. A moment later the thousands
took up the refrain — the chorus of the Russian Revolu-
tionary Anthem, a strangely-modulated churchly hymn.
Then silence again, and Martens began reading a prepared
speech. Martens had the gift of smiling, but the Drifter
found his English hard to follow. Besides, the Drifter, be-
ing of the Press, hates prepared speeches. He went home.
Yes, he thought, he agreed with the Madison Square police-
man— them furriners would bear watching. He was not
quite sure why. The Drifter
Sept. 25, 1920]
The Nation
349
Correspondence
Making the Ballot Count ?
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: I have just reread your article of September 4 in which
you conclude that "the person who throws away his ballot next
November will be the one who votes for either Cox or Harding."
Is not this protest emphatic rather than effective? I have
admired your unfailing refusal to suppress facts, and your rare
determination — often, no doubt, at great cost and risk — to give
the public the benefit of unbiased reports upon world happen-
ings. I have rejoiced to see your influence grow far beyond the
ordinary test of advertising value.
More than that, I sympathize with the grounds of your com-
plaint. The pressing need for answer to our domestic problems
to me seems no more obvious than does our unpreparedness to
make that answer. Worse still, with respect to the accepted
principles of representative government we are struggling in a
sea of confusion and obscurity. The Senate is charged with
usurpation for daring to inquire whether a treaty or a league
should be ratified. For prosecutions to guard public safety
prosecutions to gratify private hate and to serve partisan pur-
pose have been substituted. In short we are the most modern
victims of "wilful" aristocracy. For all that the proceedings of
the old party conventions showed little or no wholesome revul-
sion. The protests were colorless. During the war popular
response to the colors was fine because in it the grave differences
of opinion were drowned to serve a national cause. The polit-
ical response to the "after the war" problems was pathetic be-
cause we sought to revamp by the old keynote oratory. The
greatest struggle of which history tells, had raised into promi-
nence not one new figure to cope with revolutionized conditions.
No Lincoln rose out of the conflict to tell for all time that the
national soul had been gripped, and to prove that new problems
call for new treatment. No wonder the attitude of the public
has been listless.
But granting all this, and as much more as you might add,
what is the remedy? A new party of course, provided there is
the ability to diagnose the essential ailment and the common
purpose to apply the appropriate relief. We had an abundance
of promise and threat of independent movements. Doctrines
were heralded, and names were bandied about without leave or
reason. By the drag-net process the bearers of all complaints
were assembled. As a result there were, as it seems, more
planks than delegates. There was no supreme issue to still
the babel of voices. We lacked both the inspiration of a
supreme cause and the will for sacrifice of individual hobbies.
Particularly the issues which you emphasize were hopelessly
stranded upon the rock of discord. In saying that a vote for
Harding or Cox is lost, you must admit that a vote for Debs or
Christensen can not be saved. How could the admitted failures
of independent conventions be cured by indorsing their hopeless
outcome? You admit that neither Debs nor Christensen can
be elected. You virtually concede that neither should be elected.
You appear to recommend a protest vote to destroy, not to con-
struct— at least for the period to be covered by this election.
You might have directed your advice to congressional elec-
tions. Results might be gained in particular districts; definite
principles might there triumph; and independent groups in the
legislative body might score out of all proportion to their
numbers. Indeed, indications are that our two-party system is
doomed to travel the way of the much ridiculed continental
method, which allows of the combination of different groups as
varying questions arise.
But your advice goes to the presidential election. This in-
volves one department represented by one man for a term of
four years. There is no room for parleying now or for com-
promise afterwards. Only one man can be elected, and he will
wield greater influence than any ruler of the world, during a
period fraught with tremendous consequences for us and for
civilization. You admit that this man will be either Harding
or Cox. Remembering the splendid fight that you made to save
fundamental principles of free government and bearing in mind
the questions that without your aid might not now be accepted
as constituting the supreme issue where, I respectfully ask, is
your difficulty? The election of Cox would necessarily reverse
everything for which you fought. You must admit that Hard-
ing's triumph would point in the right direction.
You would have supported Johnson, who it is true sympa-
thizes with your domestic reforms, but who made his contest
upon the League, the Treaty and free speech. You would have
supported Knox, solely, I assume, for his stand upon the issues
just named. Harding has the support of both of them as he
has of every Republican Senator whom you urged to fight and
whose courage during the last two years gave you hope for
our Republic. To my mind the nomination of Moses in New
Hampshire, Brandegee in Connecticut, and Lenroot in Wisconsin
constitutes a more effective protest than a hopeless popular vote
of protest as you recommend. Neither can I see virtue in even
so much as a discouraging attitude towards men who have made
so splendid a fight. Both good morals and sound policy would
seem to dictate aggressive support for them and for their cause.
How else can the faith of men be preserved?
Apart from all this the essential issues are at least presented
by the platforms of the two parties. What is lacking the can-
didates have supplied. Harding's votes in the Senate were
given for the extreme reservations. Since the convention his
utterances make it clear that as President he would absolutely
protect us against the iniquities of both League and Treaty, and
also against the abuses of a one-man government. It is clear
that his demand for a return to representative government is
far more than a campaign utterance. He is open-minded, and
without malice. He has never fanned the flame of race hatred,
he is a typical American, glad to listen, perhaps slow to decide,
but sure to stand. If I had no other reason I would support
him as an irreconcilable enemy of autocracy. After all that is
the foundation issue everywhere. Before going into action we
must clear the decks — if you please, begin all over again. "Oust
the dynasty," is the watchword of the day. Let us do at home,
what we have helped do elsewhere.
Charles Nagel
Manchester, Massachusetts, September 11
"If Thine Enemy Hunger — "
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: Germany is cleaning house — slowly but surely. That
applies to her physical, mental, and political conditions, and it
is my opinion that she will have her house in order when other
nations of the world are only beginning to realize that such a
process is also necessary for them. There is still great suffer-
ing, but it is borne with resignation and a solemn determination
to overcome the difficulties to be surmounted. Extreme radical-
ism is becoming confined to smaller numbers, and will become
unimportant and less dangerous with the betterment of condi-
tion in food, clothing, and coal.
There is still considerable pessimism regarding the spread of
bolshevism. This dragon of fear may be brought down, and I
think it will, by the dominance of common sense among the
German people; but there is one absolutely sure way of avoid-
ing this danger to Germany and the world. I say the world, for
if bolshevism is allowed to get her grip on Germany all Europe
will automatically go the same way; and who will predict how
short or how long a time it will take to travel across the ocean
— as travel it will if it is not confined to its present limits.
This spread of bolshevism would mean a set-back to civilization
of at least a century. But the one absolutely sure way of avoid-
ing this calamity is for the former Allied and neutral nations of
350
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2882
the world to get together and furnish foodstuffs, clothing, and
raw materials for the rehabilitation of German industries.
When, not long ago, an American newspaper offered a prize
to the married woman who would in the fewest words indicate
the surest way to make a husband happy one woman wrote
"Feed the Beast," and she got the prize.
This maxim cannot be supposed to apply to an American hus-
band alone. It applies to all men. The political solidarity —
perhaps existence — of Germany will depend upon its stomach.
Next winter will be the critical period of its history — and there-
with the history of the world. If the nations of the world should
fail through their blinded and prejudiced eyes to see and grasp
the importance of the necessity for restoring healthful and pros-
perous conditions to the great industries which for decades
proved to be the heart-strings of the economic world, why should
not America alone undertake to reap the credit and the benefits
of maintaining the world's equilibrium?
Why should it not be America that with its overpowering
sense of adherence to the square deal should proceed to help a
stricken people to reclaim itself? Germany relies upon American
help to rebuild herself. As one of the present government
leaders said to me not long ago, "We stand or fall with American
fat."
I write you these opinions because I have just returned from
a considerable stay in Germany.
New York, September 12 Ludwig Nissen
Another Candidate
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: The editorial in your issue of September 4 urging voters
"to roll up a big popular vote against the old parties and in
favor of a radical movement" and declaring that "the Socialist
Party and the Farmer-Labor Party are the only ones for which
it is in the least worth while to vote," ignores the most thor-
oughly radical movement of all those on foot.
Single Taxers only recently awoke to the fact that parlor
discussions and the passing around of "Progress and Poverty"
constituted a very slow method of spreading the truths of a
great vital issue, but when they at last got busy and formed a
national party they polled more votes at their first election
than did the Socialists at their first election. Unlike many of
the Socialist groups, the Single Taxers propose to bring relief
from present conditions without violence and without a great
social upheaval. Moreover, we do not confine our efforts to
the benefiting of ore or two classes, but, while our economic
adjustment would be gradual, all classes to whom the problem
of living has become more and more difficult, year after year,
would from the start experience some relief, and without de-
spoiling the capitalist he would automatically be transformed
into the friendly cooperator he was intended to be.
So do, please, add the name of Mr. Macauley to your list of
those worthy of attracting votes from Cox and Harding.
Westfield, New Jersey, September 15 C. P. B.
[Our correspondent's point is well taken. We should not have
forgotten Mr. Macauley's name. — Editor The Nation.]
Anti-Commotion
To the Editor op The Nation:
Sir: I give you my hearty thanks and congratulations for
your editorial No More Race Discrimination of August 7. I
regard the eighty-seven thousand of Japanese descent as an
asset to the State and nation as really as are the others. I
regard all of this anti-Japanese commotion as inevitably hostile
to world peace and am delighted to see The Nation standing
squarely on the right side.
Claremont, California, August 20 Henry P. Perkins
Books
Eternal Africa
Africa and the Discovery of America. Volume I. By Leo
Wiener. Innes & Sons.
The Republic of Liberia. By R. C. F. Maughan. Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons.
La France au Maroc. By Berthe Georges-Gaulis. Paris : Librai-
rie Armand Colin.
The Belgian Congo and the Berlin Act. By Arthur Berriedale
Keith. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
The Black Man's Burden. By E. D. Morel. London: The Na-
tional Labour Press.
Empire and Commerce in Africa. By Leonard Woolf. London:
The Labour Research Department.
Agadir. Joseph Caillaux. Paris: Albin Michel.
HERE are seven books representing five interesting points
of view, but all of them about Africa. First, a scientific
student of languages connects Africa in new ways with the
discovery of America; then two officials, English and French,
write in studied praise of the work of Europe in Africa, past,
present, and future; an orthodox historian sets down in careful
and unemotional phrase the legal relation of Europe to the
heart of the dark continent. Then comes revolt. Two reformers
writing, one from the political and the other from the economic
point of view, say plain and biting words concerning the rela-
tions of black and white in this ancient continent; and finally,
as commentary upon all of this, a prime minister of France,
recently tried for treason, tells of the meaning of Agadir.
No age of the world, ancient or modern, has been able to
escape Africa. We may, according to our birthplace or color
or lineage, bewail this or feel a secret uplift because of it; but
it is, in either case, true that from the beginning of human
civilization, on the Nile and Euphrates, around the shores of
the Mediterranean, in central and in northern Europe and in
America, continually, each century, at one time or another,
centers world interest in this old and mighty continent. And
so again today Africa steps forward in the thought of men.
Professor Wiener shows us the amazing interaction of Africa,
America, and Europe in the early days of the slave trade. The
layman cannot judge of the exact weight of the mass of ma-
terial adduced because the extraordinary author is master of
more languages than most people have heard of, much less know.
His book indicates the widest scholarship. The conclusions of
Mr. Wiener are striking: "When I began my scrutiny, I was
firmly convinced, as is the universal belief, that tobacco, manioc,
yams, sweet potatoes, and peanuts were blessings bestowed upon
the world by the Indians. A cursory study excluded the yams
and the manioc. Soon the peanuts followed in their wake. Next
came the sweet potatoes, and at last the tobacco. It turned out
that American archaeology was to a great extent built on
sand. But the most painful discovery was in the line of Indian
religion. Here everything turned out to be topsy-turvy. In
this first volume I show that the Negroes have had a far greater
influence upon American civilization than has heretofore been
suspected."
The average layman assumes that the horrors of the slave
trade and slavery have passed and that today we have a pacific
economic and benevolent invasion of Africa from Europe for
the purpose of its ultimate civilization. This is the uncritical
attitude of Mr. Maughan, British consul-general at Monrovia.
His study of Liberia tries on the one hand to say pleasant
things concerning Liberia, and on the other hand to show British
merchants that now and here is their chance to exploit a rich
land. The unspoken assumption is that what is for the good
of the British merchant is for the good of Liberia. He sees
the possibilities of Liberia and rightly complains that "for some
curious reason, which I must confess has hitherto completely
Sept. 25, 1920]
The Nation
351
baffled me, it has usually been customary to write of Liberia
and the Liberians in a tone of gentle melancholy; to descant
upon the country and the people to whom it belongs as with a
pen dipped in sighs, and generally to regard them with the
despondent air of the good old Scots mission doctor, who was
wont to raise the spirits of his convalescent patients by remind-
ing them of 'hoo often they went off i' the relapse, ye ken.' "
Elsewhere in the book it appears that Mr. Maughan's encourage-
ment with regard to Liberia is due to his knowledge of what
Liberia may mean as a possession to British wealth. He cannot,
for instance, "conceive any situation more unfortunate than that
of a country where the education of the masses has been over-
done," and consequently thinks that "it would seem highly un-
desirable that immigration from the United States to Liberia
[should], for the present at any rate, assume larger propor-
tions than it has done for many years past."
Mme. Georges-Gaulis goes a step further. Her work is a paean
of praise of the French general who has just been admitted to
the French Immortals and whose latest achievement has been
the "pacification" of Morocco. Of this work the author is
enthusiastic and says: "General Lyautey's work will remain.
The attitude which he adopted on the front of the field of
action and which he persists in even today has caused his name
to be inscribed on history's pages. The reconstruction of Mo-
rocco has been effected; it has already become the model for
our Allies to follow." " 'I believe in action,' said the general
one day to an astonished Frenchman who had just come to
Morocco." And so forth, for a couple of hundred pages with
only this ray of light. " 'Pacification and not conquest' is his
motto, and he repeats this constantly just as he reiterates that
there are no inferior races."
Professor Keith, formerly of the British Colonial Office and
now at the University of Edinburgh, writes of the international
character of the Belgian Congo. This is the work of an ortho-
dox British imperialist who, without imagination or any great
degree of sympathy with the natives, writes a book which
contains a very short sketch of the Congo, followed by three
chapters en the inception of the Congo Free State, four more
on the work of the State, and two on its well-known failure.
The remaining nine chapters have to do with the reorganization
of the Congo Free State as a Belgian colony, with a study of
the new laws and arrangements, and an examination of the
relation of the Congo Free State to the Peace settlement.
With most students of the war, Mr. Keith recognizes the close
connection of Africa with that great catastrophe. "Whatever
be the final verdict of history on the part played by the question
of colonial expansion among the causes of the European War,
two features have emerged in the course of the conflict which
render the problem of the future of Central Africa of vital
importance to the United Kingdom and its allies."
While Mr. Keith acknowledges that all nations have sinned
in their treatment of the African races he thinks that the
crimes of Germany are the greatest, but, chiefly, apparently,
because of her determination to have African colonies at the
expense of England and France. "The demand is made that
not only shall the former territories be restored, but that they
shall be increased at the expense of France, Portugal, and Bel-
gium so that all Central Africa from sea to sea shall be in the
hands of Germany, which then by means of submarine bases
on either coast will effectively menace the ocean trade of the
Allies. The demand for so large accessions of territory, though
justified also on commercial grounds, rests essentially on the
second factor which has emerged in the course of the war, the
realization of the military potentialities in the training under
modern conditions of the natives of Africa."
The study of the Congo Free State brings clearly forward
the restless personal ambition of Leopold and the extraordinary
power which he snatched from under the nose of the civilized
world and wielded in Central Africa. The Congo Free State
was never international, but was in fact a private project of
the King of Belgium, for which he secured the recognition of
the civilized world. That this was possible is extraordinary,
but it came through the rivalries of France, Germany, and
England. England could not interfere if she kept her hold on
Egypt, while both France and Germany expected to inherit
whatever Belgium secured. Could it not be said that the World
War resulted from the attempt to cash the blank check which
Leopold handed Bismarck in return for German recognition of
the Congo Free State? "This left Leopold absolute monarch
of 900,000 square miles of territory with twenty or thirty
millions of people, unrestrained by any legislation or any ef-
fective legal requirement."
Here we begin to get an insight into the depths of degrada-
tion to which modern civilization has led the world in its rela-
tion to Africa, but it takes plain speaking like that of E. D.
Morel to expose the real atrocities. Mr. Morel's book is in part
historical and in part a setting forth of selected stories of white
atrocities all over Africa. He says: "The narrow, irregular
streets of a Moorish town, into which shells from warships
riding on the sparkling blue waters of the western Atlantic
are falling in an incessant and murderous hail, smashing the
white-walled, flat-roofed houses and splashing them all over
with the blood of the white-clad inhabitants who sprawl in-
mangled heaps at the doors of their homes — between such a
scene as this and the pitted, scarred battlefields of Europe to-
day with the blasted stumps which once were trees, and the
piles of masonry and timber which once were towns and villages,
there appears at first thought no connecting link of circum-
stance. Yet it was the violence done to Casablanca which fur-
nished the first direct incentive to that 'era of ambitions, cove-
tousness and conflicts in Europe,' whose fruits the people of
Europe have been reaping for the past five years.
"Africa has always repaid her exploiters."
Morel himself is no particular lover of Africans. He has
traveled in Africa, has written seven or eight books on aspects
of the African problems, and particularly was one of those who
exposed Belgian misrule in the Congo. During the war, how-
ever, his liberalism was interpreted as sympathy for Germany,
and since the Belgian expose was due to him and the unfortu-
nate Sir Roger Casement, his sympathy for Africa has been
interpreted as part of a pro-German "plot." In truth, his atti-
tude toward the black men is that of the liberal Englishman:
that is to say, he is opposed to the past atrocities and wants
Africa helped in every benevolent and philanthropic way. He
has, however, no conception of a self-governing, independent
black Africa. Indeed, he suspects and rather dislikes the edu-
cated African and certainly has no faith in his independent
future. His attitude is best summed up in this word from his
introduction. His book "seeks to lay down the fundamental
principles of a humane and practical policy in the government
of Africa by white men.
"We stand on the threshold of a new era. The moment is
propitious for the birth of an international conscience in regard
to Africa. Great social changes are in process of a development
among the white peoples of the earth. The seat of power is
shifting from the propertied classes to the producing masses.
The latter will find themselves invested before long with execu-
tive duties in many spheres of government, with whose prob-
lems they are not familiar; among them the administration of
dark-skinned peoples."
Mr. Morel, however, is frank in recognizing the terrific bur-
den of the black man — "the man of sorrows of the human fam-
ily"— and says that the problem of the native races today
"centers henceforth upon the black man, as the African is
called, although few Africans are wholly black." He says that
the real crisis in the black man's existence comes today and that
industrial exploitation if carried out ruthlessly may do what
slavery, the slave trade, and the political domination of Africa
has hitherto failed to do — exterminate the race.
"A subsidiary purpose of the volume is to impress the reader
with the remarkable manner in which the political history of
Europe during the past half century has been affected by the
352
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2882
reflex action upon European affairs of the proceedings of Euro-
pean governments in Africa. Those to whom history appeals
as a long chain of inter-connected links, who believe that wrong-
doing by men and nations brings its inevitable aftermath, and
that human records are stamped all over with the proofs of it,
may be forgiven, perhaps, if they are tempted to see in the deso-
lation and misery into which Europe is plunged the Nemesis
of Europe's actions in Africa."
Mr. Leonard Woolf is, if possible, even more outspoken. He
has perhaps the advantage of a more detached scientific atti-
tude than Mr. Morel in that he clearly sees the economic motives
of Europe. He says that just as long as the modern white
world is organized for individual profit just so long it is going
to bring suffering and destruction upon the peoples of the
earth. "Europe in the last century gained control over its
physical environment with a rapidity and to a degree never
attained before in any place or age. To dominate the earth, to
ride the winds, and to harness fire and water are great and
valuable achievements, but their greatness and value also de-
pend upon whether the world's passions and beliefs are har-
nessed and under control. Some people seem to think that a
maniac with a modern revolver in his hand is a nobler spec-
tacle than a maniac with bow and arrow from the Stone Age.
Perhaps he is, but at least it cannot be denied that he is infi-
nitely more dangerous. So, too, the uncontrolled passions of
fifty million men and women armed with twelve-inch guns and
aeroplanes may be a finer thing to contemplate than the blind
instincts of five thousand savages armed with tomahawks, but
national passions firing off twelve-inch guns are more dangerous
to humanity than tribal instinct directing a tomahawk. It is
only because from our schooldays history is represented falsely
to us as the logic of events rather than the logic of men's be-
liefs and desires that we are not driven by fear, if by nothing
else, to consider continually the possible results of national
and communal beliefs and desires."
Mr. Woolf goes on to show that "between 1880 and 1914 the
states of Britain, France, and Germany each acquired an im-
mense colonial empire outside Europe. These empires were
empires in the literal sense of the word: they were founded by
conquest, sometimes openly acknowledged, and sometimes dis-
guised under various synonyms for civilization. The territories
acquired were incorporated, usually against the wishes of their
inhabitants, in the European state and the inhabitants were
subjected to the autocratic rule of the European state. The
territory acquired by the British state in this way was about
SVi million square miles, and the population subjected to its
rule was about 46 million. The French state acquired 4 million
square miles, and a population of over 50 million; the German
state 1 million square miles, and a population of 15 million."
He strikes the keynote of all "Negro problems" when he says
that "if the relations of Europe to Africa are to change, the
beliefs and desires of Europeans in Africa and with regard to
Africans must change. Hence when this class of thinker or
reformer makes concrete proposals, they take the form, not of
a change from imperialism to internationalism, but of a
change in the social and economic relations between the African
and the European. The 'native' is no longer to be regarded as
the 'live stock' on Europe's African estate, as the market for the
shoddy of our factories and our cheap gin, or as the 'cheap
labor' by means of which the concessionnaire may supply Europe
with rubber and ivory and himself with a fortune, but as a
human being with a right to his own land and his own life, with
a right even to be educated and to determine his own destiny,
to be considered, in that fantastic scheme of human government
which men have woven over the world, an end in himself rather
than an instrument to other people's ends."
From this climax of arraignment of modern commercial em-
pire we may turn by way of startling contrast to the com-
placent "apologia pro vita sua" by a man who is discredited in
many respects but who knows his France and Europe well
enough to adduce the theft of Morocco as an excuse for his for-
eign policy. In Joseph Caillaux's account of his foreign policies
we get a rather illuminating even if ghastly glimpse of the way
in which the peoples of the world have been the pawns of poli-
tics. The book surveys France's experience in her foreign
affairs from 1877 to 1911. It proves beyond any doubt (albeit
inadvertently) that the distribution of Africa has been the root
of nearly all the various political controversies which have upset
France, Germany, England, and Russia for the last forty years.
Africa was "the roots of the war."
Here we are introduced to the very penetralia of high politics.
France finds her interests in Morocco blocked by England. She
therefore becomes willing to withdraw from Egypt in favor of
Great Britain. Germany becomes incensed but signs with the
rest a treaty at Algeciras, which neither France nor England
have any purpose to keep, but it forms "a good working basis."
The purpose of France to seize Morocco with the consent of
Great Britain leads to the appearance of the German warship
at Agadir. Thereupon a "showdown" is demanded. Germany,
finding that immediate war is impossible on account of her
banking situation, consents to receive an additional slice of
Central Africa while France takes Morocco. Everything is set-
tled except the World War, but Caillaux in its great lambent
light congratulates himself: he put it off three years!
Here we are back where we started. A continent with hun-
dreds of millions of human beings has been made the football
of the nations until the nations have suffered because of it the
greatest revolution humanity has ever known. Whether this
will teach us anything time only can tell.
W. E. BURGHARDT D* BOIS
Short Story Art and Artifice
Youth and the Bright Medusa. By Willa Cather. Alfred A.
Knopf.
The Surprises of Life. By Georges Clemenceau. Translated by
Grace Hall. Doubleday, Page and Company.
Jewish Children. By "Shalom Aleichem." From th« Yiddish by
Hannah Berman. Alfred A. Knopf.
]\/f ISS WILLA CATHER has worked at herself and her art.
■*■ *■ Today the product is finished and represents the triumph
of mind over Nebraska. This is no jest. Consider even the
sounder of our writers from the "great valley" and beyond —
William Allen White, Vachel Lindsey. How gifted they are and
how incurably provincial. Miss Cather started out, fortunately,
not only with a burning sense of beauty, but with a really honest
mind. She settled in Greenwich village and was able to separate
its wheat from its tares. Her vision has come to be of an
intense and naked clearness and she herself one of our few
thoroughly serious artists.
The form no less than the substance of these stories bears
witness to a fine self-discipline. It has neither the French nor
the contemporary American short-story mechanism. The fable
is driven neither toward a sting nor toward a burst of rose-
color. The structural line is long and firm; it is never broken
by a moral timidity in the guiding hand. As a result the stories
have the" radiance of perfect cleanliness, like the radiance of
burnished glass. The style has not yet been burned quite clean.
There are still patches of magazine English — unvisualized
similes, pulpy adjectives. But Miss Cather knows exactly the
effect she is after, spare yet imaginative, sensuous yet cool.
And at times, as in the young painter's vision through the magic
knot-hole in his wall, she achieves it completely.
The theme of her stories is the life of art, specifically of
music. Or, rather, it is the life of art as contrast, criticism,
symbol, refuge, as the one imaginable escape for an American
from ugliness to beauty, from bondage to freedom. Among the
earlier stories here gathered Paul's Escape strikes a key-note of
the artistic soul's escape from Pittsburg into a brief light and
then into death, since death is a nobler consummation than such
Sept. 25, 1920]
The Nation
353
a murder of a soul by a Nebraska village as is described in
A Wagner Matinee. In the later stories the protagonists have
made their escape : fully and magnificently and with a fine pagan
flourish and melancholy, too, in Coming, Aphrodite; partially in
The Diamond Mine, since Columbus does break down and cor-
rupt the life of Cressida Garnet in the end; with a touch of
conscious defiance through which the chain still clanks a little
in A Gold Slipper, with its superb embodiment of the adversary,
the Philistine, the righteous man in the beefy soul and furtive
dreams and final poverty of Marshal McKann. The debate be-
tween him and Kitty Ayrshire in the Pullman car is a tri-
umphant statement of the book's central thought — an American
debate between the body and the soul, in which the soul is not yet
wholly liberated but still feels as though heavy earth were
strewn upon its wings. Thus Miss Cather's book is more than
a random collection of excellent tales. It constitutes as a whole
one of the truest as well as, in a sober and earnest sense, one of
the most poetical interpretations of American life that we
possess.
The stories of M. Clemenceau are quite perfect. Only one has
the distinct feeling that one has read them all before, not once
but many times. With sure, rapid, effective strokes he sketches
a landscape, a situation, a character. An illustrative anecdote
is next told in the manner of an admirable but very calculating
raconteur, and this anecdote culminates in a bitter, disillusioned
little point. The anecdotes deal mainly with the life of the
French provinces — with peasants and cures and country-doctors.
And here M. Clemenceau was, of course, on his own ground.
But in the middle of the book is a group of stories dealing with
Calician Jews about whom M. Clemenceau knows nothing at first
hand — obviously and literally nothing — and yet these stories
are told with the same bright air of worldly assurance and the
same technical dexterity as the others. And so one begins to
suspect, as, indeed, one has long suspected on other and similar
occasions, that this particular form of French art has become
as highly and tightly conventionalized as, let us say, the manage-
ment of the heroic couplet had once become in England, and that
any competent man of letters can use it for an hundred subjects
without touching one of them and reveal in the process nothing
but his own skill. A personal element that "dates" the stories is
M. Clemenceau's anti-clericalism and positivism; you are left in
no doubt that his mind crystalized in the sixties of the last
century. Yet the stories, if not put to the test of inner veracity,
are thoroughly readable, and are extraordinary by-products of
a life so long and vigorously dedicated to less innocent pur-
suits.
The technique of Yiddish literature is, quite naturally, akin to
that of the Russians. It is, like the Russian, a realistic litera-
ture and a literature of pain. Its realism is not a method but a
necessity. Suffering and need strip life. When such life ex-
presses itself, the expression is simple and poignant. It has no
time for moods of studied synthesis. Art is secondary; form
merges into substance. That is true of the great mass of
Yiddish short stories, which are singularly free from the
meretricious; it is true of these stories by "Shalom Aleichem"
concerning the children of villages in the old Russian pale and
their teachers in the cheder or Hebrew school where the law and
the Talmud are taught. The life described is cramped and
dusty, but not without vivid gleams of beauty — swift, shy con-
tracts with nature, the poetry of ritual and tradition. But per-
haps the best quality of these stories is their humor, and such
characters as Isshur the Beadle and Boaz the Teacher do, indeed,
allowing for less breadth and vigor, justify the comparison of
Rabinowitz with Dickens that has been made.
ALFRED ' A ' KNOPF
ItSSIISSIISgllSSIISSIISSIISiSIISSIISSIISSl
BQ-R-ZQi
ino W. 42, Street, NEW YORK
YOUTH AND THE BRIGHT MEDUSA By Willa Cather
THERE seems to be no disputing the fact that Miss Cather is our greatest living woman novelist. In the
stories in the present volume she deals with youth's adventures with the many-colored Medusa of art.
Each tale is marked by the amazing ardor and restless energy of imagination which is peculiarly hers ; by a
quick, bold cutting into the tissues of human experience and emotion that makes each of them a new dis-
covery about character and life. $2.25.
THE CONTROL OF IDEALS
By H.B. Van Wesep
This book aims to teach us how to "laugh a
little at our own ideals and hold them no less
dear." It is written in the spirit of a Nietzsche
shorn of his madness but not bereft of his
insight. The author is a research worker in
philanthropic problems at the Rockefeller
Foundation and his manuscript was read and
recommended for publication by the head of
the department of philosophy in a great uni-
versity, an eminent authority on politics and
government and an intelligent layman. $2.00.
THE CONFESSIONS OF
JACOB BOEHME
HAGAR'S HOARD
By George Kibbe Turner
The scene of this tale of an old man's greed and a young man's
love, is Memphis during the yellow fever epidemic of 1878. Mr.
Turner excels in vivid characterization and sureness of touch,
and he has, in this novel, created a really distinguished piece of
work. $2.25.
Floy d Dell's First Novel
MOON-CALF
will be published October 25th
It is unquestionably the most im-
portant American first novel that
we have ever received.
It is advisable to place your order
now with your bookseller before
advancing costs force a raise in
the price. $2.25.
The note-book of "The Father of Theosophy,"
author of Six Theosophic Points, in which he
describes his spiritual development. Here is
to be found the inspiration and the starting
point of German theosophy, the inter-reaction
of Platonian philosophy and Christian dogma
which paved the way for the Reformation. A
work of profound and permanent interest.
With an introduction by Evelyn Underhill. $2.00
MLLE. DE MAUPIN
By Theophile Gautier
The third in the series of handsome reprints of French classics
with introductions by Burton Rascoe which Mr. Knopf instituted
last year. This book is uniform with Madame B ovary and Manon
Lescaut. Printed on Warren's India Tint Olde Style paper;
bound in black buckram with gold stamping and gilt top. $4.00.
gi2Hg%Hg£llg:gll£gH^Hg^
354
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2882
Books in Brief
THERE is much entertainment in J. Walker McSpadden's
eleven "Famous Detective Stories" (Crowell). Emile Ga-
boriau and Maurice Le Blanc, as here represented, are wordier
than the Anglo-Saxons; Robert Louis Stevenson's story has a
knightly ring that the others lack; Anna Katherine Green, with
her woman detective, strangely impinges upon the purple of
sentimental melodrama; Sax Rohmer and Thomas W. Hanshew
for the English and Arthur B. Reeve and Broughton Branden-
burg for the Americans solve mysteries by mechanics or pseud-
science; E. W. Hornung, father of Raffles, protests against the
invariable triumph of the detective in the average story ; Conan
Doyle suffers from the many imitators who have used his tricks.
Yet in spite of these minor differences, what seems most strik-
ing is the fidelity with which all these authors have followed
the formulas of Poe. Instead of inventing the form did he dis-
cover something inherent in the structure of the detective tale?
Must all detectives have mediocre companions through whose
consciousness the narrative can be reported up to the moment
when the lightning strikes and the master reveals what has not
been guessed by the stupider companion — and the readers? Are
the motives and methods of crime, under all the surface dis-
guises, capable of being reduced to such simple formulas? One
thing is certain, the detective story, entertaining as it may be,
is the most thoroughly standardized product in modern litera-
ture, as bright and hard and competent as a jack-knife, and
hardly one iota more humane.
Drama
Triflers and Playwrights
IT is commonly supposed that the French theatrical hack sur-
passes his American colleague in technical dexterity and in
the specific sense of the theater. There was a time, undoubtedly,
when this supposition squared with the facts. Today we have
a dozen writers for the stage as coldly and knowingly efficient
as Kistemaeckers and Bernstein themselves. The difference be-
tween the two groups is one that concerns substance not form,
the materials and not the methods of playmaking. The French-
man may distort and pervert the passions ; the American avoids
them. The former approaches a single situation from an hun-
dred roads; the latter flees from it by as many. Thus the one
is apt to be monotonous and violent, the other empty and trivial.
A natural consequence of this contrast is that when a single
French play comes to us in the midst of a throng of native
products, it seems far less ignoble and far closer to the central
preoccupations of life than it really is.
The immediate situation on our stage illustrates that con-
trast with a hard and brilliant light. Five new American plays
surround a single French one. They are all well enough built;
each selects and sustains its note with sufficient skill; all are
false and vacuous to a degree that lifts the isolated French play
into an unmerited luster and turns its brass to gold. Mr. Porter
Emerson Browne's "The Bad Man" (Comedy Theater) does, in-
deed, contain the human triangle of the French tradition. But
the American bosom is appeased by making the husband an
unspeakable villain and having him promptly and conveniently
killed. Similarly the figure of the Mexican bandit, acted with
both massiveness and grace by Holbrook Blinn, was conceived
in an ironic mood. A satire on the superman of melodrama
was attempted. But Mr. Browne took fright and let the action
roar to an accustomed end. Mr. Belasco gives a velvety pro-
duction of "Call the Doctor" (Empire Theater) by Miss Jean
Archibald, who has a neat little gift for epigram. Her human
situation, unhappily, omits the fundamental elements that must
have created it and holds the soothing assurance that disil-
lusioned husbands can be turned into ardent ones by a display
of silk hosiery and the noise of jazz. "Genius and the Crowd"
(George M. Cohan Theater) portrays the struggle of an Italian
violin virtuoso of twenty-three to be "pure and clean," and de-
pends on a wilted picturesqueness flavored by speeches in the
best style of the once popular Family Herald. Miss Rida John-
son Young's "Little Old New York" (Plymouth Theater)
sketches the city of 1810 with the depth and imaginative grasp
of a newspaper headline and tells the story of a romantic in-
heritance and an Irish lass masquerading as a boy. The audi-
ence dutifully laughs at the distrust with which Cornelius
Vanderbilt regards John Jacob Astor's speculations in the marsh
lands around Gramercy Pond, and is quite properly pleased by
the pale, quaint sweetness of Miss Genevieve Tobin in trousers
and an Eton jacket. A final depth is reached by Mr. Booth
Tarkington in "Poldekin" (Park Theater). This play, cal-
culated to save America from the fury of the Reds, neatly com-
bines— granting its own initial attitude and purpose — the eco-
nomics of a boarding-school miss, the intellectual grasp and de-
tachment of a baseball "fan," and the patriotism of a Poly-
anna. No respectable man of letters on the Continent would
permit himself to sink to a comparable depth of fatuity.
He might be specious; he would not be "glad." He might dis-
play the rancor of a man, not the feeble petulance of an ill-bred
child. It is characteristic of our theater that so able an actor as
Mr. George Arliss consents to take the title role in this play
and in the midst of its dreary imbecilities gives a performance
of delicately spiritual iridescence and admirably silken strength
and glow.
From these productions you go to see "The Woman of Bronze"
(Frazee Theater) by Henri Kistemaeckers and you cannot avoid
the impression that you have passed from wax-work cabinets to
a room filled with people, from the glitter of spangles into the
sunlight and the dusk of earth, from the chatter of cheap pre-
tenses to the vicissitudes that stir our hearts. Not that Kis-
temaeckers is a good dramatist or his play a good play. It is
hectic, strained, theatrical. But these American playwrights
have not, alas, reached the level on which he is an inferior artist.
Thanksgiving turkeys of papier-mache from the candy shop are
not bad poultry; a doll house is not a bad house; "Poldekin"
is not a bad play but a bad joke. In "The Woman of Bronze"
a sculptor who is married to a devoted and sympathetic wife of
his own age, falls in love with a young girl. They succumb to
their desire, and, since the girl is to be a mother, he leaves his
home with her. But the two are not happy together, their child
dies, and the man returns to seek the forgiveness of his wife.
It is a conventional plot, falsely isolated, falsely over-emphatic.
He who has watched the world with a sense for its essential
tragedies is not inordinately impressed by the importance as-
signed to this merely possessive sex passion, either, as in
America, by furtive silence or, as in France, by loud display.
The endings of such plays must, he knows, be artificial, since
within the circle or these voracious passions there is no solu-
tion either in art or life. Not until the characters, like those
of Schnitzler, accept but also transcend their passions and treat
their own ardors with detachment can a note of reconciliation
be sounded. But such things as Kistemaeckers describes do, at
least, happen; the stories of his American contemporaries never
happen at all.
Miss Margaret Anglin takes the part of the sculptor's wife
and reveals herself as clearly our most eminent actress. She
melts into her part and blends it with the ardor, the beauty,
the profound experience of her own soul. The figure she thus
projects upon the stage is of a reality so haunting and so mov-
ing in its utter freedom from all but the hour and its impas-
sioned business that the cheeks tingle and the heart throbs.
She offers us that absorption in an artistic vision which is
forgetfulness and liberation and joy. She makes an unworthy
play worthy of herself and leaves with the spectator an en-
during memory of her genius and her power.
Ludwig Lewisohn
International Relations Section
The British Labor Delegation to Russia
THE British Labor Delegation to investigate conditions
in Soviet Russia has submitted its report, dated July,
1920. The text of the report follows, with the omission,
due to limitations of space, of one or two short passages.
The British Labor Delegation to Russia was sent out by the
Labor Party and the Trades Union Congress, acting on a reso-
lution passed by a special Trades Union Congress on December
10, 1919. This resolution demanded:
"The right to an independent and impartial inquiry into the
industrial, political, and economic conditions in Russia."
The delegation consisted of nine persons — seven men and two
women — and they were accompanied by two delegates (men)
from the British Independent Labor Party. Correspondents of
newspapers were also with the party, but did not accompany
them in all of their investigations.
The British Foreign Office, when applied to for permission to
go to Russia, referred the question to the consideration of the
Council of Three then sitting at San Remo, and obtained their
consent to issue passports to proceed to Esthonia or Finland for
the purpose of entering Russia — the latter country, however, not
being mentioned. The Soviet Foreign Office, through M. Lit-
vinov at Copenhagen, telegraphed a prompt and cordial accep-
tance of the proposed visit, and the delegation left England on
April 27 and crossed the Russian-Esthonian frontier on May 10,
arriving at Petrograd on the following day. On the evening of
May 16, the delegation left Petrograd for Moscow, where they
arrived the following noon, and remained in Moscow until the
28th, when they traveled to Nijni Novgorod and embarked on
the Bielinski for the voyage down the Volga to Saratov. At
Saratov the majority of the party returned to Moscow, but cer-
tain members (owing to the illness of one of their number) re-
mained on board and proceeded as far as Astrakhan on the
Caspian Sea, and returned by ship to Saratov. The party who
returned first to Moscow, visited the Polish front near Smolensk.
The shortest period any member of the party was in Russia
was about three weeks; the majority of the members were there
for about six weeks; and one remained longer to study peasant
questions in the Samara Government.
Conditions of Inquiry
During their visit to Russia the delegation saw and talked
with the chief members of the Government, with influential
workers in the Soviet and in the trade unions, with propagan-
dists and educationists, and with members of political parties
opposing the Communists. Numerous institutions were visited
including factories, workshops, Soviet stores, cooperative socie-
ties, schools, and hospitals. Theaters were visited both in Petro-
grad and Moscow; numerous meetings were addressed; recep-
tions and dinners were attended; great parades of troops were
reviewed in Petrograd and Moscow, and the army seen at work
at the front at Smolensk. In addition to this, numerous private
persons were interviewed. The delegates generally had freedom
of movement and inquiry, and were able to make individual in-
vestigations; they feel assured that they were able to see a
substantially normal sample of Russian life. Both town and
country were seen. Throughout the visit the delegation were
received everywhere by the civic and trade union authorities
with military guards of honor, with bands playing the Inter-
nationale, during which all stood at the salute, and by a very
real and genuine popular interest and welcome from peasants
and workers. . . .
We feel it necessary to begin by pointing out that most ac-
counts of Soviet Russia which we had seen in the capitalist press
of our own country proved to be perversions of the facts. The
whole impression gained was of a different character from that
presented by these accounts. We did not see any violence or
disorder in the streets, though we walked about them freely at
all hours of the day and night. We did not see people fall dead
of starvation in the streets. We did not see any interference
with the religious life of the people. We did not see any Chinese
soldiers. We saw no evidence of extraordinary luxury on the
part of the leading Commissars. We did not find that either
women or children had been nationalized. We certainly did
witness a widespread breakdown in the transport system with
deplorable economic consequences, and we saw terrible evidences
of underfeeding and suffering. These points have been dealt
with, however, in the reports already issued by the delegation on
the iniquitous policy of intervention and blockade.
General Conditions: Food and Clothing
The first thing to which the attention of the delegation was
directed on entering Russia was the question of public order
and the conditions of the people — their individual physical con-
dition, their clothing, the conditions of their daily life and work,
the houses they lived in, the appearance of their children. Our
first impressions in these respects were confirmed throughout
our stay.
With regard to public order there is very little to choose be-
tween one side of the Russian frontier and another. In both,
peasants till the fields, men work on the railway line, and little
crowds are to be seen on platforms of stations as the train goes
through. In Russia, however, there are evident signs of illness
and underfeeding to be seen in most crowds that one looks at.
But children look better than adults. The official estimate sup-
plied to the delegation by Dr. Semasko, People's Commissar for
Public Health, was that in the towns in January of this year
only 50 per cent of the food required was supplied. The clothing
of most people is very shabby indeed; quite ragged clothing is
often seen, and boots and shoes are very bad. Very few boots,
indeed, are not obviously patched and repatched, many are past
this repair, while the ordinary Russian footwear of bark or felt
looks very defective when much worn. At all Russian stations
soldiers — mostly dressed in faded khaki-like uniforms — were
conspicuous, as well as railway officials in their old uniforms.
There is no doubt that the average Russian in the towns is
underfed, badly clothed, and badly shod. Peasants, however,
are much better off, and those we saw were sufficiently fed.
Ailing and sick children are seen only rarely. On the average,
children are better off than adults in Russia. The standard of
nutrition of children, however, is not good judged by western
standards, children seen at a good open-air "colony" school on
the outskirts of Petrograd, for instance, having the general
standard of nutrition of London children in an average poor
district. The Russian Child Saving League estimate that a
child receives only enough food for eighteen or nineteen days in
each month — roughly about two-thirds of the supply needed.
Few town children over one year receive milk unless purchased
specially at open market rates, which are quite out of reach
of the average working man or woman. The deficiencies in diet
are above all in quantity, and then in milk, fats, green vege-
tables, and albuminous foods.
Housing
Most Russian houses, except in the large towns, are of wood,
and in the villages often house a very large number of inmates.
The houses seen in the villages were of fairly good type, but the
general sanitary conditions remain "exceedingly bad."* There
is no acute shortage of houses in the villages, and during the
last year there has been an increase in the amount of new
building. In the towns "the sanitary conditions of houses are
exceedingly unsatisfactory,"* but with the requisition of all
private houses and the new distribution of housing accommo-
dation among the population the evils of overcrowding are now
less. There is ample accommodation in Petrograd, the popula-
tion of which is reduced from an estimate of about 2,000,000
to about 800,000; but Moscow is overcrowded. The lack of fuel
♦Report of Commissar of Public Health.
356
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2882
for warming houses in Moscow and Petrograd has resulted in
the destruction by frost of water and sanitary pipes on a large
scale, and the water carriage of sewage is consequently in
abeyance in a large proportion of all buildings.
Industrial and Political Life
Turning now to the general conditions of industrial and po-
litical life, there can be no question of the sweeping character
of the Russian Revolution. It has effected in the towns of
Russia not only a change of political power, but a social trans-
formation. The richer classes have been dispossessed of their
houses and other property; the control of large scale industry
has passed out of the hands of those who were formerly at the
head of it. Large masses of the town population are now en-
joying a share of the available national wealth (including house
accommodation) greater than they enjoyed before; and new
possibilities of life and culture are opening out before them;
and this is true in a very special degree of the child population.
Social equalization is, indeed, far from complete. There are
certain classes which do better than others, e. g., the soldiers,
those doing specially heavy manual work, and so-called "respon-
sible workers" in the central government departments; per-
sons who are making money by speculation, i. e., private dealing
of any kind, but especially the sale of "controlled" articles
illegally at market prices; and persons who are still able to sell
valuable property which they possessed before the Revolution.
Large numbers obtain special privileges, and some make for-
tunes. But when all is said, the material advantages enjoyed
by the "new bourgeoisie" over and above the rest of the popu-
lation are extremely small when compared with the advantages
enjoyed by the propertied classes in every capitalist country.
Broadly speaking, a single standard of living has been estab-
lished. The glaring inequalities of fortune which form so great
a scandal in capitalist countries and which are maintained even
in distressed countries such as Austria and Poland; the striking
difference in economic position between the rich and the poor —
these things no longer exist in Russia.
This equalization applies to education and entertainment as
well as to food, housing, and clothing. Opportunities of edu-
cation are now open in the towns to large numbers of children
and adults, from the elementary stages up to the university.
In connection with the theater, music, painting, and sculpture,
sports and physical development, means of pleasure and culti-
vation have been given to the workers on a scale unknown in
earlier days. The greater part of the tickets in the principal
theaters which formerly the poor never dreamed of entering
are now allotted to the various trade unions for distribution to
their members at low axed prices.
We have been much struck by the enlightened policy of the
Soviet Government in the matter of child life. It has con-
sciously adopted, and is practically enforcing, the principle to
which lip service has so often been rendered, that at any given
time the life of the rising generation is of greater moment to
the state than the lives of the adult population, and that conse-
quently the children's claim upon all the physical and intellec-
tual resources of the state must be satisfied before any other.
The utilization of the houses of the rich for "children's colo-
nies" (which take the place of the elementary schools during
the summer) is one of the most striking illustrations of this
principle.
Great efforts have been made for the economic reconstruction
of the country, which is a matter of life and death for Russia.
The Red army, before the recent Polish attack, had been par-
tially transformed into a labor army, and arrangements had
been made for mobilizing civilian labor for works of immediate
necessity; large new transport and electrification schemes had
been initiated. Voluntary and unpaid labor on Saturday after-
noons for purposes of reconstruction (the Subbotnik, as it is
called), carried out, it is true, mainly by Communists, and
partly to be regarded as a means of educating the public, has
become one of the regular features of town life. The idea of
the duty of all citizens to take part in reconstructive work for
the state is being inculcated to a degree unknown elsewhere.
A great campaign of popular propaganda has been inaugurated
for this purpose, by means of the press, posters, notices, and
"propaganda trains."
These achievements of the Soviet Government represent, we
are aware, only one side of the picture, but as Socialists we
feel that they should be emphasized at the outset. We must
state, on the other hand, our conviction that these achievements
have been bought at a very heavy price. We allude not merely
to the violence which accompanied the Revolution, the exact
extent of which we have not investigated, but to the methods of
government which are still believed by the dominant party to be
necessary. We leave open, for the present, the question as to
whether these methods were or were not "inevitable." We con-
fine ourselves simply to the state of affairs which exists.
Personal freedom, together with freedom of speech and of
propaganda (including newspapers, the issue of election litera-
ture, and the holding of meetings), is severely repressed in the
case of all those whose activities are supposed to threaten the
Soviet regime. The means now used are far less severe than
those used when foreign invasion, civil war, and internal con-
spiracy were at their height — "the Terror," as they are called
by Communists themselves. But "the Terror" has left its traces
behind it, in the form of a pervading fear which is expressed
on all hands, a fear sometimes more vague and sometimes more
definite, that any expression of opinion adverse to the dominant
party will be treated as "counter-revolutionary," and will lead
to imprisonment or some kind of penalization. This fear is kept
alive by the fact that arrests constantly take place for alleged
political offenses. The definition of such offenses is dangerously
wide, closely resembling, in fact, the definitions adopted in
our own Defense of the Realm Act, and the numerous Orders
made under it. The fear above alluded to is evoked especially
by the Extraordinary Commission, a body independent of the.
ordinary courts, acting upon no definite code of law, and con-
trolled by a "collegium" consisting of members of the Com-
munist Party.
The main reason given for these methods of government is
the dangerous situation created by foreign attacks, and the
maintenance and encouragement of internal conspiracy by for-
eign agents. An overwhelmingly "strong" government is
thought to be necessary, because the mass of the people, though
passively supporting the Soviet Government, are not yet suffi-
ciently "conscious" to be immune from counter-revolutionary
influences.
All possible means are used to secure the dominance of the
Communist Party in the elections to Soviets. The actual con-
gresses of Soviets are large and unwieldy bodies, and the power
tends to be concentrated in the hands of executive committees and
presidiums. Elections become less frequent and more formal,
and the party aims by means of organized groups at controlling
every department and every institution of the national life.
The dominance of the Communist Party is not only accepted
in practice, but defended as something which, though not in the
written constitution, is an essential part of the working of
Soviet institutions under the present transitory conditions. The
right of bearing arms, possessed by members of the party, is
based on this idea. The counterpart is to be found in the oner-
ous and dangerous obligations which attach to membership.
The report of the Ninth Congress of the Communist Party,
held on March 29 to April 4, 1920, is concerned with state policy
in its widest significance, and gives decisions which members of
the delegation have seen already carried into effect in Russia in
June, 1920.
The second paragraph of the report of the Ninth Com-
munist Congress deals with "The Question of Organization"
and lays it down that "it is the business of the party to explain
to every one of its members that at the present moment when
the Russian Communist Party is responsible for the economic
Sept. 25, 1920] The Nation 357
life of the country, the most inconspicuous and roughest work which confront them are of such a nature as to demand the last
in the economic sphere is one of the greatest importance, and ounce of their energy, and the last fraction of their organizing
is to be considered responsible party work." The sentence capacity.
quoted is typical of the finer side of the Communist Party atti- The Land and the Peasants
tude to what they consider their duties and responsibilities. The most important and urgent of Russia's practical prob-
Another matter to which attention must be drawn is that lems is that of the productivity of the land, and the relationship
centralization and government control are on the increase in of the town and the peasant populations,
other departments of life than those already mentioned. The total population of Russia and Siberia within its
Labor-power is dealt with more and more on disciplinary present frontiers is estimated at 125,000,000, of whom at least
principles. The trade unions are increasingly controlled by 90,000,000 are peasants. While the towns are preponderant in
centralized "Councils of Trade Unions," which are more amen- political power, they are dependent for their food on the peas-
able to the influence of the Supreme Council of National ants. At present the peasants support, or at least do not
Economy. The cooperative movement, instead of being an insti- oppose, the Bolshevik Government for at least two reasons :
tution for self-help on the part of certain sections of the com- (1) the revolution has given them more land, which they wish
munity, has become a definite part of the state machinery. to keep; and (2) their experience of the rule of Denikin, Kol-
As to the country population of Russia, it has not been won chak, and other counter-revolutionaries has made them see that
over to socialism, or to anything more than a passive accep- Bolshevik rule is less severe.
tance of the Soviet regime. The peasants are supporters of the By decree all land is nationalized, and in practice the large
Revolution, on the ground that it has placed the great estates estates have been expropriated and the holdings of the richer
in their hands. But the nationalization or socialization of the peasants broken up. The "Squire's Land" in the villages, and
land has not been achieved except in name. Communistic undeveloped land, has been added to the poorer peasants' hold-
methods of agriculture are being introduced here and there, but ings. When the delegation interviewed M. Sereda, Commissar
have made little headway. for Agriculture, he stated that as long as the peasant works
The methods of rule and government as here outlined are his land he holdi it, and while the right of inheritance is stated
severely criticized by the Social Revolutionaries, by the Menshe- not to exist, the question of the use of the land in case of death
viks, and by Prince Kropotkin in the memorandum he has sub- is settled by the peasants of the village; and while land cannot
mitted. be sold or willed away, "if the family undertake to work the
It now remains to consider how the Government of Russia is land, then there will be no interference with them."
tackling the practical problems of its foreign relations, and of The practical difficulties of getting supplies from the peasants
its own plan of internal reconstruction. are evidently very great and similar to those existent all over
Foreign Policy and Militarism Europe at the present time. According to Russian law, corn
The British Labor Delegation has already unanimously re- [grain] has to be delivered to the Government on payment of
corded its emphatic opinion of the criminal folly of the policy certain very low fixed prices, but it is the intention of the
of intervention, non-recognition, and blockade hitherto pursued Government to pay not in money but in kind. At present, how-
by our own and other governments of the Entente group. ever, there is little which can be given in exchange, and the
In this declaration we have called attention to the danger of the peasant is consequently resistant, as paper money is worth very
militarization of Russia. little and he cannot obtain the manufactured goods which he
The Allied policy which has made this militarization not only needs. Nevertheless, the amount of corn [grain] collected is
necessary but inevitable from the standpoint of the Government increasing. M. Lenin, in an interview, stated that the amount
of Russia defending itself against attack from without has also had risen as follows:
pushed Russia in the direction of expansion towards Persia and 1918 30,000,000 poods*
the East. When questioned on that aspect of Russian policy 1919 110,000,000 poods
the Commissar for Foreign Affairs, M. Chicherin, said that 1920 (to May) 175,000,000 poods
if England and France attacked them (through Poland or M. Sereda pointed out the difficulties of his department as
otherwise) "their hands were free in the East." follows:
The danger of the creation of a Russian militarist spirit, bit- 1. Fall in production due to lack of manures, lack of ma-
terly hostile to this country, is a real one, for which we have chinery, deterioration of stock, lowered physique of workers due
to thank the governments of Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and to lack of proper food. The decrease in productivity is esti-
Millerand. We are of opinion, however, that the Russian Gov- mated at 30 per cent to 40 per cent.
ernment, while hoping for social revolution elsewhere, does not 2. Want of technical experts, e. g., 35,000 land surveyors are
intend to attempt to carry this out by force of its armies, and required, and they have only 4,000.
that it will be possible to make a durable peace with it on a Nevertheless, M. Sereda stated that the policy of developing
basis of mutual non-intervention in internal affairs. We con- state farms and encouraging the agricultural communes and
sider that it has rendered, by its publications of the secret artels (different types of cooperative farms) in every way
treaties, a great service to democratic and open diplomacy. was being carried out. In 1918, there were 242 cooperative
By its repeated offers to negotiate on reasonable terms it has farms, in November, 1919, there were 6,366, the areas being
shown a genuine will to peace. It has shown in particular 23,509 and 650,000 dessiatinsf respectively. The farms em-
every disposition to make peace with the border states in the ployed in 1918 32,199 persons, and 1919, 420,904 persons. Cer-
west (Finland and Poland). Arrangements have been con- tain so-called "Soviet" farms are being worked to supply indi-
cluded already with Georgia, Latvia, Esthonia, and Lithuania, vidual factories.
the Republic of Azerbaijan has entered into a federative al- M. Sereda pointed out the importance of Russia to the world
liance with Russia, and the status and relationship of a Far by giving certain figures of supply for Russia:
Eastern Republic, stretching from a line east of Lake Baikal Proportion for Russia
to the coast of the China Sea, is now being discussed in World's supply of cereals 79 per cent
Moscow. The Russian Government has thus shown that it has Rye 48 " "
renounced the imperialist policy of Czarist Russia, and is ready Hemp and Flax 70 " "
to deal with the difficult problem of nationalities on a basis of M. Sereda considered that the transition from individual
justice. It should be realized that whatever the theoretical farming to socialized agriculture could only come about by
views of certain Communist leaders may be on the desirability ; ~
..... ,, *A pood is equivalent to 36 poundt avoirdupois. — Editor.
of a world revolution, the practical administrative problems t A deseiatin is equivalent to 2.7 acres.— editor.
358
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2882
peaceful voluntary cooperation and not by violence, and that
consent would have to be won by studying the psychology of the
people. German agricultui-al experts were coming to assist
them, and they desired the delegation to extend a similar invi-
tation to English agricultural experts also.
As well as the corn [grain] which the peasants deliver to the
Government, they are also called on to sell other products up
to a fixed proportion and at a fixed price. Above this propor-
tion private trade in agricultural products is allowed, and in
the market at Moscow milk, potatoes, green vegetables, carrots,
eggs, pork, and other foods were on sale. Bread was obtain-
able also at 400 rubles the pound, a very large increase on the
ration price of two rubles. The great discrepancy between the
fixed government prices and the open market prices is a cause
of great dissatisfaction to the peasants, and an incitement to
illicit trade.
For a long time to come, it is clear that Russia must be de-
pendent for its food supply on arrangements made with what
in practice is a population of peasant proprietors. In spite of
great efforts, including the use of force where methods of per-
suasion fail, the necessary amount of food is not obtained, as
the food statistics show. Nor are things likely to improve in
this respect, unless the Government are able to pay something
more than paper, which by the tremendous inflation of the cur-
rency become every day less and less valuable. An English
pound changed at the Commissariat of Finance realized 4,800
rubles, while the price in the open market was 10,000 or over.
And it is remarkable that at this higher rate of exchange prices
were roughly comparable with those in Western Europe. But
with the inflation of the currency the value of the ruble drops,
and prices rise.
The peasant is allowed and expected to feed himself and his
family, also his stock, off his land before giving up any product
to the Government, and except in districts like the Nijni Nov-
gorod Government, he is enabled to do so. Before the Govern-
ment makes its demands, an allowance is made for depreciation
of productivity due to absence of manures, machinery, and also
for seed. Most peasants seen were sufficiently fed; but their
clothing and boots were deplorable, and all were in need of
agricultural implements and machinery.
Nationalization of Industry
The large industries of Russia, the coal, iron, gold, and plati-
num mines, the petroleum wells, the locomotive and machine
works, metal industries generally, the textile industry, the rail-
ways, larger shipping, and some smaller industries such as salt
and cement have been nationalized. Some smaller industries,
such as the Trezor worl:s at Petrograd making army equipment,
and shipping up to 30 horse-power on the Volga, have been left
in private hands. But despite a big program of reconstruction
the blockade and the fight against Kolchak, Denikin, and the
other counter-revolutionary forces have prevented anything
more than the effort to maintain industry. The retail shops
have also been nationalized, and so has banking. In the case
of the shops, this has led in practice to the closing of shops,
but not to the stoppage of retail trade. Banking, on the other
hand, is being converted into a central bookkeeping department
of the state. The production of the country is being dealt with
according to an "Economic Plan" largely under the direction
of the Supreme Council of National Economy.
M. Milutin, the assistant of the Commissar in this department
(M. Rekov), explained to the delegation that "while the war is
on we cannot extend industry, we can only maintain it." The
economic plan of the development of Russia is based upon a
very comprehensive survey of the need of the country, but is
governed in its practical application by two main factors: (1)
the restrictions on external trade, and (2) the Polish offensive.
The economic plan contemplates fifty productive departments,
a financial department, and a department to coordinate the
work of local economic councils which exist in different towns,
in the different governments, and in larger areas (oblasts) em-
bracing more than one government. Each department is con-
trolled by a director or a collegium of three or five members,
and the whole of the Supreme Economic Council is controlled
by a presidium of eleven members nominated by the Central
Executive Committee of the Trade Unions, and confirmed by
the Council of People's Commissars.
The functions of the Supreme Economic Council are: (1)
industry; (2) the financing of industry and the parceling of
raw materials. There are 5,000 nationalized enterprises, of
which 2,500 are grouped into 179 trusts and directed by the
Council itself; 70 per cent of these enterprises are working.
Twenty-five hundred enterprises are managed by local economic
councils forming part of the provincial organization, but di-
rectly responsible to the Supreme Economic Council. The Su-
preme Economic Council has the power of veto over the mem-
bers proposed for appointment to the local economic councils.
Food, fuel, raw material of industry and transport, and ma-
terial for education are all supplied by the Supreme Council of
National Economy. In the case of bread, for instance, a special
commission representing the Food Commissariat, the Central
Executive Committee of the Soviets, and the Supreme Economic
Council fixes the amounts of food for different categories of
workers, and then distributes the bread available according to
the reported population of each district. The work of the
Council is thus highly centralized; and M. Milutin explained
that in connection with the nationalization of industry "the
main line of policy is to establish centralized organizations."
The difficulties of the transition period from the condition of
chaos which existed at the beginning of the revolutionary period
to the present day, are well exemplified in the Report of Two
Years' Dictatorship in the Metal Industry of Petrograd by M.
N. J. Antonov, President of the Metal Section of the Council of
National Economy of Petrograd. The trade unions of Russia
have all grown up within the last few years, and their members
in consequence have not had a training in administrative and
practical affairs like the trade unions in this country. In Febru-
ary, 1917, there were only three trade unions in Russia with a
membership of 1,385. At the beginning of the revolution some
workers broke up the machinery with hammers, and took pieces
home to their own houses; in the majority of workshops and
factories the technical staff managers, engineers, and clerks were
thought to be hostile to the revolution and were turned out. The
further revolution compelled the originally independent factory
committees and trade unions to coalesce, the factory committees
remaining the local organ of workers' control. Later on con-
trol passed to a bureau organized by the metal trades section
of the Economic Council. Still later factory administration col-
legiums were organized, consisting two-thirds of representa-
tives of the Council of National Economy, and one-third of
factory workers. These collegiums have now been replaced
(Ninth Communist Congress Report) by one-man management.
Various methods have been tried to stimulate production
which had fallen to "almost a catastrophe" owing to (1) the
want of qualified workers and technicians; (2) weak labor
discipline of the workmen; and (3) the abolition of piece-work.
In the reintroduction of the system of piece-work in 1919, a
more ambitious program of work was attempted (January-
June, 1919), and the production was increased. Sea transports,
river steamers, submarines, torpedo boats, barges, and trawlers
were made or repaired; 23 locomotives made and 41 repaired,
as well as 466 wagons [railway cars] made and 3,313 repaired.
The difficulties of the situation were complicated by the
Judenich attack on Petrograd. The difference between estimate
and accomplishment is shown below:
ESTIMATE ACHIEVEMENT
Fuel (in poods) 1,225,806 81,758
Workmen (employed) 36,286 14,670
Wages (in rubles) 106,593,000 114,191,000
In 1919 the metal industries of Petrograd district were
grouped into seven trusts, viz., motor-cars (eight factories),
Sept. 25, 1920]
The Nation
359
aeroplanes (eight factories) , medium-sized machinery (eight
factories), copper industry (four metal works), heavy machine
industry, mass fabrication trust (eight factories), and appa-
ratus of precision and clock trust (thirteen factories and shops).
Only in May, 1920, however, was an inventory of metal and
metal wares begun. The Metal Section looks forward to the
creation of a "socialistic economy" when improvement in the
fuel situation takes place after the war.
Much the same story can be told of the textile mills and also
of other less important organizations. Coal getting operations
are just beginning in the Don basin; and the reconquest of the
Caspian Sea gives access to the oil of Baku which is being sent
up the River Volga in increasing quantity, vivifying the ship-
ping and the industry on the banks of that mighty highway of
Russia's economic life.
Members of the delegation saw how the life at Astrakhan
and its fishing industry was becoming busy and active, and how
the salt industry at Vladimirovka had restarted (June, 1920)
with the arrival of the naphtha of Baku. But while the war
continues all attention needs to be concentrated upon it, and the
economic rebuilding of Russia has to be deferred.
The Cooperative Movement
The great change in the organization of the cooperative so-
cieties (already referred to) took place in April, 1920, and
the chairman (M. Lejava) is already (interview, June 2, 1920)
able to look forward to the handing over of the functions of the
Food Commissariat to the Central Organization of the Coopera-
tive (the Centrosoius). At present the Centrosoius controls
both certain productive enterprises and distribution. All citi-
zens of whatever class are members of cooperative societies.
The workers are being educated in the principles of coopera-
tion as laid down by Robert Owen. In its dealings with com-
modities, the Centrosoius carries out the orders of the Supreme
Economic Council with regard to the distribution of state
monopolized articles, and works according to the tariffs and
categories laid down. The monopolized articles are wheat,
bread, coal, sugar, textiles, fur, clothing, and timber. Other
goods are not monopolized, but the Centrosoius, while working
here as a voluntary organization, adopts in practice the gen-
eral economic plan as a guide and distributes goods according
to the need for efficient workers, and not according to capacity
for payment.
The Centrosoius has a representative on the Supreme Eco-
nomic Council, and the chairman has the right to attend meet-
ings of the People's Commissars although without power to vote.
Labor
All matters directly affecting labor are the concern of the
Commissariat of Labor, which is governed by a Commissar
and a board of two others, all of whom are nominated by the
Central Executive Committee of the Trade Unions and ap-
pointed by the Council of People's Commissars.* There are
about 500 local departments in different districts and govern-
ments. The departments of the Commissariat are: 1. Regis-
tration and Distribution of Labor; 2. Fixing of Rates of Wages;
3. Protection of Labor; 4. Statistics; 5. Museum of Labor;
with subsidiary departments dealing with finance, organization,
and internal arrangement of the Commissariat.
Labor exchanges, of which there are 420 with 260 branches,
are now part of the labor department of the state, and they
distribute labor for all purposes. Wages and hours of labor
are fixed in accordance with the economic conditions of the
country, and in practice this is done by the Central Executive
Committee of the Trade Unions. During the war it has been
necessary to allow the employment of children and young per-
sons; but it is hoped to withdraw all persons up to 16 years of
age from industry at an early date. Overtime is encouraged
in factories and workshops, and double employment is under-
taken. Children of 16 are not allowed to work more than six
hours a day. All hours over eight are paid as overtime, and
•Interview with M. Schmidt, Commissar for Labor.
the workshop votes on the number of hours to be worked over-
time. Women work the same hours as men, but for eight weeks
before and eight weeks after confinement they are excused from
work and receive full pay.
An average wage for a normal month's work varies from
1,200 to 4,500 rubles according to skill. Those out of work
receive the total unskilled wages, whether they are skilled or
unskilled, plus dinners and ration card entitling them to pur-
chase goods at fixed prices. Those unemployed must accept
suitable work if offered, under penalty of forfeiting their pay.
Specialists and technicians receive very much higher rates of
pay. At the present time there can be very little unemployment
in Russia, although exact figures are lacking. The difficulty
is to prevent men leaving the factories and workshops and going
to the country. Membership of trade unions is compulsory,
and embraces all persons without exception engaged in an in-
dustry or institution. A trade union in a factory includes tech-
nical staff, clerks, engineers, skilled and unskilled workers.
A trade union in a hospital includes orderlies, charwomen,
stokers, dispensers, nurses, clerks, and doctors. Labor is also
compulsory for all able-bodied men and women of eighteen
years and over up to fifty.
The difficulties of the situation were seen by the delegation
in the ragged and half-starved condition of the workers at
Sormova and Putilov works. They were drawn forcible at-
tention to by a worker from the Kolomna works, who stated
that desertions from the works were frequent, and that de-
serters were arrested by soldiers and brought from the villages.
The workers at Kolomna were stated to receive about 4,000
rubles a month or 48,000 a year, while the living of an ordi-
nary peasant reckoned at ordinary market prices was valued
at three and a half million rubles a year. Also, the peasants
are willing to employ men at much higher money wages than
they can get in the factories and workshops, plus a plentiful
supply of food, which the town worker does not get.
M. Karl Radek, secretary of the Third International, says
to the workers : "No surprise is entertained at your having fled
to the villages to escape starvation, but the entire country is
doomed to ruin and famine unless you return to town."
The direction in which interesting developments of trade
union activity may occur is seen in the account of the visit paid
to Chatura Electricity Works, where peat is used as a source
of power. Here the workers, who are peasants, and who work
only two and a half months a year, are paid much higher wages
than usual, the money wage amounting to from 15,000 to 20,000
rubles a month plus a substantial payment in kind of very
good rations. One hundred and five people here had handled
70,000,000 poods of peat, while at another works working on
the normal system and at normal rates of pay, 283 people had
only handled 6,000,000 poods. Another interesting experiment
is at Kazan, and is being carried out by members of the build-
ing trade union who had been given 2,500 acres of land and
had undertaken to develop a community; they were working
directly under the Supreme Council of National Economy.
Eleven hundred and fifty people are employed, and the com-
munity has its own communal kitchen, its own schools and
library, and creches for the young children. The productive
departments of the colony are a carpenter's shop, a tin-plate
shop, an engine-shop, a flour mill, and a railway with an engine
of its own. This community is undoubtedly far more favorably
situated than the ordinary workers of Moscow or Petrograd,
and their life cannot be compared with the stress and strain of
the normal lot. Amongst other advantages, it enjoys that of
being in the country and being able to grow its own food. The
rations of the community were distinctly good. Work along
these community lines appears to be in the line of natural
development of the Russian workers' psychology, which, in
work, always expressed itself before the revolution in the artel.
(A primitive method of cooperation.) Another interesting
exp riment is that of the Russian-American tool shop, created
360
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2882
in Moscow by seventy men deported from the United States,
a large number of whom, of course, spoke English, and who
had had experience of American organization of industry. The
men were working twelve hours a day and had a premium
system by which it was possible for a worker to earn 100 to 200
per cent more than the rate. A special laundry and cook-house
was attached to the shop, and all the workers, men and women,
got not only dinner but supper.
The communist view of the trade unions is expressed in the
report of the interview with M. Schmidt already given, and in
"The Trade Unions in Soviet Russia," by A. Losovsky (Mos-
cow, April, 1920). The present defects of organization are
recognized, particularly the impossibility of carrying out com-
pletely the proposed "system of the state regulation of wages,"
but it has one very great virtue, "it is the child and creature
of the Revolution." (p. 46.) It is stated that "there is not a
branch of state activity (military, food, sanitary, economic,
technical, cultural, etc.) in which the Russian trade unions are
not engaged." "Revolutionary activity, whole-hearted loyalty
to the cause of the Revolution, the clear and firm position in the
struggle with the bourgeoisie, the stern and ruthless hostility to
the very idea of the cooperation of classes, the fearless destruc-
tion of old relations and fetishes, are things which the Russian
trade unions may teach the workers of other countries." The
critics of the present form of trade union point out the need for
"independent class organization" in opposition to the tendency
of government policy being framed to suit the preponderant
mass of the peasants. Also, that the need of Russia for foreign
capital, and "the adaptation of Russian private capital" with
the "extreme growth of private small and home industry" cre-
ates now "numbers of hired workers standing in need of de-
fense of their interests by the trade unions." Another reason
for the maintenance of independent unions is to resist "com-
pulsory" measures and "bureaucratization" by the Soviet au-
thorities, and they must be able "to defend before the Govern-
ment the interests of the proletariat, independently of the views
of the Government itself." The critics look to improvement in
wages, reform of the loans system, freedom of election of
boards of administration and works committees, and political
reforms to secure greater freedom generally.
Women and the Family
The considerations that apply to the labor of men in Russia
apply also generally to that of women. But special legislation
aims to secure a period of relief from work at full pay for
eight weeks before and eight weeks after a confinement, and
nursing mothers up to one year from the birth of their chil-
dren are supplied with extra rations and exemption from cer-
tain kinds of work. How far these excellent prescriptions are
carried out in practice the delegation do not feel able to say.
All able-bodied women in Russia are now expected to work,
and it is important to remember that in old Russia the women
of the working classes habitually went out to work and, as a
rule, left their children locked up in their rooms. Now they
can dispose of their children in four ways: (1) By looking
after the children themselves; (2) By sending them only to the
mid-day meal at the children's dining-rooms; (3) By sending
them to kindergartens or creches, where they are taken care of
the whole of the day; (4) By placing them in the children's com-
munities, where they are looked after, fed, clothed, and housed
by the Soviets.
The theory of the Communist Party that every soul must
give a labor contribution to the community carries with it the
implication that the individual must be freed from the economic
burden of the family. Both men and women are paid on a
basis of individual wage. The state, therefore, must come for-
ward and provide for the economic needs of the child; it is the
concern not only of parents, but of every adult citizen to see
that all the children are well cared for; and through the public
purse all contribute to their upkeep.
It is impossible at this stage to express an opinion upon the
effects of this great change in the economic relationship of
parents and children. We are of the opinion that while it will
undoubtedly modify the lives of children in the towns, it will
not make much impression upon the great mass of the children
spread over the peasant population.
There are very few, if any, sex barriers to work in Soviet
Russia; the majority of teachers are women, as in Great Brit-
ain; about half the doctors are women also, and women are
found in every department of life. Women serve in the army,
and some are officers. The head of the police of Petrograd is
Madame Ravich, and she has all the men as well as a large
staff of women under her. The heads of the Child Welfare
departments of Petrograd and Moscow are both women.
Women also are elected to the Soviets and take part in trade
union work, although in small numbers. Women are especially
enlisted by the Medical Department to help in the sanitary and
cleanliness work of the local Soviets.
Communist Party Women's Department
The Communist Party has organized a women's department.
In structure, it is like our women's section of the Labor Party.
It has its committee working in conjunction with the Central
Committee of the party, and it has its sections in connection
with every branch and every district throughout the country.
The function of the Women's Department is to develop women
for administrative work, to educate them in all branches of the
Government's activities. They organize the mothers of the
children to attend creches and children's dining-rooms. They
prepare rotas so that one or two mothers are in attendance in
the dining-rooms to see that the staff perform their duties ade-
quately. They hold meetings to discuss all political and eco-
nomic questions, as well as matters relating to health. Innessa
Armand (known as Innessa), the head of this depart-
ment in Moscow, was especially emphatic about the ques-
tion of prostitution. The old regime left a very large heri-
tage of prostitution. It has not yet disappeared, although the-
change in the economic system is hastening its disappearance.
There is a great deal of venereal disease, however. Innessa
Armand stated that there is no longer the economic incentive
to prostitution. They try to make the old prostitutes engage
in useful work and by educational methods they are preventing
the making of new prostitutes. Girls of sixteen start work
and are expected to work at least six hours a day.
The state has abolished all distinction between legitimate and
illegitimate children. They have now a system of registration
of births of all children. The father's name is always registered
as well as that of the mother. There is now no attempt on the
part of the father to conceal parentage. In old Russia there
was no civil marriage, only the church marriage, and a very
large number of people lived together without marriage. They
called this agreement to live together a "Civil Contract," but
there was no registration. Now, while it is still true that some
people live together without marriage, as a rule they prefer to
be legally married. Divorce is by mutual consent, and if one
party disagrees or objects a delay of three months is imposed.
The department has not yet had time to establish the necessary
statistical machinery, but it was given as a considered opinion
by Innessa that the relationship between parents and children,
when not depending upon an economic tie, is more likely to
depend upon the bond of love. The story that women are "na-
tionalized" in Russia is a stupid libel without foundation in fact.
Transport
A matter of importance as grave as that of agriculture to the
country as a whole, is the question of the transport of com-
modities from one part of Russia and Siberia to another. Food
may be abundant in Siberia, but Petrograd will starve if the
trains and steamers do not go. The importance of this prob-
lem is emphasized strongly in the Report of the Ninth Congress
of the Communist Party. And while the delegation was in Rus-
sia they were enabled to see the progress which is being made.
The operations of the army at the Polish front are
Sept. 25, 1920]
The Nation
361
supported by an adequate railway system. Trains are running
from Petrograd to Moscow, and Moscow to Nijni Novgorod, to
Saratov, to Vladikavkaz, and Baku. The railway to Siberia
is open, and used for military purposes. Members of the dele-
gation themselves traveled from the Esthonian frontier to
Nijni Novgorod and voyaged down the Volga from Nijni Nov-
gorod to Astrakhan. A large part of the journey was in com-
pany with M. B. M. Sverdlov, the Acting Minister of Ways and
Communications, who is himself largely responsible for the im-
provement of transport, and an enthusiastic advocate of one-
man management and personal responsibility. The transport
system is improving, many routes of trade have been repaired
after destruction caused by war, and many bridges rebuilt and
repaired. The program of railway reconstruction laid down
for accomplishment has not only been carried out, but its
achievement exceeded. At least 4,000 locomotives are now
working in Russia, and they will reach 6,000 before long.
Wagons exist already in considerable numbers, and many evi-
dences of repair work were seen en route in sidings and at
stations passed in traveling. The discipline of the transport
service is severe; fines, imprisonment, and curtailment of privi-
leges are inflicted for many offenses, and drunkenness on the
railway on the part of an official (alcohol is, of course, pro-
hibited throughout Russia) is punished with death by shooting.
Being parts of the lines of communication, men in the railway
service are deemed of equal importance with members of the
Red army, and have to undergo military discipline and receive
rations on the same scale as the Red army.
The reconquest of the Caspian Sea has made the oil of Baku
available for river and railway service, and opened up com-
munication with Turkestan and with Persia. There is little
doubt that in the near future a substantial improvement in the
situation will be registered.
Public Health
A matter which fails to be considered apart from other ques-
tions, although of fundamental importance, is that of public
health. Health conditions in Russia are very bad, and are only
mitigated by the unflagging work of the doctors and sanitary
personnel. Since 1918 the country has been swept by great
epidemics of typhus, of recurrent fever, of Spanish influenza,
and of cholera, while local outbreaks of smallpox and other dis-
eases have occurred. The Russian Commissariat for Public
Health states that a typhus epidemic broke out in the autumn
of 1918 and lasted until the summer of 1919, the number of
cases registered during eight months being 1,299,262, with a
death-rate of from 8 to 10 per cent. This is presumably inde-
pendent of an epidemic of recurrent fever at the same time.
As registration is difficult in Russia, the total number of cases
is probably much greater, as in the villages and country dis-
tricts numerous persons must have escaped observation. The
epidemic was universal, and practically no town or village in
Russia escaped the infection. An unfortunate feature of the
epidemic was the high mortality of doctors; about 50 per cent
of doctors in attendance on patients in hospitals actually suc-
cumbed to the disease. The effect of the shortage of doctors so
produced has been lamentable, and at the time when Astrakhan
was visited there was only one doctor for the whole of the area
of the Astrakhan Government outside of the town itself. Ty-
phus in Astrakhan Government had actually killed 14 per cent
of the total number of doctors in the provinces.
The measures taken against the spread of typhus, the
great distributing agents of which are the railway lines, have
been the controlling of traffic, and the establishment of control
stations at fixed points on the line, and at important junctions.
A sanitary campaign, in which women have been largely en-
listed, has been carried out in many towns and villages. Severe
measures are taken against culpably dirty people, and baths
are called "Dr. Semasko's Extraordinary Commission." The
effect of this campaign is shown in the figures for typhus cases
of all-Russia (including Siberia) for the present year, which
are as follows:
February 389,859 civilians
March 313,624 "
April 158,308
January 66,113 army
February 75,978 "
March 57,251 "
April 16,505 "
The rise of army cases in February, 1920, coincides with the
retreat of Denikin and reinfection from his troops. But great
as the efforts of the medical staff have been, even elementary
disinfection has, as a rule, been impossible. In hospitals visited
in Moscow, and in towns and villages on the Volga there was no
soap available for washing floors or bedding or patients' cloth-
ing. The only disinfectant available in most cases was formalin,
and that only in small quantities. As a rule, it was impossible
to do more than tidy and sweep hospitals, and wash them with
water without soap. Some hospitals visited were as clean as
could be expected, others were dirty and even dangerously dirty.
Home disinfection of the houses from which infectious cases
were brought was impossible as a rule, and was only attempted
in Petrograd (the Sanitary Brigade for Disinfection work is here
under the command of Dr. Havkin) and Moscow; in the country
towns and villages it was not carried out. Nor was it possible
to disinfect the clothing of the patients themselves. In 1918
there was also a cholera epidemic reaching the figure of 35,619
cases, and on June 14, 1920, there were 100 cholera cases in
Moscow, and the menace of a new epidemic. There were only
a small number of case* in the summer of 1919. Smallpox exists
in Russia very widely disseminated, and 81,851 cases were regis-
tered from November 1, 1918, to July, 1919. At the time of the
visit of the delegation to Russia it was personally ascertained
that there were cases in Petrograd, in Moscow, and in Astra-
khan. Much vaccination was carried out.
A severe epidemic of Spanish influenza also swept over the
country in 1918. What the total mortality from these diseases
has been, it is very difficult to estimate; but at the very lowest
the mortality from typhus fever alone must amount to two or
three hundred thousand. A large number of these deaths could
have been prevented had it been possible to check the spread of
the fever by cleanliness, by washing with soap, and by disinfec-
tion. Soap, however, is a commodity for which Russia is depend-
ent on the outer world, as she is also for disinfectants. In the
deprivation of these two prime necessities of public health the
Allied policy of the blockade stands condemned as the cause of
many thousands of deaths. When to the tale of typhus is added
that of Spanish influenza, of cholera, of smallpox, and of other
diseases, when it is realized that there are practically no drugs
at all in Russia because of the blockade, that all hospital sup-
plies are reduced to practically nothing, and that linen and
blankets are lacking, the indictment of the blockade becomes
blacker still. It should be realized that on the medical side of
Russian life we are dealing with a question outside ordinary
politics. Very few of the doctors are Communists, but they are
Russians; they are as doctors professional humanitarians, they
have worked to the utmost, as their starved faces and haunted
eyes tell plainly, but destroy lice and disease germs without soap
and disinfectants they cannot. And thousands of lives have
been sacrificed for want of these elementary medical necessities.
Education
The Revolution in Russia has given a very great impetus to
education, which had hardly begun in Russia before 1905, and
which had progressed slowly up to 1917. The decrees on educa-
tional matters promulgated by the Government make all educa-
tion free up to university grade, and it is also contemplated to
supply free food and clothing to all young persons up to 16
years of age. A decree for the provision of maintenance up to
14 years of age was issued from the Commissariat of Education
in July, 1919, and the decree extending the period to 16 at a
later date. Progress has already been made in carrying the
decrees into effect, and the Russian educational authorities esti-
mate that 25 per cent of the child population are now in receipt
362
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2882
of a normal education of the elementary type. This is probably
an over-estimate, as in some places visited accommodation for
only 10 per cent of the children existed; and also there is no
method of insuring compulsory attendance as in England, and
children who do not wish to attend simply remain away. In
some of the villages any education is of a very primitive de-
scription and confined to the winter months and to children be-
tween 8 and 13. It is estimated that 15 or 20 per cent of the
children are receiving some form of effective elementary educa-
tion. The difficulties are those familiar to educationists in this
country: (a) want of teachers; (b) want of buildings suitable
for school premises; (c) want of school furniture and of paper,
pencils, books, and school apparatus.
Great efforts are being made, however, to meet these deficien-
cies. Special six-months' courses of training have been estab-
lished for teachers; buildings taken over from the bourgeoisie
are being adapted for schools, and arrangements are being made
for import of necessary articles of furniture and equipment for
school work. A campaign is being waged for the abolition of
illiteracy; adult schools of an elementary nature for both men
and women, and evening schools, are being created in increasing
numbers. Special classes have been established in connection
with the universities known as the Workers' Faculty, with a
view to preparing working men and women for university study.
But in the matter of provision of food for children, the Rus-
sian education authorities have been more successful. In the
villages this provision is not required, but in the towns there are
special children's restaurants in addition to the arrangements
for feeding at the schools. There is no doubt that as a result
of these arrangements the feeding of children is on a more sat-
isfactory basis than that af adults.
The delegation visited schools in Petrograd, Moscow, and in
towns and villages on the Volga and found everywhere signs of
the same general policy.
The Russian educational authorities are creating a large
amount of boarding-school and open-air colony accommodation
for children of school age, and a large number of creches and
kindergartens for children below school age. For the purposes
of these schools expropriated houses in the towns and in the
country are being used. Members of the delegation visited de-
lightfully-situated schools in Petrograd and Moscow, and found
that the children were being well and carefully looked after.
Some of the schools were very well fitted up; others were more
primitive. A small theater was a usual feature of all schools,
as the educational authorities lay great stress on dancing, sing-
ing, and artistic self-expression. Children from the towns are
transferred in large numbers to the country for the summer to
special summer colonies, and several of these were visited. One,
on the banks of the Moskva river, in an aforetime grand-ducal
palace, was a very charming holiday home. The Soviet authori-
ties estimate that they provide accommodation for 2,000,000 chil-
dren in their boarding establishments and colonies.
An interesting feature of the schools was the attempt which
is being made to link up ordinary education with the spirit of
the workshop. The danger of education divorcing children from
the proletarian atmosphere of factory and workshop life is
being guarded against by special arrangements of the curricu-
lum, to base it upon various forms of manual work. Religion
is not allowed to be taught in the schools, nor are teachers
allowed to take children to church, but there is no religious per-
secution, teachers and children individually are free to go to
church if they wish. It is significant in this connection that in
April permission was granted to the authorities of the Mosque
at Petrograd to commence the chanting of the muezzins' call to
prayer, which had been up to that time forbidden. Ikons and
religious observances are noticed in schools, offices, and private
houses, very widely spread. Lessons on socialism are given in
the schools, and communism is taught definitely. Photographs
of Karl Marx, Lenin, Trotzky, Lunacharsky, and others are
frequently to be seen in the schools, as are also revolutionary
mottoes.
In the schools visited by members of the delegation the chil-
dren were free and happy, and many evidences were seen of the
marked natural artistic ability which seems to be one of the
characteristics of the Russian people. . . .
Conclusion
Such, as far as we have been able to ascertain them, are the
facts in broad outline. Various questions of great importance
naturally suggest themselves, e.g., whether the various measures
taken by the Communist Party have or have not been necessary;
whether the same results could have been brought about by
milder means; whether any more democratic form of govern-
ment could not be established; and lastly, whether the Russian
Revolution ought to serve as a model to other countries, and if
so, in what respect. These are questions on which opinions
differ widely, and we do not propose to deal with them. We
only desire to point out, as essential to the understanding of
the Russian Revolution, the extraordinary conditions under
which it has been and is being carried through.
Russia is a vast country, potentially rich, but economically in
a backward state. Her people consisted, before the Revolution,
of peasant owners (the vast majority), a town proletariat, a
small bourgeoisie, and a still smaller class of large capitalists,
sharply distinguished from the rest of the population. Russian
party strife has been marked by its extreme violence. The pres-
ent leaders are men who have suffered every kind of oppression,
and have been accustomed for years to take their lives in their
hands.
With such conditions and such a history, Russia has been
plunged into no less than six years of continuous and still con-
tinuing warfare. She has been blockaded and her communica-
tions with the outside world cut off. She has been invaded by
foreign troops on all sides. More important still, the most des-
perate efforts have been made to foster conspiracy and civil war
on her territory.
The economic collapse, and the measures for the restriction
of liberty, are due at least as much to these causes, and the
general exhaustion, suspicion, and despair which they would have
produced in any case, as to the tumults and mutual hatreds to
which the Revolution itself has given rise.
Whether, under such conditions, Russia could be governed in
a different way — whether, in particular, the ordinary processes
of democracy could be expected to work — is a question on which
we do not feel ourselves competent to pronounce. All we know
is that no practical alternative, except a virtual return to autoc-
racy, has been suggested to us; that a "strong" government is
the only type of government which Russia has yet known; that
the opponents of the Soviet Government when they were in
power in 1917 exercised repression against the Communists.
Such are the conditions and peculiarities, the heated and
revolutionary atmosphere, which must be taken into account in
any criticism of the Russian Revolution, and still more in any
attempt to apply its lessons to other countries.
The Russian Revolution has not had a fair chance. We can-
not say whether, in normal conditions, this particular socialist
experiment would have been a success or a failure. The condi-
tions have been such as would have rendered the task of social
transformation extraordinarily difficult, whoever had attempted
it and whatever had been the means adopted. We cannot forget
that the responsibility for these conditions resulting from for-
eign interference rests not upon the revolutionaries of Russia,
but upon the capitalist governments of other countries, including
our own.
Ben Turner, The Labor Party, Chairman of Delegation
Margaret Bondfield, A. A. Purcell, H. Skinner, Trades Union
Congress
Ethel Snowden, Tom Shaw, Robert Williams, The Labor Party
Chas. Roden Buxton, L. Haden Guest, Joint Secretaries
The report has been submitted to and also indorsed by Mr.
R. C. Wallhead and Mr. Clifford Allen, who formed an inde-
pendent delegation to Russia on behalf of the Independent Labor
Party.
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1920
No. 2883
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 363
EDITORIALS :
"Pitiless Publicity" for Haiti 366
The Committee on Ireland 367
Traitors and Anarchists 368
Side Stepping with Cox 368
Certain Neglected Books 369
STANDING BEHIND THE PRESIDENT— AN IMPOSSIBILITY. By
John Kenneth Turner 370
THE WOMAN VOTER HITS THE COLOR LINE. By William Pickens 372
THE RETURN OF THE HAPSBURGS? By Eugene S. Bagger 374
SUPERFINE FRENZY. By Clement Wood 375
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 376
CORRESPONDENCE 377
BOOKS :
Economic Studies of the War. By Carl C. Plehn 378
Progress. B'y Preserved Smith 379
Caliban 380
Books in Brief 381
DRAMA :
Underworld. By Ludwig Lewisohn 383
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION:
German Solvency and Reparations 384
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER LEWIS S. GANNETT
LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising: Swarthmore Press Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
ACT Two of the Italian revolution is done. Act One
was the war, and the curtain fell with the cost of liv-
ing quintupled. Act Two opened with the seizure of the
steel works, and their operation by the employees, while
the Government smiled benevolently and did nothing. It
closes with the vote of the employees to return the factories
to their owners after their wage demands have been granted,
a promise of no reprisals, and a commission named to de-
termine conditions of joint operation of factories by em-
ployees and owners. It would be a bold prophet who would
predict the hour of the curtain-rise for Act Three, or the
stage setting. But it takes little perspicacity to see that
the play has only begun.
DARKER and darker grow the clouds which are begin-
ning to hide the horizon of our relations with Japan.
No less a friend of America than Baron Kentaro Kaneko has
given an interview in which he expresses great indignation
at the California proposals. That he should talk at all on
such a matter is significant enough; that he should voice
such deep feeling speaks volumes. Meanwhile the annual
fight is- on for a great addition to the Japanese fleet and the
reason given is the necessity for preparing to defend Japan
from the menace of ever increasing American armaments.
A large public meeting in Tokio to discuss the relations
between the two countries was interrupted by the police, but
not until Representative Kodama had spoken very sharply
against the American attitude. The Japanese press is
daily giving much space to the whole question, and there
seems to be a plan for a joint high commission to inquire
into the whole question of our future relations. Failing
this, there are proposals to constitute an informal commis-
sion of prominent men after the manner, apparently, of The
Nation's committee on atrocities in Ireland. On this side,
Cox has followed Harding's lead and told the Californians
that if he is elected the Federal Government will work with
California in excluding the Orientals. Next we must record
with shame the words of the newly elected president of the
University of California, who is daily showing his unfitness
for that great post. In a press interview Dr. Barrows
speaks of "foul" Japanese methods, and of the "evils of a
race which we do not detest but which we will not endure."
When heads of universities speak thus, what may we expect
from mere agitators? Thus are wars made. But fortu-
nately the Japanese moves for open consultations are pre-
cisely what the hour calls for.
IT makes very little difference to the outside world who
is President of France. The French have such a fear
of dictatorship or return to royalty that they have endowed
the office with more pomp than importance. It is custom
rather than law which keeps the office unimportant. When-
ever a strong man becomes chief of state there is talk of
more power to the President, and the newspapers prophesy
that the first magistrate will cease to be a figurehead. It
was so when Poincare took office in 1913; it is so now that
Paul Deschanel has given way to Millerand ; but custom and
tradition tend in France to overcome the will even of
"strong men." M. Millerand starts his Presidency with a
weak man as Premier — Georges Leygues, who held various
of the lesser cabinet posts twenty years ago, who was
brought up in the Delcasse school of jingo diplomacy, and
was given the post of Minister of Marine in the Clemenceau
war ministry. So long as Leygues continues Premier,
Millerand will be the real force in French policy; but time
may work just such revenges on him as on Poincare.
THE recent settlement by the Council of the League of
Nations of the Aaland Islands dispute between Finland
and Sweden is by no means an indication that the League
is functioning as its sponsors predicted it would. The
"settlement" consists of the appointment of a commission to
investigate the claims of the two countries and to make
recommendations as to the final disposal of the islands.
Sweden and Finland both declare they will never give up
the disputed territory, and, as neither country is legally
bound to accept the commission's findings and the League
has no power to enforce them, the situation is precisely
what it would have been had the two countries submitted
their dispute to the prewar Hague tribunal. As for the
League's intervention between Poland and Lithuania, its
only result so far would seem to be that M. Paderewski
364
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2883
shook hands with the Lithuanian foreign minister. Queen
Wilhelmina of Holland stated at the opening of the Dutch
Parliament that the League had failed to come up to ex-
pectations and under the circumstances Holland would take
steps to reinforce its active military forces!
INABILITY of the farmers of the grain-raising sections
to secure cars in which to ship their crops appears to
be due more to immobile railroad equipment than to lack
of it. Under direction of the Illinois Agricultural Associa-
tion, farmers of the State have completed a survey of 494
railroad yards in 46 counties. The cars in each yard were
listed on a given day, and a second inspection was made a
week later. In Grundy county reports were made in regard
to nine stations. Four of them showed a complete clearance.
At the other five, 454 cars were listed on the first count.
Seven days later 236, or more than half of the identical
cars were still there. That they were not in bad order is
shown by the fact that 224 of them were loaded. At 146
stations it was found that 10 per cent of the cars listed
remained unmoved for the week in question. Large num-
bers of empty cars were found in every county — many of
them suitable for carrying grain. If the percentage of
idle cars in the United States approaches the condition re-
vealed by this farmers' survey, it appears once more that
what is needed is not more equipment but more speed in
handling what exists and more insistence that shippers
unload and release cars promptly. Mr. D. 0. Thompson,
secretary of the Illinois Agricultural Association, makes
the following statement in his report of the survey:
"Farmers are vitally interested in knowing whether this
situation is due to inertia on the part of railroad officials,
caused by guaranteed profits, indolence of railroad work-
ers induced by the recent wage raise and augmented by
an eight-hour day with time and a half for overtime, or
simply a condition in which we find ourselves and which we
must outgrow, with all parties concerned doing their level
best. The next step of the farmers' business organizations
will be to find the real reason of inefficient transportation."
WHAT is the use of going after a single anarchist if
the President of the United States can void his oath
of office and deliberately disobey the Constitution of the
United States? The question arises because Mr. Wilson
declares that he will not obey the mandate of the Jones
Merchant Marine act of June 5 last, which directed him
to notify within ninety days all foreign governments that
this country elected to terminate all treaties restricting the
right of this Government to impose discriminatory duties
upon imports and discriminatory tonnage dues. We agree
with Mr. Hannis Taylor, who ranks as a foremost constitu-
tional authority, that the President could be impeached for
this, and we believe that he should be. The incident is en-
tirely characteristic of Mr. Wilson. The latter is correct
in his opposition to the provisions of the law — the proposed
policy is economically indefensible and politically stupid —
and he may be justified in saying that this is an interfer-
ence by Congress with a phase of our foreign policy which
is the prerogative of the Executive. Why, then, did he
sign the bill last June instead of vetoing it? He made it
law by his own act and now decides that he will not abide
by it. He cites as a precedent President Hayes's veto of a
bill ordering him to abrogate certain agreements with China.
But President Hayes took the correct course; he vetoed the
bill when it came before him. Probably Mr. Wilson did not
read the Jones bill — a procedure sometimes worth while —
before signing it. Now he seeks to offset his own delin-
quency, or error of judgment, by overriding in an illegal
manner the wish of Congress. It is a grave blow to the
American Constitution, which Republicans and Democrats
alike ought to act upon the minute Congress reassembles.
GEORGE NASMYTH, who has just died in Switzerland,
was a loyal international citizen. He started life as
a physicist, but his period of study in Europe swept him
into the tide of young internationalists who foresaw and
hoped desperately to forestall the coming war. He was
largely instrumental in forming the International Students
Clubs and encouraging the feeble groups of anti-militarist
students in the German universities in the decade before the
war; he was elected president of Corda Fratres, the Inter-
national Federation of Students, at Rome in 1911; he was
a leader in the student groups in England and America
which dreamed so lustily in the first years of the World War
of what a league of nations might be. During America's
participation in the war he served with the Fuel Adminis-
tration in Washington; then, after the armistice, returned
to Europe, first as delegate to an international Congress of
Cooperative Societies, then to organize the first post-war
conference of the World Alliance for Promoting Inter-
national Friendship through the Churches held at the Hague
last autumn, and later to regather the scattered strands of
the international student movement. The world is poorer
for the loss of George Nasmyth's enduring and energetic
faith in it.
THE making of denials is a business, or a science, or an
art, according to the point of view, and with some it
is a policy. It is hard to say what it has been with Franklin
Roosevelt and Senator Harding. Mr. Roosevelt made a
speech at Butte on August 18 in which the Associated Press
reported his saying that he had "had something to do with
the running of a couple of little republics. The fact is, I
wrote Haiti's Constitution myself. . . . Until last week,
I had two votes in the League Assembly myself." He was
also quoted as saying the United States controlled about
twelve votes of little Latin American republics in the
League. Days passed, and the statement was printed and
reprinted. Finally, on September 2, Mr. Roosevelt issued
a lengthy denial, not of the Haiti, but of the League state-
ment. He had merely said that about twelve republics would
feel that their interests bound them to vote with the United
States. Two weeks later still Senator Harding quoted the
statements about Haiti and Santo Domingo; he did not
mention the twelve votes in the League. Mr. Roosevelt
telegraphed his regret that the Senator should put into his
mouth "an alleged statement about the votes in the League
of Nations of Haiti and Santo Domingo which I had al-
ready publicly denied making." It was Senator Harding's
turn, and he spoke with super-senatorial subtlety. "I am
frank to say I had not seen and have not yet seen such
denial," he telegraphed, "but I accept your statement in
good faith and express regret that I should have quoted
you."
THE campaign drags on its weary length, without life,
vitality, or popular interest. Cox has spoken on prohi-
bition, stating that the issue "is as dead as slavery."
Oct. 6, 1920]
The Nation
365
Harding stands proudly on his record — whether as an
owner of brewery shares, or as one who voted usually with
the "wets," and then slipped over to the "drys," is not quite
clear. His letter of April last, favoring recognition of the
Soviet Government, he ignores now that it has seen the light
of day. Only by his refusal to imitate Cox in constantly
attacking people in the opposition does he shine. As for
the Ohio Governor, he continues to "see things." He finds
the Republicans are denying him publicity by exercising
illicit pressure upon the Western newspapers ; that Republi-
can scouts precede him to prepare a hostile atmosphere for
him; and he is still obsessed by the idea that the Republi-
cans are buying up the election. Meanwhile it appears that
the Democratic national organization is destitute of funds,
and has been able to raise only $135,000 ; so that the closing
of the headquarters in New York has been seriously dis-
cussed. Never was one of the old parties so short of money ;
indeed, it is rumored that the stenographic employees would
have gone home unpaid several week-ends if it had not been
for the generosity of James W. Gerard. Now all the Demo-
cratic hopes are centered on Mr. Wilson's declarations to
the people, soon to begin. Absit omen! Will they aid the
Republicans as did his famous missive in the Congressional
elections of two years ago? Meanwhile no enlightenment,
no illumination, no program anywhere. Only a determina-
tion to elect Harding by disgust.
PERHAPS the most significant aspect of the campaign
of 1920 is the cleavage from the two old parties in the
States of the Northwest. In North Dakota, South Dakota,
and Montana this has been accomplished chiefly by the Non-
partisan League, and in Wisconsin by the League working
in conjunction with the La Follette forces. The capture of
the Democratic primaries in Colorado was achieved mainly
by the State organization of the Farmer-Labor Party, while
in Washington this party has superseded the old Triple
Alliance, and has adopted a program, calling, among other
things, for a State-owned bank. James Duncan, secretary
of the Seattle Labor Council, has been nominated for Con-
gress in the first district, and C. J. France, who was ousted
as secretary of the Port of Seattle because of his affiliation
with the Farmer-Labor Party, has been put up for the
United States Senate. The State campaign is the leading
issue everywhere; the Presidential campaign is receiving
almost no attention. In States where the Nonpartisan
League is the chief factor, the Presidential electors will
probably go by default to whichever of the old parties the
Nonpartisan League nominally represents. In Colorado and
Washington, however, Christensen will presumably get the
full vote of the insurgent movement, and this is also true in
South Dakota, where the Nonpartisan League is organized
as a national party.
HAVE seen to it," said Attorney General Palmer to
k the labor men and Socialists who came to ask amnesty
for political prisoners, "that no prosecutions under it [the
Espionage act] have been instituted since the armistice."
In January, 1919, Morris Zucker of Brooklyn was sentenced
to fifteen years for a speech which he made on November
30, 1918. In August, 1919, Jacob Isaacson was indicted for
an editorial against the Victory Liberty Loan, which ap-
peared during the previous spring in an issue of Freedom.
During the following month J. E. Snyder, editor of the
Oakland World, was prosecuted for an editorial to the effect
that the Constitution was dying. In November, 1919, E. B.
Ault and Anna Louise Strong, editors of the Seattle Union
Record, were indicted for an editorial concerning the Cen-
tralia affair. Finally, more than a year after the armistice,
three Socialists were arrested and tried for circulating
posters showing conditions in Federal prisons and demand-
ing the release of all political prisoners. These cases — all
of them prosecuted under the Federal law — are even more
illuminating in the light of a letter written by R. P. Stewart,
Assistant-Attorney General, to Albert DeSilver, a New York
lawyer interested in Isaacson. "With reference to your
statement regarding the Espionage act, I desire to state that
the act is enforced not as a matter of war strategy or war
policy, but because it is a war penal law, the enforcement
of which is the duty of this Department, as is the case of
any other penal law." The war, as an excuse for political
prosecution, is over. As for Mr. Palmer's statement, it is
not true. We fear the truth is not in him.
IS the cost of living coming down? The Department of
Labor reports that the index number of the Bureau of
Labor Statistics dropped 4V2 per cent during August. The
Amoskeag Manufacturing Company announces a cut of one-
third in the price of cotton goods for fear that its cotton
department will have to shut down as the woolen department
has already done. Henry Ford handsomely reduces the
price of his black beetles of the road 14 to 31 per cent, with
no decrease in wages. Various other manufacturing com-
panies are following suit to a greater or less degree, and
in some of the large retail stores the "sales" and price
reductions for fall and winter clothing have set in unusually
early. The ultimate consumer, poor worm though he be, is
the one who has brought about any reduction that has ap-
peared or may follow, not by brass bands and transpar-
encies, nor by "drastic measures" taken against the wicked
profiteers, but merely by drawing in his horns and sitting
tight; by refusing to buy anything but the barest necessi-
ties, because in the circumstances he could not afford to do
otherwise.
JACOB H. SCHIFF ranked beyond question as one of
the greatest of American philanthropists. His bounty
was truly boundless as the sea and he knew no caste in his
giving. Christians came to him for aid in their undertak-
ings, even when they had a religious tinge, and rarely went
away unaided. He made money in order to do good with
it; certainly no one has felt a greater responsibility in dis-
pensing riches accumulated. He possessed in high degree
the respect of the business world and the public, so that
President Wilson's telegram of sympathy to Mrs. Schiff
expressing his belief that "the nation has lost one of its most
useful citizens" expresses the general opinion. Unlike
many others, Mr. Schiff did not label all his gifts or trumpet
them abroad ; to innumerable persons he gave at the critical
period of their careers a helping hand, so that literally mul-
titudes have risen up to call him blessed. In international
affairs he was a man of the world. Unable to approve of
Germany's course in starting the war, he overcame the
natural influence of his close personal and business ties
with Germany and stood out against the Kaiser's Govern-
ment, without, however, losing for a moment his sympathy
with the people of Germany. To the Jewish people his loss
is almost an irreparable one, and by them, too, will his
memory be enduringly cherished.
366
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2883
"Pitiless Publicity" for Haiti
A FLOOD of statements, counter-statements and mis-
statements, admissions, confusions, and denials, re-
garding facts and policies in Haiti and Santo Domingo
poured out of Washington last week. The Nation rejoices
that the course of our Government in those republics will at
last be forced to face the test of public knowledge and public
opinion, and is proud that it led the way in exposing the
facts. It was Senator Harding's repetition of charges first
made in The Nation which unsealed the lips of Washington
officials, but the long statements issued by Secretary of State
Colby have been specific replies to charges which have been
made exclusively in Mr. Herbert J. Seligmann's and Mr.
James Weldon Johnson's articles in The Nation.
After all this outpouring from Washington, and the hasty
defense and outcry against "radical criticism" by Adminis-
tration newspapers, the case against the course of the United
States in Haiti and Santo Domingo remains untouched. We
intervened, The Nation believes, on quite inadequate
grounds, although as to that opinions may honestly differ;
having intervened, we relentlessly extended the scope of our
authority in a brutal and unjustifiable manner, dissolving
the Haitian Parliament at the points of American bayonets,
forcing unwilling acceptance of an overbearing treaty, re-
moving the entire Government of Santo Domingo and set-
ting up an arbitrary Government by military fiat, killing
thousands of opponents of our regime (three thousand in
Haiti) as "bandits," establishing a strict censorship and so
avoiding the test of public knowledge and opinion, and
forcing upon the unhappy little republics financial agree-
ments favoring certain American banks. Some of the worst
abuses have been remedied, though the wounds remain ; the
corvee, or slave labor, which we revived in Haiti, has now
been abolished; indiscriminate shooting and torture have
been lessened; but the incompetent administrative methods
of the Americans continue to be a luxury which the island
cannot afford, the financial control lodged in American hands
is still used, contrary to the treaty, to force measures in
favor of the National City Bank of New York City, and the
absolute domination of military rule to the exclusion of local
civilian self-government persists in Santo Domingo. "Self-
determination" and "rights of small nations" as used by
American statesmen are still tragic jests in the Caribbean.
Secretary Colby and Secretary Daniels have both taken
a hand in replying to The Nation's charges. On September
18 Secretary Daniels quoted Senator Harding's charge that
"thousands of native Haitians have been killed by American
marines." He called it an "unjust reflection upon the brave
and patriotic members of the Marine Corps on duty in
Haiti." But he did not and he cannot honestly deny that our
marines have killed three thousand Haitians. On the same
day Mr. Colby said:
The American control in Haiti and Santo Domingo is not
Administration control, but was undertaken at the invitation
of those peoples and with public opinion of the United States
and the better opinion of the two republics in favor of it. A
solemn treaty was entered into between the two governments
providing for the use of American naval forces to stamp down
banditry there.
Mr. Colby is in error; American control of neither re-
public was undertaken at the invitation of the people. The
attitude of Haiti is sufficiently shown in the pathetic procla-
mation issued by President Dartiguenave on September 4,
1915 (reprinted in The Nation for August 28, 1920), when
American forces seized the Haitian customs-houses, two
weeks before what Mr. Colby calls "a solemn treaty" — which
Haiti, before that military occupation, had refused to ac-
cept— was forced upon Haiti. Military dictatorship and
military censorship failed to give Dominicans in Santo
Domingo so much as a chance to protest.
Long stories emanating from the State Department ap-
peared in the newspapers on September 20. They informed
us that Admiral H. S. Knapp had been sent to Haiti to in-
vestigate and adjust the difficulties between the National
City Bank of New York City, controlling the National Bank
of Haiti, and the Haitian Government and other commer-
cial and financial interests, and that Major-General J. A.
Lejeune had been in Haiti two weeks preparing a report on
the American force of occupation for Secretary Daniels.
Now General Lejeune, Commandant of the Marine Corps,
naturally sees things through Marine Corps eyes ; in a letter
which The Nation printed in its issue of July 24 he vir-
tually confirmed criticisms of our course in the nominally
independent republic of Haiti and dismissed them with the
sweeping remark that "as in all work in countries like Haiti
mistakes are bound to be made." Admiral Knapp was in
command of the American forces which seized the Govern-
ment of the Republic of Santo Domingo in December, 1916;
he signed the extraordinary series of "executive orders"
transferring the various Dominican cabinet positions from
Dominican citizens to officers of the United States Marine
Corps, dissolving the Dominican Congress, and suppressing
the institutions of popular government. In judging his fit-
ness for his new task it is worth recalling "Executive Order
No. 42 of the Military Government of Santo Domingo" is-
sued March 17, 1917, and signed by this same H. S. Knapp,
then "Captain, U.S.N., Commander, Cruiser Force, United
States Atlantic Fleet, Commanding Forces in Occupation in
Santo Domingo." It reads:
The International Banking Corporation of New York City
being about to succeed to the business of the bank conducted in
Santo Domingo City by Mr. Santiago Michelena, which is the
present appointed depositary of funds for the Dominican Gov-
ernment, it is hereby ordered and decreed:
1. That the branch in Santo Domingo of the International
Banking Corporation of New York City is hereby appointed
depositary of funds of the Dominican Republic on and after
April 1, 1917.
2. The officer who, under the Military Government, is admin-
istering the affairs of the Department of Hacienda y Comercio
of the Dominican Republic, is hereby authorized to execute any
necessary contract in conjunction with the duly authorized rep-
resentatives of the International Banking Corporation of New
York City, in order to establish the respective rights, obliga-
tions, and duties of the contracting parties.
3. The transfer of the Dominican Republic funds from Mr.
Santiago Michelena to the International Banking Corporation
of New York City shall become effective April 1, 1917, previous
to which date the contracts authorized under the second para-
graph of this order shall be executed.
We copy the order verbatim from the official gazette of
the Dominican Republic for March 21, 1917. In the issue
for March 28 we find an "Agreement between the Military
Government of the Dominican Republic, represented by
Paymaster I. T. Hagner, U.S.N., the officer administering
Oct. 6, 1920]
The Nation
367
the affairs of the Department of Hacienda y Comercio,
hereinafter called the Government, and the International
Banking Corporation," whereby the Government, payment
on whose debts had been suspended by one of Captain
Knapp's Executive Orders, made the Government's debt to
Mr. Michelena, which the International Banking Corpora-
tion was about to take over, a preferred debt over all other
indebtedness, with interest at 9 per cent. We also find a
"Contract" between the same parties, whereby the Govern-
ment agrees to deposit all its revenues with the Corporation,
receiving 2% per cent interest, less % per cent to be paid to
the Corporation as compensation for service as depositary.
The International Banking Corporation is affiliated with
the National City Bank; Knapp is the man who is now
selected by our State and Navy departments to investigate
charges of improper favoritism to the National City Bank
in Haiti!
September 21 brought another statement from the State
Department. It was in part a justification of the original
intervention in Haiti, repeating the high purposes an-
nounced at that time. Continuing, it mentioned that
disorder in Haiti in 1915 "resulted in the landing of French
troops in Port-au-Prince" even before American marines
were landed, and said that further aggression was feared.
French troops did land. Mr. Colby might, however, have
gone further and mentioned the number of French troops
landed: eight men were sent ashore to guard the Legation
— not a serious menace to the Monroe Doctrine! The sec-
ond part of the State Department's statement was in an-
swer to Mr. Johnson's documented article in The Nation
for September 11 : Government Of, By, and For the National
City Bank. This statement declared that:
No assistance or support has been given the National City
Bank in Haiti other than that which would be extended to any
first-class American bank in any foreign country. Far from
encouraging the National City Bank in obtaining monopolistic
privileges, the Department has, in so far as it has had an
opportunity to exert an influence, used it toward preventing the
National City Bank from enjoying monopolistic privileges.
At the same time it was announced that the State De-
partment approved the action of John Mcllhenny, Ameri-
can Financial Adviser to Haiti, in withholding the salary
of the President of Haiti and other cabinet officials, and
stated that such action was taken to compel fulfilment of
Haiti's treaty obligations.
What assistance or support the State Department stands
ready to extend to any first-class American bank abroad, it
is, of course, impossible for The Nation to say. The Nation
did, however, charge, and it repeats the charge, which is
supported by the protest of almost every important firm
doing business in Haiti, with the exception of the National
City Bank, that our State Department instructed Mr.
Mcllhenny to insist that the Haitian Government approve
"a modification of the bank contract agreed upon by the
[U. S.] Department of State and the National City Bank"
and agree to a new charter for the National Bank of Haiti ;
that after the Haitian Government had reluctantly con-
sented to sign, a new clause favoring the National City
Bank was surreptitiously added to the agreement, unknown
to the Haitian Government; that the Financial Adviser, to
force the signature of the modified agreement, stopped
payment of the salaries of the President of Haiti and of his
cabinet ministers — not, as the State Department says, to
force fulfilment of a treaty, but in violation of the treaty
and to force acceptance of a clause giving to the National
City Bank what the business men called "a sort of mo-
nopoly in the foreign money market." These charges, and
the data substantiating them, are matters of record; The
Nation printed official documents supporting them in its
issue of September 11; they are not met and cannot be
downed by vague generalities and implied denials.
Newspaper comment on the issues raised by Mr. Colby's
various defenses has divided on sharp party lines. This is
a pity; the issues have nothing to do with party politics.
The New York Times is probably quite right in its cynical
defense that a Republican Administration would have com-
mitted the same crimes. The crime remains; the Ad-
ministration has suppressed free government in Haiti and
Santo Domingo. A black stain must be removed from the
American scutcheon, the American people must be made
fully aware what is being done in their name, and the
nation restored to a position where it can once more speak
of freedom and liberty, of self-determination and small
nations, without giving cause for cynical smiles in Europe
and violent charges of hypocrisy throughout Latin America.
Congress at its coming session must be prompt to investi-
gate, and must tolerate no official white-washing.
The Committee on Ireland^
THE organization of a Committee of One Hundred for
the investigation of atrocities in Ireland was an-
nounced last week by The Nation. The response to the invi-
tations which were sent out has been gratifying. Not only
have the one hundred acceptances which were originally
set as a goal been received, but that number has been ex-
ceeded and the list is still growing. The names of eighty-
nine members were printed in last week's issue. The
additional names, up to the time of going to press, are:
United States Senators McNary, Oregon, and Ramsdell,
Louisiana; Governors Bamberger of Utah, and Edwards of
New Jersey; Mayors Beck, Akron, Ohio; Plunkett, Phoenix,
Arizona; Kiel, St. Louis, Missouri.
Fred G. Biedenkapp, Brotherhood of Metal Workers, New
York City ; Alice Stone Blackwell, Boston ; Professor Arthur
C. Cole, University of Illinois; H. W. L. Dana, Cambridge,
Massachusetts; the Rev. William Horace Day, Bridgeport,
Connecticut; Frederic C. Howe, Harmon, N. Y. ; the Rev.
G. S. Lackland, Denver, Colorado; Rabbi Judah L. Magnes,
New York City; Albert Jay Nock, editor of the Freeman,
New York City; M. O'Neill, Akron, Ohio; the Rev. William
Austin Smith, editor of the Churchman, New York City;
Professor Richard C. Tolman, American University, Wash-
ington, D. C. ; L. Hollingsworth Wood, New York City.
The Committee is now engaged in choosing a Commis-
sion of five members to conduct the investigation. It is
hoped that the Commission may be able to begin its sittings
at Washington by the middle of October. Mr. William
MacDonald, associate editor of The Nation, will act as secre-
tary of the Commission. The sessions at Washington or
elsewhere will be open to the public, and all the evidence
submitted from day to day will be available for the press.
Invitations to come to the United States and testify be-
fore the Commission have been sent to Mrs. Terence Mac-
Swiney, wife of the Lord Mayor of Cork; Mrs. Thomas
MacCurtain, widow of the late Lord Mayor of Cork who
was murdered last March; the mother of Police Inspector
368
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2883
Swanzy who was murdered at Lisburn a few weeks ago;
Mr. John Derham, town commissioner of Balbriggan, sacked
by English soldiers last week; Sir Horace Plunkett, a lead-
ing advocate of dominion government for Ireland; the
mayors of Belfast, Londonderry, Thurlos, and Lisburn, and
the acting Lord Mayor of Cork; and Mr. George Russell
("M"), the well-known Irish writer and correspondent.
Other persons having first-hand knowledge of atrocities in
Ireland, including a number who are now in this country,
will also be invited. Witnesses who are prepared to tell of
Sinn Fein violence will, of course, be heard. Documentary
material relating to the subject-matter of the investigation
is also being prepared for the use of the Commission.
The editors of The Nation wish again to emphasize the
entirely nonpartisan and non-political character of the pro-
posed investigation. The position of The Nation with re-
gard to British policy in Ireland and the demand for Irish
self-government or independence has been repeatedly stated,
and we shall continue to discuss those subjects editorially
in the future with the same freedom with which we have
discussed them in the past. The editorial opinion of The
Nation, however, will have no bearing whatever upon the
work of the Commission. The sole duty of that body will
be the impartial examination of the testimony regarding
atrocities in Ireland that will come before it. The appalling
conditions which prevail in Ireland have aroused the world.
The Commission will undertake to sift the evidence and
present the facts; then let who ought take notice.
Traitors and Anarchists
NOWHERE has the expulsion of the duly reelected So-
cialists from the New York Assembly been more ad-
mirably characterized than by the New York World, which
declares :
The New York Assembly says in so many words to every
radical that he must not appeal to constitutional processes and
can have no resort except to violence. No other such open
championship of anarchy and the methods of anarchy has ever
been known in the United States as the New York Assembly
has made under the hypocritical pretense of vindicating patriot-
ism. As a result of it the Socialist Party, with all that it rep-
resents, is thrust forward as the chief advocate of representa-
tive government in this State. There is nobody who is weak-
minded enough to believe that patriotism or Americanism had
anything to do with the ouster of the Socialist Assemblymen.
If these men were not regarded as implacably hostile to the
great property interests of New York, they could mock the Con-
stitution night and morning without arousing a semblance of
resentment in Albany.
Precisely. And if this infamous assault on everything
most fundamentally and sacredly American is allowed to
stand, rights of minorities will nowhere be safe, and our
representative and orderly government will be imperiled
as it has not been and never could be by all the "radical"
propaganda in the world. Exclusion of duly elected Roman
Catholic representatives in the South could easily follow
such a precedent; in that section the general attitude to-
ward members of the Roman Catholic faith is as baseless
and bigoted as the Assembly's toward Socialists. This is
a possibility to be commended to the earnest consideration
of Mr. Martin McCue and others. It might well lead to
similar outrages against Republicans or Democrats, Irish
or Jews, Swedes or Italians, in sections where tribal super-
stitions, coupled with economic competition, render any par-
ticular group feared and disliked.
What is to be done? It is evident that no change of mind
or heart is possible from the present Assembly whose Re-
publican and Democratic members supporting the ouster are
the "perpetual traitors" in the case — traitors to all things
American. It therefore behooves every liberty-loving citi-
zen of New York to vote against these men in November,
and to register in the only legitimate way — which these
men have sought to destroy — a determination that govern-
ment by law under the Constitution shall not perish. This
is the paramount issue in New York State and indeed in
the whole country today.
Meanwhile the attempt is being made in the high places
of reaction to assign some share of participation in the
recent crime on Wall Street to the "preachers of discon-
tent"; by which is meant those who are trying to do away
with abuses of the existing order. The New York Times,
one of the two New York dailies indecent enough to con-
tinue • its defense of the proceedings at Albany, selected
Senators Hiram Johnson and Borah for editorial castigation
because of their criticisms of international bankers, while
the New York Tribune (which, after an original indorse-
ment of Sweetism, switched and is now sound on the Albany
situation), and Mr. Munsey's Evening Sun hold the "parlor
bolshevists" not without indirect responsibility for the ex-
plosion. Moral complicity is at all times a dangerous accu-
sation, difficult of proof, and usually not only unfair but
false in its implications. But, if the Wall Street horror
proves to have been the act of an anarchist, no more appro-
priate place to lay the charge of indirect responsibility for
it can be found than at the door of those who deny -the
orderly and established use of the ballot as a method of
protest and political change, and force into the disordered
consciousness of the unbalanced fanatic the belief that vio-
lence and bombs alone are left. If there is indirect re-
sponsibility, it belongs to Speaker Thaddeus C. Sweet and
his anarchist gang.
Side Stepping with Cox
Special Dispatch from the Candidential Train
GOVERNOR COX made the same splendid success as a
vote getter in the Southwest that he did in the North-
west. In the latter section his intimate practical knowledge
of farming made him hosts of friends among the wheat-
growers and cattle-raisers. The Nonpartisan League audi-
ences were inclined to be a little cold at first, but warmed
up wonderfully after his talk at Devil's Lake, North Dakota,
in which, talking as one farmer to another, he proved in ten
minutes that he knew the difference between a Jersey cow
and an ear of corn. This triumph was duplicated among
the fruit-growers of California, where he won many con-
verts to the League of Nations by showing that he is aware
that apple butter is not made in a churn.
The strongest of all Governor Cox's arguments for the
Wilson policies, however, is the candidate's winning per-
sonality. Nobody who has ever seen him kiss a baby could
doubt his ability to guide America's foreign policy wisely.
He is the only Presidential candidate who has been able to
kiss other people's babies as if he enjoyed it. This has
made him well-nigh invulnerable with women voters, one
of whom was heard to remark last night: "Surely a man
Oct. 6, 1920]
The Nation
369
who kisses babies the way he does could never break the
heart of the world."
All along the route of the special train people have been
immensely impressed by Governor Cox's charges in regard
to the Republican campaign fund. His methods in this
respect have been as ingratiating as his manner of kissing
babies. No rough stuff for him. He gives leads but not
names, fancies rather than figures, inferences in place of
facts. His accusations have aroused interest everywhere.
All that people are waiting for now is the proofs.
But to realize the full adroitness of the candidate's cam-
paign methods one must hear him prove that the League of
Nations is not what its constitution says it is, less than
Mr. Harding fears it may become, and as much as President
Wilson declares it must be. "What the world wants is
peace," said Governor Cox, in the course of an eloquent
address in Arizona. "Many of you voted for our illustrious
President in 1916 because he kept us out of war. Now, of
course, in 1917-18 he did not keep us out of war. . . ."
"No," interrupted a hearer, "but in 1919-20 he kept us
out of peace."
"Not at all, not at all!" replied the candidate, a globule
of perspiration coming to his brow. "It was the faithless,
unpatriotic, and unrepresentative Republican oligarchy in
the Senate that did that. Now if America were in the
League. . . ."
"But," came the interruption again, "doesn't Article X
mean that if the Upper Silesians should invade the Czecho-
Slovakians, our boys would have to go over and drive the
invaders back?"
"Certainly not," said Governor Cox, and added with his
usual lucidity: "Article X means — it means that — that if
the Lower Californians were to attack you Arizonians, the
Azerbaidjianians would have to come over and help you repel
the enemy."
"But," insisted the inquirer, "do you think it would be
easy to get the Azerbaidjianians to do that?"
A trace of irritation showed in the voice of Governor Cox
— for the first time during the trip. "I think," said he,
a little wearily, "that anything would be easy after three
months spent trying to make the Treaty of Versailles look
like the Fourteen Points."
And he stooped and kissed another baby.
Certain Neglected Books
THE Americans who believe that American literature
is good enough as it is, and who sit down to read the
same smooth old native classics over again, probably have
as gay a time as they deserve, but they miss a good deal.
The Americans who so continually abuse American litera-
ture because it is no better than it is that they have no time
to read anything but the smooth classics (which they will
not read) are even worse off than the patriots, who at least
know something though not much. But both sets of Ameri-
cans darken counsel with words without real knowledge.
Question either, and the chances are they have hardly heard
of dozens of books which can no more be left out of account
than the wit of an Irishman, or the onion of a stew. They
either look blank or snort at the mere mention of colonial
authorship, and yet the mystical writings of Jonathan
Edwards — not his savage sermons — are among the most
exquisite and thrilling of his century, and the letters of
Benjamin Franklin are some of the best reading on earth.
Think of the fluttering of the encyclopedias which went on
a few years ago when President Eliot included John Wool-
man's Journal in the Five Foot Shelf! Think of the flut-
tering that would now go on if some one of our first citizens
were to point out that Samuel Sewall's diary is almost as
amusing as Samuel Pepys's!
Not to go too far from the present, what about Davy
Crockett's incomparably racy autobiography for people who
sniff at the frontiersman of Fenimore Cooper? And what
shall we say of those who sleep over "Hiawatha" — not too
unnaturally — but have never seen Frank Cushing's versions
of the Zuni folk-tales? They are the same sort as those
who vaguely remember Uncle Remus as an entertainer of
the nursery and never realize that he and his inventions are
not matched once in a century. In poetry they complain of
Longfellow — Whittier — Holmes — Lowell, of course, or ad-
mire them for wrong qualities, but if you ask them of Emily
Dickinson or Father Tabb they are embarrassed, and they
have never read more deeply into Whitman than the half a
dozen pieces which have beguiled the anthologists. They
do not know that "Moby Dick" is one of the great romances
of the world; that the same author's "Mardi," strange mad
book as it is, has as quaint meat in it as "The Anatomy
of Melancholy"; that "Typee" and "Omoo" and Charles
Warren Stoddard's "South Sea Idyls" are alive and aglow
with imperishable tropic beauty. They will have looked in
vain in all the manuals for an account of E. W. Howe's
"The Story of a Country Town," although there never was
a literature that could afford to overlook it. They know
Thoreau for his "Nature" writings, so dear to the spinsterly
bosom, but do not guess that he is ten times more important
as a philosophical anarchist. They know Emerson without
knowing his supreme essay on Illusions. They do not even
recall Hawthorne's The Seven Vagabonds or Ethan Brand.
They will have heard of "Daisy Miller" and perhaps "The
American" and "The Turn of the Screw"; but ask them
about Henry James's The Lesson of the Master or The
Next Time or The Altar of the Dead, and see what happens.
They can tell you about "Huckleberry Finn" or "The Rise
of Silas Lapham"; but do not try them with "The Mys-
terious Stranger" or "The Leatherwood God." Suppose
they are awake to the "Spoon River Anthology" or "Wines-
burg, Ohio" or "The Education of Henry Adams" or "North
of Boston." Do they know "Mont St. Michel and Char-
tres" or "Mountain Interval" or "Xingu and Other Stories"
or "Twelve Men" or "The Fugitive Blacksmith"?
The list might be stretched out on this line all fall and
winter without reaching a necessary end — or without curing
the trouble. The fact of the situation is that we seriously
need a new examination of our literary assets, now jumbled
confusedly together in a welter of collected editions and
tangled copyrights. Vested interests as well as stodgy tra-
ditions have held the elbow of Time from his natural win-
nowing. Our most brilliant critics, irritated at the delay,
continually snarl at our literature because it is not what it
is not. Well, the way to a better condition lies partly along
the road of critical contempt. But partly it lies along the
road of a sifting scholarship which will do more than has
been done to show us how rich our literature actually it.
Although we shall doubtless not see any super-anthologist
who could bring all these good things together in a solid
corpus of American literature, we need at least better guide
posts than we have.
370
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2883
Standing Behind the President — An Impossibility
By JOHN KENNETH TURNER
WRITING to Senator Hitchcock, March 8, 1920, Presi-
dent Wilson asserted that a militaristic party, de-
feated at the Peace Conference, had subsequently achieved
control of France:
Throughout the sessions of the conference in Paris it was
evident that a militaristic party, under the most influential
leadership, was seeking to gain ascendancy in the counsels of
France. They were defeated then, but are in control now.
But in his September treaty tour the President expressed
the view that the militaristic party was in control of France
during the conference, his picture of victorious French
militarism being painted in the following words :
Again and again, my fellow citizens, in the conference at
Paris we were face to face with this circumstance, that in deal-
ing with a particular civil government we found that they
would not dare to promise what their general staff was not
willing that they should promise; that they were dominated by
the military machine which they had created, nominally for
their own defense, but really, whether they willed it or not, for
the provocation of war. So soon as you have a military class,
it does not make any difference what your form of government is,
if you are determined to be armed to the teeth, you must obey
the orders and directions of the only men who can control the
great machinery of war. [Speech at Kansas City, Sept. 6, 1919.]
In the midst of the conference itself we find the President
taking a third view of this important question. Far from
hinting that militarism was a factor in any allied country,
he assured the American people that it was dead throughout
the world :
Today the world stands freed from the threat of militarism.
[Victory Loan Message, April 19, 1919.]
Writing to the Prime Ministers of France and Great
Britain, March 4, 1920, opposing their projected Adriatic
settlement, President Wilson asserted that at Paris he had
not considered himself bound by the Entente secret
treaties :
The definite and well-accepted policy of the American Govern-
ment throughout its participation in the deliberations of the
Peace Conference was that it did not consider itself bound by
secret treaties of which it had previously not known the ex-
istence.
Prior to that date, however, he had repeatedly acknowl-
edged that he had considered himself bound by the secret
treaties. For example:
One of the difficulties in framing this treaty was the fact that
after we got over there private secret treaties were springing
up on all sides, like a noxious growth. You had to guard your
breathing apparatus against the miasma that rose from it.
But they were treaties, and the war had been fought on the
principle of the sacredness of treaties. We could not propose
that solemn obligations, however unwisely undertaken, should
be disregarded. [Speech at St. Paul, Sept. 9, 1919.]
In the March 8 letter to Senator Hitchcock, also, the
President mentioned what he termed "wrong ambition" on
the part of our allies, and suggested that, without the
adoption of Article Ten, we could not be certain that such
wrong ambition would be discarded:
It must not be forgotten, Senator, that this article constitutes
a renunciation of wrong ambition on the part of powerful
nations with whom we were associated in the war. It is by no
means certain that without this article any such renunciation
will take place. Militaristic ambitions and imperialistic policies
are by no means dead, even in the counsels of the nations whom
we most trust and with whom we most desire to be associated
in the tasks of peace.
But frequently, throughout the war, during the Peace
Conference, and afterwards, the President had assured us
that our allies were quite incapable of wrong ambition. To
his Cheyenne audience [Sept. 4, 1919] he painted a pleasant
picture of Entente unselfishness at Paris in the following
words :
Every thought of aggrandizement, of territorial or political
aggrandizement, on the part of the great powers, was brushed
aside, brushed aside by their own representatives. They de-
clined to take the colonies of Germany in sovereignty. .
They did not claim a single piece of territory.
The President had even informed us that none of these
governments had ever been guilty of a dishonorable act:
I challenge anybody to show where, in recent years
there has been the repudiation of an international obligation
by France — or Italy — or Great Britain — or Japan.
There can be cited no instance where these governments have
been dishonorable. [Speech at Billings, Sept. 11.]
Nevertheless, during the same tour, we find the President
himself citing instances of dishonorable action on the part of
Japan, England, and France. Describing the rape of China
in the San Francisco speech [September 17] he referred to
the French, British, and Japanese holdings there as "stolen
territories," and admitted: "She [Japan] has it [Shantung]
as spoils of war." While in the Cheyenne speech he said :
You know that China has been the common prey of the great
European Powers. . . . There was a very serious impair-
ment of the territorial integrity of China in every one of them
[the concessions referred to], and a very serious interference
with the political independence of that great political kingdom.
Regarding the alleged pledge of Japan to return Shan-
tung, the President, at times, suggested that England and
France had given pledges of a similar character:
Sitting around our council board in Paris I put this question:
"May I expect that this will be the beginning of the retrocession
to China of the exceptional rights which other Governments
have enjoyed there?" The responsible representatives of the
other great Governments said: "Yes, you may expect it." [San
Francisco, Sept. 17.]
Three days later, however, we find him asserting that no
such promise had been made:
Back of this provision with regard to Shantung lies, as every-
body knows or ought to know, a very honorable promise which
was made by the Government of Japan in my presence in Paris,
namely, that just as soon as possible after ratification of this
treaty they will return to China all sovereign rights in the
province of Shantung. Great Britain has not promised to
return Wei-Hai-Wei; France has not promised to return her
part. [Speech at Los Angeles.]
Notwithstanding such admissions the President boldly
proclaimed that his treaty put into general operation the
principle of self-determination:
The heart and center of this treaty is the principle adopted
n&L only in this treaty but put into effect also in the treaty
with Austria, in the treaty with Hungary, in the treaty with
Oct. 6, 1920]
The Nation
371
Bulgaria, in the treaty with Turkey, that every great territory
in the world belongs to the people who are living on it. [San
Diego, Sept. 19.]
That the Treaty of Versailles subjects Germany to a puni-
tive indemnity was acknowledged by the President in the
Columbus speech [September 4] in the following words:
In the first place, my fellow countrymen, it [the treaty] seeks
to punish one of the greatest wrongs ever done in history, the
wrong which Germany sought to do to the world and to civiliza-
tion; and there ought to be no weak purpose with regard to the
application of that punishment. She attempted an intolerable
thing, and she must be made to pay for the attempt. -
But a little farther along in the same speech the President
denied that the treaty provided for any indemnity whatso-
ever. Payment was exacted merely to make good the losses :
Look even into the severe terms of reparation — for there was
no indemnity. No indemnity of any sort was claimed, merely
reparation, merely paying for the destruction done, merely mak-
ing good the losses. . . . There is no indemnity in this
treaty.
In the next breath, same speech, the President again
justified the German assessment as a punishment for wrong
done:
The reparation . . . will be pressed to the utmost point
which Germany can pay — which is just, which is righteous. It
would have been intolerable if there had been anything else.
For, my fellow citizens, this treaty is not meant merely to end
this single war. It is meant as a notice to every government
which in the future will attempt this thing that mankind will
unite to inflict the same punishment.
The President asserted that the war was a commercial
and industrial war, as distinct from a political war:
Why, my fellow citizens, is there any man here, or any woman
— let me say, is there any child here, who does not know that
the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commer-
cial rivalry? . . ■ . This war, in its inception, was a commer-
cial and industrial war. It was not a political war. [St. Louis,
Sept. 5.]
But from April 2, 1917, he had held that it was eminently
a political war. And four days after the St. Louis speech,
at Minneapolis, he again painted it as a political, as distinct
from a commercial and industrial, war:
The object of the war was to destroy autocratic power; that
is to say, to make it impossible that there should be anywhere,
as there was in Wilhelmstrasse, in Berlin, a little group of
military men who could brush aside the manufacturers, brush
aside the Emperor himself, and say: "We have perfected a
machine with which we can conquer the world; now stand out
of the way, we are going to conquer the world."
In the same St. Louis speech, again, the President sug-
gested that the German commercial classes wanted war for
commercial reasons:
The real reason that the war we have just finished took place
was that Germany was afraid her commercial rivals were going
to get the better of her, and the reason why some nations went
into the war against Germany was that they thought Germany
would get the commercial advantage of them. The seed of the
jealousy, the seed of the deep-seated hatred, was hot successful
commercial and industrial rivalry.
But on subsequent days the President asserted that the
German commercial classes wanted to avoid the war for
commercial reasons. For example:
The German bankers and the German merchants and the
German manufacturers did not want this war. They were mak-
ing conquest of the world without it, and they knew it would
spoil their plans. [St. Paul, Sept. 9.]
To the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the President
asserted that he consented to participate upon the Repara-
tions Commission only to assist our dear allies :
Why, we were disinclined to join in that [the Reparations
Commission], but yielded to the urgent request of the other
nations that we should, because they wanted our advice and
counsel. [Aug. 19, 1919.]
Note, however, that his inconsistency is often consistent
with the change in his audience. To the Chamber of Com-
merce at St. Louis, a fortnight later, he disclosed the fact
that he was very much inclined to participate, and acknowl-
edged a selfish commercial motive:
Some of you gentlemen know we used to have trade with
Germany. All of that trade is going to be in the hands and
under the control of the Reparations Commission. I humbly
begged leave to appoint a member to look after our interests,
and I was rebuked for it. I am looking after the industrial
interests of the United States. I would like to see the other
men who are. They are forgetting the industrial interests of
the United States, and they are doing things that will cut us
off, and our trade off, from the normal channels, because the
Reparations Commission can determine where Germany buys,
what Germany buys, how much Germany buys. . . . It is
going to stand at the center of the financial operations of the
world.
To the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, same con-
ference, the President described our proposed after-war
union with our allies as a moral union :
There is no way which we ought to be willing to adopt which
separates us in dealing with Germany from those with whom we
were associated during the war. . . . Because I think it
is a moral union which we are not at liberty to break.
But in the Coliseum speech at St. Louis he described the
proposed union as eminently a financial union :
Under the League plan the financial leadership will be ours,
the industrial supremacy will be ours, the commercial advantage
will be ours.
Although the President informed his audiences that
"When the treaty is accepted men in khaki will not have to
cross the seas again" [Columbus, September 4, 1919], in due
course he asked Congress to approve an American manda-
tory in Turkey, which would require a new army to be
sent immediately to Europe.
In explaining the settlement then being negotiated, the
President assured us, at New York, March 4, 1919: "Nations
promise not to have alliances." But this did not prevent
him from agreeing to a special military alliance with France
and [July 29, 1919] urging its ratification upon the Senate.
At the very time that he was assuring his audiences that
his settlement provided for general disarmament and would
end war, he was urging upon Congress a bill to create a
standing army of 576,000 men — a standing army only
300,000 smaller than that of Germany at the beginning of
the war.
The President held that the war was fought, in part, to
abolish secret treaties. At the same time he held that it
was fought to vindicate the sacredness of treaties, whether
secret or not. Although he declared : "One of the things that
this treaty incidentally does is to invalidate all secret
treaties" [Tacoma, September 13], yet at other times he
acknowledged and defended its validation of the Entente
secret treaties, as has been seen.
Although, in his Memorial Day address at Paris [1919],
the President asserted : "Private counsels of statesmen can-
not now and cannot hereafter determine the destinies of
372
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2883
nations," and although, at Oakland [September 18], he de-
clared: "From this time forth all the world is going to
know what all the agreements between nations are. It is
going to know, not their general character merely, but
their exact language and contents," yet in the intervening
period he refused the Senate information upon which his
Paris decisions were based; mentioned the "intimacies" of
the Peace Conference, and the "indiscretion" of talking
about them, even to the treaty-ratifying body; declared it
a mistake to "redebate here [with the Senate Foreign Rela-
tions Committee] the fundamental questions that we debated
at Paris" ; refused data on the ground that it was agreed at
Paris that they should be "confidential"; acknowledged pos-
session of "international secrets," which he declined to share
even with the Senate; confessed to the view that his Paris se-
crets should never become public property [Conference with
Senate Foreign Relations Committee at White House,
August 19, 1919] ; brought out more and more clearly the
facts that the treaty itself was but a skeleton of secret
understandings known only to five old men who whispered
together at Paris ; that he was attempting to bind America
to courses of action which would be known to the country
only after they had become accomplished facts; that his
projected League of Nations was not intended to be under
the control of peoples, or even of national legislatures, but
was to be an instrument of executives, as secret, irrespon-
sible, and autocratic as the Peace Conference itself.
Finally, upon the question as to whether he really ever
expected to carry out his peace pledges, or to attempt to
realize them, on Memorial Day, 1919, at Paris, he said:
If I may speak a personal word, I beg you to realize the
compulsion that I myself feel that I am under. By the Consti-
tution of our great country I was Commander-in-Chief of these
men. . . . Shall I — can I — ever speak a word of counsel
which is inconsistent with the assurances I gave them when
they came over? It is inconceivable.
But twelve days later he said:
Mr. Walsh, do you think any considerable number of people,
when they read my declarations, thought that these settlements
were to be made at some particular place, automatically, imme-
diately? [President Wilson to Frank P. Walsh, June 11, 1919,
as reported to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by
Messrs. Walsh and Dunne.]
In these words we have the President's own admission
that the promises upon which 75,000 American youths gave
up their lives in Europe were never intended to be carried
out.
The Presidential contradictions herein touch the most
vital questions of peace. They completely discredit the
President's own special pleadings in favor of his particular
form of settlement ; for, obviously, we cannot take the word
of a statesman on any matter upon which he expresses
opposing and irreconcilable views. They equally discredit
the political party which has so fulsomely indorsed the man
and his work. They raise the question of the sincerity of
the Democratic candidate and of every Democratic leader;
they stultify every voter who chooses to remain with the
Democratic Party. They represent, however, only a very
small fraction of the deadly parallels that can be registered
against the President upon the public questions which have
come before the country in the past eight years. For to
"stand behind the President" always has been a physical
impossibility and an intellectual absurdity. Yet that is the
position of Mr. James M. Cox.
The Woman Voter Hits the
Color Line
By WILLIAM PICKENS
THE Nineteenth Amendment has become the law of the
land and it is constitutionally possible for twenty-five
million women to vote. How many of these will actually
vote? Three million are colored, and more than three-
fourths of them live below Mason and Dixon's Line. *There
the colored man has been cheated out of nine-tenths of his
votes, and only a small proportion of the white men vote
because of the indirect reaction of this political dishonesty.
Will the colored women of the South be similarly shut out?
The recent registration of voters in South Carolina may
be taken as a fair example, as this State has been ever repre-
sentative of the South. In common with other Southern
States, it has, by administration and manipulation of suf-
frage laws, practically nullified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
amendments, which enfranchised colored men. The black
race slightly outnumbers the white in South Carolina, and
colored women outnumber colored men. The colored woman
is accordingly the largest class in the State, and her right to
vote gives a new concern to the maintainers of "white
supremacy."
What of the colored women ? They have shown themselves
in every sense and in every emergency good citizens. In the
war their auxiliaries were second to none in efficient service.
As the State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs in Ala-
bama founded a reform school for colored boys long before
the State would adopt the work, so now the colored women of
South Carolina are supporting an Industrial School for Way-
ward Colored Girls to which they gave $9,000 last year. A
colored woman owns and operates the best hospital for her
race anywhere in the State, and it is patronized by white
physicians.
While colored people predominate in numbers in the whole
State, in the city of Columbia, with 37,500 inhabitants, they
number about one-third. Let us observe the attempt of
colored women to register in this capital city. The regis-
trars are white men, sometimes but half -educated. One can
register either as tax-payer on a stated minimum value of
taxable property or under the "educational qualification."
On the first day of the registration in September the colored
women who presented themselves evidently took the regis-
trars by surprise, as the latter seemed to have no concerted
plan for dealing with colored women except to register them
like the white women ; and this they were doing without any
test or question whatsoever, save such necessary inquiries as
to name, age and residence. The registrars had evidently
believed that few colored women would have the nerve to
attempt to register, and there was visible disappointment
when many colored women, bright and intelligent, in some
cases armed with the necessary tax receipt, appeared the
first day. While there was apparently no preconcerted plan
not to register them, one ready-made discrimination of the
South was freely used, that of "white people first." The
registrars would keep numbers of colored women standing
for hours while they registered every white person in sight,
man or woman, even the late-comers. A registrar was some-
times observed to break off right in the middle of registering
a colored woman, and turn to some white new-comer. To the
Oct. 6, 1920]
The Nation
373
credit of the instinctive fairness of white women it should
be said that they at first manifested a disposition merely to
fall in line and await their turn until interfered with by the
white officers who would call them arbitrarily from behind a
group of colored applicants. Yet many of these colored
women bravely stayed and patiently stood from 11 :30 in the
morning till 8:00 at night in order to register to vote! The
attitude and the disappointed calculation of the white men
can be best expressed by quoting one of them : "Who stirred
up all these colored women to come up here and register?"
Such persistent courage, however, was too ominous to the
white registrars, the guardians of racial supremacy and
party success; for although they seemed to have no plan of
repulse for the first day, they evidently held a council of war
at night — and things looked different on the morrow.
Consider how the law itself is made the vehicle of injus-
tice and oppression in its administration. One can register
if one pays taxes on at least three hundred dollars' worth of
property, or can read from the State or the Federal Consti-
tution some passage selected by the registrar. It would
seem the purpose of such a law merely to determine the
general fitness and intelligence of the candidate, or to make
a bona fide test of his literacy. But although all women were
registered without tests the first day, and white women with-
out test or question throughout the registration, colored
women after the first day, in addition to being tortured by
long standing, were greeted with scowls, rough voices and
insulting demeanor. They were made to read and even to
explain long passages from the constitutions and from vari-
ous civil and criminal codes, although there is no law requir-
ing such an inquisition. On the second day the registrars
were assisted by a lawyer, apparently for the special busi-
ness of quizzing, cross-questioning and harassing the colored
women, in the manner of opposing counsel in court. He
asked questions about all sorts of things from all sorts of
documents — questions which he could not himself answer
and about which lawyers wrangle every day in court. It was
the evident purpose to send back to the colored population so
discouraging a report that others would not even try to
register. Indeed the Columbia State, the morning paper,
had suggested that the colored women were manifesting
"very little interest," and that "very few" were expected to
register.
Well educated colored women were denied the right to
register. Some of the questions actually put to the inexperi-
enced colored applicant were: "Explain a mandamus." "De-
fine civil code." "How would you appeal a case?" "If presi-
dential votes are tied, how would you break the tie?" "How
much revenue did the State hospital pay the State last
year?" "How much revenue does the Baptist Church pay
the State?"
South Carolina law requires only that one shall read, and
not the passing of any examination in law or civil govern-
ment. If a colored woman mispronounced a word in the
opinion of the half-educated registrar, she was disqualified.
In one of the county registration places a colored man was
threatened with disfranchisement because he accented the
word "municipal" on the antepenult, where the accent be-
longs, and not "municipal" as the registrar insisted it
should be.
There was not only injustice but rank insult. A colored
man was thrown out of the room for speaking with one of
the waiting colored women, for fear that he was coaching or
prompting her in the manner of primary school discipline.
As one colored woman was reading with ease the passage
set before her, the registrar blurted out: "Heah, girl, yo'
misponounced two words. Yo' git out o' here! Yo' cain't
vote — yo' ain't got sense enough to vote!" A graduate of
the State College for Negroes was rejected because she "mis-
pronounced a word" — always in the mere opinion of the
registrar, with never an appeal to Webster. Some of the
colored teachers of Columbia, licensed by the State to teach
colored children, were denied the right to register, as being
insufficiently educated to read a ballot!
There was not only insult but threatened and actual vio-
lence. On the second day when the number of colored peo-
ple in the room had grown large because the registrars had
compelled them to wait while they registered white people
out of turn, the "high sheriff" came in and shouted: "Yo'
niggahs git out o' de way, git out an' let de whahte people
register — an' stay out! An' if yo' don' stay out, dey'll be
some buckshot to keep yo' out." — And still the colored people
came. The women especially defied all opposition.
By Friday of the registration week more than twenty of
the better educated colored women who had been rejected,
had signed an affidavit against the registrars. Contrary to
calculations, some colored women were even stimulated to go
and assert their right to register because they heard that
others of their race had been unjustly turned away. They
decided either to register or to put the responsibility on the
officers of the law. No discouragement, no "test," no petty
insult stopped them. Nothing availed against them save
the arbitrary will of the tyrants who sat as registrars. The
women's suit will be based on the Nineteenth Amendment,
to open the way for appeal to federal courts. The colored
women of South Carolina may thus play a leading role in
the judicial establishment of the enfranchisement of her
race and her sex.
According to the press many colored women in Richmond
have been denied the right of registration in the same man-
ner and there are similar reports from other localities. Does
this mean that the South will resort to the methods to keep
Negro women from voting that have been employed to keep
the men from the polls? These methods have included every
means of trickery and brutality from vague statutes to shot
guns. The "white primary" of the dominant and majority
party of the South practically ousts the whole colored race
from any share in government. There is no trouble in keep-
ing ignorant and shiftless black men from voting — most of
them do not want to vote. But the "educational qualifica-
tion" clauses are chiefly employed to keep industrious and
intelligent colored men from the polls, and some have been
disfranchised who were graduates of European universities,
in addition to Yale or Harvard. A Norfolk daily paper
recently said in an editorial that a law should be enacted by
the legislature of Virginia against the passage of the woman
suffrage amendment which could be so manipulated as to
allow any white man to vote "unless he were an idiot" and
to prevent any Negro from voting even if he were "a gradu-
ate of Harvard." Every method has been employed against
the colored man, up to "red shirt," "Ku Klux" campaigns
and less picturesque but equally forceful terrorism. In some
districts a colored man seals his death warrant by even at-
tempting to register. Nothing in the code of "Southern
chivalry" will prevent similar treatment of colored women.
Will the women of the United States who know something at
least of disfranchisement tolerate such methods to prevent
intelligent colored women from voting?
374
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2883
The Return of the Hapsburgs?
By EUGENE S. BAGGER
Hungary cannot be satisfied with assisting Poland against
Soviet Russia, but she must finish Western Communism as well.
... It would be child's play for a good Magyar division to
rid Vienna of the Red Terror, and when that's done the collapse
of Czecho-Slovakia will become inevitable. . . . Once we are
allied to an Austria where nationalism is restored we shall
become a powerful factor in the situation with which everybody,
even Russia, will have to reckon.
THE day this statement appeared in the Budapest review
Magyar Kiilpolitika ("Hungarian Foreign Policy"),
semi-official mouthpiece of Premier Count Teleki, the rest
of the Government's official and semi-official apparatus was
working overtime disclaiming responsibility for the raid on
the Austrian village Fiirstenfeld. On July 28, eight hun-
dred Magyar soldiers, disguised as peasants but operating
in military formation, crossed the Austrian frontier, raided
the Fiirstenfeld arsenal and carried off 21 machine guns,
1,938 rifles, several thousand rounds of ammunition and
large quantities of other military equipment. The supplies
seized amount to one-fifteenth of the armament authorized
for Austria by the Treaty of St. Germain. The Hungarian
Government, using its old formula employed during the
White Terror, officially denied that the National Army had
anything to do with the outrage, and declared the raid con-
ducted by Austrian smugglers "masquerading" as Magyar
soldiers, partly in order to compromise the Horthy regime.
Nevertheless, the inquiry conducted by Colonel Korner of
,the Austrian War Office proved the attack the work of regu-
lar Magyar soldiery.
But the Fiirstenfeld outrage is not an isolated instance
of Magyar aggression, and the passage quoted from the
Kiilpolitika is typical of the extensive campaign carried on
by the Budapest press against the republic of Austria. And
this press campaign is only the advance publicity of a new
crime planned by Horthy's henchmen. Having transformed
Hungary into a lake of blood, they seek to extend their
activities. They are preparing to invade Austria, to set up
a White Terror at Vienna, to restore the monarchy and
then to turn against the democratic republic of Czecho-
slovakia. These designs are openly boasted of by the Mag-
yar militarists. The reactionary press of Budapest — and
there is none other today — frankly discusses the necessity
and the advantages of the conquest of Austria, and military
preparations are in full swing on the border.
All this is not unknown to the Allied powers. The Aus-
trian Government has repeatedly protested against the Hun-
garian raids and the maintenance of armed camps of Aus-
trian monarchists on the Hungarian side of the frontier.
On August 3 Foreign Secretary Renner, after submitting
evidence on the Fiirstenfeld raid, pointed out to the Entente
representatives that as the peace treaty renders Austria
defenseless the republic expects protection from the Entente.
Austria has lived up honestly to the disarmament clause of
St. Germain; Hungary has not yet ratified the Treaty of
Trianon, and not only has she not reduced her armed
strength, but is conducting general mobilization. The prep-
arations of Hungary to attack the Austrian republic are de-
scribed in three official declarations of the Austrian War
Office based on affidavits of eye-witnesses. (The Zalaegers-
zeg encampment had been the subject of an Austrian protest
to the Council of Ambassadors in June.) Here is a sum-
mary of the three statements:
A monarchist legion, recruited from Austrian citizens on
Austrian territory, is maintained at Zalaegerszeg, a few
miles from the frontier on the Hungarian side. The pur-
pose of this legion is to overthrow the present Austrian Gov-
ernment and to restore monarchy. Every member of the
legion is pledged by solemn oath to that end. The roster of
the Terror Detachment which is to take charge of Vienna
after the occupation is already drawn up. The terrorists
are to be rewarded by free loot. The legionaries are well
paid and fed. They wear the uniform of the old Austro-
Hungarian army, with the Imperial crown and a white rib-
bon on their caps. Regulations are as in the old army. The
units are equipped with machine guns and receive special
training in barricade fighting and bombing. Apart from
this Austrian legion an army of 30,000 Magyar soldiers
(regiments are named) are stationed near Szombathely,
another frontier town, ready for orders to march on Vienna.
This army consists of picked men, its recruits coming up
under general mobilization orders after being carefully
sifted; and Jews, trade unionists and intellectuals, instead
of being armed, are enrolled in battalions of forced labor.
Besides the Austrian legion at Zalaegerszeg there is a Croat
legion in the neighborhood and a Slovak legion at Raab. A
Transylvanian legion, to be used against Rumania, is also
being formed.
The foregoing the Austrian war office declares officially.
But the Magyar intrigue is continuing on the other side of
the frontier as well. Foreign Secretary Renner rather un-
derstated his case by saying to the Entente diplomats that
the Magyar activities rendered the internal consolidation
of Austria impossible. In fact, the Magyar influence per-
meates every phase of Austrian life. It dominates the
Christian Socialist press of Vienna; it is behind the anti-
Semitic and monarchist organizations and secret fraterni-
ties, it has undermined the bureaucracy and, of course,
furnishes the rallying center for officers of the old army
and the aristocracy. The June anti-semitic outbreaks at
Vienna and Graz, instigated by Magyar officers and secret
agents; the mob that beat up Jews on the streets and de-
molished Jewish stores cheered Horthy. The Christian So-
cialists and German Nationals cordially detest one another,
but they agree in their hatred of the Socialists and their
love for Horthy.
But the attentions of the Magyar Government and its
terrorist retinue are not limited to German-Austria. A sys-
tematic campaign of calumny is conducted in the Budapest
press against what it calls the "bolshevik outpost in the
West" — the Czecho-Slovak republic. Not content with call-
ing its opponent names, the Magyar Government seems bent
on stirring up a bolshevist revolt in Slovakia, which would
then be used as a pretext for an invasion. On August 5 the
Czecho-Slovak official press bureau announced that one Jan
Vavrica, member of the Slovak Committee at Vienna, was
arrested at Bratislava (Pressburg) for Communist activi-
ties. Evidence showed that Vavrica was financed by the
Budapest Government! He is also charged with negotiat-
ing, in behalf of the Magyar Government, a military agree-
ment with Poland, according to which Slovakia would be
invaded from the North by the Poles, from the South by the
Magyars, and a provisional government set up. The Czecho-
Oct. 6, 1920]
The Nation
375
Slovak statement adds, rather ambiguously, that this scheme
was submitted and approved at Paris. Irredentist plots
and hoards of arms and ammunition were discovered last
spring by the Rumanian authorities in Transylvania, and
several Magyar officers were convicted.
The mad imperialism of Horthy's Hungary is a menace
to all her neighbors, but the most immediate danger is to
Austria, and this not only because she is the weakest of all.
The fact is that the anti-Austrian campaign of the Magyar
press and the anti-Austrian measures of the Magyar Gov-
ernment are, in a sense, the answer of French diplomacy
to the declaration of neutrality by the republics of Austria
and Czecho-Slovakia in the Russo-Polish war. Whether or
not the secret military alliance between France and Horthy
has actually been concluded or not is doubtful. The Vienna
and Berlin press published reports that an agreement was
signed at Godollo, near Budapest, on July 27 or 28 (on the
eve of the Fiirstenfeld raid). The Berliner Tageblatt even
printed a summary of the terms by which France insures
"rectification" of the Hungarian frontiers, at the expense
of Czecho-Slovakia and Rumania, in exchange for Hun-
garian military aid against Soviet Russia. The French
Foreign Office subsequently denied the existence of a mili-
tary agreement, and stated that no frontier changes were
contemplated. On the other hand, the Budapest press per-
sists in talking of the "new French orientation." In the
Hungarian Assembly Premier Teleki declared that the Gov-
ernment did not intend to send an expeditionary force to
aid Poland, and the mobilization was ordered merely as a
"defensive measure." But it should be remembered that the
pivotal fear of France, the obsession around which French
diplomacy crystallizes, is not Russia but Germany. Horthy
may be a completely useless ally against Soviet Russia, and
yet he may be extremely useful against German-Austria.
A Magyar occupation of Vienna would put an end to the
dream of uniting Austria with Germany — indeed, it might
be the starting-point of the dismemberment of Germany
itself, as it might usher in a Bavaro-Austro-Hungarian
monarchy under a Hapsburg or Wittelsbach — a scheme by
no means frowned upon by the Quai d'Orsay.
Still, there is a consoling element in the wretched situa-
tion on the Danube. The flirtation of the Paris statesmen
with the murderers at Budapest had the beneficent result of
opening the eyes of the succession states to the real bearing
of French policy. The conclusion of the "Little Entente"
whereby Czecho-Slovakia, Jugoslavia, and Rumania serve
notice that they are determined to run their own destinies
is in effect a refusal by these three countries to be the tools
and dupes of France. Yet the history of the past two years
has demonstrated the complete inability of French diplo-
macy to learn a lesson and its unerring genius for choosing
the worst possible course. As likely as not Paris will seek
compensation for the abatement of its influence at Prague,
Belgrade, and Bucharest by further fostering good relations
with Budapest. Such a course would be consistent with the
French advocacy of a "Danubian federation" — a conception
aptly described by Mr. Benes, the Czecho-Slovak foreign
minister, as a second edition of the Hapsburg empire. Con-
tinuation of the Magyar military preparations and press
campaign against Austria would indicate that the Magyars
feel sure of the good will of France. Turning Vienna over
to the White Terror of Messrs. Horthy, Pronay, Hejjas, and
Hapsburg would be an ironic aftermath of the great war.
Yet the reestablishment of royalty in Central Europe with
the official sanction of "democratic" nations is not in the
least an unthinkable eventuality. Horthy is the most likely
candidate for divine rights. But a Hapsburg is by no
means impossible.
Superfine Frenzy
Broken Images. By Azalea Heppelthwaite Rosenberg. Lit-
tle Brown Jug and Company.
THIS volume, by the distinguished lyricist whose "The
Jaded Lute" and "Whiffs of Yesterday" are liberally
represented in all conservative anthologies, marks a distinct
divagation in Miss Rosenberg's manner. She has heeded
the adjuration of the modernists to grow young along with
them; the result is a collection which will be called typical
of all that is best, because newest and noisiest, in our
poetry. It will be — it has been already — hailed as the zenith
of the year's lyric achievement.
As is the fashion, the book is introduced by two poets of
admitted standing — the very introductions admit it — and by
three college professors with a penchant for reading verse
later than Chaucer. Miss Rosenberg is hailed, by them, as a
super-Sappho, an over-Ovid, a 17-ounce Pound, a stonier
Sandburg. Her lines that follow are no anti-climax. Con-
sider the opening tenderness of the Imagist Portraits, from
which we cull three miniatures:
Her
Your eyes
Are amorous coal-scuttles
Filled with a jonquil passion
To tease the hurrying clocks
Of time-spirited candle-sticks.
Faugh! I would empty you,
But the butcher's bill is unpaid.
The reference to daylight saving, in the fourth line, is a
fine example of the opening vistas of subject-matter claimed
by many minnesingers of today; only the concluding ref-
erence to an unpaid bill is reminiscent of an earlier hour
in Miss Rosenberg's singing.
A Poet
Benign St. Vitus
Permeates your thinks,
O prophet of an alkaline future,
Heroic and punctual
Last roe of salmon.
Myself
The universe
Minus a dust-grain,
I.
The unique modesty of this is astonishing. We call to mina
no other present-day singer who doubts that the complete
universe, including the Scandinavian, is in himself.
A more incandescent note is sounded in the section en-
titled Images of Fire. Mark the thermic overtones of these
four unnamed sparks:
I.
A tired shoe-maker
Bats the tennis-ball of his enthusiasm
Into two faded violets
And a cigarette stub.
Eheu, where art thou,
Dionysos!
IV.
Three jade-white eyes
376
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2883
White with the moon-lust.
There is another argument,
But I have forgotten it.
XIX.
An unlighted candle
Turns off the buoyant faucet
Of six suns,
As for the seventh,
Mexico is not north of us.
XL.
After fire,
Embers,
Cinders,
Ashes . . .
And more
Ashes.
The caustic preciosity of Robinson, the sounding line of
Marlowe and Milton, the surge and thunder of the Jugo-
slavian epic singers, speak in certain of these numbers.
Yet the truer triumph of Miss Rosenberg, realism punc-
tuated with a gasp, may best be found in a poem which
was listened to last spring by the Poetry Society of Amer-
ica and called forth a salvo of applause.
May in the Ghetto
Dawn upon Suffolk Street.
Gaunt cops owl by,
Tenement litter yawp the Forwards,
Push carts totter past,
Faceless droves of garment-workers
Din on the dirty pavements.
A sparrow teeters on a sagging wire,
Trilling dusty arias
To the scraggly geranium slip
Blooming in blood
Squeezed from these Ghetto faces.
May — discovered !
Who was that guinea
That stumbled across America?
Space forbids quotation from the first movement of
Mestus, the astringent acidity of Four Adaptations from
M'ai Ti Po, and the bewildering beauty of the lyric se-
quence, Flies from M-xny Ointments. Suffice it to say that
here and elsewhere in the volume are fulfilment, promise,
and more fulfilment. It is caviare to the private, and sauer-
kraut to the general. Homer knew only Homer ; but Shake-
speare knew Homer and Shakespeare. Posterity will know
both of these, and Azalea Heppelthwaite Rosenberg.
Clement Wood
In the Driftway
NOT by any means the least fascinating highway in
New York is Varick Street. All day long its pave-
ments thunder beneath the wheels of wagons and trucks,
at least half of them drawn by honest, fat, and sprightly
horses, instead of being propelled by motors. Its sidewalks
are lined with two-story-and-basement red brick houses, fast
vanishing relics of a departed day. The window sills and
roof line of at least one of them have a rakish list to star-
board which is vastly preferable to the rigidly vertical dig-
nity of the pretentious houses further uptown. There are
columned doorways to admire and small round windows
cut next to them; there is the old red-stone Hudson River
Railroad terminal, somehow a welcome relief after the glar-
ing white marble of the Grand Central Station. The side
streets are almost irresistible, part of their attraction being
due to the fact that they have names instead of numbers.
There is history in Varick Street, and variety, and numerous
ancient associations that cling tenaciously to its cobbles, and
there is beauty ; for at the end of it on a hazy morning the
spire of the Woolworth Building rises strange, mysterious,
unreal, the highest tower of a dream city far beyond New
York, so high and so far that the white smoke that drifts
across it looks like a cloud, and the very top is frequently
completely hidden in the mist. "God's House" the little
children of the East Side call it — for does it not reach right
up to Heaven?
* # * # #
THE peerless apostle of normalcy should study the cheer-
ful columns of the Sun of New York. There he might
recently have read: "The situation in Trieste was normal
this morning. Martial law continues in force. . . . Seven
persons have been killed and fifty injured in the last three
days."
# * * * #
THE Drifter, being weary of the company of his fellow
human animals, ate alone, and mounted the bus. Down
crowded Fifth Avenue it took him, where double lines of
shiny-topped limousines glided smoothly beneath the neck-
laces of brilliant street-lamps. The Drifter dismounted at
Washington Square and wandered eastward — past the old
Marble Cemetery where James Monroe lies buried, into the ,
teeming, steaming East Side where baby-carriages are
parked along the curbs thicker than the limousines on Fifth
Avenue, where the tenements spill over into the streets and
bescarfed grandmothers carry their chairs to the gutters
and croon old-world lullabies to oblivious babies asleep
through all the winking of the dim lights, the screeching of
itinerant street gangs, and the steady hum of the street.
On he wandered, past pitiful little Stuyvesant Fish Park,
and southward toward Seward Park, through better-lit
streets where push-carts contest the baby-carriage's mon-
opoly of the curb; through Ca'nal Street, that Little White
Way of the East Side, and out on the Manhattan Bridge.
The Bridge lifted him gradually to the level of tenement
windows, where his aye intruded upon little girls precari-
ously lifting cut-glass bowls to the topmost kitchen shelves,
upon weary gatherings of all the boarders about inadequate
tables, upon preparations for a night on the fire escape.
Then, as the bridge arched higher and higher, he looked
down on the roofs, to the gay lights of a Cherry Street
block party deep below, until finally he came out above the
water. He stopped and drank deep of the sea air blowing
fresh from the harbor. Before him the great sweep of
Brooklyn Bridge loomed dim and black; below, the shifting,
lucent water, catching and losing the echoes of every light.
On lower Manhattan a few late-lit offices rose like hanging
gardens into the night, or like some fairy mountainside of
Japan, lantern-starred. The Grand Canal of Venice has
nothing to compare in romance and mystery with that
picture; the Seine and the Thames and the Tiber are mere
creeks beside that mighty river, and their arching bridges
shriveled in the Drifter's memory to toy building-blocks.
He swore a mighty oath to recall and revisit the splendid
vistas of the city— then remembered vaguely that he had
sworn just such a mighty oath long before.
The Drifter
Oct. 6, 1920]
The Nation
377
Correspondence
A Perplexed Voter
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: How shall one make the best use of his vote in the
coming presidential election?
From the speeches of the Republican and Democratic candi-
dates it is evident that no stretch of the imagination can place
either of them upon a par with the distinguished men of even
the smaller nations of Europe. Harding seems incapable of
formulating any statesmanlike policy, and Cox seems to have no
higher ideal than that of "calling the kettle black." It is to this
humiliating choice that we come because of our rotten political
system.
What can we do about it? We must smash the machines;
must make radical changes in our electoral system; must make
it possible to gauge accurately the prevailing opinion of the elec-
torate as Adams testifies that he could do in the time prior to
1776. All these things may be done by a few and easily effected
changes in the election laws, but that is a matter for the future
and the question remains as to what a lover of liberty is to do
in the present emergency.
There are the alternatives of voting for the candidates of
either the (1) Farmer-Labor, the (2) Single Tax, the (3) Pro-
hibition, or the (4) Socialist party. The first is but a replica
of the two main parties, a vote for which would carry no effec-
tive protest; the second is too restricted in its scope to satisfy
the demands of one who has wider views than the Single Tax;
the third has passed its usefulness; and the fourth is obnoxious
to the great majority of voting citizens.
Truly the conscientious voter is between the devil and the
deep sea, and the temptation is to say, a plague upon all your
houses, I will not vote. But this is to subvert our liberties, to
ignobly wash your hands of the country's welfare as Pilate
washed his hands of the life of Christ. To me it seems that
the least any forward-looking man or woman can do is to use
the ballot in November to register the loudest protest against
present political conditions, and I seek a way to make my pro-
test most effective.
I condemn the actions of the radical Americans — from the
Department of Justice down — who have harried out of the coun-
try, or imprisoned for long terms, those whose only offense is
that they have voiced unpopular opinions, those who have had
the courage of their convictions sufficient to raise their voices
in opposition to prevailing opinion or hysteria. I decry the
abortive attempts to protect the people from the greedy prof-
iteers. I am ashamed for my country that it should continue
penalizing political prisoners long after all other countries have
proclaimed amnesty to all such.
The most emphatic protest of which I can conceive to all these
undemocratic actions would be a smashing big vote for Eugene
V. Debs, not as a socialistic vote, but as a vote for a sincere man
who, however mistaken, has had the courage to follow his lights,
Contributors t© This Issue
John Kenneth Turner is an author of note.
William Pickens has been instructor in classics at Talla-
dega College and dean of Morgan College.
Eugene S. Bagger is a New York journalist who has
made a special study of central European affairs.
Clement Wood is an American poet and writer.
Paul D. Cravath, a well-known lawyer, was advisory
counsel of the American Mission to the Inter-Allied
Council on War Purchases and Finance.
and to endure punishment with a Christ-like spirit. I abhor
the doctrine of the Socialists that calls for governmental regula-
tion of our lives, and that would put all the industries of the
country under the control of government agents, but as there
is no immediate danger of the American public adopting such an
experiment I feel safe in voting for the man Debs.
No other action will carry effective rebuke to the present
administration, to the hysteria that has prevailed, to the intol-
erance that has been manifested, and, more than all, it will
notify the political manipulators that there is a God in Israel.
Baltimore, September 8 F. Lincoln Hutchins
Maxim Gorki to H. G. Wells
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: It happens to have been the London Times in which
"the ghastly absurdity" appears, but it might so well have been
the New York Times that I hope you will give the inclosed
open letter from Maxim Gorki to H. G. Wells space in your
correspondence column:
"On April 2 the Times published the experiences of an
Englishman recently returned from Russia. Among other
things he relates that human fingers were swimming in the
broth served in one of the communal kitchens of Petrograd. If
this ghastly absurdity had been published in some obscure rag
whose object is to appeal to all the worst instincts of the masses,
I should not have paid any attention to the ravings of an em-
bittered and certainly far from clever person, but as the Times
saw fit to publish the story, I wish to tell you that it is false.
"Believe me, dear Wells, we Russians have not yet reached
the stage of cannibalism, and it is my belief that we shall not
reach it, despite the endeavors of the highly civilized Western
Powers to bring about conditions which would force the Rus-
sians to savagery and degeneration.
"We are living in times when even the most perverted and
wicked imagination could not manufacture a lie or a calumny
which could be more awful and more degrading than the actual
truth. One of these revolting truths is the hunting down of
Russia — a country which is putting the whole of its creative
power into a social experiment of the greatest significance and
importance to humanity at large.
"We Russians should have been left either to our own wisdom
or to our own folly. In either case we would have provided
the rest of Europe with an instructive spectacle. However,
Europe, as represented by Great Britain and France, is en-
deavoring to strangle us. I do not think that Europe will suc-
ceed in this, but it is just possible her policy toward Russia
will drive the Russians in the direction of Asia. Do you not
foresee in this possible union with the Asiatic nationalities a
terrible threat to the culture of Europe? As far as I am con-
cerned this question obsesses me like a nightmare.
"Allow me, in conclusion, to say a few words about Lenin. It
has been asserted in the Times that this man surrounds himself
with Asiatic, semi-barbaric splendor. This is a shameful fabri-
cation. Lenin is devoid of any love of power. He is a puritan
by nature, and lives as simply and unpretentiously in the
Kremlin as he did while an emigre in Paris. He is a big man,
and an honest man. His role in Russia is that of a colossal
plow which is indefatigably turning up a clogged, barren soil.
"Believe me, I do not shut my eyes to the negative manifes-
tations produced by the war and the revolution, but at the
same time I cannot help seeing within the Russian nation the
birth of creative will power which, step by step, transforms our
people into an actual civilizing power. And to me the actual
is the beginning of all beginnings, as at the beginning there
was action.
"With best wishes, dear Wells,
"I remain, yours,
"M. Gorki"
Baltimore, September 20 E. Buckner Kirk
378
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2883
Books
Economic Studies of the War
Publications of the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. Oxford University Press:
Early Economic Effects of the European War Upon Canada.
By Adam Shortt.
Early Effects of the European War upon the Finance, Com-
merce and Industry of Chile. By L. S. Rowe.
Economic Effects of the War upon Women and Children in
Great Britain. By Irene Osgood Andrews assisted by Mar-
garet A. Hobbes.
Federal Military Pensions in the United States. By Wm. H.
Glasson.
Effects of the War upon Insurance with Special Reference to the
Substitution of Insurance for Pensions. By Wm. F. Gephart.
The Financial History of Great Britain (1914-1918). By Frank
L. McVey.
British War Administration. By John A. Fairlie.
War Thrift and Government Control of the Liquor Business in
Great Britain and the United States. By Thomas N. Carver.
The Effect of the Great War upon Agriculture in the United
States and Great Britain. By Benjamin H. Hibbard.
Disabled Soldiers and Sailors: Pensions and Training. By
Edward T. Devine assisted by Lilian Brandt.
British Labor Conditions and Legislation During the War. By
M. B. Hammond.
Effects of the War on Money, Credit and Banking in France
and the United States. By B. M. Anderson, Jr.
Direct and Indirect Costs of the Great World War. By Ernest
L. Bogart.
ALL of these works are under the Division of Economics and
History of the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. In August, 1911, a conference of statesmen, publicists,
and economists was held in Berne, and plans for an elaborate
series of investigations and reports were made. The war inter-
rupted and to a considerable extent changed the original plans,
which naturally did not include studies of war in the doing.
The result of the outbreak of war on the plans is that some of
the reports or studies deal with prewar conditions, some strictly
with war conditions, and some with both at once. Many of the
published studies are partial only, and the intention is expressed
of continuing and completing them.
Adam Shortt's study is practically a single chapter published
in advance of the entire work. It traces the financial and eco-
nomic history of Canada from the break, in 1912, of the expan-
sion boom to and through the early days of the war. The im-
mediate effect of the war was to intensify the paralysis of trade
and industry in which the collapse of the boom had left Canada.
The article then traces the effects of war's "unlimited demand
for men, materials, and supplies at ever-increasing prices and
rates of remuneration." The facts and figures show vividly the
effect of war spending on the life and industry of a small
country.
L. S. Rowe's study of Chile seems at first approach to deal
with matters remote from the seat of war. But Chile has one
great export which ties her economic life to that of the great
world outside and upon which the great world has come to
lean heavily — nitrate. The sudden interruption of the world's
trade and the break-up of trade routes brought great disturbance
in Chile. Then the world demand for nitrate and copper rose,
the price of these commodities rose, and ultimately there came
a period of great prosperity. The report was prepared in 1915
and shows only the early effects. It abounds with facts and
figures tracing vividly the course of trade and that the more
clearly since it deals with abnormal conditions.
"Without the work of the women the war could not have gone
on," said a representative of the British Ministry in New York
in 1917. Irene Osgood Andrews, assisted by Margaret A.
Hobbes, presents a study of how women helped. Since much of
woman's war work was done by women who shifted from non-
essential to essential war industries, a bare statement that over
a million more women were employed in gainful occupations
during the war than before is not instructive. Nor do we gain
full light when we know that 1,392,000 females were taking the
place of men. The mass of details presented in this small
volume makes a summary difficult. Perhaps the most striking
chapter is the one describing the strict control of women workers
under the munitions act. Among the measures enforced were
prohibition of strikes and lockouts, no leave without certificates
and these but sparingly issued, and special tribunals to deal
with discipline. The regulation of wages was likewise severe
and the wage rates seem phenomenally low especially for war
times. It is stated that they reached only 25 shillings in 1917.
But full data in earnings are missing.
Wm. H. Glasson's monograph on military pensions is a his-
tory of such pensions from their beginnings in the United States.
It contains but a very scanty account of the pension and in-
surance legislation of the World War. But in view of the coming
additional burdens upon the country, such a history, chrono-
logical and analytical, is extremely useful. It is a volume of
over 300 pages, well indexed, and complete and full in its
analysis of legislation and expenditures for pensions from colonial
times to the present. Naturally the pensions granted to Civil
War veterans and their dependants are given the greater space.
It will prove a valuable work of reference.
The title of Wm. F. Gephart's study promises more than is
delivered. Instead of being a study of insurance with special
reference to "insurance for pensions" it is better described as a
study of insurance with incidental references to insurance for
pensions. But perhaps that is the meaning of special. It is a
comprehensive study of commercial or private insurance with
reference to the effect thereon of war, as affecting risks, and as
resulting in government action which affected the premiums.
The appendixes contain a brief outline of Federal legislation on
insurance during the war. But the 250 pages of text deal with
insurance, life, social, marine, and fire, much more from the point
of view of the company than from that of the government. Per-
haps there was an effort made to keep out of the field covered
by Glasson in the study just mentioned above.
The budget speeches of the British statesmen when assembled
constitute a remarkable body of oratorical and historical litera-
ture— those of Lloyd George and of McKenna on war finance
being among the most remarkable. Hartley Withers's "The
War and Lombard Street," is a description of the early days of
the war well entitled to use as part of its title the title of
Bagehot's famous work. It was with such material that
Frank L. McVey might have dealt. It seems that he fell short
of his opportunity. But the subject-matter is difficult. He is
rash, indeed, who tries to explain in brief compass the tax
system of Great Britain. The property and income tax is the
greatest "engine of finance" the world has ever seen. But like
a Liberty motor it has a multitude of parts, and McVey has
not been able to see the driving power because confused by the
parts.
One of the dramatic episodes of the war was when Lloyd
George became Minister of Munitions and opened a brand new
portfolio. This act drove home the thought that the war had to
be won behind as well as on the lines. It was therefore a
peculiarly interesting duty which John A. Fairlie undertook when
he was assigned to describe the way in which the Government
of Great Britain was militarized in every branch, every "form
and agency of action." Particularly interesting are the twenty-
two pages on munitions and aircraft. But the interest is also
great in the navy, the army, defense of the realm, war relief,
trade and transportation, food control, and finance. The way
in which Parliament made the Government practically dictator
is possibly the most significant feature of the story as told.
Oct. 6, 1920]
The Nation
379
Thomas N. Carver's two essays are bound up together, as both
deal with the proper conduct of common folks at home during
war. In both of these essays there is much preaching, though
the homilies are less conspicuous in the second than they are in
the first. Thrift is a difficult theme, and the balance between
thrift and penuriousness difficult to strike. When Mr. Carver
says that "for every woman who is physically and mentally sound
even one servant is a luxury unless she is actually engaged in
other productive work which would prevent her from doing her
own housework," he opens an endless debate. It was the ques-
tion of drunkenness rather than the question of drink per se
which first aroused public interest in drink control as a war
measure— or so runs Mr. Carver's explanation of war control.
Probably most of those who feel that prohibition as a permanent
policy was unfairly foisted on this nation will agree with him.
The prominence of the food question in war gives special in-
terest to Benjamin H. Hibbard's discussion of the effect of war
on agriculture. There is never any great supply of food beyond
the needs of a single season. When transportation facilities are
working smoothly we can take a chance that next year's crops
will be adequate somewhere. Seven lean years are not in our
calculations. But war not only cuts off farm labor; it cuts off,
or congests with men and munitions, the great channels of trade,
and the shortage of food then becomes dangerous. Mr. Hibbard's
study covers production and prices very thoroughly, but trans-
portation is not within his field of inquiry. Price control and
other measures are fully recorded. It is a vitally important
record and full of suggestions as to future policies.
The volume on disabled soldiers and sailors by Edward T.
Devine and Lilian Brandt is the largest of the series. About
ninety pages are devoted to the historical part, and then the
current developments in Great Britain, Canada, France, Ger-
many and Austria, and the United States are presented, fol-
lowed by four chapters in the new program. The latter covers
physical restoration, financial indemnities, and economic re-
establishment. While the United States has not so many dis-
abled to care for as some of the other countries yet there are
enough and to spare. Unfortunately the problem of this restora-
tion has not been well handled save on the medical and surgical
side. Mr. Devine's book is therefore all the more timely. He
draws his information from wide experience, especially from his
long stay in France in Red Cross duties. His long service in the
field of social ameliorization and peculiar power of clear and
forceful presentation make the book of great value.
Wide public interest centers in M. B. Hammond's study of
labor conditions during the war. One of the first things that
the British economists did when Great Britain entered the war
was to make a special study of labor conditions. The contribu-
tions of the different members of the investigating committee
were assembled and edited by Kirkaldy in a volume which made
a distinctly valuable contribution to war research. Since then
the English economists and statisticians have continued their
studies, and the results have been put to most excellent use by
Mr. Hammond. There is a good account of the relations of the
Government with the trades unions during the war, and a good
study of industrial unrest. But probably of more immediate
and direct interest is the chapter on industrial reconstruction.
This chapter covers among other matters of first importance the
Whitley committee and its recommendations, the discussions of
these recommendations and their adoption, together with the
first steps toward putting them into operation. Those many
persons who speak so fluently about the Whitley councils will
find here a means of giving real content to their words.
It is not casting any aspersions on the other authors to say
that Mr. Anderson's book is the most learned of all in this series,
nor is that statement meant as other than a compliment to
Mr. Anderson. In these days when the foreign exchanges are
playing hide-and-seek and racing hither and yon without visible
purpose, it is good to be shown once again that there is a science
of banking that has a sound foundation and firm principles.
The chief trouble with the study is that it stops too soon, mostly
with 1917 and early 1918, and it is to be hoped it may be con-
tinued. We are forced by lack of space to select matters on
which to comment. Possibly the most important feature of
French finance was the strength of the Banque de France. This
institution bore the larger part of the burden of war finance.
The legal limit of its issues before the war was 6.8 billions of
francs, the limit was ultimately placed at 30 billions, and the
maximum advances to the state (June, 1918) were 21 billions.
Yet it stood the strain. On the American side the analysis of
the workings of the Federal Reserve system is the most interest-
ing part of the study.
Two things impress one immediately about E. L. Bogart's
study of the costs of the war. First is its completeness, and
second is the early date of its publication. It covers not only
England but the five main parts of the British Empire as well;
also France, Russia, Italy, the United States, Belgium, Japan,
Rumania, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Bulgaria, and to
a lesser extent other Entente Allies. The story in each case
is fairly complete as to the direct money costs, and it is rather
amazing that so much could be assembled so soon after the war.
Mr. Bogart reaches a grand total net (that is, excluding advances
by one country to another) of $186,000,000,000 for money costs.
This is somewhat lower than the figure most commonly used of
$200,000,000,000. The details of the differences would carry us
too far. The study covers not only expenditures but taxation,
borrowing, and banking and currency so far as banknotes and
other advances and paper money contributed to the meeting of
the costs of the war. Of course all estimates are made on the
basis of par of exchange before the war. A correction of this
error, which is in all the other estimates, cannot be made
until we know on what basis the war debts will eventually be
settled. While it is a rather pitiful business adding up in money
values the loss of human life, yet the human mind seems to
require some such estimate. Known dead 10,000,000, 6,300,000
seriously wounded, 14,000,000 otherwise wounded, 6,000,000
prisoners or missing: this is the total of the casualty lists. To
the 10,000,000 known dead he adds 3,000,000 presumably dead
and values the lives lost at $33,500,000,000. Then there is $30,-
000,000,000 more for property loss, $45,000,000,000 for produc-
tion loss, and, adding in war relief, losses to neutrals, and some
other items we get $151,600,000,000 indirect losses, or an aggre-
gate of $338,000,000,000.
The Division of Economics and History of the Carnegie En-
dowment is organized to "promote a thorough and scientific in-
vestigation of the causes and results of war." The foregoing
studies give the economic settings and results of war in many
fields, but of the economic causes nothing beyond suggestions.
Still it is scientific to study effects first in search for causes.
Carl C. Plehn
Progress
Recent Developments in European Thought. Essays Arranged
and Edited by F. S. Marvin. Oxford University Press.
\7L fHILE Professor Bury and Dean Inge are assuring us that
* * the idea of progress is an illusion, and that we are, to all
intents and purposes, on a level with the men of the Stone Age
— and, by the same reasoning, on a level with the apes, and
reptiles, and amoebas — Mr. Marvin is busily editing lectures on
the advance of the human race. This volume, the third in The
Unity Series, covers the period from 1870 to the present. In
a general survey the editor points out the extreme brilliance of
the contributions to knowledge, especially in the domains of
biology, physics, and history, of this era, and the rise of Marxian
socialism, which he thinks defeated in Western Europe but
militant in Russia. He rather apologizes for having no chapter
on the League of Nations; but it is perhaps wise not to write
a biography on the day of an infant's birth.
380
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2883
Naturally, the essays by different authors vary in value.
The least satisfactory is the first, on Philosophy. The author,
justifying the ways of St. Thomas, advances backward, like
Cloten, his adversary — Bertrand Russell— fleeing ever forward
to his face. He really thinks, in this day and generation, that
there has been no progress, but only decline, since Aquinas, and
he overlooks the one real service that the great schoolman per-
formed for Catholicism (that of transmitting Aristotelian real-
ism), in his endeavor to show that only "neo-Thomism" can
reconcile the mysteries of faith and the demands of reason.
The whole essay is a rebuttal of Russell's "anti-theism" and a
discussion of his mathematical discoveries.
The apologetic interest is also visible in F. B. Jevons's lecture
on Religion, aiming, as it does, to show that the essence of relig-
ion is love, and not magic or any of the primitive ideas uncov-
ered by Frazer's researches into savage life. More remarkable
is it that C. H. Herford, in his study of recent Poetry, is also
concerned to show that, whereas the period began with a marked
hostility to religion, it ended in finding a synthesis between
piety and science. The first of the three phases into which he
analyzes his subject was scientific; the second symbolic; the
third was dominated by many motives, among which he distin-
guishes the idea of "creative evolution," the new freedom of
youth, the new realism, the cult of force, and the new idealism
of nation, democracy, and Catholicism.
The most brilliant essays are those dealing with the fields of
thought most intensively cultivated by the last generation. Mr.
Gooch shows how history has been revolutionized in perspective,
in method, and in treatment, by the vast discoveries of fresh
material as well as by the influence of new sciences. The pic-
ture of mankind, that used to be so neatly framed in time limits
not exceeding three thousand years and in space limits of the
area covered by the Semitic and European races, has now ex-
panded to many times its original dimensions. New worlds
have been conquered in the mastery of Egyptian, Babylonian,
and Cretan civilizations; while the history of modern Europe
has been enriched by the flood of documents poured forth from
the archives. In like manner the content of history has been
expanded ; it is no longer past politics, but includes every human
activity, economic, intellectual, social, religious, and artistic.
Compared with the treatment accorded History, the studies here
offered of Political Theory and of Economic Progress are
slightly disappointing. The first is dedicated to an argument
against the "powerful and malignant theory" of Karl Marx,
and to a regretful discussion of the admitted fact that authority
is gradually leaving the state to take up its dwelling in other
corporations. The issay on Economic Progress is really nothing
but a picture of industrial England in the year 1842. Beauti-
fully done in its way, it is not at all what one expects from its
title and place in the present collection.
Probably the average reader will find less new material in the
chapter on Biology than in the one on Atomic Theories." Where-
as the first performs its task satisfactorily by tracing the full
development of the Darwinian hypothesis, the latter grapples
with the problems that are even now crying for solution. The
miracle of the universe is only matched by the miracle of thought
that has so far unraveled the processes of nature that men can
now measure the velocity of light and weigh the sun and the
atom. The three factors to be reckoned with by the scientist
are matter, electricity, and force, and each of these seems to
be divisible into natural units, atoms, ions, and electrons. What
is the ether, that substance which, if it exists, must combine a
rigidity greater than that of steel with a fluidity greater than
that of the most volatile gas? What is the meaning of the
newly discovered phenomena of radioactivity, by which elements
are transmuted and by which rays are generated which, could
they attain a velocity equal to that of light, promise to develop
an infinite force? What is the bearing of the theory of rela-
tivity? These and many like problems still baffle the trained
and acute minds that have progressed so much further than
former generations dreamed that they can at least ask such
questions and keep sounding for the answers.
Essays on art and music complete an interesting volume.
Both are subjective, and both are concerned more with aesthetics
than with the actual performances of the last generation of
artists and composers. Taken as a whole, the cumulative im-
pression of these various lectures is greater than that of any
one taken separately. All in all, they show that, however pes-
simistic recent political developments may have made us, we
have every right to feel highly optimistic when contemplating
the field of intellectual achievement. Preserved Smith
Caliban
Caliban. By W. L. George. Harper and Brothers.
rpHERE are novels that make history, like "Uncle Tom's
*■ Cabin"; there are those that illustrate it, like "Caliban."
Mr. George has grasped in its concrete terms one of the fun-
damental things in our civilization — the press. His report may
not be faultlessly accurate; there may be depths he has not
reached, complications he has not disentangled. But his ac-
count has great fulness of matter, dogged closeness of observa-
tion, fine solidity, and burning candor. It is astonishing enough
that the popular dailies have been friendly to him and to his
book at all. Their attitude must arouse in him a slightly sar-
donic mood. For he could turn upon each of them with the
ancient and devastating remark: de te fabula narratur.
Bulmer is his hero. It was, perhaps, a mistake to call him
Caliban. For Caliban was less than human and had something
of the gentleness of the animals. Also Caliban was alone.
Bulmer is never alone. It is that which makes him Bulmer. In-
utter physical solitude he is still the crowd, the mob, the herd.
He has its aimless energy, its unreasoning jumpiness and fierce-
ness. Incapable of reflection or repose, he understands it .be-
cause he is at one with it. "He thought nothing that the most
vulgar could not think, but he thought it with an intensity and
brought it about with a will that gave it splendor." Cloistered
and fastidious souls are unwilling even to believe in the exist-
ence of this type of hero. Yet he is all about us — in the great
executive, sometimes a university president, who talks like a
village parson or a ward politician as soon as he leaves the
technique of his job; in the captain of industry whose leisure
hours are empty if it rains on the golf-course and there are no
cheap magazines at hand. These heroes do not lead men; they
sum them up. Their difference from their lowliest fellows is
merely quantitative. What all desire they have had the luck
and energy to secure; what all would be they have become.
They are the modern folk-heroes not because they set an aim but
because they are images in which the folk can worship itself.
Bulmer's beginnings were small. But there was never, could
never have been, any doubt as to his success. It is one thing
to know that the public wants "zip," Bulmer's special brand
of "pep." An aloof aesthete may share such objective knowl-
edge and shudder. It is another thing to be Bulmer and want
"zip" oneself and believe in it and worship it. Similarly he
was, later on, himself often instructed and convinced by the
editorials in his own newspapers. And he was speaking to him-
self as much as to his readers when he said: "I'll give 'em
Liberalism before I've done. Liberalism and empire. Liberal-
ism and beer; I'll show 'em that it wasn't to the tune of the
harmonium that Englishmen spanked the Pope and poleaxed a
king." He knew subtler and more shameful things. He knew
that the love stories in his magazines should be "vicious in en-
vironment and pure in spirit" and that the big news stories must
"show the public something immoral. They'll do it if it isn't
found out, and vote against it if it is." And all these things
he knew profoundly from within. He caught others in no snare
in which he was not himself entangled. His eloquent defense
of his publications, their policy and their influence, was not
Oct. 6, 1920]
The Nation
381
in any degree meant to drive out a lurking doubt in himself.
His fire needed no fuel; it was always hot and bright. Thus at
the crucial moment of his life — for we are convinced that he
wanted Janet with all his heart — he pleads in words like the
legend flashed on the screen during a sentimental movie: "Of
course, love sanctifies!" And Janet answers: "It does nothing
of the kind. Love doesn't sanctify in the way that lysol disin-
fects. Love happens4 There's nothing holy about it or unholy."
Before the realistic and critical intelligence the great Lord
Bulmer, owner of a dozen newspapers, maker and breaker of
cabinets, goes down to disaster like the humblest of his readers.
And like that reader he has not the slightest notion of what
has happened to him. He goes on multiplying his old activities,
speeding he knows not whither. It is of the essence of his char-
acter that he cannot reach either beneath or beyond his public
and gregarious self.
In his excellent "Literary Chapters" Mr. George asks the
question: "Who is the next man?" Who of the younger British
novelists is likely in time to occupy a position comparable to
that now held by Conrad, Bennett, Galsworthy, and Wells? He
mentions Gilbert Cannan and D. H. Lawrence; Frank Swinner-
ton and James Joyce; he mentions other candidates who seem
to us quite negligible. He does not, curiously enough, name
Somerset Maugham whose "Of Human Bondage" is the in-
disputably great British novel of the period. Neither, of course,
does he mention himself. Yet he is himself at least as reason-
able a candidate as any. It is true that he lacks grace and
spiritual intensity. His words never haunt one nor do his
sentences cling to the ear. But he projects the stuff of human
life and character with great breadth and vigor. He did so,
notably, in "The Stranger's Wedding"; he does so again and
on a larger scale in "Caliban." For Bulmer does not stand
alone. Three women enter into the book and all three are,
beyond question, magnificently alive. There is Eleanor with
her whalebone mind and her craggy frigidity; poor Hettie
clinging to life through her feeble and cowardly amorousness;
and, above all, Vi — elemental, stupid, astute only on a healthy
sensual plane; and terribly and pathetically futile in the end.
It is by the solid virtue of such creation rather than by finer
graces that the novelist makes his most permanent appeal. And
that virtue is the distinguishing one of Mr. George's art.
Books in Brief
rpHE seductive problem of social ethics is likely to prove no
* better than a snare and a pitfall to the unwary. It is
well known that the philosopher and the sociologist are no more
courteous in speaking of each other's work than common decency
requires. And yet it is a pity that the two cannot work to-
gether. In a period of rapid social flux like the present, when
programs disintegrate as fast as they can be integrated, any
serious attempt to determine a satisfactory theory of social
conduct must lean heavily upon speculation. An adequate
social ethic must look to the ultimate as well as to the proxi-
mate and the practical. It dare not concern itself with pro-
grams until after it has determined to what end conduct should
lead, and by what standards it must be gauged. It must ex-
amine the true nature of well-being, and in the light of this
analysis estimate the several political, economic, legal, educa-
tional, and other institutions and ideals as practical contri-
butions to the achievement of such well-being. As a result of
such an examination an intelligible theory of conduct, with ra-
tional ethical sanctions, presumably will emerge. In "An In-
troduction to Social Ethics" (Harcourt, Brace and Howe) John
M. Mecklin chooses to subordinate the philosopher to the sociolo-
gist. He assumes without inquiry that democracy is "the best
solution of the social problem" because of its "practical re-
sults" ; and he bases his theory of the social conscience upon the
psychological argument of evolution through organization.
When he turns to philosophy he lands in the camp of Spencer,
holding that the good is the achievement of a mobile equilibrium.
This fundamental idea of mobility involves an examination of
successive historical adjustments between institutions and
ideals, which brings the author to the field of applied sociology.
The book is frankly designed for American readers, and with
rather doubtful expediency the author makes constant and single
appeal to domestic backgrounds. One clear advantage is gained
by such a method: it serves to localize the problem and drive
it home to Americans. The historical facts made use of are
drawn largely from the contributions of recent students, and
his presentation of such forces as Calvinism, the colonial home,
the public school, the constitution, the industrial revolution in
the United States and the frontier serve as excellent chapters
in American history. One unfortunate mistake of fact should
be pointed out — that of attributing to Horace Mann alone the
establishment of the public school system, whereas it was the
rising labor group that gave a main impulse to the move-
ment; and there are some curious distributions of space. Far
more serious, however, is the isolation of the study from any
consideration of current European backgrounds. It is in
Europe and not in America that the most intelligent social
speculation is developing and the most suggestive experiments
are being made; and the omission of any serious consideration
of the great European movements — of communism, anarchism,
guild socialism, syndicalism — in their revolutionary bearing
upon social ethics is altogether surprising. Even in dealing
with American backgrounds his examination of current col-
lectivistic movements is of the slightest; and his comment upon
the role of the business man, organized in Chambers of Com-
merce, is little more than casual. In the index to the volume
there is a single reference each to socialism and capitalism,
and none to syndicalism, trade unionism, or labor. Such gaps
are hardly to be excused. The book is excellently written and
will be enjoyed by moderate liberals, who will find in it abun-
dant matter with which to buttress their liberalism. To the
more radical-minded the book will make little appeal.
i
DR. BINET-SANGLE, author of "Le Haras Humain" (Paris:
Albin Michel) and "L'Art de Mourir" (Albin Michel), has
no hope for the race except through its physical amelioration.
He is bitter against the Christian Church, as against all institu-
tions which encourage the coddling of weaklings. He approves
of legalizing infanticide when the offspring is imperfect, and he
proposes an arrangement for the painless elimination of adult
members of society who decide that life is no longer worth
living and who prove their point to the satisfaction of the au-
thorities. His earlier volume outlines a plan for the establish-
ment of a "Ministry of Anthropogenetics," one of whose im-
portant activities shall be the conduct of a sort of eugenic ex-
periment station, where fifty individuals of the choicest mental
and physical material which the nation can furnish shall be kept
for the purpose of improving the stock of the race, the men being
always between thirty and forty years of age and the women
between twenty-five and thirty-five. Dr. Binet-Sangle is sure
that a procedure which has improved race-horses till they can
run a mile in a little more than two-thirds the time it took the
best of them a hundred years ago, will be just as able to lift the
human family to a stage of distinctly superior health, longevity,
and efficiency. In his more recent book he makes a careful ex-
amination of each of the frequently-employed means of taking
life, and decides in favor of the inhalation of nitrogen monoxide,
the "laughing gas" of the dentist, as inducing unconsciousness
almost immediately, and as apparently involving, in most cases,
sensations rather pleasant than otherwise. He has gone into
the subject carefully, and outlines in conscientious detail an
elaborate procedure for administering the gas in such a fashion
as to eliminate the possibility of delay or discomfort. The gods,
says the poet Lucan, have concealed from men what a pleasant
thing death is, so that they may not all hasten to taste of it.
382
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2883
Both Dr. Binet-Sangle's books are crammed with curious in-
formation which may prove useful at certain junctures; but the
average man or woman, alas, continues to have certain "mystic
prejudices" which this learned doctor deems purely illusive and
acquired.
SHORTLY before the publication of the Diamond-Jubilee edi-
tion of her first novel, "The White House by the Sea," Ma-
tilda Betham-Edwards issued her last volume of reminiscences,
"Mid-Victorian Memories" (Macmillan). Although less gifted
than her famous cousin Amelia B. Edwards, the Egyptologist,
she was a prolific writer, and her many volumes of travel and
books of lively anecdotes and chatty bits of gossip about her
distinguished contemporaries have all the charm of intimate
conversation. From her Huguenot grandmother she inherited
a love of France that led her to spend much of her time there.
She was enterprising, eccentric, kindly, humorous. Her chap-
ters on Coventry Patmore, George Eliot, Baron Tauchnitz, Lord
Kitchener, and others are written with a naive simplicity, in
a loose, self-acquired English style, but often throw unex-
pected side-lights. Have we ever imagined George Eliot play-
ing Beethoven sonatas to please her friends, even if "too pains-
takingly and correctly"? Have we ever thought of her as
"sauntering down Bond Street, looking into shop windows, ex-
claiming, 'How happy we both are that we want nothing we see
here!'" Miss Betham-Edwards loved Henry James in common
with numbers of notable elderly Englishwomen. Part of his
letter to her apologizing for not sending one of his novels, as
promised to her maid, is deliciously characteristic. "...
'But,' you will say, 'why didn't you send the promised volume
to E. M. from London, then? What matters to us where it came
from so long as it came?' To which I reply, 'Well, I had in this
house a small row of books available for the purpose and among
which I could choose. In London I should have to go and buy
the thing, my own production, while I leave two or three brand
'new volumes, which will be an economy to a man utterly depleted
by the inordinate number of copies of 'The Outcry' which he has
given away and of which he has had to pay for his sanguinary
(admire my restraint!) publisher allowing him half!' 'Why,
then, couldn't you write home and have one of the books sent you,
or have it sent to Hastings directly from your house?' Because
I am the happy possessor of a priceless parlormaid who loves
doing up books and other parcels and does them up beautifully,
and if the vol. comes to me here, to be inscribed, I shall then
have to do it up myself, an act for which I have absolutely no
skill and which I dread and loathe, and tumble it forth clumsily
and insecurely.' "
" A HISTORY of the New Thought Movement" (Crowell), by
** Horatio W. Dresser, determines the origins of the move-
ment, sets the philosophy behind it in an historical background,
and demonstrates that the upper level of the devotees of the
New Thought are engaged in a serious intellectual venture. We
may respect their connections though we differ from them radi-
cally and aggressively. Historically the movement is carried
back to "Quimby the Pioneer," the quaintly provincial practi-
tioner who combined an Emersonian idealism with the practice
of hypnotism as then recently introduced from France. Mrs. Eddy,
as is known, owed almost everything, including such health and
ideas as she had, to Quimby. Her earlier writings acknowledge
the debt as naively as her later retractions repudiate it testily.
Another of Quimby's patients, the Rev. Warren Felt Evans, be-
came the first writer on the subject, bringing a Swedenborgian
type of belief to amalgamate with the conviction of the power
of mental healing. The New Thought movement as it became
explicit was substantially a reaction from the crudity of Chris-
tian Science and the idolatry of Mrs. Eddy. It took various
forms reflecting the temperament and philosophic allegiances of
its leaders, and gradually assumed a national and an interna-
tional form. With the enthusiasm of a devotee Mr. Dresser
records the origin and growth of every root and branch of the
movement. At its worst inviting a recourse to a crude occultism
and an alliance with threadbare "isms," at its best maintaining
an irreconcilable attitude toward the scientific thinking of
religious-minded people, the New Thought movement takes its
legitimate place in the annals of American spiritual experience,
instructive in many, and quite opposite, ways to many minds.
THE Jones Bill solemnly promised the Filipinos complete inde-
pendence as soon as a stable government could be estab-
lished. In "Self Government in the Philippines" (Century) Maximo
Kalaw, Chief of the Department of Political Science in the Uni-
versity of the Philippines, sets forth facts and statistics to show
that the Islands have founded a stable government that has
functioned efficiently in all departments for more than two years.
After a resume of Filipino-American relations up to the time of
the passage of the bill the author discusses in some detail the
organization of the new government. Then in turn are con-
sidered the Philippine budget system, Filipino loyalty during the
war, economic development, the extension of autonomy to munici-
pal and provincial governments, and the policy of the govern-
ment toward the non-Christian tribes. The author next argues
— and on the strongest grounds — that, a stable government hav-
ing been established, the Filipinos are justified in urging the
redemption of America's promise. Except in a very few in-
stances where patriotic momentum carries a little beyond war-
ranted inferences, the book is a fair presentation of the story of
Philippine progress. The tone throughout is kindly; nowhere is
it querulous or impatient. The author has succeeded admirably
as spokesman of his people in reflecting their gratitude toward
our Government and their true fitness and intense desire to enter
the world as a free young nation. Not the least pleasing feature
of the book is its simple straightforward style. The young
Filipino men and women taught in the American schools of the
Islands think straight, talk straight, act straight. We can un-
derstand them and they us. There is no place for equivocation
or juggling of words. A definite condition was set; it has been
magnificently met by the Filipinos. It is now the right and duty
of Congress to act. '
"Tp NGLISH NOTES" (Lewis M. Thompson) is a parody
*-J written to pay back Charles Dickens in his own coin for
"American Notes." It was published in 1842 and fell flat. Re-
published today, in a presentable volume instead of its original
cheap newspaper form, it probably would fall as flat were it not
for Mr. Joseph Jackson's Foreword. Mr. Jackson is a Dickens
collector. By chance he found the long-forgotten pamphlet in a
second-hand bookshop and bought it to add to his Dickens collec-
tion. But, unlike most collectors, having bought it he read it.
There was no clue to the author. Puzzled, intrigued, he set to
work to play the Sherlock Holmes in literature, and traced the
authorship to Edgar Allan Poe. In the manner of the accom-
plished detective he sums up the reasons for and against and
places them in separate columns, side by side. The most con-
vincing reason for is that the "Notes" are signed Quarles Quick-
ens, and Quarles was the name Poe signed a few years later to
his Raven. Also, Mr. Jackson asks, who else at that date could
or would have written the parody? But other reasons are less
plausible. We do not like to think Poe would have chosen this
anonymous public method of resenting a private grievance, how-
ever indignant he might have been with Dickens for refusing to
find him a London publisher on the plea that he was "an unknown
writer," or however apt to give "free vent to his feelings in his
reviews of the works of his successful contemporaries"; hard
blows are legitimate in criticism. Nor are we convinced by the
argument that Poe "could not have risked such popularity as he
had by acknowledging at the time his authorship." If he wrote
the pamphlet, he was more likely unwilling to claim so dull a
production, one so inferior to the work he signed. For the truth
is that the pamphlet is mostly dull, a ponderous parody. Dick-
Oct. 6, 1920]
The Nation
383
ens, who deserved treatment at once more sprightly and more
brutal, could have been none the worse for it. Its merit today
is that it has served Mr. Jackson for an excellent and enter-
taining piece of detective work. In its present form, with this
Foreword, "English Notes" must have a place on the shelves of
every collector of Dickens or of Poe. The original publication
seems almost beyond reach; only four copies are known by Mr.
Jackson to be in existence. Nothing is added to the interest of
the book by publishing the alleged portrait of Poe by Aubrey
Beardsley from the collection of H. S. Nichols.
DOUGLAS GOLDRING brings a novelist's gift of facility
and vividness to a miscellaneous collection of literary
reminiscence and criticism which he calls, somewhat sinisterly,
"Reputations" (Seltzer). Mr. Goldring cannot be accused of
log-rolling with his fellow novelists. He belabors more backs
than he scratches. "At every word a reputation dies." Many
of them deserve to. He is particularly gratifying when he
damns that confusion of values which acclaims schoolboy ver-
sifiers as poets simply because they happened to die in the war,
and when he excoriates those lost intellectual leaders who
either stuck a ribbon in their coats or lapsed into a protective
silence when they were needed most. He seems, however, some-
times to enjoy what he quotes Ford Madox Hueffer as calling
"crabbing the other fellow's benefit." It is not wholly fair to
damn Arnold Bennett on the strength of his worst work; and
when Mr. Goldring criticizes Hugh Walpole for being too much
interested in the aristocracy and Gissing for being too much in-
terested in the proletariat, he is judging an author by his sub-
ject matter rather than by his achievement, and thus commits
what modern criticism considers the sin against the Holy
Ghost. At least, however, Mr. Goldring is never dull.
Drama
Underworld
A MERICAN literature is said to be looking up. Discounting
•**■ the wilder claims and prophecies, one may gladly admit
a vigorous stir in poetry and in criticism. If the production of
sound fiction, novels that are both creative and true, is still
small, one can at least dismiss all anxiety for this branch of
literary art. No American novel that has distinction or promise
need go begging. The publishers yearn and pray for such manu-
scripts and will leave their offices in search of them. A dif-
ferent story must be told of the drama. If an American play-
wright of the caliber of, let us say, Dreiser or Hergesheimer,
the Strindberg-Hauptmann or the Donnay-Schnitzler type were
to appear, he would not perhaps be mute; he would assuredly
be inglorious.
He would, quite naturally, come to New York to see the
managers. He would find them heavily guarded by underlings
and excessively elusive. He would be told to leave his "script"
and given a perfunctory assurance that it would be examined.
Then an empty silence would fall upon him. He would seek
to break this silence by telephoning or by repeating his call at
the manager's office. In vain. Publishers can be reasoned
with, since they can be seen. Managers melt into thin air.
Our American dramatist, presumably young, would sink into a
kind of limbo of the spirit — a gray and forlorn region. Re-
calling the glow of creation and the deep urgency of his ambi-
tion, he would seek to find other roads to the theater. He
would be aware of the fact that two or three dramatic critics
in America spend their strength doing battle for precisely the
kind of play he has written. To these he will now address him-
self. He will ask George Jean Nathan or even the humble
writer of these words to read his manuscript and will be bit-
terly disappointed by the result. Yet the critic is quite helpless.
How is he to know that this particular play is a masterpiece?
He must either read all manuscript plays that come to him or
none. Since life itself forbids the former course and since dis-
crimination would be both unjust and futile, he chooses the
latter. He does so the more calmly as he knows his influence
with managers to be almost wholly limited to suggesting the
kind of thing they already want. Mr. J. D. Williams's produc-
tion of Eugene O'Neil's "Beyond the Horizon" offers a solitary
exception. But O'Neil's one-act plays had previously been given
a hearing through the Provincetown Players, and profited by
the circumstance that Mr. Nathan prints one-act plays in the
Smart Set. To Mr. Arthur Hopkins and to the Theater Guild
our stage owes inestimable benefits. The production of a single
seriously good play of native origin is not among them.
Our young dramatist, shivering in his hall bed-room, will now
remember as a last resort that playwrights and players have
often worked together. He will seek out prominent actors and
actresses. If by virtue of social adroitness, a gift for flattery,
and an ingratiating manner — qualities likely to be his in inverse
ratio to his talent and nobility of purpose — he succeeds in inter-
viewing "stars," he will find, first, that they are commonly
"owned" by managers quite as baseball players are and have
to play in the plays provided, and, secondly, that they them-
selves are not looking for good plays, but for grateful and pre-
posterously showy parts. This point they will make clear to
him with a gigantic and unblushing simplicity of mind.
In these fruitless efforts our dramatist will have spent at
least six months. A dullness will have fallen upon his spirit;
his fastidiousness and sensitiveness will show rents and cal-
louses. In his rooming-house, at restaurants, on Broadway
itself, in the reception rooms of managers, he hears interminable
talk concerning the art and business by which plays are "gotten
on." A tall, youngish man is encouraging. He is about to have
a play produced by a new manager. It took him eight years.
An elderly person with a moist sputter and a crumpled face
is bleak on the whole subject. Years ago he was co-author of a
successful farce. Now he broods bitterly over a trunkful of
unproduced plays. Our young dramatist shudders, but he lis-
tens. He has nothing else to do. "You've got to give the mana-
gers what they want." "Yes, but what do they want?" The
feeble talk eddies back and forth. Somebody says in a rough,
tired, oracular voice: "Alf. Stone's secretary once said to me,
says he: 'What the boss wants is melodramas to make people
die of fright or bedroom farces to make 'em die laughin'.' " Our
dramatist happens to come upon another group. Here the talk
is of the gorgeous profits of the gilded hacks, of the fabulous
fees paid by the great film corporations for scenarios and "movie
rights." "Yes," some one says, "'is alright. But there's no use
submitting scenarios. They steal 'em. You got to get next."
That phrase throbs in our dramatist's aching head. It sums
up his situation. He has spent his years on the noblest of the
arts, not on the art of "getting next." But concerning his art
he has not heard a syllable spoken. He has slipped into an
underworld of spiritual prostitution. These people watch the
plays with the largest box-office receipts. These they imitate.
Then they fawn and cajole and treat underlings to luncheon
and wait weary hours in managers' offices to "get next." Swiftly
our dramatist walks to the office of the manager who has had his
play for the past five weeks. He demands his manuscript. A
young woman with rosy nails and brilliantined hair fetches it
languidly from an inner sanctuary. No interest has been shown,
no report communicated. He has not "gotten next."
This account is no fanciful one. It is based on hard facts.
It may be replied that we have no American dramatists of the
nobler kind. But how are we to tell? It is certain that a young
Ibsen or Hauptmann or Shaw would meet in New York today
the fate described and would withdraw in just and austere wrath
to his native province. Those that remain and sink into the
underworld of the theater and at last succeed on its terms are
not they for whom we are waiting or whom our drama needs.
Ludwig Lewisohn
International Relations Section
German Solvency and
Reparations
Foreword
The Nation is doing a great public service in publishing
the most important of the three briefs submitted by the
German Government at the Spa Conference. This publica-
tion is especially opportune at the present time because of
the worldwide interest in the International Financial Con-
ference that is just beginning its sessions at Brussels under
the auspices of the League of Nations. The brief that The
Nation is publishing summarizes the tivo other briefs, one
of which is a study by twenty leading economists, financiers,
and bankers of the "Economic Capacity of Germany," and
the other a discussion of the present "Charge of Taxation in
Germany," by the Ministry of Finance. These briefs make
a most important contribution to the world's knowledge of
economic and financial conditions in Germany which must be
considered in connection with any plans for the economic
regeneration of Europe. All three briefs have been subjected
to close and critical scrutiny by the Allied experts. My in-
formation is that the substantial accuracy of the facts and
statistics they present is not disputed in any responsible
quarter, although the soundness of some of the conclusions
drawn by the German Government and their experts as to
the extent of Germany's ultimate capacity to make indemnity
payments is questioned. The briefs show how completely
the Treaty of Versailles denuded Germany of the ships, for-
eign investments, international credit, and working capital
that were the foundation of her export trade and foreign
commerce. After allowing for all possible differences of
opinion, there is no escape from the conclusion that the eco-
nomic recovery of Germany and her ability to make indem-
nity payments to France and her Allies are in great measure
dependent upon the active help of other nations. The prob-
lem of Germany's economic and industrial rehabilitation is
primarily a world problem rather than a purely German
problem.
Paul D. Cravath
THE brief presented by the German Delegation at the
Spa Conference in July, 1920, on the subject of "Ger-
many's Solvency for the Purpose of Reparations," was in
large part prepared by the economist, Dr. Bonn. It reads
as follows:
I
German economics before the war had to solve the problem
how to feed an ever growing population placed on a compara-
tively small territory. This had been achieved on the whole
satisfactorily, on the one hand by developing economic interna-
tional relations, on the other hand by an increase of home
production, especially in agriculture — the result of the appli-
cation of intensive methods.
In spite of all, Germany would never have been able to sup-
port her population by agriculture and industry alone. Taking
an average of some years, German imports considerably ex-
ceeded her exports. This excess was balanced by services of
the German mercantile marine rendered to foreign nations, by
the returns from German capital invested abroad, and the
income derived from German enterprise and labor in foreign
countries, especially in the higher grades of employment.
The economic condition of the German people had been im-
proving comparatively quickly before the war. Their income in
general increased slowly but steadily. Although the giant in-
comes yielding big income tax returns formed a much smaller
proportion of all incomes in Germany than they do in English
speaking countries, progress was noticeable in every direction.
The burden of taxation was comparatively small, as the total
requirements for Empire, states, and municipalities amounted
to 4,478 million marks or 67.85 marks per head of the popula-
tion. Although there was no reliable census of production, the
value of German production before the war has been estimated
at between 40 to 50 billion marks. The national income was
estimated at 40 to 45 billion marks, and the nation's wealth
by various methods at 200 to 400 billion marks. These esti-
mates were rather optimistic as, owing to defective methods,
they did not differentiate between mere non-productive wealth
and productive capital. The only reliable returns, the assess-
ment to the levy on capital of 1913 (Wehrbeitrag 1913),
showed unencumbered taxable wealth of just over 180 billion
gold marks. By adding productive capital free of tax and by
including non-productive capital which might be sold abroad,
the total reached would not be more than 220 billion gold marks.
Even if these estimates were considered fairly accurate in the
past, they are quite useless for the present time. The loss of
the ceded territories will bring about a reduction of 10 per cent,
to which must be added the loss of the colonies and of enter-
prise abroad. The greater part of Germany's stock of foreign
securities was used up during the war. Moreover, the war,
armistice, blockade, revolution, peace, and their consequences
have transformed German economics and have lowered the ca-
pacity for production in many of the most important trades to
not quite one-half of their former output.
According to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles the popu-
lation, which is reduced in number but not in density, is ex-
pected to contribute a large share of its diminished total pro-
duction. Germany has pledged itself to devote its economic
resources to the reparation of capital damages. Its capacity
to furnish goods from its output will be limited in proportion
to the amount of working capital ceded for reparation.
The payment of the first 20 billion marks, to be completed
by May 21, 1921, must be considered as a levy on capital, in
so far as the cession of ships of the mercantile marine, of
cables, state property, proceeds from liquidation, and the de-
livery of cattle, machinery, etc., is concerned, while the annual
delivery of coal, coal products, dyes, shipbuilding, reparation
work, etc., constitutes a more or less regular charge.
The first payment will take away from Germany part of her
working capital and the income resulting from it, which by its
very nature is almost irreplaceable.
At a rate of 10 per cent, this amounts to a loss of 2 billion
gold marks per annum or 20 billion paper marks — reckon-
ing one gold mark as ten paper marks — without taking into
consideration the value of the material which cannot be fully
expressed in cash.
The second payment is a charge on German production: a de-
livery of 43 million tons of coal is equal to 34 per cent of today's
total output; the carrying out of even the shipbuilding clauses
equals 40 per cent of the building capacity of the German ship-
building yards before the war. A delivery of only 12 million
tons of coal, calculated at the low German prices, requires a pay-
ment of 3 billion paper marks per annum; its real value at
world market prices amounts to about 1.2 billion gold marks or
about 12 billion paper marks. Two hundred million gold marks
or about 2 billion paper marks are needed to pay for the delivery
of 200,000 tons of shipping. Even if demands for reparation
proper were spread over a number of years, Belgian demands, so
far the only ones presented, are already running into billions. To
this must be added the cost of the armies d¥ occupation, certainly
several billion paper marks per annum.
Starting on the other hand from an interpretation of the
Oct. 6, 1920]
The Nation
385
peace treaty, that Germany is obliged to pay interest and sink-
ing fund on a total of 40 billion gold marks as a beginning, this
will be equivalent to a yearly charge of almost 2.4 billion paper
marks.
The regular payment of such sums must depend on the pre-
sumption of a strong active trade balance, whatever terms may
be taken as a basis, as Germany, after ceding her claims and
after delivering her capital invested in ships and oversea en-
terprises, can only pay with goods. German exports therefore
must not only pay for her necessary imports and for the interest
and the repayment of credits granted to her, they must further-
more be large enough to provide payment of the regular repara-
tion annuities.
II
Is Germany's economic structure able to bear such burdens?
The population of Germany totalled on October 8, 1919, about
60 millions. It has lost one-fifth to one-fourth of the men
engaged in following an occupation. The actual loss of lives is
over 1.7 millions. In addition, there are 1.5 millions wounded
and disabled who can do no work or only do it to a limited
extent. Notwithstanding the severe conditions of life in cities,
the urban population has increased slightly; more than one-third
of the people live in towns of over 50,000 inhabitants. This town
population is existing today under especially trying conditions.
As building has long ago come to a standstill, the pre-war addi-
tion of about 200,000 dwellings a year is not forthcoming. The
feeding of the urban population has but slightly improved. After
a temporary improvement during the summer of 1919, the food
rations guaranteed to the town population have increased once
more to only 40 to 60 per cent of the caloric minimum, while
the cost of the daily minimum required for adults has risen
from six marks to ten marks from January, 1919, to March,
1920. The coal shortage has reduced heating and lighting to
such a low level as to be scarcely endured by an underfed popu-
lation.
Physically and psychically people are not what they used to
be, especially the industrial population. Many years must
elapse before the younger generation will have recovered from
the results of underfeeding. The output per head of the work-
ers has gone down compared with pre-war conditions. Not-
withstanding a shortening of the working day in the coal mines,
the output per head per hour in the Ruhr district had de-
clined from 136.3 kilograms in 1913 to 127.5 kilograms taking
an average for the months July to December, 1919. Already
toward the end of the war, a falling-off of one-third in the
efficiency of labor had to be taken into account. Although the
number of men in the service of the Prussian-Hessian State
Railways is double what it was before the war, the total amount
of work achieved has risen very slightly. Moreover, the ca-
pacity for doing skilled work has declined, many highly trained
men having lost their acquired skill by doing rough work for
such a long time, while the younger generation has never had
any real technical training, having been in the trenches or in
the munition factories.
The soul of the people has changed. The sense of duty and
the love of order have disappeared in many cases, a result of
the shattering of nerves through the war. Their place has been
taken by an easily provoked irritability.
The decrease of efficiency, the shortening of the working day,
which took place in most countries, are regrettable indeed from
the point of view of production. It was unavoidable and neces-
sary to ease the psychical and physical strain. Recovery could
not be expected within a measurable time without a letting-up
in every sphere of life. Continued exertion at full pressure
must have led to psychical, physical, and social collapse rather
than to an increase of production, unless it were preceded by a
process of recuperation.
The distress may not be felt to the same extent by the wealth-
ier classes of the population, as they have broken into their
capital and in many cases have used it up almost entirely in
the attempt to keep alive; they realize, however, the psychical
depression due to the loss of the war, and the obvious impos-
sibility of rising again, in spite of the greatest exertions, is
paralyzing their energy.
That applies especially to the hundreds of thousands expelled
from abroad, from the colonies and the ceded territories, who
have certainly the will and the strength to resume their life's
work, but who are prevented from returning to the place of
their former activities, while Germany has little room to offer
for the display of their abilities.
Some members of the former leading social classes, especially
officers, are living in very straitened circumstances. They have
no private means, and as no opportunities are offered them
either at home or abroad to give vent to their energy, they add
to the general unrest, which must prevail in a country just now
unable to satisfy even the mere physical wants of its popula-
tion and which cannot show the masses a way out of their misery
apart from Utopian promises. These promises have an excep-
tionally disastrous effect on the brain workers, who are reduced
to bitter want, and whose income today is very often much
smaller than that of the manual workers.
Agriculture
German agriculture before the war furnished about 90 per cent
of the vegetable food, 67 per cent of meat and fats, 50 per cent of
milk and milk produce of the home demand. The cessions of
territory, as a result of the peace treaty, have reduced the area
fit for agriculture by 13.5 per cent. This loss weighs the more
heavily as the ceded territories produced more than their in-
habitants required. They furnished to the rest of the Empire in
the bad harvest year 1917-1918 nearly half a million tons of
grain, more than one million tons of potatoes, and 100,000 tons
of sugar.
The fertility of the soil has diminished during the war, be-
cause it could neither be plowed properly nor sufficiently ma-
nured. During this time only about 35 per cent of the average
quantity of nitrates and phosphates used before the war
could be put on the land annually; the number of draught ani-
mals and the possibility of getting agricultural machinery and
implements were reduced by 40 per cent. During the last stage
the farmers had only about one-tenth of the fodder used
for animal consumption which they had been in the habit of
purchasing before the war. That is why the harvest last year
fell off 40 per cent in grain, 50 per cent in potatoes, and even
66 per cent in raw sugar within the present German confines.
The number of cattle was reduced by 10 per cent, of pigs by
40 per cent. Moreover, the dead weight of cattle was reduced
by 40 per cent, of pigs by 25 per cent, and the production of
milk has gone down from 24.4 billion liters to 9 billions. Tak-
ing it all round, one must reckon with a falling-off of produc-
tion of 40 per cent in vegetable foods and 60 per cent in animal
foods.
This loss can only be made good very slowly. The shortage of
fertilizers has been intensified by the cession of territory. The
loss of the iron ore deposits in Luxemburg, Lorraine, and the
Sarre basin has curtailed the home supply of basic slag (Thomas
phosphate) by at least 600,000 tons; one would have to reckon
with double that quantity, if the standard of pre-war production
were to be reached once more. In 1919 the farmers received
only one-fifth of the phosphates they needed in peace times and
one-third of the nitrates used in pre-war days. The shortage of
coal has interfered with the working of agricultural factories,
with the distribution of goods, and the production and trans-
portation of fertilizers; the delivery of 35,000 tons of benzol will
make the use of agricultural machinery difficult.
The handing over of highly bred cattle, and especially of
horses, must impair the breeding of live stock, which has dete-
riorated ; moreover, it will reduce the supply of draught animals
for agriculture, which is already very short.
Germany imported 25 per cent of her timber requirements in
time of peace; as they can no longer be met at present by im-
386
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2883
portation from abroad, and as the normal annual growth is in-
sufficient, devastation will take the place of orderly forestry.
German agriculture is falling back on much less intensive
methods. Apart from the shortage of all means of production,
the rapid depreciation of the paper mark is proving a very
great hindrance. Owing to the shortage in raw materials and
the high prices, the towns can produce very few articles which
the country people are willing to buy. The farmers are be-
ginning to get suspicious of the paper money; they reduce the
working of their holdings more and more to satisfy merely their
own requirements; the continuation of state control over the
most important agricultural products, which must go on for
some time yet, is meeting with an ever growing opposition,
making the organized provisioning of the German population in-
creasingly difficult. The proportion of home grown agricultural
produce for sale is diminishing, while the proportion of food
which must be imported is increasing. German agriculture
today is furnishing the towns with not quite 1,200 calories (in-
cluding the non-rationed goods and the illicit trade [Schleich-
handel], at the utmost with 1,600 to 1,650 calories) per head
per day. There is a deficit of at least 1,100 calories per head,
or an annual total of 20,000 billions for the entire population
entitled to rations. To cover this deficit completely, the impor-
tation of 9 million tons of food and foodstuffs is required. Even
after the importation of 5.5 to 6 million tons for human and
animal consumption, which is contemplated for the next year
and which will cost today 3.5 billion gold marks, there would
still be a considerable deficit in the food supply. German agri-
culture will be able to contribute to the feeding of the German
people as before only after complete reconstruction, principally
by means of importing food for cattle, and fertilizers. Agricul-
ture today plays no part in German exports, whereas before the
war sugar stood sixth in value of all German exports.
The price of imported food is much higher today than the
price of the home-grown article on account of the low rate of
exchange; so it does not exercise any influence on the fluctua-
tion of prices. To bring it within the reach of the poorer classes,
it was necessary for the Government to take over part of the
cost; in this way the Government had to supply nearly 10 billion
marks for the period July, 1919, to June 30, 1920.
Industry
German industry has to solve a threefold problem. It has to
provide work and employment for the industrial population,
which constitutes 43 per cent of the total population. Emigra-
tion cannot be taken up again on a large scale, in spite of a
great desire for it, so long as German emigrants are not wel-
come everywhere. Moreover, the high rates of passages are pro-
hibitive and make emigration impossible for the poorer classes;
the steerage passage to New York costs 6,000 marks.
As the income derived formerly from the mercantile marine
and from capital invested abroad no longer exists, it is German
industry which must furnish regular payment for the import of
food and raw material. After this has been achieved to a cer-
tain degree, it can face its third task, the creation of values
for purposes of reparation.
German industry before the war was built up largely on the
coal and iron supply of Germany. Even the important indus-
tries which used large quantities of foreign raw material were
in a fairly safe position through the ample supply of cheap coal
and the cheap freight rates. These conditions no longer exist.
Germany has lost 70 to 75 per cent of her iron ore output; she
can look forward to an annual output of only 6 to 7.5 million
tons of ore. Germany will retain three-fifths only of her former
plant for the production of iron and steel, with a capacity of
producing 12 million tons of iron at the utmost, or three-fifths
of her former production. In order to achieve this, she must
import at least 12 million tons of high grade ore from abroad.
As the cost of getting this ore is very great, the maximum pro-
duction which can be reckoned with today is about 7 to 7.5
million tons of pig-iron. To produce these 7 to 7.5 million tons
Germany would require about 2.4 million tons of minette
from Lorraine and Luxemburg, 2.7 million tons of Swedish ore,
and 1.4 million tons of Spanish ore, apart from chisel. This
would barely cover the minimum demand for iron goods of 600,-
000 tons per month, or 7.2 million tons per annum. If the iron
industry is to provide the means of payment for the imported ore,
it must export an eighth to a sixth of the finished goods. Only
the surplus above the minimum of home requirements and above
the payments for the ore is available for the payment for other
imports or for reparation purposes. The quantities of iron and
steel indispensable for the reconstruction proper of Germany
are not procurable; shipyards alone would require 45,000 tons
per month. The German iron industry therefore will be trans-
formed into a finishing industry, working to a great degree with
imported raw materials.
The output of German coal in the year 1919 amounted to 108
million tons, Upper Silesia included, or 57 per cent of the out-
put of 1913. This reduction cannot be made good by the insig-
nificant increase from 87 million tons to 94 million tons
in the output of lignite. As the quality of the coal is
12 to 15 per cent inferior on account of the bad condition
of the mines and of the lowered efficiency of labor, the heating
power of the total coal supply in Germany, without the Sarre
basin, coal and lignite combined, amounts to but 57 per cent of
that of the pre-war output; if Upper Silesia were excluded, the
figure would have been only 47 per cent. Moreover, the con-
sumption for the use of the mines and the quantity allowed to
the miners has increased on account of their large numbers.
The probable output of coal for 1920 will be 126 million tons,
if there is no interruption in the regular work. Of this about
71 million tons are available for house fuel, for industry, and
for agriculture. The allotment to households cannot be further
reduced if social order is to be maintained among the under-
fed population in the cities of Germany. In 1919 only 1,800
pounds of coal or 51 per cent of the ration allotted to each house-
hold, were distributed on an average throughout Germany. Nor
is it possible to reduce the supply allowed for industry and agri-
culture any further, if the collapse of all social life is to be pre-
vented. The production of potash, nitrate, and sugar, threshing
by machinery, and transportation have already suffered heavily
under the shortage of coal. Such industries as brick-making and
cement works which use exclusively German raw materials have
been reduced to one-fifth or one-fourth of their total working
capacity, on account of the shortage of fuel. For similar rea-
sons the china and porcelain factories, in spite of their splendid
trade outlook, are able to carry out only 40 per cent of the orders
they were able to undertake in pre-war days. In centers of
glass-making, such as Fiirth, 30.8 per cent of the population
were out of work in April, 1920. In November, 1919, there were
8,530 factories requiring more than ten tons of coal per month
each which did not get any coal at all; nearly half a million
employees were dependent upon them. During the period from
October, 1919 to March, 1920, only 57 per cent of the total re-
duced coal demand of the entire industry could be complied with.
An increase in the output of coal will be possible in course of
time. During the last few months a good many extra shifts
have been worked. The number of miners has been increased
by the incessant efforts of all parties concerned; in the Ruhr
district alone it has grown from 395,000 to 479,000. Even
greater in proportion is the increase in the lignite districts.
Although the number of miners has increased 21 per cent, the
daily output has so far gained only 10 per cent.
A further expansion of production is possible only if the
mines can be restored to their former technical condition and
if the additional miners are properly housed. About 150,000
additional miners are wanted. The cost of building the required
accommodation was estimated in October, 1919, at 3 to 4 billion
marks; today it would be almost 15 billions.
The money can be got by raising the price of coal, but as long
as bricks, tiles, builders' lime, and cement cannot be had be-
cause the industries producing them are short of coal, the em-
Oct. 6, 1920]
The Nation
387
ployment of additional miners, and with it the increase in output,
can proceed but slowly.
Any possible increase in production would be completely nul-
lified by the loss of Upper Silesia. Reckoning there with an
output of only 30 million tons — the pre-war output was 44 mil-
lion tons — Germany would lose the use of the 18 million tons a
year over and above the requirements of Upper Silesia. She
would have to pay for her own purchases and would lose the pro-
ceeds of any coal sold abroad.
Apart from a few industries like the potash and the chemical
industries, which even today enjoy a certain privileged position,
nearly all German exporting industries have been brought down
to the level of a finishing industry. Raw materials are bought
wholly or partly abroad at prices depending on the rates of
foreign exchange. Only concerns which reexport their total
output of finished goods need not trouble much about these fluc-
tuations.
As long as there is an enormous unsatisfied demand in Ger-
many, and as long as the population suffers for want of clothing
and boots, German industries ought to work, partly at least,
for the home market, and to have some regard for its purchasing
power. Without credits only such surplus can be sold at home
as remains over after a sufficient quantity of finished goods has
been exported in payment for the imported raw material. There
is a famine in goods, which may not be immediately apparent as
the public is now awaiting a fall in prices and the total amount
of goods available from time to time for its satisfaction is very
small. The nearer industries get to the highest point of their
working capacity, the greater proportionately will be the quan-
tity of goods at the disposal of the home market. They cannot
get there, however, because on the one hand the price of the raw
materials needed is too high — it would take 4.5 billion
gold marks to provide the textile trade with all the raw
material and half finished goods they could use — and because on
the other hand the inadequate supply of coal permits only a
few industries to work at more than 50 per cent of their real
capacity; in some centers of the textile trade the number of
unemployed was as high as 87 per thousand inhabitants in the
month of April.
The financing of industries is getting more and more difficult.
The enormous rise in prices and wages shows that the working
capital of many concerns is inadequate. An increase in capital
must follow, which very often is equivalent to a watering of
stock, because the chances of increased profits do not grow cor-
respondingly. High taxation is unavoidable; when carried
through it will swallow up the liquid means of industry.
Transportation
The breakdown of the German transportation system aggra-
vates the situation. The loss of the rolling stock caused by the
armistice has never been made good. The number of engines, it
is true, has increased, but 45 out of every 100 are now in
the repair shops, while before the war there were only 19.
So far no improvement has been possible, in spite of a tem-
porary increase of the hands employed in the repair shops
from 70,000 to 162,000. The shops cannot always get sufficient
supplies of coal and iron, the efficiency of the men has declined,
and added to all this is a shortage of railway coal, its poor
quality, and the absence of sufficient reserve stocks; the stock
on hand covers on an average only a little more than ten days'
supply, so that even a short interruption in the flow of supply
often causes a stoppage of trains. The passenger service is
limited to barely one-fourth of the fast trains and to one-half of
the passenger trains running before the war; the number of
cars available for freight in 1919 was 18 per cent less than in
the previous year, and 42 per cent below that of 1913. The
state of the permanent way is gradually getting very precarious ;
for want of material only 1 per cent repairs are being carried
out on main lines as against 5 per cent formerly. Very much
the same conditions exist with regard to inland navigation.
Motor transport is handicapped by the shortage of gasoline.
Although freight rates have been raised by about 490 per cent
and passenger rates by 350 to 599 per cent over the pre-war level,
the former surplus of the German railways has been turned
into a deficit, which will be at least 14 billion marks for the year
1920. Traffic could not stand a new rise of freights.
Commerce
German commerce has lost a large part of its financial
strength on account of the war and its consequences. Its assets
abroad have been sequestered and partly liquidated. The losses
abroad, so far recorded, which have been inflicted on German
nationals are estimated by the parties concerned at above
20 billion gold marks. These investments were a very im-
portant support to Germany's oversea trade. As the compensa-
tion for such losses will be paid in German currency, subject to
deduction of taxes, the persons affected will not be able to
resume their activities abroad. The personal connections of
German merchants with the former enemy countries have almost
been destroyed; and they are heavily handicapped by their lia-
bilities to neutrals, which must be paid in foreign currency.
German commerce has not only lost its points d'appui in the
former enemy countries and in the colonies, but it will suffer
greatly with regard to its oversea connections by the loss of the
German cables. Moreover, it has been deprived of its most im-
portant tool for the reconstruction of German economic life,
merchant shipping. It will be heavily burdened in future with
charges payable in foreign currency to foreign enterprises for
news service, banking, insurance, and freight. The balance of
payments is continuously deteriorating.
Commerce at home has lost a large share of its opportunities
through war time syndicates and the operation of public control
of trade. The middle classes, which were closely connected
with it, are badly shaken. The place of honest trade has been
widely usurped by profiteers, who are discrediting it and who
carry out its most important functions in a very inefficient man-
ner. Moreover, they do not take the place of honest trade as
far as Germany's economic strength is concerned, because they
have succeeded and will always succeed in shirking their lia-
bilities toward taxation, just as they have done in other coun-
tries, notwithstanding all measures against them.
Total Production
The physical output of German agriculture has fallen, it is
estimated, 40 to 60 per cent; in very few cases has industry been
enabled to work 50 per cent of its pre-war capacity. The physi-
cal deterioration of industrial plants may be estimated in most
cases at 50 per cent of the pre-war status.
The value of German production expressed in paper marks is
at the present time, of course, much higher than before the war.
This is easily accounted for by the revolution in prices which
has taken place since August 1, 1914. The prices of all com-
modities have risen enormously, especially lately, but this rise
is unevenly distributed. Taking 100 as the index figure at the
outbreak of the war, the price of rationed food has risen to 600;
the total cost of food required, in Berlin, has increased from
800 to 900; during the same period the index figure in house
rent rose only from 100 to 120, while in steel ingots it rose to
2,620, in Silesian coal to 1,035, and in cotton fabrics to 5,000.
Wages more than doubled between November, 1918, and Feb-
ruary, 1920; since the beginning of the war their index figure
rose from 100 to 570.
It cost 26.55 marks per week to feed an adult in Berlin in
July-August, 1919, and 71.43 marks in April, 1920, a rise of 169
per cent. So the race between prices and wages, and between
wages and prices, never stops.
This rise in prices is caused on the one hand by the growth
of additional purchasing power, which is partly indicated by
the increase of the German paper circulation. The total circu-
lation has grown from 5.5 billion marks (paper issues and coin)
on July 23, 1914, to 59 billion marks on March 31, 1920; this in-
cludes neither the emergency circulation issued by municipalities
388
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2883
and states nor the notes of private banks of issue. This figure
embraces 45.2 billion marks notes of the Reichsbank and 13.7
billion marks Darlehenskassenscheine (Loan Bank Certificates).
The gold reserve of the Reichsbank covers only 1.8 per cent of
the bank notes and the loan bank certificates in circulation. It
is estimated that about 20 billions of the total paper circu-
lation of nearly 60 billions issued are held abroad. So far
their influence on prices at home is only indirect. All the
stronger is the influence exercised by the additional demand for
goods, created by Germany's great need of credit and especially
by the issue of treasury bills.
On the other hand there is but an insufficient supply of most
kinds of goods. As production cannot expand quickly in spite
of high prices because the productive power is exhausted, prices
are forced up by the combined effect of a glut of paper money
and of a shortage of goods. Nor can the importation of goods
bring about a quick adjustment, as home prices are often below
world market prices on account of Government control and of
the attempt to fix them. A low exchange rate, the result of tem-
porary economic exhaustion, and unrestricted imports over fron-
tiers not under control of the Government may stimulate ex-
ports, but must raise the cost of imports. At the same time, a
sudden rise of the exchange is causing new trouble to economic
life, as the ever rising cost of living is forcing up wages and as
the purchasing power of the public is slowly declining, while
raw material has been bought in many cases on particularly
unfavorable terms.
The depreciation of money varies in different parts of Ger-
many. But everywhere the paper wealth of the German people
has grown, while their capacity to produce commodities has
everywhere declined, in agriculture and industry alike. Conse-
quently, the German people are apparently able to carry a much
heavier burden of taxation, payable in paper marks, than before
the war. The services, however, which they must render ac-
cording to the peace treaty will have to be paid in gold marks.
As the wealth of the nation has been estimated at 220 billion
gold marks before the war, it can only be valued at 100 billions
today, taking into consideration the cession of provinces in the
east and in the west, the loss of the whole mercantile marine,
the disposal of foreign securities, the liquidation of enterprise
abroad, the complete using up of all merchants' and manufac-
turers' stocks, and the depreciation of all means of production
caused by wear and tear during six years. From this must be
deducted German indebtedness abroad, which may be 8 or 10
billion marks.
iJALANCE OF TRADE
Germany is a debtor state today, even before she has begun
with her annual payments according to the peace treaty. Total
exports between August, 1914, and the end of 1918 were only
16.5 billion marks against total imports of 31.8 billion marks
during the same period. From January, 1919, to February,
1920 — fourteen months — imports were 50 billion marks, exports
17.6 billion marks valued at prices correspondingly raised above
the standard prices used by the Imperial Statistics Office for
1918. Taking further into consideration the imports of Ger-
many's former allies for Germany's account during the war of
5 or 6 billion marks, and illegal imports via the occupied terri-
tory estimated at about 13 billion marks up to the end of Febru-
ary, 1920 (which may partly be balanced by illegal exports of
perhaps 5 billion marks), a total excess of imports over exports
of 60 billion marks will be reached. Of this figure 4.5 billion
marks have been paid since July, 1914, by the export of gold, 5.6
billion marks by the sale of securities. There remains a total
foreign debt for Germany of about 50 billion marks, payment for
which has been postponed partly by the operation of credits and
partly by acceptance of German bank notes. Payments for in-
terest and amortization must be made on these credits. The
bank notes estimated at 20 billion marks, which have gone
abroad to some extent as a result of "the flight of capital," do
not bear interest, but cannot be considered as a definite payment.
Germany is starting on her way to reconstruction with a heavy
debit balance. At present there exists no possibility of repay-
ing this debt, although the Reichsbank has always managed to
liquidate its foreign exchange liabilities punctually, as the hold-
ings of foreign securities remaining in German hands are of
very little importance. Every fall in the rate of exchange adds
to the liabilities, especially as ocean freights must be paid in
foreign currency. At the same time Germany must import
large quantities of food and raw materials to bring about the
recovery of her people. The minimum estimate for next year
is 5.5 to 6 million tons of food, .75 million tons of raw materials
for the manufacture of fertilizers (mainly phosphates), and 14
million tons of raw materials for industrial purposes.
It is doubtful whether relief in this direction can be expected
from the ceded territories which formerly sold more to the rest
of Germany than they bought from her. The continuation of
their sales is assured to them through tariff arrangements dur-
ing the years of transition. But Germany has no guaranty that
the agricultural areas of the east and west will send their food
and raw material to Germany instead of sending them to the
countries with which they have been incorporated. Even sup-
posing the districts ceded to Poland would continue to send
food, and Lorraine to send minette, which has been done so far
to a very limited extent only, Germany will have to pay world
market prices for them. A quarter of a million tons of sugar
implies a payment of 5 billion marks, the importation of 3
million tons of minette requires 300 to 400 million marks. A
deterioration of the balance of payment must be the result, as
the total value of Germany's exports to the ceded territories will
not balance their imports into Germany, and the difference will
scarcely be made up by dividends and rents in favor of German
nationals.
The largest part of essential imports, almost 12.75 million
tons, must be carried across the sea from countries with a high ,
exchange, and the stiff rates of ocean freights payable by
Germany must be added to the purchase price. The estimated
cost of indispensable food imports is 3.3 billion gold
marks. This will not bring about a complete recovery of
the German people, nor will it do away with the terrible short-
age of all necessaries of life, nor give full employment to Ger-
man factories. An extra importation of 12 million tons of
additional food and foodstuffs would be needed, if the German
population were to attain once more the pre-war standard of
living, when 3,285 calories per day per head were available.
Imports then amounted to 11 million tons, but the lessened pro-
duction of German agriculture must be taken into account.
In a similar way the importation of raw materials will be cut
down. Before the war the textile industry, including Alsace-
Lorraine, required 940,000 tons; it will not get more than 385,-
000 tons, which will enable the mills to run at 50 per cent of
their working capacity. Imports without doubt can be cut down
considerably, but in doing this manufacturers will be prevented
from satisfying the urgent home demand, or the trade will be
incapacitated from exporting considerable quantities as pay-
ment for their own raw materials and for the food needed.
German exports in the future may range between 35 to
40 billion paper marks. Against this the value of the im-
ports of indispensable food and raw materials will be 80
billion marks. The nature of German exports will differ rather
from that of the exports of the past. Some of its most impor-
tant items, apart from sugar, consisted of goods manufactured
mainly from German raw material. The loss of the iron ore
districts will transform iron and steel making, which was the
basis of all German industries, into a finishing (Veredelungs)
industry. Such finishing industries can be considered as assets
in the balance of trade only so far as the value of the exported
finished goods exceeds the value of the imported raw material.
The smaller the working capacity of an industry supplied with
raw material, and the larger the home demand for its goods, the
less available it will be in regard to other items of the balance
of trade. A finishing industry is an asset in the balance of
Oct. 6, 1920]
The Nation
389
trade only to such degree as the demand of the home market
can be cut down; as Germany is empty today of all important
commodities, this can be done only within narrow limits, or by
working the plants at top speed, so that the quantity set apart
for the home demand, though actually large, is but a small part
of the total output. . . .
German plants would have to work to the full limit of their
manufacturing capacity in order to bring about an active bal-
ance of trade. This is checked by the shortage of coal. The
obligation to deliver coal in compliance with the treaty of peace
must prevent the finishing industries from completely fulfilling
their task even if the output of coal is increased, as it partly
deprives Germany of the coal, the elementary raw material, on
which all German industries, finishing industries as well as
basic industries, must rely.
Under present conditions Germany's balance of trade must
be unfavorable. It can only become favorable again if the
forces of German economic life are working at top speed. To
achieve this Germany must for some time import the foodstuffs
and raw materials which she requires to invigorate her people
and to satisfy their most urgent needs. After that she must
receive the raw materials needed to get her factories into full
swing. This process will take some years, as Germany must
get the goods needed from abroad against credits. As the pay-
ments for interest on credits must burden German business life
and as the unstable rate of exchange may jeopardize payment,
great caution is needed.
Contrary to this development, the peace treaty really presup-
poses a favorable balance of trade. After the cession of capital
goods contained in the first instalment of 20 billion marks,
and after the sale of valuable private property which at the
present moment helps to swell German exports, future pay-
ments must be carried out by the export of commodities produced
year by year. An attempt might be made to transfer German
capital abroad on even a larger scale than has been done at
present in consequence of the peace treaty or by the "sales"
due to the bad exchange. This, however, can only be done at
the expense of Germany's economic strength and by jeopardizing
the stipulated annual instalments. The latter's capital value on
the international money market depends on the assumed cer-
tainty of their being paid. A regular annual payment of
2.4 billion gold marks, as contemplated by the peace
treaty after 1926, can be carried out only by an excess of Ger-
man exports over imports covering that amount. It is hardly
likely that Germany can throw even half of her former exports
on the market, especially if the treatment of "a most favored
nation" is denied to her for five years. The total value of Ger-
man exports will therefore scarcely reach the total value of her
former exports, even if a rise in the prices of commodities in
the world market from 150 to 200 per cent is taken into account.
Exports worth 2.4 billion gold marks would certainly
amount to 25 to 30 per cent of the total exports. This
can only be considered if production were to increase sufficiently
to provide goods for the payment of liabilities according to the
peace treaty after other goods have been made available for the
payment of indispensable imports. To set aside goods for the
payment of reparation liabilities as long as the value of exports
does not exceed the value of imports, is an attempt to settle an
old debt by contracting a new one.
Ill
Germany cannot undertake larger reparation liabilities than
her economic structure enables her to bear. The possibility of
doing this will be limited, moreover, by the state of her public
finance. All payments rendered by Germany to other nations
must in the end be provided out of the budget of the German
Reich from such funds as taxpayers are going to place at the
disposal of the Government. If this cannot be done, a debauch
of borrowing and an unlimited increase of paper issue must
follow. The depreciation of money must increase, while pro-
duction will decrease. Imports must cease, and although the
falling rate of exchange will temporarily stimulate exports as
a kind of premium and for the time being may lead to dumping
and unfair competition, even this impetus must shortly fail, as
neither raw materials nor food can be got abroad. Without
such imports, it can hardly be expected that even Germany's
present limited economic strength can be kept up.
The recovery of German economic life is impossible without
a recovery of the German monetary system; a recovery of the
German monetary system depends on German finance being put
in order, especially by the regulation of the floating debt; and
the ordering of German finance in its turn depends on the total
amount of the liabilities under the reparation clauses of the
peace treaty and on the manner in which they will have to be
met. The ordinary budget of the country balanced with 2.4
billion marks in the year 1913, apart from the services managed
by the Government; the ordinary budget for 1920, based on the
figures of April, 1920, estimates an expenditure of 27.9 billion
marks. This does not include the huge deficit of the Government
services, which have their own separate budget, postal service
(probable deficit one billion marks), railways (probable deficit
14 billion marks). This huge expenditure can be met at present
only by the issue of floating debts.
On March 31, 1920, the funded debt amounted to 92 bil-
lion marks. It has increased very little since the end of the
war, as the premium saving bonds loan brought in only about
4 billion marks, half of which has been paid for with war
loans. On the other hand, there is a steady growth of treasury
bills. The amount outstanding rose from .4 billion marks at the
beginning of the war to 48 billion marks on September 30, 1918,
i. e., a monthly average increase of 935 million marks. From
October 1, 1918, to March 31, 1920, the average monthly increase
has reached 2.4 billions.
On March 31, 1920, the total floating debt of the Reich con-
sisting of treasury bills amounted to 91.6 billion marks. There
are other short termed liabilities of the Reich reaching 13.5
billion marks. Thus on March 31, 1920, the total floating debt
of the Reich was 105 billion marks. Moreover, the states have
contracted a floating debt of another 16 billion marks up to
March 1, 1920.
The effect of this floating debt on the circulation of notes is
at present only partly direct. Of 91.6 billion treasury bills dis-
counted by the Reichsbank by the end of March only 42.7 billions
were held by it. The remaining 48.9 billions were in other
hands, constituting a danger to the Bank, the gravity of which
must not be underrated. When the money market tightens up
with the resumption of economic activities, or if there were a
panic, these 48.9 billions would return to the Reichsbank for re-
discounting, and the note issue would have to be increased on a
very much larger scale than has been done up to now.
The paper money issue (notes of the Reichsbank, of the pri-
vate banks of issue, currency notes, and loan certificates) has
increased from 2.7 billions on June 30, 1914, to 26.7 billions on
October 31, 1918, and to 60.3 billions on April 23, 1920.
At present there is no possibility of paying back or of funding
the floating debt. The savings of the German people are not
large enough to convert 1,600 marks per head of the population
into a funded debt without withdrawing indispensable working
capital from industry and trade. There is even no hope at
present of stopping the further increase of the floating debt.
The ordinary budget of the Reich for 1920 estimates a current
expenditure of 23.8 billion marks, to which must be added at
least 8 billion marks for the states and municipalities, making a
total current expenditure of 32 billion marks, or 533 marks per
head of the population. The proceeds of the taxes recently voted
and of the old taxes are expected to yield permanently 30.95
billion marks. This would mean that revenue falls permanently
short of expenditure by over a billion marks. To this must be
added for the present about 4 billion marks non-recurring ex-
penditure of the Reich for 1920 on the ordinary budget and the
very large extraordinary budget of at least 12 billion marks.
The probable deficits of the railways of 14 billion marks, and of
390
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2883
the postoffice of one billion marks, are not included in it. As the
taxes will not come in until late in the financial year, they will
figure to some extent in the next budget only. It is quite im-
possible at present to get a clear idea of the amount of the
total deficit.
One must not forget, moreover, that the "morale" of the tax-
payers has suffered greatly. In face of very high taxation cer-
tain classes of the population which were formerly to be de-
pended upon as taxpayers may succumb to the temptation to
defraud. Notwithstanding severe legal enactments, "the flight
from taxes" has already set in strongly. Direct taxation is
weighing very heavily on income. It varies for the different
sources of income. Taking an income of 10,000 marks as start-
ing point, it ranges from 11.7 per cent, 19.95 per cent, and
35.05 per cent to 59.52 per cent, 63.52 per cent, and 70.72
per cent on an income of 10 million marks. To this must be
added non-recurrent levies. A distinction is made between old
wealth and new wealth (war profits). Old wealth has to pay
from 5 per cent on 10,000 marks to 54.18 per cent on 10 million
marks, whilst the enormous percentage of 98.49 per cent is
taken from new wealth (war profits) amounting to 10 million
marks. . . .
On the other hand, it is very difficult at present to raise ex-
isting indirect taxation still higher. In a period of a low stand-
ard of living, of a serious falling-off of consumption, and of
soaring prices for staple goods, higher indirect taxes do not
promise larger returns. The Government was compelled to set
aside 10 billion marks or about 160 marks per head of the
population from July, 1919, to June 30, 1920, in order to cheapen
imported food. Under these circumstances it is politically im-
possible in a democracy to secure a vote for indirect taxation,
which is sure to lower the standard of living of the masses.
German finance is in a precarious state. Radical remedies
will not save it. If Germany were to declare itself bankrupt —
a suggestion which is sometimes made — social order would be
turned into chaos. The German war loans were taken up by a
large percentage of the population. These persons are sup-
porters of the existing order for the time being. If their small
savings turned out to be worthless, they would surely be driven
into the camp of social anarchy. Moreover, such a violent meas-
ure would bring about the collapse of industry and social life.
The German economic system is based on credit to a very large
degree. The savings banks have invested many billions in Reich
and state loans. The joint stock banks, as the great credit
givers of the country, are holding large amounts of treasury
bills; nearly fifty billions of treasury bills were in other hands
than the Reichsbank's on March 31, 1920. As the largest part
of the German national debt is held at home, a declaration of
insolvency would reduce the income of the taxpayer (on account
of the ever widening field of the catastrophe) to a much greater
degree than could be made good by the wiping out of taxes for
the debt charge.
The execution of the peace treaty in its present form must
increase the dangers to German finance. The treaty assumes
an initial payment of 60 billion gold marks. This means a
charge of about 1,000 gold marks or about 10,000 paper marks
per head of the population, taking the value of the mark at
10 per cent of the par value. A family of four would owe 40,000
marks according to the treaty; it would have to raise 2,400
marks per annum on a 6 per cent basis for interest and sinking
fund. As the present estimates already provide for an expendi-
ture of over 30 billion marks, a family of four would be
charged with 4,400 marks taxes. Each member would have
to render 1,100 marks. Many earned incomes have risen lately
with the increased cost of living; with others this has not been
the case, in spite of the reduced purchasing power of money.
According to the assessments for the Prussian income tax for
the year 1918, 81.21 per cent of the Prussian taxpayers had
an income not exceeding 3,000 marks, another 16.08 per cent
had an income of less than 9,500 marks.
The German Government are of the opinion that the sum of
20 billion gold marks, which must be paid up to May 1,
1921, will be covered, if not exceeded by deliveries already com-
pleted or in process of completion. The value of the coal mines
in the Sarre basin, the surrendered ships, the Reich's and states'
property in the ceded territories, railway material and rolling
stock, goods of a non-military character left behind, coal already
delivered, etc., will exceed the stipulated amount.
As regards private property, the Government must redeem
it and pay compensation. To redeem 20 billion gold marks,
200 billion paper marks are needed. Compensation may per-
haps be reduced by heavy taxation, so that the Reich may be
spared an expense it is unable to bear. By doing this, those
classes which require capital for resuming their economic con-
nections abroad will be crippled financially.
This state of affairs is even more serious where the periodi-
cally recurring annual charge is concerned. The delivery of
about 12 million tons of coal per annum will burden the budget
with several billion marks every year.
To carry out the obligations of the treaty, at least 24 billion
marks a year must be provided for in the budget. The value of
2.4 billion gold marks equals today about 24 billion paper marks.
This would in effect double the current expenditure of the Reich,
the states, and the municipalities. Each fall in the rate of ex-
change must automatically increase this financial burden.
Even if the Government were able to balance the ordinary
budget by heroic measures, and to stop the further increase of the
floating debt, the financial clauses of the Versailles treaty would
push it again and again on to the road leading to bankruptcy.
The taxable wealth of the German people is not great enough.
. . . The Government would be compelled to borrow over
and over again, and this means floating debts.
The German Government is expected on the one hand to bal-
ance revenue and expenditure by straining every nerve, and to
stop inflation by reducing the floating debt; it is forced, on
the other hand to increase its expenditure continuously, and to
accelerate the issue of notes.
The charges on German finance must automatically lead to
an increase of the floating debt. The growth of the floating
debt in turn must automatically be followed by a growing note
circulation, and by a new depreciation of money and a new rise
of prices. Under present conditions rising prices cannot lead
to increase in production; they prevent sound economic calcu-
lation, and cause a severe struggle for higher wages. The
paper value of German production is growing indefinitely, but
the real value expressed in gold must decline with the increas-
ing difficulty of getting imports for feeding the people and with
the cessation of domestic production. Every rise in prices is
followed by new demands for higher wages, and every conces-
sion to labor is overtaken by a fitful rise of prices. Payments
due abroad remain unchanged; but when production is falling
they absorb a relatively larger share of the total produce at the
disposal of the German people. As they must be paid for by the
issue of new paper money, prices rise further still. Higher
prices increase the burden of the payments due abroad for the
next year. Under such circumstances German finance cannot
recover, notwithstanding severe treatment of capital and income.
The collapse of German finance is the natural result of the
war and its consequences. In this respect there is no difference
in principle between the position of Germany and that of other
countries. The fundamental difference in Germany's situation
is due to the fact that, as a result of the peace treaty, she is
not able freely to choose the ways and means which could lead
to the recovery of her economic life and to the salvation of
her finance.
Without freedom of economic action, and without economic
cooperation with other nations, Germany can neither rebuild
her economic life nor put her financial affairs in order. With-
out financial order Germany cannot punctually meet her lia-
bilities. If freedom of economic action is restored to Germany,
there is hope that her people, trained to work, will put all their
strength into economic reconstruction.
J
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1920
No. 2884
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 391
EDITORIALS :
The Progressive Bloc 394
Truth Rising Again 395
The Baseball Scandal 395
Fiction and Its Producers 396
The Committee of One. Hundred For Ireland 397
THE STATE DEPARTMENT AND THE NEWS. By Paul Hanna 393
TWO WAYS WITH ALBANIA. By Hiram K. Moderwell 399
THE SOCIALIST CAMPAIGN. By Lewis S. Gannett 401
BEHIND THE BRITISH COAL CRISIS. By Felix Morley 402
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 404
CORRESPONDENCE 404
DRAMA :
Max Reinhardt. By Ludwig Lewisohn 405
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION:
France and General Wrangel 406
The Conditions of the Third Internationale 406
The Petrograd Elections 408
FALL BOOK SUPPLEMENT:
The Philosophy of World Pathos. By Hartley Alexander 409
The Human Costs of the War. By David Starr Jordan 410
Musical Portraits. By Henrietta Straus 411
The Functional Organization of Society. By Thomas Reed Powell... 413
Aria and Recitative. By Mark Van Doren 414
Lloyd George. By J. A. Hobson 415
History and History. By Charles A. Beard 416
Divine Personality and Human Life. By R. R 417
Sociology in Two Dimensions. By Robert H. Lowie 418
Ladies and Women. By Dorothy Brewster 419
A Slav in the Austrian Consular Service. By Hamilton Fish Armstrong. 420
Foreign Rights in China. By Frederick Wells Williams 421
Treitschke's History. By W. K. Stewart 422
The Irreconcilable Blind. By Gregory Zilboorg 423
The Politician of the Middle Valley. By Clarence W. Alvord. ...... . 424
Nationalization. By Arthur Gleason 423
A Conservative on the League. By C. R. Fish 426
The Advancing Hour. By William MacDonald 427
Steel and Oak. By L. L 42g
Notable Fall Books !!.'.!'.!!!!!!!!!!!!!.'!!! 428
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER LEWIS S. GANNETT
LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates— Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation.
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British. Agents for
Subscriptions and Adverting: Swarthmore Press Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
MR. WILSON to the fore! His first lance in the cam-
paign has been broken on the enemy's front. He
rejoices that the "genuine national referendum" which he
has desired is at hand and that the people themselves are to
give a sovereign mandate to their representatives; "they
are to instruct their own Government what they wish done."
Does the country want its honor vindicated and the Treaty
of Versailles ratified, he asks. Well, all the American peo-
ple have not forgotten that their sacred honor was pledged
by this same man in the form of the Fourteen Peace Points
upon which the armistice was based, and that subsequently
that pledge of honor was forgotten in the sordid give and
take and bargaining at Paris. They are not unmindful of
their honor now, but unless every sign fails the country has
made up its mind that it is going to entrust the keeping of
that honor to somebody who doesn't typify autocracy and
Palmerism and Burlesonism and the abrogation of civil
rights and liberties. They may, as Mr. Wilson insists, be
"grossly misled" by false League attacks, but their instinct
that the time has come for a new government is sound, even
if that is going to be a poor and a reactionary one.
" F AM the State Department," seems to be Mr. Colby's
1 motto, and criticism of his methods is lese-majeste.
Not so long ago his predecessor lost his job for differing
with his chief; now Mr. Colby banishes from the Depart-
ment two press correspondents who presume to question his
manner of informing and misinforming the public. Autoc-
racy feels at home in the State Department. The incident
involving Mr. Paul Hanna, described elsewhere in this issue,
was but the upshot of intense dissatisfaction of other
trained and trusted Washington correspondents. Two
months ago Mr. Stanley M. Reynolds, correspondent of the
Baltimore Sun, called attention to the Department's policy
of keeping the country in the dark regarding important
international negotiations, and the Sun indorsed his posi-
tion editorially. Mr. Harold Phelps Stokes, correspondent
of the New York Evening Post, dispatched to his paper a
similar broadside — it was Mr. Stokes's amazing indict-
ment which induced The Nation to take the matter up.
When Mr. Hanna accepted The Nation's assignment, his
course in presenting to the Secretary of State a memoran-
dum of his criticism was correctness itself, contrasting
sharply with Mr. Colby's expulsion of Mr. Hanna and his
associate Federated Press correspondent, Mr. Todd, from
future conferences. To his credit Mr. Todd scorned en-
trance to the press conferences which the slightest gesture
of dissent from Mr. Hanna's letter would have secured.
WHY did Mr. Colby choose to banish these two corre-
spondents and pass over the criticism of two con-
servative metropolitan newspapers warmly supporting the
Democratic campaign? Because, stooping to the familiar
trick of other high administration officials, he evidently be-
lieved that by centering his virulence on the correspondents
of a radical press association, he could effectively draw the
red herring across the path of wholly justified, public-
spirited, and American criticism of his autocratic, not to
say shifty, methods. As the Editor and Publisher says edi-
torially: "Exclusion of radicals has become easy, popular,
and therefore too common to serve as answer to charges. It
would seem that where freedom of the press is involved a
more direct and more dignified answer might be expected."
That Mr. Hanna's criticism struck home, Mr. Colby's
behavior convincingly testifies. Mr. Hanna's fellow-corre-
spondents know where the truth lies. It now remains to be
seen whether or not they will have the courage and sufficient
sense of professional honor and solidarity to unite in endors-
ing his protest and in withdrawing from Mr. Colby's wholly
barren seances. Such a move would be a constructive
effort toward reestablishing the importance and dignity of
the press; it would greatly advance the causes of "pitiless
publicity" and "open covenants openly arrived at," and
materially aid the "grossly misled" electorate in the "genu-
ine national referendum" of which Secretary Colby's chief
392
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
has just spoken so fervently in his first campaign plea.
ADMINISTRATION hypocrisy and Administration sup-
pression of truth are nowhere more evident than in the
poor little ex-republic of Santo Domingo, now a province
governed by the United States Marine Corps. Washington
treats us to a long summary of the sanitary and educational
reforms effected by the American military administration,
but tells us nothing of the essential facts or of the excesses
of American military rule, The Germans improved sanita-
tion during their occupation of some of the villages of north-
ern France, but no officer of the Marine Corps ever suggested
that those reforms justified German presence in France.
The money which built the schools and executed the health
laws in Santo Domingo was Dominican money, and Amer-
icans had no business to be there spending it for them. That
is the essential underlying fact which whole scrap-books of
white-washing reports cannot hide. Our Government at-
tempts to shroud its acts behind a censorship, but by devious
ways the facts are slowly reaching the American people. It
was only when the story of Fabio Fiallo and his fellow
Dominican patriots leaked into the Latin-American press,
and when the protests of Press Clubs in Montevideo and
Buenos Aires were telegraphed to our newspapers that the
American people learned of this latest Junker drama.
FABIO FIALLO, Amerigo Lugo, and Flores Cabrera,
three Dominican writers of distinction, ventured to
criticize American policy in Santo Domingo. American offi-
cers arrested them, and they were tried by American mili-
tary courts. The sentence was at first secret; rumor had it
that they were condemned to death. The story spread
through Latin-America. The Nation wrote to Secretary
Colby on September 7, inclosing a clipping from a Mexico
City newspaper, and asking if the story were true. Secre-
tary Colby has not yet replied. Fortunately, the story was
exaggerated. Lugo's sentence was never officially con-
firmed; Fiallo began serving a term of three years' impris-
onment at hard labor, and was also condemned — he, a poet —
to pay a $5,000 fine. After the story reached the United
States via Uruguay, the sentences were first commuted, then
suspended. Lugo's crime was writing this :
Neither the necessity of maintaining herself in this country,
nor the pretension of wishing to aid us in return to a condition
of internal order empowers the United States of America to
lay hands on everything as if nothing had been organized by us
previous to the violent outbreak of her soldiers.
Fiallo went further.
"Dominicans," he wrote, "let us join closely, shoulder to
shoulder, and let us form, full of the vigorous breath of liberty,
the formidable barrier of resistance which shall break all the
spears of intervention as if they were frail reeds."
And Admiral Snowden, solemnly reviewing the verdict of
the lower court, commented that the sentence was not rigor-
ous or excessive, and that Fiallo might properly have been
condemned to death! These things are done in our name;
the facts are suppressed; and those who seek information
about them are banished from the State Department.
THE best thing to be said about the American Legion is
that its membership includes only a fraction of the
men whom this country mobilized for the World War, and
that its acts and opinions are therefore not representative.
The worst thing to be said about it could hardly be harsher
than it has spoken itself in the record of its national con-
vention, just concluded in Cleveland. Although the Legion
piously voted to keep out of politics, it proceeded to meddle
with at least four political questions — and took the wrong
side of all of them. The Legion indorsed the efforts last
winter to get bonus legislation through Congress, and in-
structed its officers to press at the next session the bill that
has already gone through the House. A resolution was also
adopted in favor of compulsory military training, while the
Pacific Coast delegation forced through a declaration calling
upon Congress to prohibit immigration from Japan. After
the convention itself was over, the new executive committee
met and called for the dismissal of Louis F. Post, Assistant
Secretary of Labor, one of the few public officials in Wash-
ington who has stood for the enforcement of our laws in
relation to the deportation of aliens, as against the illegal
methods of the Department of Justice. The diminishing
ranks of the Legion would make it less worthy of serious
consideration were it not for the fact that the great number
of former soldiers outside of it are only slightly organized,
and that the public is prone to confuse the voice of the
Legion with that of the men who formed our army and navy
in 1917 and 1918. Let us disassociate the two.
w
OLF! Wolf!" cry Messrs. Gompers and Woll in the
American Federationist. Oudegeest for the Inter-
national Federation of Trade Unions and Adamson for the
Council of Action of the British Labor Party, according
to these American watchdogs, are stalking round the fold
with Lenin and Trotzky, ready to spring. Look at Italy,
where Bolshevik teeth are even now deep in the victim's
throat. The International Federation has changed its mind
about the League of Nations, is no longer willing to accept
it even with reservations; the British Labor Party has
turned its back on the democratic parliamentary system
"which England has evolved by seven centuries of strug-
gles": this points to Moscow and the Third Internationale
and the plans of Soviet Russia to swallow the world. But
the American Federation of Labor smells the peril and will
beware. No mass action by means of a general strike to
prevent war in this country! The American Federation,
of course, has always stood against the demand for a large
standing army, for the limitation of munitions of war, and
for the reduction of naval establishments. "But," say the
watchdogs with a burst of logic, "if the production of war
materials were to cease entirely all small nations would be
utterly helpless and at the mercy of their larger neighbors"
— presumably because their larger neighbors, having no
weapons, would then come in and strangle them with naked
hands. Didn't something like this, except for the naked
hands, happen to Serbia and Belgium in 1914? Ah, but it is
comforting to know that Gompers and Woll will dam the
floods of revolution that threaten Europe!
TWENTY-ONE housing laws were passed by the New
York State Legislature at its special housing session,
but there is little likelihood that the new bills will materially
increase the number of houses available for dwelling pur-
poses in New York City. The bills did obviate the needless
horrors of the usual October 1 hegira; and in so doing
they cut a wide gash in the time-honored principle of the
sacred rights of private property. A landlord is no longer
lord of his own property; he cannot set his rent or choose
his tenants. But the law, which leaves these decisions in
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
393
the irresponsible hands of the overburdened courts, does not
go far enough; if the landlord and his tenant are not to
settle such questions between them, the final review should
be by an expert commission rather than a function of a
petty magistrate's mood. And the more important question
is not to keep present tenants off the streets but to build
new houses to meet the city's growing need. The new bills
make State Land Bank bonds a legal investment for city
sinking funds, and exempt new building from taxation for a
period of years. These steps may help, but there is no con-
viction that they will meet the crying need. There seem to
be but two ways to get houses built — either to remove the
restrictions on rents so that they may skylark to a figure
that will invite speculative building, or for the city or State
to build houses itself.
EVERY day brings additional proof of the necessity of
something being done to stop the bloodshed in Ireland.
Every day the leading American newspapers carry the
ghastly tales on their front pages of towns or villages sacked
or burned, of women and children driven from their homes
by British soldiers, of "black and tan" police running amuck,
of policemen shot down from ambush, of public buildings
raided and public officials killed or wounded — in brief, riot,
plunder, and terrorism. Reprisals once charged to the ac-
count of Sinn Fein are being answered by reprisals for
which the Government is held responsible, while so influen-
tial a publication as the New Statesman charges the Cabinet,
and Lloyd George himself, with being responsible for the
outbreaks of maddened troops, which the daily press lays
to the natural anger of the soldiers. Every day brings justi-
fication for the existence of The Nation's Committee of 100
to throw light upon what is going on. Every day more men
of light and leading in England are protesting against the
continuance of the existing situation. Thus so well known a
soldier as General Gough has attacked the Government for
which he fought so conspicuously in France, because of its
Irish policy and Earl Grey has made a proposal for the
solution of the difficulty by proposing what is in its essence
the Dominion scheme of government plus immediate with-
drawal of British troops. He is willing to trust the Irish to
govern themselves, but he is met with charges from the
jingo press that he is proposing a policy of shameful scuttle
— and this well meant effort is also likely to go for naught.
THE combined population of the three largest cities in
the United States is something over ten million; their
combined area is 605 square miles. Which means that in
contrast to an average of thirty-five persons per square mile
in the United States as a whole, in New York, Chicago, and
Philadelphia there are almost 1,700. Ten per cent of the
people of the country living in .0002 per cent of the area!
These figures are less appalling than they are bewildering;
only an inmate of one of these three great cities can begin
to appreciate just how much personal discomfort they indi-
cate. And yet this concentration of the population of the
United States, more than a quarter of which lives in cities
of over 100,000 inhabitants, goes on. The country boy still
goes to the city to make his fortune; the farmer finds it
increasingly harder to get hands to harvest his crops. Food
is plentiful in the country; but the consumers of it are in
the cities, and the difficulties in bringing one to the other
mount apace.
THAT homespun economist, village epigrammatist, and
true folk-philosopher, Calvin Coolidge, has written an
introduction to a new edition of Carl Schurz's life of Lin-
coln. Well, what next? Senator Warren G. Harding would
be just the man to introduce John Marshall's life of Wash-
ington; Mr. Charles F. Murphy might perform a similar
service for Randall's life of Jefferson; the embattled war-
rior Leonard Wood, for Grant's own memoirs; and Henry
Ford, for the sage recollections of Franklin. Such under-
takings bind the past and present together in the affection-
ate and intimate bonds of natural piety. We must not let
the deeds of great heroes perish from the earth, but must
preserve them as apples of gold in picture-frames of silver.
Rue and fennel and rosemary and pansies are all well
enough for average men. But the great living recall the
great dead by resembling them and interpreting them. Cal-
vin Coolidge is called — by certain loyal Republicans — the
Lincoln of the Berkshires. If only his interpretation turns
out to be as good as his resemblance !
SOME eighty-odd Hapsburgs are penniless and obliged to
go to work. A Geneva dispatch reports that they are
forced to accept situations in order to live, some arch-
duchesses becoming governesses, others maids. Here, we
submit, is a ray of light amid the darkness of our so-called
servant problem. The eighty Hapsburgs and the various
other ex-royalties and ex-nobilities of middle and eastern
Europe may perhaps be a drop in the bucket. Yet every
little helps. Nor can any experienced householder doubt the
probable success of such an experiment after a long pro-
cession of empresses and absolute autocrats in the kitchen.
Nothing more is needed but a warm invitation by the
housewives of America. In view of the ancient lineage of
the prospective immigrants, the Ellis Island formalities
might be waived. The romantic possibilities, to say nothing
of the motion picture and serial rights of the ensuing situa-
tions, are most attractive. And who would not have a little
Hapsburg in his home?
SO the famous old New York Sun becomes an evening
newspaper and the New York Herald takes its place in
the morning by fiat of their owner, Frank A. Munsey. Well,
it's pleasant to welcome back an old friend in the Herald thus
brought back to separate life after a brief but most uncom-
fortable hyphenate existence with the Sun, which could not
but end in divorce. We welcome it even if there was a good
deal of rouge and painted lips and dyed hair about it in the
last days of the Bennett regime to hide a premature and
needless decay compelled by the fads and fancies of an un-
worthy owner. Of course, jokes are now in order about the
Sun setting in the evening instead of rising in the morning;
but from the practical newspaper point of view Mr. Munsey
is right in changing the name of the Evening Sun and di-
vorcing the Sun and the Herald. It is a curious fact that
wherever a newspaper owner has had a morning and an
evening edition, the latter has grown faster and flourished
better when it had its distinctive title. Of course, neither
the Sun nor the Herald will be else than a conventional paper
and the opportunity is vast in New York for a broad, liberal
paper more painstaking in its news than any of the many
now in existence. A most interesting development is that
the Times continues to wane. From a daily sale of 393,178
on April 1, 1919, it is now down to 342,553, which is proof
once more that you cannot fool all the people all the time.
394
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
A Progressive Bloc
THE great two-ring political circus now showing has
ceased to attract even the mildest interest. Tight-rope
walker Harding's performance is so crude as to excite little
save derisive laughter, while the weapons brandished by
sword-swallower Cox are so evidently made of papier mache
that the crowd turns its back on the Democratic ring before
the real act begins. The sideshows are doing no business
at all. The Farmer-Labor tent is utterly empty; a govern-
ment solicitous for the morals of its citizens prevents the
star performer of the Socialist show from exhibiting under
its canvas; and the Eighteenth Amendment makes impossi-
ble the sale even of red lemonade in the Prohibition booth.
A bored electorate, having passed the milestone of Babe's
fiftieth homer, turns its attention to an unexampled baseball
scandal and the world series. The second four years of
Wilsonism were too much for the ordinary American.
Judging from all present indications, he has simply made
up his jaded mind to jump from the frying pan into the
fire by voting for Harding. At Marion they are busy build-
ing a super-cabinet to function around a "normal" President.
The real battleground has accordingly shifted to the
back porch, where two groups of politicians are striving
each to assert a proprietary interest in the amiable stuffed
figure that the Republicans have set up as a candidate.
Between the parties, no matter how loud they shout, there
is no issue, national or international, but within each party
there is an issue. The Republicans as a party, of course,
are against the Wilson League of Nations, just as the
Democrats are for it. But while the dominant Republican
group must for partisan reasons fight the Wilson League,
they are in reality no less earnest than the President himself
in desiring its equivalent. Mr. Elihu Root, recently sojourn-
ing abroad in behalf of international peace, may fairly be
presumed to have been not inactive during recent months in
the difficult task of devising a rubber-tired, ball-bearing
substitute for the creaking abomination that was patched
together at Versailles. The real issue in this League of
Nations business as in all domestic questions is not be-
tween the parties, but between the everyday people and
the exploiting interests within each party.
It is by no means too early, then, to look forward to the
next political development possible from the progressive
viewpoint. All indications are that reaction is to carry the
coming elections by overwhelming majorities. There is no
reason to hope that the next Congress will be notably more
liberal in either branch than the present whose members
are so busy trying to get reelected. From the action of the
majority, then, nothing is to be hoped. But at each end of
the Capitol there exists a saving remnant of individuals
(they can scarcely be said in either case to make up a
group) who have at any rate some realization of the issues
and have stood in some measure for the popular interest.
Why should not these individuals, without necessarily
breaking party ties, yet recognizing the unreality of the
issues separating the parties, unite as a progressive bloc
for common action on the grave questions that must be
faced in 1921 and the years following? The League ques-
tion might well furnish a rallying point for such a bloc.
As for other issues there are a plenty — labor, transport, the
agricultural problem, civil liberty, our fiscal policy, etc.
Certain names at once come to mind: La Follette and
Norris and Walsh and Borah, whose political independence
has just been demonstrated anew; Johnson, Harris, Capper,
France, McKellar, and Sheppard in the Senate, for example;
and in the House men like Huddleston, Kelly, Frear, Baer,
Carss, Sinclair, Browne, James, Fuller of Massachusetts,
Keller, Mason, and Randall of California. There is reason-
able hope for some reinforcement of the group in the House,
but the course we have suggested depends for its effective-
ness, not upon large numbers, but upon courage and clear-
ness of purpose. We recognize full well the difficulties of
that course, and we entertain no illusions as to the character
of some of these political leaders of ours. But such as they
are, they represent the best we have to work with at pres-
ent; and unless progressives are to despair utterly of
political action, they must think out some mode of getting
forward in the midst of the prospective wilderness of reac-
tion. We would accordingly urge upon these and other
like-minded political leaders the desirability, nay the neces-
sity, of some such action if the progressive thought of the
country is not to be voiceless in the next two years. The
formation of such a bloc might have immediate practical
consequences of importance. Should the Senate be closely
divided again, as is not impossible, even a small group of
Senators, acting fearlessly together with a fairly clear con-
ception of the issues involved, might, by utilizing the
partisan division, prevent the enactment of reactionary
special-interest legislation that will otherwise slip through.
More important by far is the education which a battle
waged by such a group would give to the public. Economic
thought in the United States is shockingly backward, and
political opinion sadly demoralized. The press is mostly in
the hands of reaction, and in consequence it is almost im-
possible to get before the people the facts on which they
might form intelligent opinion and base intelligent action.
An informed and courageous minority group could make of
these facts news that the dailies could not afford to
ignore. The public, it is true, is little interested in Con-
gressional debates. During recent years it has had too
little reason to be. Should "a little group of wilful men,"
however, confident in the Tightness of their course, from
time to time block the progress of the powerful financial
and political machine that is going to ride over us during
the next few years, their action and the reasons for it would
be real news. A few months of such action would have far-
reaching educational results.
Thus, an independent group might well serve as the
much-needed point of crystallization for the liberal senti-
ment of the country now held in solution. Some meaning
might, perhaps, be injected into the campaign of 1922 or
1924, as opposed to the mummery of 1920. For the events
of the years just ahead are likely to prove highly educational,
provided only there be at hand a group of men in position
to point out their meaning. In a period of sharp reaction
the progressive bloc would in this task none the less be
working with the times ; for the body of the people, after all,
are eager for the light. And only the truth can show the
way out of the darkness that envelops them.
The frank Republican reaction after March 4 will be
preferable to the present reaction with its hypocritical
veneer. The issues will be clearer and more easily dealt
with through Congressional elections.
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
395
Truth Rising Again
IS Europe dying as Anatole France declares? Sir Philip
Gibbs has answered the question in the New York Times
by an article so compelling and so full of emotion as to have
attracted widespread attention. He is plainly so nearly of
Anatole France's opinion that the difference between them
is of the slightest. Yet he still has hope, for he has a cure.
Here it is, idealistic enough to please any pacifist and to
arouse the scorn of every practical man :
There is only one cure for the woes of Europe and our own —
not easy, but bound to come unless we are looking for downfall.
It is the reconciliation of peoples, burying of old hatchets, wiping
out of old villainies and cooperating in a much closer union of
mutual help under the direction of a league of nations, made
democratic and powerful by the free consent and ardent im-
pulses of the common folk. Before that can happen there must
come new leaders, new enthusiasm for the ideals of life, a new
spirit of unselfishness and service for the common weal — and
just now we do not see them coming.
Beyond all question this is the truth and Sir Philip has
again rendered great service in saying it. From him it
comes with particular effectiveness, for he was one of the
correspondents who "kept up the morale of the people at
home"; who lent himself — as he had to in order to stay at
the front — to all the lies and falsifications of governments
and military. It is as if his conscience now troubled him
and so he aids to rise the very truth he helped to crush to
earth, at the risk, we fear, of soon being called as many
names as those persons who shared Mr. Wilson's belief that
there should be peace without victory and who demanded it
in 1917 lest Europe perish before the bitter-enders had
their way. Today Sir Philip justifies them — unconsciously
probably; shall Europe, in chaos and utter disaster, prove
the point beyond all cavil?
The old watchword, "the war to end war!" Sir Philip
says "now mocks at us with jeering laughter." The English
— his English — are experimenting with new poison gases
and bombing Arab villages, just as Americans are bombard-
ing those of the Haitians, while the French are placing their
hopes in military science as the only safeguard of the
future. The effort to cure war by more war, to reform
erring peoples by "force without stint," has brought its own
penalty with it. The poison engendered has entered into the
veins of all the peoples. Every Frenchman, says Sir Philip,
admits that France, victorious, is dying and England is only
a little less sick of the same disease. All the high moralities
with which the world was regaled he now sees have proved
only so many death's heads. The comradeships of the war
are at an end; the Allies regard each other with suspicion,
the French believing that England has grown enormously
rich at everybody else's expense. There is no leadership;
"nationalism more narrow, more bitter, more selfish than in
the world of 1914 has replaced the fleeting hope of many
peoples that there might be a real league of nations based
upon the common sense of common folk"; "we have fallen
back on cynicism as nations, as classes, as individuals."
Labor is Sir Philip's greatest disappointment of all — it has
scored the "greatest failure of all" in his judgment. But
how could he have expected anything else as the outcome?
When was there a war which ennobled peoples or classes?
When was there a war which did not have its crassly
materialistic reaction? When was there a war that did
not set back the hands of progress, stay all true reforms?
Our state's witness is sure that Europe will not return to
health until it has been through "great agonies." Alas, in
no other way can the sins of this guilty world be purged;
only by suffering can it be cured of the disease of war which
menaces its very existence. It is indubitably because
America has suffered so little that it is politically so back-
ward. A great period of travail lies before us all. That it
has begun to make men like Sir Philip Gibbs see where the
truth lies, and tell it, is one of the most hopeful auguries
that the cure of truth, and honesty, and a return to human-
ity has begun to work.
The Baseball Scandal
THE study of international affairs proves now to have
been not absolutely useless to those who follow the
news of the scandal in baseball. Whoever it may have been
that "fixed" the series, it was some one who ran a modest
risk and carried off an enormous swag, like the little gangs
of armament makers and investment bankers and natural
imperialists who hatch up rows between the nations of the
earth. Whoever it was that took the bribe, it was men who
got pitifully little for it in the way of actual money but
who jeopardized their reputations and careers, tricked their
fellows on the team, deceived the public at large, and
smirched the credit of the game for a dozen years. The
population, as under the workings of Realpolitik, suffers : it
pays out its money honestly and in return gets a simula-
crum; it makes such heroes of successful players as a na-
tional population makes only of its successful generals, in
the end to find out that something unseen was behind the
heroes ; it looks on with rapture at the glitter and thrill and
magnificent competence of the sport, and all the time is at
the mercy of any crook who may buy or throw a match.
The grieved newsboys of Boston typify millions when
they pass resolutions condemning the "murderous blow at
the kids' game" struck by the "Benedict Arnolds of base-
ball." Perhaps we had not realized how much the fortunes
of baseball hang upon a moral issue. The sport has grown
to vast dimensions, involving an amount of money and time
and emotion that hardly any other institution in the United
States can equal. From the outside it looks like a material
enterprise if any thing does. And yet all this investment,
all these hours, all this excitement, would fade away if the
public could not feel confidence in the integrity of the play-
ers. The weather may be tricky or a bat may slip or a
ball may bounce in some unexpected way ; now and then the
best man may go stale or lose his nerve; the professional
honor of the player, however, has been taken for granted.
Actually we do not trust cashiers half so much, or diplo-
mats, or policemen, or physicians, as we trust an outfielder
or a shortstop. The light which beats upon him would do
very well for a throne. The one thing which he is not called
— many things as he may be called for his blunders — is sneak
or traitor. The man at the bat, cheer him or hoot at him
as we may, is supposed to be doing his best. There is some-
thing about the very nature of the game, played in the
bright sunlight with nerves at the very edge of tension,
that produces the illusion of a cleanness in the characters
of the performers more or less comparable to the sharp,
clean movements and instinctive responses of their bodies.
Bribery is something to be hatched in furtive rooms, by
396
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
lamplight, and carried out furtively. To find out that fa-
mous players have been corrupted is more than to lose faith
in them personally ; it is to begin to doubt the whole system
on perceiving what incongruities may enter in. All may
be fair in love and war, but in sport nothing is fair but
the rules.
Sordid as the details of this particular scandal have been,
there is something handsome in the spirit which they have
aroused. The losers of money have had a good deal to do
with the hunt for the offenders, of course ; and yet the great
public has lost no money and is touched only in its sense of
fair play. If anything like this degree of decency had been
applied to public affairs Mitchell Palmer and Archibald
Stevenson and Lusk and Burleson would now occupy a very
different status in public opinion. At least it is not without
some lesson from public matters that a scheme has been pro-
posed to take the conduct of the sport out of the hands of
owners, players, and officials and put it at the service of the
people as a whole, by placing the supreme jurisdiction in a
group of men not financially interested in the game and so
presumably better able to pass impartially upon the ways of
the institution. This promises well. How long must we take
to find out that it never does to trust the concerns of the
public too long or too completely to professionals? Leave
the army entirely to the military and you have war. Leave
business entirely to business men and you have the maddest
exploitation. It is the same with churches or universities
or newspapers: there must be an occasional admixture of
lay authority or the specialists will move in the direction
either of dry rot or of corruption. So, of course, with base-
ball. The suffrage of the American public has allowed it to
grow into towering dimensions. The creature has grown too
big to be trusted without some supervision. There is now
nothing to do but to take charge of it and keep it within
bounds useful to the community which has made baseball
what it is.
Fiction and Its Producers
HPHE profession of letters today means the writing of
1 prose fiction, ^he poets live on inherited fortunes, or
are connected with trade, or occupy editorial positions, or
lecture on subjects ranging from polyphonic technique to' the
practice of psycho-analysis. Only the novelist is a serious
breadwinner, and hence it is he who, like the pianist or the
architect, must be aware of the problems of rivalry and
competition. So in America, casting his eye over the pub-
lishers' announcements in any given season, he must be dis-
heartened by the roaring trade driven in imported goods.
He knows, too, that these announcements have a solid basis.
The average British novel is not imported in sheets— that
dubious and tepid honor sometimes bestowed by London on
books from overseas. It is set up and manufactured in the
United States. It represents a real investment. It com-
petes. It means business.
Our American novelist need be no silly jingo to resent
these large inroads upon his natural market. He knows that
the world of art is eternal and universal. He quarrels with
the sale and influence of masterpieces no more than he does
with the shining of the stars. If his own works are master-
pieces, he need not fear for them; if they are not, he will
yet rejoice in a splendor beyond his reach. What does trou-
ble him is the importation and competition of great masses
of perfectly competent, perfectly honest, but, in a high and
final sense, perfectly mediocre British novels. We cannot all
be Fieldings and Flauberts ; we cannot even be Galsworthys
or Bennetts. But our American novelist wonders wistfully
why we cannot, at least, be our own — well, Sheila Kaye-
Smiths. He reads her sturdy tales of Sussex peasants with
pleasure as a man and approval as a craftsman. He is thor-
oughly competent to esteem their definite but quite limited
merits. Only, we have our own country folk, he cannot help
reflecting, and our own novelists and a larger chance for
native products would do so much to sustain the present and
fructify the future of our literature.
If he would remedy this state of affairs, our American
novelist must consent to subject both his world and himself
to a really severe examination. He must begin with the fun-
damental fact that these British novels of the second rank
average a sale which justifies their importation. There is
an audience for them. This audience, consciously or not,
must find something in these books in which the average
American novel is deficient. And, if our American novelist
will keep his eye quite steadily on the object, he will find that
quality to be intellectual honesty. Let him but examine a
few typical American novels of the better sort and make
sure. Miss Elsie Singmaster's "Basil Everman" starts out
like a book by Sheila Kaye-Smith and ends like one by Archi-
bald Marshall ; Mr. Lee Wilson Dodd's "The Book of Susan"
begins like a work of Somerset Maugham and continues like
one by W. J. Locke. Hence these books are ultimately read
in America not by the audience that supports the serious
British novel, the audience which, by our premise, the self-
respecting American novelist desires to capture, but by the
devotees of the meretricious and the mellifluous. Our nov-.
elist of the second rank, in other words, lags intellectually
behind the very people to whom he should make his appeal
and has no one but himself to blame for their preference of
his British colleagues.
Why should it be so? Why do nine out of every ten
American novels that begin competently wilt into sodden
romance or explode into tribal fireworks ? Why are they not
thought through honestly to the end? There are two chief
reasons. The first reason springs from a widespread belief
among us — a strange belief for a nation nurtured in democ-
racy— that only the cheap and the false can sell well enough
to put bread into a man's mouth and that all the people do,
indeed, want to be fooled. The second reason is deeper and
more ominous. All honest books, all profoundly true books,
are revolutionary because they are revealing, and dangerous
to the inner comfort of the unthinking because they are dis-
illusioning. They are written from beyond the psychology
of the social group, not from within it; beyond and not
within the circle of mass thinking and mass delusion. You
cannot be both a scrupulous artist and a safe and sane citi-
zen of Indianapolis or Gettysburg or New Haven. You may
be tolerated there; you cannot, if you have kept your artistic
mind and vision quite pure, be applauded until you are very
famous or safely dead. That is the experience of the ages;
it will not alter in America today. Truth and beauty are
outcasts. If you want to sit on your front porch in summer,
approved by the hardware merchant on your right and the
city treasurer on your left for your "wholesome influence"
on the young, your income, and your new motor car, you
must be content to write "red-blooded novels" and "happi-
ness books" and leave the practice and the true rewards of
your art to the less domesticated spirits of an older, wiser,
wilder land.
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
397
The Committee of One Hundred on Ireland
THE membership of the Committee of One Hundred on
Ireland already exceeds one hundred, and is still grow-
ing. More than half of the States of the Union and the
District of Columbia are represented. . Since the previous
issue of The Nation went to press the following members
have been added:
Bishop Hugh L. Burleson, South Dakota; United States
S nator Arthur Capper, Kansas; Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, editor
of the Crisis, New York City; John F. Galvin, New York City;
United States Senator Charles B. Henderson, Nevada; Rabbi
E. E. Hirsch, Chicago, 111.; Bishop J. M. Horner, Ashe-
ville, N. C; Dr. Edmund J. James, lately President of the Uni-
versity of Illinois; James Weldon Johnson, New York City;
Miss Anne Martin, Reno, Nevada; Dr. John S. Simon, St. Louis,
Mo.; Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer, White Plains, N. Y.; Albert
B. Unger, New York City; Bishop Cortlandt Whitehead, Pitts-
burgh, Pa.; United States Senator Robert M. La Follette;
Bishop Troy Beatty, Chattanooga, Tenn.
Following the generous suggestion made by Mr. John E.
Milholland in a letter printed elsewhere in this issue, The
Nation has decided to call for general public subscriptions
to meet the further expenses of the investigation. It is
hoped that the response may be prompt, because the pre-
liminary work of organization is already going on rapidly
and the Commission will soon be announced; generous,
because the necessary expenses of such an investigation
are inevitably very considerable and cannot be completely
determined in advance; nation-wide, so that everyone who
believes that the truth about the things that are happening
in Ireland should be made public may have a share in help-
ing the undertaking. Small as well as large subscriptions
will be gratefully received. Mr. Royal W. France has
agreed to act as treasurer of the fund, and a detailed state-
ment of receipts and expenditures will be made public in
due time.
Mr. John Derham, Town Commissioner of Balbriggan,
the Mayor of Thurles, and Mrs. Swanzy, sister of Police
Inspector Swanzy who was recently murdered at Lisburn,
have already accepted invitations to come to this country
and testify before the Commission. Similar invitations
have been cabled to the Chairman of the Town Commis-
sioners of Lisburn, and to the same official of the town of
Mallow, which was burned and plundered by British regular
troops on September 28, in addition to the invitations an-
nounced in The Nation last week.
On September 21 an invitation to come to the United
States as a witness was cabled to Mrs. Thomas MacCurtain,
widow of the late Lord Mayor of Cork who was murdered
last March. Four days later Mrs. MacCurtain reported
that she had been shot at while in her garden and that her
house had been raided. On September 28 the Archbishop
of Canterbury, head of the Protestant Church of England,
issued a call to Christians for a week of prayer. The
Nation immediately sent to the Archbishop the following
cablegram :
The Editors of the New York Nation, at whose suggestion a
committee of over one hundred representative citizens has been
formed for the investigation of atrocities in Ireland, express
their grateful appreciation of your appeal to Christians for
prayer on behalf of Ireland and its people. Our proposed in-
vestigation contemplates no political interference or sugges-
tion, but aims only to ascertain facts and to fix responsibility.
We are concerned for the plain people of Ireland who suffer and
die. Unless moral force can prevail to end disorders, physical
force, whose inevitable end is war, must continue to make a
peaceable solution impossible. American opinion is deeply im-
pressed by the continued employment in Ireland of British sol-
diers and police apparently too brutal and lawless to be con-
trolled. While noting with satisfaction recent expressions of
concern by the Prime Minister and the announcement of an
inquiry planned by the military authorities, such promises of
settlement are vain in view of the recent attack upon the person
and house of Mrs. MacCurtain, subsequent to the dispatch by us
of an invitation to her to come to America in October and
testify, and of continued outrages at Belfast, Balbriggan, and
elsewhere. The Nation bespeaks your Lordship's indorsement of
the proposed American investigation, and your help in ending
the unspeakable conditions in Ireland which, if continued, may
finally wreck all hope of continued friendly relations between
the United States and Great Britain.
In response to an inquiry addressed to Mr. E. De Valera,
President of the Irish Republic, by the Chicago Tribune
regarding his attitude toward the proposed Commission,
the following statement was made public by Mr. De Valera's
secretary on October 4 :
In response to your inquiry, I am instructed by the President
to inform you that he welcomes any investigation which will
reveal to the carefully misinformed world the truth about the
atrocities in Ireland. The Irish have nothing to hide, but the
English everything.
The President fears that it will be difficult for The Nation
to institute an effective inquiry. When Mrs. MacCurtain re-
ceived a cabled invitation to testify regarding the murder of
her husband, her house was immediately raided by British
forces to destroy the evidence in her possession, and she was
also shot at.
The President does not for a moment doubt the good faith
of The Nation or the humanitarian motives and desire for
peace which inspire their enterprise; but he doubts the ability
of The Nation to secure from the British, whose navy controls
the seas, either safe conducts for Irish witnesses or safeguards
against reprisals for their families. The cordon of secrecy
which the British have drawn round their barbarities in Ireland
the British dare not relax, lest the world realize with what
callous brutality these zealous champions of liberty in Belgium
can improve on the methods employed against that country,
giving us not one but many Louvains in Balbriggan, Thurles,
and other ruined Irish towns.
President De Valera's statement is of peculiar importance
for two things. It assures The Nation of his approval of the
proposed inquiry, and it places upon the British Govern-
ment the responsibility for any interference or reprisals to
which witnesses who have been invited to appear before the
Commission may be subjected. So far as the British Gov-
ernment is concerned, the names of those whom the Editors
of The Nation have invited to come from Ireland have been
given to Sir Auckland Geddes, with the request that they
may be communicated to the Government which he repre-
sents. Until evidence to the contrary is forthcoming, we
shall be loath to believe, notwithstanding President De
Valera's apprehension and the lawless proceedings which
give it strength, that the British Government will go to
the extreme length of preventing any of the persons who
have been invited from coming to the United States. We
shall hope that the Commission will meet with no obstacles
in the performance of the work assigned to it.
398
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
The State Department and the News
By PAUL HANNA
ACCEPTING The Nation's invitation "to write us a fact
article on the methods of the State Department in the
matter of news," I advised Secretary Colby, through his
aide, Frederick A. Emery, of the plan to write such an
article telling the truth as I saw it about the rules which
govern his twice-daily interviews with the newspaper corre-
spondents. The "incident" which Secretary Colby created is
the result of that journalistic effort.
It is unfortunate that we cannot reproduce here the de-
fense of these rules, which Mr. Emery immediately volun-
teered. It would illuminate this whole controversy as noth-
ing else can. It was such a defense that when I said it
would look worse in print than any of my charges against
the system, Mr. Emery became greatly agitated and declared
I must not print a word of what he had said. "I spoke only
in an off-hand fashion," he insisted. Ten minutes later we
had agreed on a possible way to satisfy my wish to print
the State Department's own justification of its press rules,
together with my description and criticism of them. I
would put my grievance in writing. Mr. Emery would con-
sult with his chief. Secretary Colby would reply or not
reply, as he should see fit. Therefore, I addressed Mr. Fred-
erick A. Emery by letter, on September 27, saying:
Dear Mr. Emery:
My criticism of rules governing press interviews at the State
Department, which is supported by many journalists and a
growing body of citizens, may be expressed as follows:
These rules permit the Secretary of State to "inspire" any
kind of story he may desire, while at the same time forbidding
reporters to tell what the Secretary of State has said to twist
or taint the news.
These rules forbid reporters to attribute, directly or indi-
rectly, to the Secretary of State statements for which the Secre-
tary of State is wholly and exclusively responsible, and which
he has directed the reporters to publish.
These rules permit the Secretary of State to repudiate his first
inspired story and to inspire a totally different one next day —
concealing his own part in the enterprise and making reporters
take the blame for bad judgment, misinformation or plain
ignorance.
These rules permit (even encourage) the Secretary of State
to contradict himself or reverse his reasoning one or a dozen
times in the course of a single interview, with perfect assur-
ance that not a word of the revelation will be printed.
Consequently, these rules make the Secretary of State the
most irresponsible diplomatic officer in any considerable nation
of the world, excepting Japan.
In other countries a Cabinet Minister must answer or refuse
to answer questions directed to him in open sessions of Parlia-
ment, and then stand or fall by the decision of the people's
representatives.
As a substitute for that democratic procedure, we have in
America the press interview, but under the State Department
rules the press interview is deftly twisted inside out, so that
the Cabinet officer can fill the press with his own propaganda
without being responsible for a line that is printed, and never
has to deny or acknowledge anything so far as the public is
concerned.
We concede that the Secretary of State may properly refuse
to answer any question, if he acknowledge responsibility for
such refusal. We concede he may properly inspire any news-
paper story he may desire, if he accept responsibility for in-
spiring it.
Under the present rules governing interviews the Secretary
of State evades both these responsibilities.
If you will be kind enough to call this list of complaints to
the attention of Secretary Colby and procure from him, or with
his indorsement prepare, a statement in defense of the press
interview rules, I shall be very happy to embody the statement
in the magazine article that I discussed with you a few days
ago.
Permit me to thank you now for the favor asked, and to
remain,
Sincerely,
[Signed] Paul Hanna
It is important to establish the truth or falsity of those
charges against the press interview rules, charges based on
a reporter's contact with them for three years. Any answer
to the letter, if only a line saying the criticism was beneath
serious notice, would have given something in rebuttal. No
answer has been received.
Serious attention must now be called to this fact. All
the above charges are directed against the rules. It is set
forth that those rules permit the Secretary of State to do
certain things inimical to the public welfare and hostile to
democracy. What Mr. Colby does or says in defense of the
rules — the vigor with which he clings to them — must indi-
cate what use he makes of them. But there are other indi-
cations also. Indeed, there is abundant proof of the most
direct and absolute character, provided Mr. Colby will re-
move the press muzzle for just one day and let the reporters
write from their notes the things he has said to them in
secret during his brief term as Mr. Lansing's successor.
It is for the protection of America's delicate relations
with foreign countries, we are told, that silence must be
preserved. Have we, then, such delicate relations with the
Vatican that Mr. Colby dare not say in public what he has
said freely enough behind the press muzzle to discredit the
Roman Catholic Church? When Mr. Colby enters upon a
bland dissertation of "bigotry," filled with classical allusions
to books that the assembled reporters might profitably read
to improve their grasp of the spiritual kinship between
Romanism, Bolshevism, and Sinn Feinism, does the welfare
of the United States require that his remarks be suppressed
by journalists who disagree? Or, would a revelation of his
remarks prove embarrassing only to the Department, Mr.
Colby's personal ambitions, and the prestige of his political
associates? Is it to preserve amicable relations with the
foreign world that Mr. Colby recites behind closed doors
the alleged sinister hoggishness of American labor, as
brought to his alarmed attention when he served as a mem-
ber of the Shipping Board? Are such reminiscences re-
quired to enlighten reporters who have assembled to ask
questions about our military occupation of Haiti or the
progress of negotiations with Japan? And if these suave
insinuations to impressionable reporters are out of place,
yet entertaining withal, and of no sinister moment, then
why are the reporters bound only to ponder their implication
without revealing their source? We grant it is desirable in
this year of grace that those members of the American Fed-
eration of Labor who toiled to build ships during the great
war should not be offended by knowing what Mr. Colby
thinks of them. It is consequently proper that Mr. Colby
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
399
should not express his opinion of them, even in the corrupt-
ing secrecy of intercourse with the reporters.
"The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world," is a
proverb full both of sentiment and prescience. Mr. Colby's
secret conference is the cradle of most of the diplomatic
news coming out of Washington. And, as the cuckoo lays
her egg where she has no right, leaving it for other birds
to hatch, so does Mr. Colby line the daily interviews with his
infant ideas, for the correspondents to father and feed. It
does not relieve the evil of this practice to say that only a
few reporters in the class are deceived or misled by their
instructor. Our theme is the rules and Mr. Colby — not the
reporters — whose remarks as they leave the interview ex-
hibit a protective callous of cynicism for which the public
should give thanks. But the constant dropping of propa-
ganda wears a hole through indifference, and State De-
partment reporters must produce copy. What the Secretary
of State knows has not been revealed. What he has said
may not be repeated, paraphrased, or in any manner indi-
cated as coming from him. The inevitable alternative is
the "dope" story, and the safest of all "dope" is an echo
of the Cabinet member's generalizations, for which the re-
porter and his paper become exclusively responsible.
During my innocent first month at Washington I quoted
directly in the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph something
that former Under Secretary Polk said at the press inter-
view. My attention was called to the unintended slip, and
the error (which others had made) I never repeated. Many
months later I attributed, without quotation marks, some
important statements of fact to Secretary Lansing. I was
officially informed that this, too, was a violation of the rules
against repeating what was said at press interviews.
In behalf of the Federated Press I wrote a few weeks ago
a news story which more or less adequately described the
spirit of the press interview, but did not violate the law
governing that institution. The questions asked by reporters
were set down and in each instance followed by: "Answer
given, but suppressed by rules governing interviews," or
some similar truthful phrase. So Mr. Colby knew that the
Federated Press was in rebellion against rules, which, what-
ever their justification amid the perils of a great war,
seemed now to function only in behalf of wars which Con-
gress and the people have not authorized. And he would not
have been surprised to read the letter of criticism printed
above, even if its preparation had not been arranged in
advance with his publicity agent. I repeat, no answer to
that letter has been received. And of the criticism it makes,
no refutation has been attempted by the Secretary of State.
Yet, if it did not deserve an answer, this communication
written on plain stationery and having no connection with
anything except the proposed articles for The Nation, gave
Mr. Colby his chance to practice the arts of a secret di-
plomacy upon the Federated Press.
Twenty-four hours after Mr. Emery received it, Mr. Colby
read aloud from the letter to the assembled reporters and
described it as a reason why the Federated Press was un-
worthy to be represented at the press conferences. By this
action, I can only assume, Mr. Colby hoped to discredit an
indictment of his office which he could not refute, before the
indictment could be published as planned.
The Federated Press is a growing news agency of labor
and farmer journals. Being the advance guard of printed
disagreement with established exploitation, it has received
the first blow. Let others who prize their freedom beware!
Two Ways With Albania
By HIRAM K. MODERWELL
Rome, July 25
HALF a dozen nations had their troops in Albania dur-
ing the war. Four of them continued to maintain
them in or near the country after the armistice. There were
Italy, Greece, and Jugoslavia, who regarded the country as
pie for themselves; and France, who regarded it as pie for
her friends. But when the pie was finally opened the birds
began to sing, causing no end of trouble and embarrassment
to all. The discovery that their loot had strangely become
a living thing made all four nations, and the Supreme
Council, too, scratch their heads. They excogitated two
policies — classic imperialist policies — to handle the situa-
tion. Out of the comic conflict of these has emerged the
present Albanian nation, now but one step removed from
full independence.
First the old military notion. Albania was territory to
be held or divided according to political or economic con-
siderations; if the "natives" should "rebel" they would be
"punished." No other theory guided the great Powers in
their early treatment of the country. The Albanian state
was constituted in 1913, upon the insistence of Austria, to
prevent the expansion of Serbia to the sea; its subordina-
tion to Austro-German influence was tacitly recognized in
the gift of a German king, the Prince of Wied. The En-
tente scarcely liked the settlement. It was the last con-
cession to Germany, in anticipation of the Great War that
was to come.
With the outbreak of war, Austro-German claims to Al-
bania, in the opinion of the Entente, lapsed. They re-
garded the land simply as prize-money for their allies, pres-
ent or future. By the Pact of London, Italy, having re-
ceived the promise of Istria and half of Dalmatia and a
section of Albania around Valona, promised not to oppose
the division of the rest of the country between Serbia and
Montenegro on the north, and Greece on the south. The
pact, of course, was kept secret from the Albanians as from
the rest of the world.
So much for way number one. Italy occupied Albania
for "military-strategic" reasons and used it as a highway
to the Saloniki front. But with "no intention of permanent
occupation." Liberal policies were in the air. The Russians
were proclaiming the rights of peoples to self-determination.
Trotzky was about to spread copies of the Pact of London
to the four ends of the earth; even in primitive Albania,
without telegraphs or newspapers, the news would eventually
penetrate. In June, 1917, at Argirocastro, General Ferrero,
in the name of his Majesty the King of Italy, proclaimed
with all solemnity the integrity and independence of the
Albanian nation. The Albanian chiefs, menaced by Greeks
and Slavs, accepted Italy as their protector.
So things stood at the time of the armistice, with the two
imperialistic policies going strong — one based on the theory
that Albania was territory, the other on the theory that
Albania was a "people." There was something to be said,
in the councils of professional politicians, for the first
theory. Albania, since the time of the Turkish conquest,
has never had a government. The Turkish governors and
prefects milked the country for what little was to be got
out of it, undertook a few ridiculous public works, and for
400
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
the rest rejoiced in their harems to their souls' contents.
Without administration, without any dependable system of
justice, without means of communication, the Albanians fell
back on their old tribal system which must have been flour-
ishing when the Hellenes conquered them in 1000 B. C. and
borrowed their gods. The tribes elaborated their own sys-
tem of law and justice, handed down by tradition in the
memories of their elders. Disputes within the tribe were
settled by a solemn council. Wrongs done their members
by members of other tribes were punished by the tribe itself.
Vendettas continued endlessly through the centuries. For
the rest, the people cultivated their fields with their wooden
plows, span and wove, and occasionally traveled mule-back
over trackless plains and hills to buy simple knick-knacks
in the villages. Of course, such men readily consented to
become mercenaries in the petty local wars of the region.
The Allies took advantage of the situation, arming the
Albanians against the Austrians and Bulgarians, as the
Austrians armed them against the Italians — as, indeed, the
Italians later armed them under the fancy dress of "Mon-
tenegrin royalists" and the Serbs armed them under the
equally fantastic disguise of "Jugoslav patriots." It is not
surprising that worried statesmen in Rome and London
were inclined to regard Albania as "territory."
Yet the Albanians have at least as good a right to be re-
garded as a "people," in the Wilsonian sense, as the little
gobs of folk who now form the free and independent Baltic
nations. Whether or not they are actually the descendants
of those Pelasgians who once inhabited all the Balkan penin-
sula and were driven westerward first by Hellenes and then
by Slavs, they are certainly children (and almost unmixed
children) of the Ulyrians whom the Romans found across
the Adriatic. Their language, which is of Indo-Germanic
origin, shows few traces of neighbor influence until recent
times. Their history is even distinguished. If Pyrrhus,
King of Epirus, was not an Albanian it is not clear what
he could have been. Certain it is that Skanderbeg, ally of
Venice against the invading Turks, was pronounced by the
Pope "Defender of the Faith." The Turkish dominion was
never secure. When the Turks were not being annoyed by
the successive uprisings they were tolerated because they
did not mix much in Albanian affairs. The Young Turks
sent an army of more than fifty thousand to reduce the
country to an obedient province; it was ambushed and the
few survivors were sent back without having accomplished
a thing. In the first weeks of the Balkan war of 1913 the
national flag went up in Valona, and the Turks were driven
out for good. But the Albanians have been fighting against
one enemy or another ever since.
Now the country, although it is not rich enough to have
been worth plundering, has in these days certain distinct
values to interested imperialisms. Scutari in the north,
with its almost impregnable defenses, forms an excellent
port for some hypothetical Jugoslavia that shall have built
the necessary railways. Valona, in the center, matches up
with Brindisi and forms one of the gate-posts to the Adri-
atic. The high southern coast overlooks the famous island
fortress of Corfu and, in unfriendly hands, renders it use-
less. In addition there is some mineral and agricultural
wealth, and the opportunity for pretty map-drawing.
So with the coming of the armistice four imperialisms
began to try their ways with the country. Theoretically it
was to be held under the orders of the armistice commission
(except Valona, which was tacitly recognized as Italian
property). Theoretically, the occupying troops were to be
assigned by General Franchet d'Esperey. Actually, the
French and Italians scrambled for possession of Scutari,
and the Italians reached there first. The French lodged in
Koriza and the Greeks and Serbs looked on hungrily.
From this point on the decencies of international beha-
vior were forgotten. Forgotten that Albania was not enemy
territory, but a free and sovereign nation; forgotten that
the land had never been invaded but only "crossed" for the
purposes of war. Each country played its own game.
The Italians fumbled toward a "friendly protectorate" —
except only for the Valona region which had been assigned
to Italy in full sovereignty. The French looked out for the
interests of their ward, Jugoslavia. The British seem to
have aimed at securing the territory opposite Corfu for
their ward, Greece. The Greeks and Serbs worked with
money and propaganda, the Serbs also seizing Mount Tara-
bosh, from which they today have their guns pointing on
Scutari.
"The Albanians," said an Italian naval officer to me, "are
animals. They need a firm hand."
It sounded familiar. It was, in fact, way number one
come back again and left, as always, to the execution of
the military. First there were the classic pranks with a
hand-picked government. The ministry which sat in Du-
razzo agreed to hand administration, police, customs, justice,
nearly everything that a government may possess, to the
Italians. In the meantime the army did what armies must
necessarily do — irritated the population with lordings and
threats and pryings and petty persecution. It does not
appear that the Italians were especially cruel, although the
Albanians excitedly swear that they have frequently killed
in cold blood. But against this irritation the Italians' ad-
mirable road-building and town administration availed noth-
ing. Their "firm hand" became all too obvious.
In January the tribesmen met at Lushina. They com-
pounded their tribal differences in a "bessa" or truce, ac-
cording to the forms of their ancient law. Then, being in
very fact a constituent assembly, they declared themselves
a parliament and constituted a government with its seat to
be at Tirana. The Italians chose to consider them rebels.
They sent troops to occupy Tirana; placed machine guns
in the principal streets and before the principal buildings,
gave orders that the pretended government and parliament
would not be allowed to meet. The pretended government
and parliament insisted on their right to meet, and met.
The first act of the new government was to invite the
Italians to leave the country. The Italians did not reply.
There were little skirmishes in which the Italian patrols
were usually outnumbered and defeated. The districts and
the towns gave their adhesion to Tirana, from Scutari to
Argirocastro. The old hand-picked government evaporated.
In the whole country there was no opposition to Tirana save
from foreign-paid mercenaries. And this in a land where
every man and boy has a gun and any village could have
resisted and maintained itself an independent republic.
The new government, without money and without troops,
set out to organize a nation. They sent prefects to all the
districts, and the prefects were accepted. They called for
volunteers to repel the attack of Essad Pasha's Serb-paid
rebels, and repelled them. They took over the customs, ac-
cepted the proferred allegiance of the various Albanian mili-
tary formations organized by the Allies for use in the late
war. They formed a gendarmerie. They announced that
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
401
they would maintain, until their last sharpshooter was dead,
the independence of Albania as solemnly recognized by the
Powers in 1913, against Italian, Greek, and Serb alike.
Then a strange change came over these latter countries.
They suffered a sudden attack of Christian charity. Italy
withdrew her troops from the whole inland, retaining only
small garrisons in three or four coast towns, and several
regiments in the defenses of Valona. She protested sym-
pathy and friendship with Albania in her struggle to main-
tain her integrity — which she herself had just been bar-
gaining away — against Greek and Serb. Italy had discov-
ered way number two.
But Christian charity is a game which three can play at.
Greece now sent her homage and affection to the Tirana
government, and Serbia joined in. They would let no rival
of theirs outdo them in sympathy and friendship for the
oppressed. They would promise not to occupy, under any
circumstances, the territory which they claimed until the
Powers had made a decision; they would never occupy them
at all if their rival Italy should not retain Valona. Which
handsome offer meant, in practical language: "Go and at-
tack the Italians in Valona. While you are doing it you
have nothing to fear from us."
Then occurred a new d'Annunzio enterprise, Albanian
style. The Albanians who had gathered to resist the Greeks
before Koriza, began to drift north. Emissaries were sent
from farm to farm summoning all to come to the great
black mountain which overlooks the Shushitza valley. There
the farmers gathered, sleeping on the bare rock, night after
night, in hiding while new volunteers arrived. They sent
an ultimatum to General Piacentini in Valona, demanding
for the Tirana government the civil administration of the
city. No answer.
So one night early in June the farmers, armed only with
their rifles, moved down from the black mountain and at-
tacked— not isolated patrols this time, but a modern system
of fortifications. In a few hours the most of it was over;
nearly a thousand prisoners and great stores of munitions
and supplies were in Albanian hands and the Italians
hemmed within the inner defenses of the city.
There they have stayed, not to emerge, while a fortunate
change in government at Rome brought the Albanians fairly
trustworthy assurances that the country should be entirely
theirs; while an Italian mission dickered with the Tirana
government over the terms on which a Valona naval base
should be maintained; and while Tirana maintained pre-
cisely the attitude toward them that Rome had been main-
taining toward d'Annunzio. The negotiations must even-
tually succeed; the Italian people are not going to fight a
war for imperialism in central Albania; the Albanians will
accept nothing less than all of their country.
Way number two is a good way. But it is better adopted
early than late and ceases to confer distinction when all
one's neighbors insist on getting converted at the same time.
Contributors to This Issue
Paul Hanna is Washington correspondent of the Fed-
erated Press.
Hiram K. Moderwell is an American journalist now
traveling in Europe.
Felix Morley, formerly a Philadelphia newspaper man,
is studying at Oxford as the Rhodes Scholar from
Maryland.
The Socialist Campaign
By LEWIS S. GANNETT
DESPITE the Communist split of a year ago, which
wrecked the party organization in many States with-
out seriously affecting the ranks of Socialist voters, and the
Farmer-Labor Party movement, which Socialists feel is at
heart a timid socialism intended to ensnare by camouflage,
the leaders of the Socialist Party expect this year to more
than double their vote of 1916 and to go far beyond their
high-water mark of 1912. They have not for years gone into
a campaign so poorly organized or so devoid of funds ; their
strength lies in the personality of their presidential candi-
date, Eugene Debs, in the reaction from the Albany ouster,
and in the general unrest which encourages any protest
party.
Debs is easily the biggest and warmest personality among
the presidential candidates. He may never be President or
even governor or senator, and he might make a poor
administrator in high office, but he will be more loved by the
two million who may vote for him than will Harding or Cox
though they poll twenty million votes. There are some who
will not vote for Debs because he is in jail, and many have a
vague idea that he is in jail because he sought to "overthrow
the government" or something of the sort. But others will
vote for him just because he is in jail for a principle and
remember his address to the jury that convicted him :
Gentlemen, I abhor war. I would oppose the war if I stood
alone. When I think of a cold glittering steel bayonet being
plunged into the white quivering flesh of a human being I recoil
with horror. ... I love the people of my country but I don't
hate the people of any country on earth — not even the Germans.
I refuse to hate a human being because he happens to be born
in some other country. He is a human being endowed with the
same faculties . . . and I would infinitely rather serve him
and love him than to hate him and kill him.
Debs might have had a pardon had he been willing to recant,
or even to plead for one ; but he refuses to ask a pardon for
himself, despite his sixty-five years, until the last of his fel-
low political prisoners are released.
Debs's personality is doing most of the Socialist Party cam-
paigning. He cannot speak for his party because he is not
allowed to cross the front porch of Atlanta Prison ; he writes
little, and only when urged. But even a picture of Debs
carries something of a homebred Lincoln-like quality. Sey-
mour Stedman, the Chicago lawyer who is the candidate for
the Vice-Presidency, and other less known party leaders, are
making speaking tours, but they have no special trains or
brass bands to announce their arrival, and next week's itin-
erary is sometimes dependent on this week's collections.
New York, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma are the Socialist
strongholds. The Socialist ticket will be on the ballot in
forty-odd States, but a real campaign in very few. Other
State organizations, once well organized, broke up during
the war or in the after-war Communist disputes. In Wash-
ington, for instance, the Communists won control of the
party organization and left nothing but a wreck. In Illinois
the Farmer-Labor forces swing the union labor vote. In
California, however, where the Communist split left no party
organization behind, the party is stronger than ever; Sey-
mour Stedman's meeting at the Coliseum in San Francisco
brought out an even bigger crowd than came to hear Debs
eight years before, and Upton Sinclair, who left the party
402
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
during the war but returned after the disillusioning Peace
Conference days, is conducting a lively campaign for Con-
gress in Los Angeles. In Minnesota the nonpartisan labor
organization supports the Farmer-Labor Party State ticket,
but Debs for President. Many Farmer-Laborites in other
States cannot understand why Christensen does not retire
and throw his national strength to Debs. In Pennsylvania,
the Reading district, home of James Maurer, the Socialist
President of the State Federation of Labor, may come close
to electing a Socialist Congressman; in Oklahoma, the party
is strong among the tenant farmers. In Wisconsin the
Socialists count Victor Berger's reelection in Milwaukee,
even though it may mean a third expulsion at Washington,
certain ; they hope to elect a second Congressman from Mil-
waukee, and possibly a third from Sheboygan.
But the action of the New York State Legislature in
expelling the five elected Assemblymen in January, and three
of the five after all five were reelected at the special election
in September, has made New York City the storm center of
the Socialist campaign of 1920. There, as in Victor Berger's
Milwaukee district, the two old parties have joined forces,
thereby doing more than years of Socialist propaganda to
prove their essential unity of purpose and program. Were it
not for fusion, the Socialists would be sure of at least four
Congressmen from the city and of at least eight assembly-
men. In 1917, indeed, when there was no fusion, they elected
ten assemblymen; in 1918, the first fusion year, they elected
two; in 1919, five; this year, with fusion against them in
eight districts, they have hopes of a dozen assemblymen
from the city, and of one or two up-State. The expulsion,
defying the basic principles of American government, trans-
formed the Socialists from the outcasts of wartime into de-
fenders of representative government and of the rights of
minorities.
As a matter of fact the Socialist program, while undoubt-
edly radical, contains nothing of the revolutionary phrase-
ology of Russia, and nothing which, but for the name Social-
ist attached to it, would frighten any ordinary American.
It urges the dissolution of the present League of Nations
and creation of a democratic international parliament, the
recognition of Soviet Russia, no diplomatic or military coer-
cion to protect American investments and concessions
abroad, restoration of the constitutional rights of free
speech, press, and assembly, repeal of the Espionage Act,
amnesty for political prisoners; it declares against deporta-
tion of aliens for mere political opinion, against the use of
the injunction in labor disputes, for enforcement of the
Fourteenth Amendment, for nationalization of railways, ex-
press service, telegraph lines, mines, oil wells, packing
houses, power plants, banking and insurance, and other
national utilities ; urges immediate payment of war debts by
a progressive property tax, provision for current needs by
income and inheritance taxes, and full taxation of land held
out of use. And this program probably fairly represents the
intent of the rank and file of the party. Since the Commu-
nists seceded a year ago, the party has shown a pronounced
moderate trend. It is parliamentarian, political, democratic.
Its leaders have lost something of the old party sectarian-
ism ; they are profoundly interested in the Nonpartisan and
Farmer-Labor movements, and do not bar the ultimate possi-
bility of fusion with them. If they should elect half a dozen
congressmen this year, these might readily cooperate with
some of the independent congressmen who are likely to come
in, under various party labels, from the West.
Behind the British Coal Crisis*
By FELIX MORLEY
Portsmouth, England, September 10
THE essential reason why the coal dispute in England is
proving so hard to settle peaceably — and why, even
should this one be settled, another would shortly take its
place — is the widely divergent ideas and ideals at issue.
Wages and hours are only superficially involved. At bottom
the scheduled strike is another phase of the fight the British
miners have long been making for nationalization of the
mines and industrial democracy in that key industry.
Moreover, the miners are now for the first time on the
defensive, and are for that reason the more determined.
This strike, unlike its threatened predecessors of the last
two years, is not to secure nationalization, but is designed to
prevent the Coalition Government's completing steps which
would render socialization far more difficult to secure. Both
sides know that defeat for the miners would entail loss of
much of the ground gained by the industrial labor move-
ment since the close of the war. That is why not only the
Triple Alliance but also the entire Trades Union Congress,
representing 6,600,000 organized workers, is pledged behind
the Miners' Federation.
The British miners, who are 904,000 strong, organized on
industrial lines, and incomparably the strongest unit in the
labor movement of England, have been advocating national-
ization on grounds of economy and national welfare. This
agitation reached a climax in the stormy weeks following
the armistice, when the miners, by a majority of more than
six to one, voted to down tools unless the Government recog-
nized the principle of state ownership of mines. Mr. Lloyd
George replied to this threat by offering a royal commis-
sion, which should thoroughly investigate the status of the
industry under private ownership and make recommenda-
tions of such basic alterations as seemed advisable. With
some difficulty the miners' leaders prevailed on their men
not to strike pending the holding of this impartial inquiry.
At the time it was everywhere understood and nowhere
denied that the recommendations of this commission would
be held binding by the Government.
The royal commission made its very thorough investiga-
tion in the spring of 1919, and on June 20 the chairman, Mr.
Justice Sankey, presented his report to the King.f The first
recommendation of this majority report was "that Parlia-
ment be invited immediately to pass legislation acquiring
the coal royalties for the state and paying fair and just
compensation to the owners." The second recommendation
of this report was "that the principle of state ownership of
the coal mines be accepted."
The proceedings of the Sankey commission are justly fa-
mous, and the salient facts about the British coal industry
which were brought out are in the thoughts of every miner
today, even though the public may have forgotten them. It
was shown that certain members of the nobility obtain as
much as three pounds an hour out of coal, from the mere
fact of inherited possession of land taken by their ancestors
* Since this article was written a compromise has apparently been effected
between owners and miners by which the latter receive satisfactory wage in-
creases, and the danger of an immediate strike greatly diminished.
t The so-called Sankey report, printed in International Relations Section of
The Nation of May 3, 1919, is there referred to in good faith as "accepted by
the British Government as its proposal for the settlement of the dispute." Ex-
tracts from the hearings of the British Coal Commission appeared in The Nation
of June 14, 1919.
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
403
centuries before coal became a factor in the life of man.
It was shown that under private, competitive ownership and
operation, even with controlled prices, the householder paid
more than three times the total labor cost of production for
every ton of coal. It was shown that in the last twenty-
years 3,500,000 miners have been seriously injured while at
work, and that during the year 1913, 1,753 miners were
killed outright in the mines, a majority of these casualties
being caused by the insufficient safeguards and overdriving
consequent to the system of royalties and private profits.
But popular apathy, the greater by reason of the strain
and weariness of the war, enabled Lloyd George to proceed
along lines perilously near direct action. He contemptu-
ously cast aside the majority report of the royal commis-
sion with its recommendations for nationalization. On that
day the revolutionary spirit took root in British labor, for
the unexplained rejection of the Sankey report aroused the
most intense indignation in its ranks. At the annual Trades
Union Congress held in Glasgow, September, 1919, a reso-
lution in favor of "compelling" the Government to accept
the Sankey report was passed by a vote of 4,478,000 to
77,000. Lloyd George talked bolshevism and sat tight.
On December 9 and 10 of last year, in accordance with the
instructions of the Glasgow congress, labor met in London
in special session on the mines issue. Final decision on a
general strike for nationalization was deferred three
months, and it was decided to utilize the interim period for
intensive publicity and propaganda. This effort, however,
revealed a majority of citizens entirely apathetic to the
issue and concerned only with getting their coal. Those
who were following the struggle recognized that it was one
between two minorities. The minority of Lloyd George, the
dukes, the colliery owners and their active sympathizers in
"big business" was infinitely the smaller of the two. But it
controlled the Government.
Early last March the miners again urged, by a union
vote of 524,000 to 346,000, that the general strike be
adopted. The closeness of this vote showed that the Lloyd
George coup had been successful; the Sankey report had
been made a "scrap of paper," but even so labor could not
yet bring itself to abandon the tradition of parliamentary
government. On March 11, in bitterness of heart, the ad-
journed special congress reconvened, and voted 3,732,000 to
1,015,000 against "trade union action in the form of a gen-
eral strike." The miners were given a sop in the form of a
small wage increase, and so the situation rested until the
emergence of the present crisis a month ago. That which
brought this crisis about was the Government's announce-
ment that its wartime control of the coal industry would be
completely removed at the earliest possible date. Under
existing legislation this control may be continued until
August 31, 1921, with the possibility of a further extension
of six months.
The present system of control is, of course, purely an
emergency measure, and its retention will not at all advance
the socialization of the industry. Removal of control, on
the other hand, would obviously greatly retard socialization.
It would mean restoration of the old prewar system intact,
with multiplicity of wage schedules, conflicting methods of
operation, and general disunity of government in the in-
dustry. Against such an eventuality the miners stand de-
fiant. Furthermore, and in this is found the real proof of
the miners' sincerity, the removal of control would unde-
niably result in domestic coal prices reaching the famine
level current on the Continent, and in the consequent profits
to the industry the federation would share heavily. But with
the miners in this struggle, anxiety to gain more money for
themselves is very secondary to the deep-rooted desire of
breaking the vicious circle of ever-rising living costs.
It is now necessary to consider briefly the history of the
Government's campaign in preparation for decontrol. The
outstanding events in the history of the labor side have
already been given, and in what follows the reader is asked
to note a rather striking parallelism of dates. A compari-
son gives ground for the belief that someone in officialdom
has been as unscrupulous as astute in leading up to the
present situation.
The first postwar increase in the price of coal was for
six shillings a ton and came on July 21, 1919, after the
excitement roused by the royal commission's inquiry had
died away, but before it was definitely known that the Gov-
ernment would not act on the Sankey report. That is the
first, but not the most striking coincidence of chronology.
The next move, a ten shilling per ton decrease in the price
of household coal, came December 1, 1919 — just eight days
before the scheduled meeting of the Trades Union Con-
gress, to act on the Government's rejection of the Sankey
report. The sequel shows that economic justification for the
decrease was not considered — today the Government would
permit a strike rather than see a decrease — but there was
good reasoning behind it for all that. The effect of this
sudden ten shilling a ton reduction in influencing popular
psychology against a strike for nationalization was emi-
nently successful.
This ten shilling reduction was allowed to stay on all
through labor's propaganda campaign for nationalization.
It helped greatly in causing labor finally to renounce the
general strike at the second special congress of March 11,
and then it was allowed to stay for two months more — until
the public did not need much coal because of the advent of
summer, and had almost forgotten a coal crisis had ever
existed. On May 12 came the step which is directly respon-
sible for the present crisis. By Government order the price
of household coal per ton shot up fourteen shillings and two
pence — industrial coal four shillings and two pence increase
— making up the ten shilling reduction of five months earlier
and over forty per cent to boot. For this juggling there
was the scantiest economic justification.
The fundamental reason of the miners' two demands is now
apparent. To prevent decontrol the present gigantic sur-
plus, ten per cent of which finds its way into the pockets of
the coal owners, must be absorbed. The miners ask, first,
wage increases totaling £2,250,000 a month, to which they
seem quite entitled under the Government's policy of adapt-
ing wages to rising living costs and the profits of the par-
ticular industry. The second demand is for the removal of
the imposition of fourteen shillings and two pence a ton.
This would absorb £3,070,000 a month. The two together
total £5,320,000 a month. If both are granted they will still
leave a clear monthly balance of £680,000 surplus profit to
the industry as a whole. But to grant this means that the
industry will have to be treated as a unit, with some of the
surplus earnings of the more profitable areas transferable
to the poorer areas. And this again means the continua-
tion of control. Over the issue of whether or not the coal
industry shall be treated as a unit, a much bigger issue than
it sounds, has arisen the present crisis. What it may lead
to, in view of present conditions in Europe, none can say.
404
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
In the Driftway
THE Drifter on his occasional sallies into downtown
Manhattan becomes acutely aware of the rights of
militant minorities, and the wrongs of deportation, and he is
always amazed at the capacity of his colleagues on The
Nation for unwavering, unstinted, almost cosmic sympathy.
Haiti, Ireland, Russia, Santo Domingo, Korea — no remote
corner of any continent escapes the editors' understanding
hearts. Still, one race has gone unnoticed, one of the most
ancient of European tribes, now brutally threatened with
death or deportation. The Drifter came upon it in a letter
to the editor of the London Spectator:
Sir: Will you intercede for the apes of Gibraltar? It is
stated in the Press that an order has been issued for their
destruction or deportation. They are the sole representatives in
Europe of the Barbary ape, and have been at Gibraltar for cen-
turies, probably ever since the occupation by the Moors. Hith-
erto they have received the protection of the Government, and
when, in 1908, they had dwindled to five females the Governor,
Sir Frederick Forestier-Walker, caused another pair to be im-
ported in order to save this most interesting tribe from extinc-
tion. My own garden and others sometimes suffered from their
depredations, and an artillery officer at one time complained
that the apes interfered with the drill of his battery. The wife
of another officer was much alarmed by the sudden appearance
of an ape in her room, looking over her shoulder into the mirror.
But such inconveniences were submitted to for the sake of pre-
serving the well-known and very interesting animal which has
been so long connected with the history of the rock. I hope the
present Governor may be persuaded to imitate his distinguished
predecessor, and to allow a small family of these apes to live
in freedom on Mount Calpe. I am, sir, &c,
E. R. Kenyon, Major-General
(Formerly Chief Engineer, Gibraltar)
Will the embattled editors let the apes of Gibraltar die
out? Shall Mount Calpe go without its free family of apes?
The Drifter appeals to the editors of the Spectator and The
Nation to join hands across the sea to save the apes.
# * # * #
THE Drifter has noted in the advertisements of a well-
known dictionary that many new words have been
added to the language, among them "buddies" and "blighty,"
which he had always considered mere slang and not fit for
anything as solemn as a standard dictionary. He wonders
if the dictionary makers, like the census takers, gain a
large measure of pride in mere added numbers and whether
they are equally eager to discard the outworn and the obso-
lete. For if war has added new words, prohibition surely
has subtracted others. The Drifter
Correspondence
The Marblehead Plebiscite
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir : I took a straw vote on the coming election today. At the
Home for the Feebleminded I found that nearly everyone is
going to vote for Cox, while at the Town Insane Asylum they
are almost unanimously pledged to Harding. Inasmuch as there
are sixteen in the Home for the Feebleminded and thirty-seven
in the Town Asylum, it looks as though Harding would get it. "
Marblehead, Massachusetts, October 1 Walter C. Hunter
ALFRED ' A ' KNOPF
2,10 W. 42 Street, NEW YORK
/sy*533I^?a?!E?i:aSlfflS*?sl!ID;*5allE?,?BHB^t2all,^*2!aS2s?+?afl^?Jl
SEVEN MEN
These books will be published October 15:
By Max Beerbohm
SIX brilliant stories by the incomparable Max1 that make, says Solomon Eagle in The New Statesman, "the best of
his books." They move from the literary-artistic cult of The Yellow Book era to the mock-Elizabethan heroics
of Savonarola Brown. Max includes in an appendix six of his inimitable drawings which have never before been pub-
lished. An especially dignified and handsome format (with a binding design by Claude Bragdon) ; large octavo, gilt
top. The first edition consists of two thousand numbered copies. $4.00
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND BEHAVIOR
By Andre Tri don
The unconscious ; the meaning of nerves ; the
love life; the negative and the positive lives;
dual personalities ; sleep, sleeplessness, and
nightmares ; self-knowledge through dream
study ; psychoanalytic treatment ; the four
schools of psychoanalysis (Freud, Jung, Adler,
Kempf) are some of the chapters of this most
timely, interesting and valuable book. $2.50.
Floyd Dell
has written the most interesting
first novel that has ever come to
us. It is called
MOON-CALF
THE ANTHOLOGY of ANOTHER TOWN
By F. W. Howe
The other town is of course a country town,
and here are the stories of Sammy Heming-
way, Judge Terry, Hon. Martin Holbrook,
Gladys Hart, Doc Robinson, and seventy more
of its inhabitants. Mr. Howe records no great
wickedness or tragedies, but pictures the real
life of the common people. A panorama, really,
of what one critic has called 'America incar-
nate"—the small Middle Western town. $2.00.
THE GATE OF IVORY
By Sidney L. Nyburg
Author of "The Chosen People," etc.
A novel of Baltimore when politics, not yet
hopelessly encumbered with the reforming
spirit, was still a game worth playing for the
sake of its spoils. The story of Eleanor Gwynn, irresponsible,
brimful of audacity, wilfulness and dangerous charm, and Allen
Conway, is good old fashioned melodrama, in one sense; in
another it is a portrayal of the eternal conflict of spiritual values
and work-day materialism ; but it is perhaps more an uncom-
monly interesting experiment in the novel form. $2.25.
and will be published October 25
It is advisable to place your order
now with your bookseller before
advancing costs force a raise in
the price. $2.50.
THE FORERUNNER
By Kahlil Gibran
A second volume of "parables and poems" by
the representative poet and dramatist of the
Near East. The Boston Transcript speaks of
him as "singularly impressive" and The Dial
said : "He seems to express curiously what Rodin did with clay."
With five remarkable original drawings by the author. $1.50.
James Oppenheim's SONGS FOR THE NEW AGE
is on press in a new edition (uniform with his THE BOOK OF
SELF) and will probably be ready October 15. $2.00.
ssLi^ii^ii^H^a^a^^
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
405
Drama
Max Reinhardt
IT is not often that a man retiring from . public activity at
the age of forty-eight may be said to have changed perma-
nently the character of the art which he has practised. Yet
to say that of Max Reinhardt is, in one sense, to say too little.
It may be justly urged, from another point of view, that he
has created a new art or, at the least, transformed a profes-
sional activity into a creative one. For the essence of this
man's work is not to be sought in his revolving stages, his tiny
or gigantic playhouses, or even in the unexampled wealth of
great dramatic literature which he persuaded his public to
accept. His secret is his inner and initial conception of his
task; his triumph is in the lonely hours of contemplation before
his vision was transferred to the theater.
What was the character of the vision that came to him? It
was a vision of the play's soul, of its innermost nature in terms
of images and sounds. What came to him was the play's
intimate "style," its inner music, its inevitable rhythm of tone
and color. The sudden vision revealed to him how, in this
special instance, the "intensity of nature" could be equaled —
the intensity of the play's own interpretation of nature, be it
observed. For Reinhardt's imagination is synthetic, not ana-
lytic. He spent his apprenticeship with Otto Brahm, first of
the great naturalistic directors. But he himself is a neo-
romantic through and through. Hence his close affiliation with
Hofmannsthal and the younger members of the Viennese school ;
hence in so many of his stage-pictures the eerie grace and
wild, haunting loveliness that allies him to the spirit of Moritz
von Schwind and the romantic painters. The vision that came
to him was, in brief, one of a special kind of beauty answering
a special soul in art. So, brooding over "A Midsummer Night's
Dream," it came to him that this piece was a forest poem —
Waldgedicht. He saw the forest in its changing moods; he saw
the creatures of the play blend with or detach themselves from
the trees and glades. He heard the forest music. He saw and
created a vision of the forest — Shakespeare's and also his own.
The spectators were persuaded to yield imaginatively to the
vision and this now celebrated production was performed nearly
a thousand times! What the "sacred bard" is to the hero,
Reinhardt has been to the bard himself.
Having seen his vision, he forced himself to work with all
the national passion for scholarly thoroughness and accuracy.
He read the commentators of the poet and the play, the political
history of the play's period, the history of its manners and its
art. But his intention was never realistic reproduction, never
a cold historicity; he sought the symbolical detail that blended
with and interpreted his original vision. Thus in working at
his production of "Othello" he found that the rhythm of color
which his imaginative grasp of the Venice of 1500 had awak-
ened in him was almost exactly identical with that employed by
Carpaccio. And so the whole play was embodied through a
restricted scale of tints: leaf -green, yellowish white, gray,
brown, brick-red. But in the scenes at Cyprus line and color,
within the framework of his own vision and Carpaccio's testi-
mony, were given an added sweep and a touch of sultriness.
For here, in spite of the Venetian domination, the Orient began
to glow and throb.
Such details and a thousand others Reinhardt recorded in a
document known as his Regiebuch. It contained the text of the
play and a paraphrase of that text giving the most exhaustive
directions for the physical embodiment of his vision. Not until
this document was completed did he call his assistants into
conference; not until his creative work was done did he enter
his workshops or his theaters. And often, after many weeks
of labor, he would reject an entire production at its final re-
hearsal. The vision had been lost; the rhythm was somehow
broken; the special beauty he had dreamed had not been born.
In that spirit and in no other does art come into being. The
perfect and permanent things are difficult and rare. No wonder
that it took this man less than twenty years to revolutionize
the theater of his country.
His concrete creation of the beauty through which he sought
to equal the intensity of nature in terms of mood and light and
line and color may be studied in some of his stage-pictures.
Take the scene of the banquet in "Macbeth." Every line is a
straight line, every angle a right angle. All form is reduced
to a barbaric severity. But the two rectangular windows in
the background through which the cold Northern stars glitter
are narrow and tall — so unimaginably tall that they seem to
touch that sky of doom. The torches turn the rough brown of
the primitive wooden walls to a tarnished bronze. Only on the
rude tables lie splashes of menacing yellow. There is something
barren and gigantic about the scene — a sinister quiet, a dull
presage. Contrast with this the desolate modernity, the spirit-
ual malady expressed in the upper chamber in "John Gabriel
Borkman," or the splendor and gay yet pain-touched passion in
"Much Ado About Nothing," or the earnest charm and cool,
autumnal grace of "The Marriage of Figaro." These scenes
have body. But that body is irradiated by a spiritual life. And
that life expresses the creative vision of Max Reinhardt.
Ludwig Lewisohn
LECTURES by FRANK HARRIS
The brilliant editor of Pearson's will lecture every Wednesday
and Sunday at 8.30 p. m., on famous men of the past forty
years. Mr. Harris knew intimately Browning, Carlyle, Mere-
dith, Wagner, and many other celebrities, and speaks of them
most forcefully and interestingly, giving many intimate per-
sonal details never before told.
57 FIFTH AVENUE
Admission $1.00
SCHOOL ORCHESTRAS AND BANDS
By GLENN H. WOODS
Director of Music, Public Schools, Oakland, Cal.
A PRIMER of ORGAN REGISTRATION
By GORDON BALCH NEVIN
A volume of The Music Students Library
Price, $1.50 postpaid
THE PAGEANT OF THE PILGRIMS
Text by Frederick H. Martens Music by N. Clifford Page
In a Prologue and Six Episodes, with incidental music, 6olo, chorus
of mixed voices and orchestra
Time of performance: one hour and a half to two hours
Solo Voices: Soprano, Mezzo-soprano, Tenor, Baritone and Bass
(or Baritone)
Price: Vocal Score, $1.00; Choruses only, 20 cents;
Libretto, 25 cents
THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS
Text by Felicia Hemans Music by Louis Adolphe Coerne
Cantata for Mixed Voices. Solo Voice: Baritone
Time of performance: about fifteen minutes
Price, 30 cents
THE PILGRIMS OF 1620
Text by M. Josephine Moroney Music by E. S. Hosmer
Cantata for Mixed Voices. Solo Voice: Baritone
Time of performance: about thirty minutes
Price, 50 cents
THE PILGRIM FATHERS
Text by Frances J. Crosby Music by George F. Root and J. C. Macy
For Mixed Voices. Solo Voices: Soprano, Alto, Tenor, two
Baritones and Bass
Time of performance: about one hour
Price, $1.00
The Dilson Novelty List is well worth while
Ask to have your name placed on our mailing list
OLIVER DITSON CO., 178-179 Tremont St., Boston
Chas. H. Ditson & Co., 8-10-12 E. 34th St., New York
Order of your local dealer.
>4nnTi
rR
International Relations Section
France and General Wrangel
THE recognition by France of the de facto Government
of General Wrangel was announced on August 11.
On August 30 the Daily Herald (London) published the
following agreement, which was officially denied but widely
reasserted.
For the promise of official recognition by France, and military
and diplomatic support against the Soviet Government, General
Wrangel engages himself:
1. To recognize with priority all debts due to France by the
Russian state and municipalities, to be paid in compound interest.
2. The Soviet Government having been overthrown, France
converts all Russian debts to a new loan, at a yearly interest
of a>y2 per cent for 35 years, with partial yearly amortization.
3. The paying of interest and the yearly amortization of
capital is to be guaranteed by:
a. The handing over to France for exploitation of all railways
of European Russia for years.
b. The handing over to France of the right to draw customs
and port charges at all ports on the Black and Azov Seas.
c. The placing at the disposal of France of the surplus of the
corn of the Ukraine and Kuban districts during the years,
the export before the war to be taken as the basis.
d. The placing at the disposal of France of three-fourths of
the exported quantities of naphtha and benzine during
years, according to estimate of before the war.
e. The surrendering of one-fourth of the quantity of coal in
the Don district during years.
Note: The number of years for points a, c, d, e to be settled
by a special agreement, not yet drawn up.
Points b, c, and e take effect immediately after Wrangel's
conquest of the corresponding territories. The sums obtained
by the export of raw materials should be used for the payment
of interest for old debts.
4. To the Russian financial, commercial, and industrial minis-
tries shall be attached officials of the French financial and com-
mercial chancelleries, whose rights shall be settled by a special
treaty.
5. Russia engages itself to restore liability to military service
upon the same basis as before the war.
6. France undertakes to restore the Russian rifle and muni-
tion factories and the primary equipping of the new army.
France and Russia enter into a military offensive and defensive
alliance for 20 years.
By a secret treaty is settled the policy of France concerning
the border states separated from Russia, and their mutual rela-
tions to Russia.
The Conditions of the Third Internationale
AT the Second Congress of the Third or Communist
Internationale, held at Moscow in July, certain con-
ditions were formulated which parties wishing to enter the
Third Internationale should fulfil. These conditions were
printed in the Freiheit (Berlin) of August 25, and in the
Bulletin Communiste (Paris) for September 2. The text
printed below follows the French version, additional matter
included in the German version being given within square
brackets. The press of the German Independent and the
French Socialists divide, many calling the conditions im-
possible; the American Socialists unanimously reject them.
The First Congress of the Communist Internationale did not
lay down definite conditions for admission of parties into the
Third Internationale. Up to the time of calling the first con-
gress there were in most countries merely Communist wings or
groups. The Second Congress meets under other conditions. In
most countries there now are Communist parties and organiza-
tions. Parties and groups which very recently belonged to the
Second Internationale and now desire to enter the Third although
they have not become truly Communist, are turning more and
more often to the Communist Internationale. The Second Inter-
nationale is wrecked. The middle parties and Centrist groups,
understanding how hopeless is the outlook, are attempting to
lean upon the Communist Internationale which is becoming more
and more powerful. Nevertheless they hope to retain a sufficient
degree of autonomy to enable them to carry out their old op-
portunist or Centrist policy. The Communist Internationale has,
in a way, become the fashion. The desire of the leading groups
of the Center to enter it is an indirect proof that the Communist
Internationale has won the sympathies of the great majority of
the class-conscious workers of the world and is daily stronger.
The Communist Internationale might be menaced by the in-
vasion of unreliable elements noted for their half-way methods
and not yet free of the ideology of the Second Internationale.
Furthermore in some of the great parties (Italy, Sweden, [Nor-
way, Jugoslavia, etc.] ) which have Communist majorities there
remain large reformist and pacifist groups which only wait the
occasion to raise their heads again, to begin the active sabotage
of the proletarian revolution, and so help the bourgeoisie and
the Second Internationale. No Communist should forget the
lessons of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The amalgamation
of the Hungarian Communists with the reformists cost the
Hungarian proletariat dear. Hence the Second Congress of the.
Communist Internationale considers it necessary to define with
precision the conditions for the admission of new parties and to
direct the attention of those parties which have been admitted
to the Communist Internationale to the duties incumbent upon
them. The Second Congress, of the Communist Internationale
determines the conditions for membership as follows:
1. The daily propaganda and agitation must have a clear
Communist character [and agree with the program and deci-
sions of the Third Internationale]. The party pr-ss must be
edited by responsible Communists, who have proved their devo-
tion to the cause of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the
proletariat should not be discussed as a current and formal
phrase; propaganda for it should be such that its necessity,
deduced from the facts of daily life, would be obvious to every
worker, soldier, and peasant, and regularly noted in our press.
In the columns of the press, at public meetings, in the trade
unions, in the cooperatives, wherever the supporters of the Third
Internationale have access, the bourgeoisie and also its accom-
plices, the reformers of all types, must be systematically and
unmercifully branded.
2. Organizations desiring to affiliate with the Communist In-
ternationale should regularly and systematically remove the re-
formists and Centrists from all responsible posts, major or
minor, in the labor movement (party organizations, editorial
offices, trade unions, parliamentary groups, cooperatives, munici-
pal administrations, etc.) and replace them with tried Com-
munists, without hesitating, especially at the beginning, to re-
place "experienced" opportunists by workers of the rank and file.
3. In countries where because of a state of siege or of excep-
tional laws the Communists are unable to carry on all their
work legally, it is absolutely necessary to combine legal with
illegal activities. In nearly every country of Europe and Amer-
ica the class struggle is entering upon the phase of civil war.
Under such circumstances the Communists cannot rely upon
bourgeois legality. It is their duty everywhere to create parallel
to the legal an illegal organization capable at the decisive mo-
ment of fulfilling its duty to the revolution.
4. A systematic and vigorous propaganda must be carried on
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
407
in the army. Communist nuclei should be formed in every
military unit. Most of this work will be illegal but to refuse
to do it would be treason to revolutionary duty and incompatible
with membership in the Third Internationale.
5. A systematic and well-planned agitation must be carried on
in the country districts. The working class cannot triumph
unless it has the support of at least a part of the farm workers
(day workers and poorer farmers) and unless its policy has
won the neutrality of at least a part of the backward rural
groups. Communist activity in the country is coming to be of
capital importance. It must be carried on chiefly by the urban
Communist workers who have connections in the country. Re-
fusal to do this work or confiding it to unreliable semi-reformist
hands is equivalent to renunciation of the proletarian revolution.
6. It is the duty of every party desiring to belong to the
Third Internationale to denounce not only avowed patriotism, but
also dishonest and hypocritical pacifism, and systematically to
demonstrate to the workers that without the revolutionary over-
throw of capitalism no international court of arbitration, no dis-
cussion of the reduction of armaments, no "democratic" reor-
ganization of the League of Nations can preserve mankind from
fresh imperialistic wars.
7. It is the duty of parties desiring to belong to the Com-
munist Internationale to recognize the necessity of a complete
and final break with reformist and Centrist policies, and to
preach this break among the members of the party. Without
this a consistent Communist policy is impossible.
The Communist Internationale demands imperatively and
without discussion that this break be made within a very short
time. The Communist Internationale cannot admit that such
avowed opportunists as Turati, [Kautsky, Hilferding, Hillquit,
Longuet, Macdonald,] Modigliani, etc., should have the right to
call themselves members of the Third Internationale. That
would make the Third Internationale too much like the Second.
8. A particularly clear-cut stand should be taken in the
matter of colonies and oppressed nationalities by parties in
those countries whose bourgeoisie possesses colonies and op-
presses nationalities. Parties belonging to the Communist In-
ternationale are duty-bound pitilessly to unmask the acts of
their own imperialists in the colonies, to support every move-
ment for emancipation in the colonies not only with words but
with acts, to demand the expulsion of their own imperialists
from those colonies, to nourish in the hearts of the workers in
their own countries a genuine fraternal feeling for the working
population of the colonies and for the oppressed nationalities,
and to sustain a systematic agitation among the troops of their
countries against all oppression of the people of the colonies.
9. Parties desiring to belong to the Communist Internationale
should carry on a systematic and persistent propaganda within
the trade unions, [the workers' and shop councils,] the coopera-
tives, and other mass organizations of the workers. Within
those organizations Communist nuclei should be formed, whose
stubborn and persistent work will win the trade unions to
Communism. It will be their constant task to expose the trea-
son of the social patriots and the instability of the "Center."
These Communist nuclei should be completely subordinate to
the party as a whole.
10. It is the duty of parties belonging to the Communist In-
ternationale vigorously and persistently to fight the yellow
Trade Union Internationale organized at Amsterdam. On the
other hand they should aid with all their power the interna-
tional union of the Red trade unions affiliated with the Com-
munist Internationale.
11. It is the duty of parties desiring to belong to the Third
Internationale to revise the personnel of their parliamentary
groups, to expel all unreliable elements, and to make these
groups subject to the party executives, not only in form but
in fact, by demanding that each Communist member of Parlia-
ment subordinate all his activity to the true interests of revo-
lutionary propaganda and agitation.
12. The periodical and non-periodical press and all party
publishing concerns should be under the complete control of the
party executive, whether that be legal or illegal. The organs
of publicity cannot be permitted to abuse their autonomy and
to follow a policy not in complete accord with the party policy.
13. Parties belonging to the Communist Internationale should
be organized on the principle of democratic centralization. In
the present period of acute civil war the Communist Party can
fulfil its function only if organized in most centralized fashion,
if controlled by iron military discipline, and if the party execu-
tive, armed with large powers, exercises uncontested authority
and has the unanimous confidence of the active membership.
14. The Communist parties in countries where the Commu-
nists work legally must carry out periodic housecleanings of the
party organization to rid the party of petit bourgeois and spe-
cial interest elements.
15. Parties desiring to belong to the Communist Internation-
ale should give unqualified support to all soviet republics in
their struggles against the counter-revolution. They should
untiringly preach refusal to transport munitions or supplies to
the enemies of the Soviet Republic, and, whether legally or
illegally, they should carry on propaganda among the troops
sent against the soviet republics.
16. Parties which have hitherto retained their old Social
Democratic programs are duty-bound to revise those programs
without delay, and to work out a new program in the spirit of
the decisions of the Communist Internationale adapted to the
special conditions of their countries. As a rule the programs of
parties belonging to the Communist Internationale should be
confirmed by the Congress of the Communist Internationale, or
by its Executive Committee. If the program of a party should
not be sanctioned by the Executive Committee, the party may
appeal to the Congress.
17. All decisions of the Congress and of the Executive Com-
mittee of the Communist Internationale are binding upon all
parties affiliated with it. In this period of acute civil war
the Communist Internationale must be far more centralized
than was the Second. The Communist Internationale and its
Executive Committee should take into consideration the very
varied conditions in the different countries, and make general
and binding resolutions only when they can be carried out.
18. In accordance with the above, all parties belonging to
the Communist Internationale should change their names. Any
party desiring to join the Communist Internationale should be
called "Communist Party of . . . (Section of the Third
Communist Internationale)." The question of name is not a
mere matter of form, but has considerable political importance.
The Communist Internationale has declared war upon the
entire old bourgeois world and on all the old yellow Social
Democratic parties. It is important that the difference between
the Communist parties and the old official "Social Democratic"
and "Socialist" parties which have betrayed the banner of the
working class should be made clear to every workingman.
[19. It is the duty of all the leading press organs of the
parties to print all important official documents of the Execu-
tive Committee of the Communist Internationale.
[20. All parties belonging to the Communist Internationale,
or which have applied for admission to it, should as soon as
possible, at the latest within four months after the Second
Congress of the Communist Internationale, call a special con-
vention to examine these conditions. The Party Executive
should see that all local organizations are made acquainted
with the decisions of the Second Congress.
[21. Parties desiring to enter the Third Internationale which
have not yet radically changed their former tactics should
arrange that before entrance into the Third Internationale at
least two-thirds of the members of the Party Executive and of
all the important central bodies shall have clearly and publicly
declared in favor of entrance into the Third Internationale be-
fore its Second Congress. Exceptions may be allowed with the
approval of the Executive Committee of the Third Internation-
ale. The Executive Committee may also make exceptions in
408
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
the cases of the Centrist adherents named in Condition 7.
[22. Party members who on principle reject these conditions
laid down by the Communist Internationale are to be expelled
from the party. This applies especially to delegates to the
special party convention.]
The Petrograd Elections
ELECTIONS to the Petrograd Soviet were held during
the week of June 23-30. The following extracts and
summaries are from the Bolshevist papers of that period.
The Pravda (Petrograd) of June 16 contains an announce-
ment of the forthcoming elections, signed by Zinoviev, chairman
of the Petrograd Soviet, and Trilliser, secretary, setting forth
the rules and regulations for the balloting.
The distinguishing feature of Soviet elections is that the
voters are grouped occupationally and not geographically. The
workers vote at their factories or at their union headquarters,
the soldiers in their barracks, the students at their universities.
Housewives and other scattered workers are provided with spe-
cial polling places.
The general ratio of representation, as prescribed in the regu-
lations, is one delegate to each 400 voters. Concerns employ-
ing more than 150 and less than 400 workers elect one delegate ;
those having less than 150 workers combine with other groups in
kindred occupations. Soldiers and sailors elect delegates at the
ratio of one for each 200. Detached units numbering less than
200 elect one delegate each. Brain workers (writers, scientists,
professors, artists, etc.) elect delegates through their profes-
sional organizations.
The large organized bodies of workers also elect delegates to
the soviet, so that the citizens have a certain degree of double
representation, by delegates from their shops and from their
respective unions. The Petrograd Council of Trade Unions
elects one delegate for each 5,000 members. Each registered
industrial and trade union numbering not less than 2,000 mem-
bers elects two delegates. Organized professional sections hav-
ing not less than 500 members (artisans, transport workers,
clerks, etc.) elect one delegate each.
Nominations are made by groups of workers, soldiers, etc.,
and the different tickets are presented to the factory or shop
committees, or to the boards of their unions, or the district mili-
tary sections, as the case may be. These tickets must be posted
in the election places at least 24 hours before the election. The
date of the elections, which may be held at any time during
election week, is determined by the factory and shop committees,
trade union boards, etc. Notice of the election must be posted
in the place where it is to be held at least 24 hours in advance.
Elections where voters are scattered (house servants, janitors,
etc.) must be advertised in the press.
An election is legal regardless of the number of those voting.
The number of delegates is established in proportion to the num-
ber of voters employed in the concern where the election is
held, and not in proportion to the number who actually vote.
With the official announcement of these regulations, Pravda
prints two specimen blank forms, one for giving notice of elec-
tions and the other for reporting the results. Each has to be
duly certified by the local election board and delivered to the
Central Election Board. This board is composed of seven mem-
bers, appointed by the Executive Committee of the Petrograd
Soviet, the Council of Trade Unions, and the Military Section
of the Petrograd Soviet.
A typical campaign editorial appears in the Petrograd Pravda
of June 18. The official organ of the Communists appeals for
support on the party's record. The editorial says in part:
"Once more the workers will have to say to whom they will
intrust the leadership at this complicated and serious moment.
We stand before a new attack by the Allies. We have delivered
a strong blow against the Polish shlachta (landlords) who at-
tempted to grab us by the throat. But the battle is not yet
ended. In the south, Wrangel has crawled out from the Crimea,
and with the aid of the British and French imperialists attempts
to stretch a helping hand to the Poles.
"'Bread and Peace,' was our slogan in 1917; but world im-
perialism tried to strangle us and we had to fight for our revo-
lution. As a result of our victories, however, the food supply
is much better and Petrograd gets more food now than in 1919.
"Now the Soviet Government of Petrograd again asks the
workers to tell to whom they will intrust the defense of the
great city, under whose banner they will fight against world
imperialism. There is no doubt that the proletariat of Petro-
grad, which was not afraid of Judenich, who almost captured the
city, will now give their votes to the vanguard of the working
class, the Russian Communist Party."
As the elections progress, the papers flaunt the Communist
victories. The following are characteristic headlines:
"Maxim Gorky is elected to the Petrograd Soviet by the De-
partment of Education."
"The Post Office elected 20 Communists and 10 nonpartisans."
"The Housewives made a good start and elected a Communist
woman to the Petrograd Soviet."
"The Students of the First City District elected two Com-
munists."
Defeat of the chief opposition party is hailed with exultation.
A paragraph headed "Great Failure of the Mensheviks" reads:
"The Mensheviks placed great hopes in the elections at the
Post Office, and at the Telegraph and Telephone offices. They
made much preparation for the campaign among these workers,
who comprise many intellectuals. Result : The Communist ticket
elected by an overwhelming majority."
The Red Gazette is especially bitter. In the issue of June 26,
under the caption "Disgrace," it pours scorn upon two factories
which elected deputies from the opposition parties:
"At the Nobel factory two Mensheviks were elected and at the
Pal factory one Social Revolutionist. . . . We are not direct-
ing attention to the deputies of these factories; we are pointing
the finger of scorn at the factories which elected these deputies.
Behold the workers of the Nobel factory! Behold the workers of
the Pal factory! Look at them, sailors and Red army soldiers!
Behold these erring ones, brothers and sisters! They voted for
the representatives of those parties which only recently em-
braced Kolchak and Denikin. They voted for the parties which
always hindered our revolution. ... In all Petrograd only
two such enterprises were found which voted for the parties of
the plucked crows. These factories may serve as specimens for
a museum of freaks; one may look at them with surprise — but
one must despise them."
The records of the candidates are rigorously exposed, and the
lists and returns carefully scrutinized. There are occasional
charges of irregularity and demands for reelection. At the
Nobel factory a Menshevik, Dorofeev, was elected on a nonparti-
san ticket. Whereupon the workers in the foundry shop of that
factory passed the following resolution of protest: "We, the
workers of the foundry, protest against a faulty election. Un-
der the banner of nonpartisanship a Menshevik was elected. We
do not trust the Mensheviks, who at the present moment under
the leadership of a Menshevik, Pilsudski, are waging war against
Soviet Russia. We demand a new election for Dorofeev's seat."
The housewives launched a savage attack upon the two fac-
tories which had the temerity to elect Menshevist deputies. At
their election meeting the housewives of the second city district,
numbering 1,500 electors, passed a resolution condemning the
action of the Nobel and Pal factories. "Comrades, workers,"
runs their statement, published in the Red Gazette, June 29,
"think whom you have elected. At the head of the Polish army
stands the traitor Pilsudski, waging war against workers and
peasants. . . . And you have elected to the Petrograd Soviet
the same kind of Mensheviki. It is a shame, comrades, to help
the White Guard lords. Death to the Mensheviki and Social
Revolutionists, together with the Polish lords. Long live the
newly elected Communist Petrograd Soviet!"
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
409
The Philosophy of World Pathos
Yale
Lectures on Modern Idealism. By the late Josiah Royce.
University Press.
THE appearance of the first posthumous work of Josiah
Royce is in itself a moment of importance. America, in
entering upon a new world-career, has discovered, and inevitably
discovered, a new interest in itself. The vivid and generous
idealism, the high self-approval, with which we entered upon the
overseas crusade, followed by the bitter recessional, rebuffs not
only of our confidence in others but also of our own clarities and
contentments, have left us humbled and puzzled and confused
with a sense of our own self-strangeness. We Americans
marched into the war with a serene courage and a singing voice,
not glad, but ready; we are returning, drooped and disastered,
with an unintelligible external victory and an inevadable inner
conflict, surprised by our friends, uncertain of ourselves, wistful
of our ideals. What, indeed, are we, inwardly and truly? How
much is of Europe, how much of the New World? What, out
of our past, is genuinely our spirit and our inheritance? We
have passed not only through a crisis of action, but into a crisis
of national consciousness, and we are now wrestling, ere the
dawn break, for some touch of grace which shall restore within
us the inspiration of life. Faith in ourselves — even as a com-
pensation for a broken faith in others — we must find anew; and
hence it is that we are turning, with an interest hitherto un-
known on these shores, to a reexamination of American history
and a reappraisement of the possibilities of American literature,
philosophy, art, if perchance therein may be discovered the truth
which shall make us whole.
To minds so caught in the glamour of self-distrust every work
and word of. those who in our past have been framers of our
national thought and leaders of our essential life, stout and
acknowledged Americans, will come as text for study and object
of reflection; and within this range fall the works and words
of Josiah Royce. It is certainly too early to attempt to assign
to the thinking of Royce its place in the intellectual history of
America — much less to try to appraise it as a contribution to
the whole development of philosophy. Though its mission is to
clarify, to reduce the whole pageant of time into the narrowed
mirror of ideas that we may view the parts with a comprehen-
sive eye, yet no more than politics or letters can philosophy be
understood apart from its perspective: its interests, its prob-
lems, its solutions are all colored and glassed by the fluid of its
contextual life, which crystallizes into form only as that life
subsides into a future for which the deeds and thoughts of the
past are as hardened monuments. Royce himself was deeply
possessed of the historic sense; and none could have been more
fully aware than he of the futility of an early eulogy or an
early silence where the concern is those great matters of thought
which slowly build up the speculative abiding-places of mankind.
The shadow of the Sphinx is long; she is deliberate with the
centuries.
Yet though it is early to assign a place to Royce the philoso-
pher, there need be less reserve in appraising the man: the
human, one might almost say, the anecdotal side of a career
belongs to its contemporaries. In his last years Royce was a
pathetically heroic figure. He was an afflicted man, physically
broken, when he was called upon to face the great questions
which the war forced upon the world and upon his country; yet
he rose to the hour as few American thinkers were able to rise,
and in a series of fine utterances he gave unfaltering voice to
that high and patriotic idealism which is "the hope of the great
community." What must have cost Royce — what shattering of
idols, what bitterness of soul — such an expression as the Tre-
mont Temple address, itself keeping up the height of New Eng-
land tradition, only those can guess who know to what extent
his intellectual life had been a devotion to German philosophy;
and though it may well be, as his editor, Professor Loewenburg
remarks, that his "very attitude of sympathy towards German
civilization of the past intensified his righteous indignation,"
nevertheless this could have meant but an intenser inward pain.
Royce had come to be a kind of apostle of German Absolute
Idealism; by the expansion of its tradition he had sought to
illuminate our own social ideals, and the German debacle could
have come to him only as black treason to his more vital faith.
The finer, therefore, that as an American he stood unswerving.
Royce is dead. Ours, not his, must be the retrospection which
— after the battle — shall give the fuller appraisal not only of
what German philosophy has meant in the world, but of what it
might have meant, or indeed may mean in another than our
present political dimensions. We must begin again the perusal
of the book of history, and it is therefore appropriate that the
publication of the "Lectures on Modern Idealism," delivered at
Johns Hopkins University in 1906, should take us back to the
quieter and confident period before men's minds were broken
with self-distrust. In so turning back, we are not studying
merely a fallen dust; for the past never dies. German idealism
was a vast and perhaps deadly influence in the making of the
career of Germany. But it was more than German: it entered
France and England and Russia, aggressively and at times
dominantly; it entered the United States, vaguely in our first
transcendentalism, positively through the expositions of Royce
and other American Hegelians; it looms, indeed huge, in the
speculation and in the politics of the nineteenth century. But
more than this: the temper of German thought is not merely
German; it is phenomenal (as its own philosophers might say),
along with other phenomena, of the modern world, and its un-
derstanding is a part of the understanding of the modern world.
The conflict, within the individual, of his individual's will and
his citizen's will Rousseau had emphasized before Hegel, and
who but Rousseau has made vivid those conceptions of the sover-
eignty of a people and of the sanctity of the public sentiment
which move so deep in our hidden loyalties and differ so little
from the over-individual idealized as the Volkgeist? Democracy
in France and America owns, after all, a speculative cousinship
with bureaucracy in Germany: as Royce indicates, they hark
back to that romantic storm and stress, that political and social
and spiritual unrest which in so large measure is the avatar of
modernity. We must know ourselves, we Americans; and if we
would know truly we must know whence we were born and what
is our inheritance.
The ten lectures on modern idealism are in matter less com-
prehensive than their title might indicate. They form an his-
torical introduction, devoted to the early Kant-to-Hegel period,
rather than a survey of nineteenth century idealistic thought.
In two lectures Royce lays his finger upon the essence of Kant,
showing how that philosopher could be at once so persuasive
and so tantalizing: as his speculative legacy Kant left (in his
two "Critiques") an unsolved antimony of the logical and the
moral selves which, owing to his own cultivated suspensions of
judgment, he was content to leave, but which served as a chal-
lenge to the powers and tempers of those who followed his lead-
ership. Fichte was the first, stressing the rights of the moral
Ego. Royce passes him briefly and goes on to a study of the
dialectic of Subject and Object as developed by Schelling; and
thence to his real interest, the less aesthetic and more stringent
dialectic of Hegel, to which he devotes four of the lectures,
leaving to a last discourse a summarizing of later trends (into
pragmatisms, humanisms, realisms, and what-not), which all
appear to Royce — though this is not his figure — like an assort-
ment of more or less exasperated and quite futilely resistant
creatures caught once for all in the Kantian trap and fated to
its dialectic issue. The plan of the whole series, one might
remark, is itself a shrewd application of the dialectic of history,
an embodied illustration (as no doubt the lecturer was aware)
of the major theme of the whole.
But it is not the familiar moments of the dialectic that we
are now interested to retrace. Long ago Plato showed both the
powers and the limitations of dialectic as an instrument of
inner discovery; and if Schelling's application of it to nature
410
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
and to art, and Hegel's demonstration of its persuasiveness as
the form of history, have indeed led us to question whether
all that is outward must not be cut to the pattern of the inward,
if this is to become a spiritual familiar, nevertheless opinions
as to the ultimate and metaphysical value of the Idee as pat-
tern of the Universe are now formed: the evidence is before us;
the pros and cons are debated; convictions are set and inimi-
cally encamped. Platonists still proclaim that the dialectic is
but a pathway to insight, but a method of self -discipline; Hege-
lians still behold in it an image of the world; and temperaments,
classical or romantic, answer with their several assents. The
parties are fixed; the discussion has been lost in the slogans.
Today it is in another and far more significant aspect of
German Idealism that our interest is engaged. Perhaps the
most astute phase of Royce's lectures is the stress he lays upon
the fact that the profoundest asseveration of Kantianism is of
the indissoluble union of the problem of truth and the problem
of morals — morals in the broadest sense, ethical, political, social,
indeed cosmic. Philosophy's great distinction from science on
the one hand, and from religion on the other, lies just in the
fact that it sees the two problems with a single eye; and
wherever philosophers lose their sense of the proportion, on one
side or the other, their thought sinks into ineptitude (as witness
the helplessness of the Neo-Realists of our own day where
morals are in question). The fact that man's moral nature is
a phase of cosmic nature, and that the conduct of the human
species as a whole — in its worlds of thought, politics, art, re-
ligion, economics — is itself a comprehensive truth, faceting if
not reduplicating the whole of nature, is the fact which the
Idealistic tradition seized upon as the one key to all knowledge;
and each of its philosophers in his way made the moral dilemma
his image of the world. Fichte and Schopenhauer, analogously
opposite, fictioned the universe on the motive of desire, as if
the "pursuit of happiness" were the one cosmically natural
right. Hegel, with more maturity and discipline, construed an
Absolute within which the moments of reason itself become the
objects of will and the movement of reason toward its natural
conclusions becomes the transcendental essence of desire. The
"foregone conclusion" becomes, as it were, the reality in which
is and ought coincide to make that portrait of the Absolute
within which (monstrously enlarged) man perceives the utter
embodiment of his own ever-dividing and ever-reuniting souls
and societies. The world is a transcendental whole, but only
because men and mankind are contending, and hence moral.
There is a kind of speculative primal innccency in all this
theorizing that seems to set it remote from men's affairs. But
ideas are never innocent; they are terribly self-responsible. In
numerous implicative phrases Royce indicates the iron conclu-
sion of Hegelian logic, later to become Politik. "A world of
small communities must give place . . to a world of an
imperial type of social unity"; "provincialism leads to impe-
rialism"; "the state is at once a necessity and an oppression to
all"; "the truth of the individual is the consciousness of the
people to which he belongs." Would Royce now, one wonders,
have closed a similar series of lectures with the hope that this
philosophy may become "the expression of the very soul of our
civilization"? Or, indeed, would Hegel now not find a certain
sardonic satisfaction in beholding his own dialectic moment in
history so inevitably portrayed: Weltansicht inviting Weltan-
schauung, this reacting to Weltschmerz whence the discovery of
the Weltgeist (so far he had gone), and inevitably beyond this
the tragic demand for Weltmacht and Weltreich? Royce him-
self remarks that in this philosophy "the tale of the Geist is
more of a tragedy than is that of the individual life." History,
since 1914, has glossed this passage.
"The tale of the Geist," the repertoire of the World — is not
this, after all, the core of German Absolute Idealism? One
cannot review it in thought without perceiving anew that it is,
deeply, a philosophy of world-pathos — as Schopenhauer per-
ceived, and as its bravest apostles unconsciously betray. The
theatric note is never far from the foreground of its most
logical consciousness: it is indeed the glory of Schelling, and
in Hegel's mime-like delineation of the self-expressing and
self-transcending Gestalten des Bewusstseins, the phenome-
nology of the Spirit which moves nimbly behind the scenes, we
have a strange half-embodied drama, the tragedy of conflict, the
comedy of contradiction, and the grim humor of eventual fu-
tility. Storm-and-stress is staged in categories, and romance
masquerades as reason. The essence of Greek and Japanese
tragedies, says Royce, "according to Hegel, is that loyalty is di-
vided in twain, into loyalty to the underworld — shadowy, mys-
terious, but absolute — and loyalty to the visible government,
whose commands are explicit, but are of today"; and this
phrase is a perfect description of that vaster, but not less
theatrical, tragic mode which impels the Geist first to play forth
its phenomenological roles, and then in self-pity and terror to
destroy them. At the end, the whole action falls remote and
staged into an aesthetic spectacle, with the curtain ever ringing
down upon its empty ends; the volitional and the rational, the
moral and the natural, out of the weariness of time pass thinly
into the silence of eternity.
It would be deeply unjust to what is noblest in German
idealism, it would be deeply unjust to the true Americanism of
Josiah Royce, to close with this appraisement. For there is a
value in the philosophy difficult to throw into the simple relief
of ideas. A philosophy of world-pathos it is (and perhap its
defects flow remotely from the ambiguities inherent in the Teu-
tonic word "world" — a romantic thing, and no classic "cosmos") ;
but it is also in some truly benign sense a philosophy of peace.
Not externally: phenomenological — as we should say, historic —
wars it views with indifference; but internally, as the living ex-
pression of its apostles shows, it achieves the high and serene p
pacification of the reconciled spirit. It began its history with a
moral dilemma; it grappled directly with the moral issue; and
its conclusion is a kind of moral conclusion, though at that point
where morals seems to pass over into aesthetics. Comprehen-
sively it takes the life of man, in all its contentiousness, petty
or great, and throwing it vastly into the phantasm of nature
it finds the two transubstantially welded, and out of the mystic
union discovers its own inner quiet. Is it, after all, so remote
from that healing of nature to which, more simply, fretted hu-
manity ever turns for its consolations?
There is indeed something histrionic in all this world. We
fight its battles phantasmally, and after victory and after defeat
we seek reposeful dream, wherein its active contentions resolve
into a music of antiphonal voices; and then, once more, caught
in the claws of a red reality, we waken to discover that the
choired responses are the guns of war. . . . There is no
answering quiet save death. What lies beyond? The voices
of the prophets proclaim — and there are some that harken and
follow, and some that mock, and all pass their mortal way, and
no man knows if the question be answered yonder. . . .
The world-pathos is, after all, the pathos of humanity. Hegel's
philosophy is the philosophy of men's broken congregations, of
human life in all its towering aspirations, in all its helpless
humiliations; and of the lives of nations in all their aspirations
and all their humiliations. . . . But of the World — is there
nothing more august beyond?
Hartley Alexander
The Human Costs of the War
The Human Costs of the War. By Homer Folks. Harper and
Brothers.
\/f R. FOLKS is a well known and highly esteemed social
worker, active for the last thirty years in charities in New
York and Cuba, and during the war Chief of the Department
of Civil Relief of the American Red Cross. His volume is one
of the highest import — an indictment of war from the side of
those whose only part in it is misery and death, the bereaved,
the fatherless, the homeless, the diseased, the enfeebled, the
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
411
crippled, the bankrupt: necessary by-products of the ghastly
scourge. And no more terrible exhibit of the nature of war has
been written, not even by Philip Gibbs, Barbusse, Latzko, or
Duhamel. The sacrifice of human values is portrayed in a
plain, straightforward style, without any effort at a dramatic
effect or an emotional appeal not inherent in the facts them-
selves. The work consists partly of a narrative of the author's
varied experiences as relief agent in Serbia, Belgium, France,
Italy, and Greece, partly of a statistical summary of the human
damages of the war in these lands, and finally of two terrible
chapters, War, the Best Friend of Disease and Civilization's
Indictment of War.
The final effect of modern war is to destroy in the enemy
country whatever a humane civilization has built up, and that
by a series of collective crimes, most of them utterly abhorrent
to any sane being acting on individual initiative. To such a
purpose, by the use of modern mechanism, each side in the late
conflict was hideously successful.
Mr. Folks asserts that in 1914 "the millennium was on its
way" — it was not at the door, but it was definitely predictable.
The war has postponed it indefinitely, for life's great disap-
pointments arise chiefly from two causes, "sickness and untimely
death." To promote and extend these calamities is part of the
business of war. "Life," he continues, "was already being made
longer, happier, and richer. . . . The warfare against dis-
ease was civilization-wide. It was a slow fight, and a long one,
but it was winning." These assertions he substantiates by a
record of the progress during forty years in the relief and sup-
pression of tuberculosis, diphtheria, yellow fever, malaria, ty-
phus, syphilis, and uncinariasis by discoveries and methods
which "had already added ten years to the average life-time in
America and Great Britain, had made life vastly more attract-
ive, and which, in the very near future, with increasing mo-
mentum, would have lightened the black cloud of sickness and
untimely death that for ages had kept the world in gloom."
This world movement toward health, the most promising in
modern life, was "disrupted or delayed" by the Great War.
"In some cases progress made slowly and painfully through
decades was lost in two or three years; attention and funds
were diverted to destroying instead of saving life, and age-old
pests and enemies of man took fresh heart and a firmer hold
on the race." The ravages of disease and the hopeless distress
among the people caught between the lines can never be esti-
mated or even realized. Even the soldiers fared better. When
not in actual conflict the armies were cared for more carefully
than ever before in history, but the civilian had to shift for him-
self, fortunate to escape the worst of fates. To the confirmed
militarist the civilian is regarded as an obstructive nuisance. As
such he was treated in every "occupied district" throughout the
war.
Above all else war is the "baby-killer." That the birth-rate
in every country concerned, even the United States, fell off
in a degree proportionate to women's suffering, may be re-
corded as a piece of good fortune for those who might have
existed but who never will. "The earth became unpopular as a
future home. ... It was no place for babies." But the
death-rate stands in still closer ratio: even of those more en-
during or fortunate, few caught in the war current will ever
reach the manhood or womanhood which was their just due.
In this matter America's duty is summed up in a single pregnant
sentence: "England and America cannot save themselves alone.
The world cannot remain half -free and half pest-ridden." This
is doubtless true in a political and economic sense. But it is a
hundredfold more pertinent in the sense of sanitation.
Mr. Folks's indictment of war I must here reduce to a mere
catalogue of its crimes: "War is the negation of civilization,"
and its aftermath, "implied reliance upon force rather than
persuasion and orderly procedure," is felt as a crushing burden
the world over. "Of the tremendous mass of Allied population
(twice as numerous as the people of the United States and its
dependencies in 1910) almost exactly one-third had been made
homeless, subjects of an enemy army, killed, widowed, orphaned,
or permanently crippled." The great war left two millions of
people homeless. It has oppressed and humiliated forty-two
millions of enemy subjects. It has sent into slavery "hundreds
of thousands, no one knows how many." In its "wholesale mur-
der" it counts nine million soldiers dead. It has left fifty mil-
lions of manless homes, ten million empty cradles. It has spread
far and wide the war diseases. It has left a mortgaged future
to every nation concerned. It has left an insistent demand for
continental reconstruction and nobody to do it. The evil effect
of the "last cost of war," its reversed selection on racial stocks,
is not discussed by Mr. Folks, being outside his own experience,
though he suggests that "these may prove to be the most impor-
tant and permanent results of all." Nor does he consider
political changes hastened — perhaps unduly hastened — "for no
one can yet tell what these will prove to be."
War is indeed the one great human disaster. "Earthquakes,
floods, tornadoes, explosions, may harm the whole population of
a locality, alcohol or vice may injure a percentage of the people
of whole countries, but war can be compared only to all these
things combined and sown broadcast over a continent. We may
select from all these other enemies of the human life their worst
features, combine them into one quintessence of horror, in-
tensify this to the nth power, scatter it continent-wide, and
that is war. War is the negation of all the race has striven for
through all the centuries. It is the enthronement of unreason
and coercion. It is the supreme skepticism, both of man and of
God." "If this study presents a terrible picture," continues our
author, "this picture should surprise no one. It is of the essence
of war to produce such results. That was the intention of the
war makers. Each side was trying to do just these things to the
other, and both measurably succeeded."
Occasional vivid sentences tell a long story in a few words.
Speaking of Serbia, he writes: "One is almost tempted to say
that in all these countries the church has the aspect of being a
camouflaged branch of the government charged especially with
the task of stimulating national spirit." "The morale of the
[French] refugees left much to be desired. For some reason
the refugees were not satisfied. They were not enthusiastic
about the war." "Pity us less and aid us more" [chalked on the
walls of Rheims].
In conclusion, Mr. Folks appeals for American help by direct
personal gifts and by the national cancellation of loans. This
last must probably come sooner or later, but it should take
effect, one would think, only as the nations concerned abandon
military adventures and levy taxes on the swollen incomes of
their own profiteers. The restoration of human values in
Europe must follow, for it cannot precede, the demobilization
of armies. David Starr Jordan
Musical Portraits
Musical Portraits. By Paul Rosenfeld. Harcourt, Brace and
Howe.
HP HE critical controversy aroused by Paul Rosenfeld's re-
*■ cently-published "Musical Portraits" has been strangely
unilluminative of the book under discussion. But it has at least
served to remind us how the majority of our musical guides still
cling to Wagner and Strauss as the last intelligible words in
music, and how they still underrate Berlioz, overrate Rachmani-
noff, hound Mahler, listen to Ornstein with thumbs down, and
either ridicule or denounce the whole school of modern ca-
cophany from Schoenberg to Strawinsky. In the midst of such
a dim and flickering light of judgment the clear and searching
rays that Mr. Rosenfeld has turned upon his subjects seem all
the more brilliant and arresting. He has endeavored to in-
terpret twenty composers by analyzing the spiritual causation
of their art, dwelling on its hidden springs of race, tradition,
and environment rather than on those harmonic elements that
comprise the material structure. While this is a distinct de-
412
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
parture from the critical methods generally employed in Amer-
ica, many of the fundamental ideas set forth have been voiced
at one time or another by the more penetrating of European
critics. Yet Mr. Rosenfeld has displayed a marked faculty for
reinvesting these ideas in fresh and striking habiliments, em-
broidering them with such originality and skill that they take
a new aspect. For instance, when he tells us that Wagner
passed with the nineteenth century, of which he was the "sign
and symbol"; that time has shown us the greatness of Berlioz;
that Richard Strauss is the "false dawn of modern music"; and
that Debussy and Ravel have linked the France of today with
that of the clavecinists of two hundred years ago — then Mr.
Rosenfeld is merely telling what Rolland and Jean-Aubry have
already told us. But he also leads us into far different chan-
nels of speculation. He calls Wagner "the great initiator, the
compeller of the modern period . . . not only because he
summarized the old," but "because he began with force a
revolution." Of "the father of the modern orchestra" he says:
"It is as though the world had had to move to behold Berlioz,
and that only in a day germane to him and among the men his
kin could he assume the stature rightfully his and live." The
artistic decay of Richard Strauss is attributed to "a psychic
deterioration," an "unwillingness to go through the labor pains
of creation." And the art of Debussy and Ravel is claimed to
be "in one respect . . . the continuation of the music that
came to a climax in the works of Haydn and Mozart. It is
subtle and intimate, and restores to the auditor the great
creative role assigned to him by so much of the music before
Beethoven."
Again, in the chapter on Rachmaninoff, the elegiac and super-
ficial character of that composer's music, the meaningless em-
bellishments of the piano concerti, the out-moded manner and
content of expression inherited from French and German ro-
manticism, have already been touched upon by Ernest Newman
and others. It remained for Mr. Rosenfeld, however, to give
the most inclusive, vivid, and scathing summary of this whole
school of Russian salon composers, of which Rachmaninoff is the
chief living representative. "For them," he says, "as it is for
every Russian musician, Russia was without their windows,
appealing dumbly for expression of its wild, ungoverned energy,
its misery, its rich and childish laughter, its deep, great Chris-
tianity." But "they did not hear the appeal. They sat in their
luxurious and Parisian houses behind closed windows."
The characterizations of Moussorgsky, Borodin, Rimsky-
Korsakoff, Liszt, Sibelius, and Scriabine are superb, but contain
little that has not been acknowledged. The chapters on Mahler,
Schoenberg, Bloch, Strawinsky, and Ornstein seem to us the
most important in the book, because it is the first time we have
had their causes fully presented with any degree of insight and
understanding. By using that most modern of methods, psycho-
analysis, as in his studies on Mahler and Bloch, Mr. Rosenfeld
has been able to deduce much that seems incontrovertible;
while his interpretations of Strawinsky and Ornstein, however
provocative of discussion, reveal him as singularly equipped to
elucidate those qualities that distinguish these composers from
their contemporaries; for he himself is in apparent harmony
with the age which they embody.
Mahler's problem Mr. Rosenfeld makes out to be that which
must be faced by every Jewish creative artist in an alien civi-
lization: either to accept the stigma of his race and speak in
his proper idiom, or else to succumb, as Mahler did, to his
anti-Semitic environment, and pay the penalty of "sterility,
banality, and impotence." It was this same weakness, Mr.
Rosenfeld declares later, in his chapter on Ernest Bloch, that
kept Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, and Rubinstein from creating.
Not, he disclaims, that the artist of Jewish extraction must
write Jewish music, "utilize solely racial scales and melodies,"
but "he must not attempt to deny his modes of apprehension
and realization because they are racially colored. He must
possess spiritual harmony." Ernest Bloch possesses this spirit-
ual harmony, and so his genius has found full and free expres-
sion. And because, Mr. Rosenfeld concludes, Bloch "rests quite
as heavily on the great European traditions of music as he does
on his own hereditary strain," one finds in his art "the fusion
of the East and the West."
Arnold Schoenberg has always been "the great troubling
presence of modern music," even to those most willing and able
to understand him. Mr. Rosenfeld offers what seems a simple
solution indeed to those baffling works, the "cruel five orchestral
and nine piano pieces." "If there is such a thing as form with-
out significance in music," he says, "might not these composi-
tions serve to exemplify it? Indeed, it is only as experiments,
as the incorporation in tone of an abstract and intellectualized
conception of forms, that one can at all comprehend them."
In this intellectualism of Schoenberg the Jewish element again
plays its part. "Beside the Doctor of Music there stands the
Talmudic Jew, the man all intellect and no feeling, who subti-
lizes over musical art as though it were the law." Yet in spite
of this, we cannot but admire with Mr. Rosenfeld the teacher
who dares to inscribe at the head of his treatise on harmony:
"What I have here set down I have learned from my pupils."
Perhaps Mr. Rosenfeld is right when he says that Schoenberg,
"for the present ... is the great theoretician combating
other theoreticians," and that his later music may "shortly come
to be considered as simply a part of his unique course of in-
struction." Certainly, no more feasible explanation has yet
been given us.
Strawinsky and Ornstein bring us to what Mr. Rosenfeld
calls the age of steel in music. "With Strawinsky," he says,
"the rhythms of machinery enter music art. . . . For him
the material world was very real, sharp, and immediate." And
then Mr. Rosenfeld proceeds to translate the composer's works
into word pictures, which, as verbal fantasies on all the noisy
and mechanical devices of the twentieth century, are quite ex-
traordinary, but which, as visualizations of Strawinsky's music,
seem at times a bit strained.
Happier to us is the portrait of Ornstein, whose name always
evokes in our mind images of violence — violence in music, vio-
lence in discussion. And when he is presented to us as "the
mirror held up to the modern city," with its "pounding rhythms,"
its "frenetic activity," its "garishness," its "unceasing roar,"
or as "youth," in all "its excess, its violence, its sharp griefs
and sharper joys, its unreflecting, trembling strength," the
likeness is unmistakable. We recognize it too in the picture of
Ornstein as "the resurrection of the most entombed of spirits,
that of the outlaw European Jew." Nor does it require any
stretch of the imagination to hear in the "Poems of 1917" "the
waitings and rockings of little old Ghetto mothers." But in
following Mr. Rosenfeld's speculation as to what has occasioned
that decline in Ornstein's genius which has been so marked of
late, in admitting such plausible reasons as transition from
adolescence to manhood, a flinching from the hostility of the
world, too much concertizing, happiness attained through love,
we note curiously enough the omission of one cause which is
not only applicable, but is also one on which Mr. Rosenfeld
has laid much stress in other chapters. Ornstein has, for the
last few years, been living in a distinctly non-Jewish atmos-
phere. Is it not possible that in losing contact with that spirit-
ual soil in which his being had root and was nourished he has
lost that in which he found his greatest stimulus and freedom?
Because of this we are not as positive as Mr. Rosenfeld that
"Leo Ornstein is sure of reaching the high heaven of art for
which he seemed . . . bound." Nevertheless, the whole
chapter is a brilliant plea for the young Russian composer.
The whole book, in fact, is an astounding exhibition of vir-
tuoso writing. In this, as well as in the subject-matter it
expresses, it indeed "marks off the miles" in American musical
criticism. No one who wishes to get a clearer understanding
of modern music can afford not to study these "Musical Por-
traits." For they not only contain the basic elements of truth,
but are singularly free from malice and prejudice.
Henrietta Straus
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
413
The Functional Organization of Society
Social Theory. By G. D. H. Cole. Frederick A. Stokes Company.
MR. COLE has intellectual power of high order. His thoughts
do not proceed from a porch. Whenever by way of getting
a start he indulges in a dogmatic generalization, he soon follows
it with qualifications. His object, he says, "has been not to
achieve finality or write a definitive book," but to set others to
work on the problems which he has only raised. Thus he seems
to be shooting arrows into the air and asking others to help him
find them and reshape them. Yet he knows well what he is
aiming at and where he wants to stand. His theory is one with
a name and a pedigree, but it does not proclaim them and so
may be treated on its merits without regard to what it may owe
to other members of the same philosophical family. Like all
good theorists, Mr. Cole is fortunate or skilful in finding his
start on a path that leads straight to his goal. Indeed,
he comes close to telling us that he has salted his mine with the
gold that he later extracts. One of the most commendable traits
of his book is its candor in confessing that it is prompted by a
preference. Yet as these confessions are scattered and some-
what obiter and do not set the structure of the study, it is well
to marshal them and emphasize them so that we may see more
clearly just what Mr. Cole is doing. He insists so strongly that
society should be studied functionally that he should welcome a
functional approach to the study of his social theory.
Mr. Cole is painting a picture of his ideal of the organization
of society. He calls his object "primarily philosophical." He is
concerned, he says, "principally with social theory as the social
complement of ethics, with 'ought' rather than with 'is,' with
questions of right rather than fact." And what is right? For
Mr. Cole it is some blend of what he wants and what he thinks
will work. He knows that social theory cannot tell us what ends
are "right" and what ends "wrong," and that our conceptions of
desirable social arrangements "are inevitably formed in the light
of our ultimate conception of social value." Social principles,
he says, are true only on certain assumptions, and there is no
way of proving these assumptions either true or false. His own
announced assumptions are that "the object of social organiza-
tion is not merely material efficiency, but also essentially the
fullest self-expression of all the members"; that "self-expres-
sion involves self-government"; that "human beings have wills,
and that they have a right and a duty to use those wills to
their full capacity in the direction of society." In short, he
wants as many folks as possible to have what they want when
they want it, and he is devising a plan to help bring this about.
Those who shrink from Mr. Cole's Utopia are apt to find his
book not to their liking, even though he tells them soothingly
that "any one with the smallest degree of social vision can see
that the existing structure of society is doomed either to igno-
minious collapse or to radical transformation." Mr. Cole does
not say openly that a new group is rising to power and that by
strength of numbers it is destined to dominate. Such an idea
might be inferred from his prophecy that "it is the possession
by the working-class movements of such strong and purposeful
forms of organization as trade unionism and cooperation that
makes their inheritance of the task of reconstructing society
almost certain"; but this must be read with remembrance that
right, not might, is Mr. Cole's concern. For force he has no
fondness. At the very outset he dismisses the Austinian ap-
proach from the state and sovereignty because "it begins at the
wrong end, with the coercion which is applied to men in society,
and not with the motives that hold men together in association."
Social theory must supplant political theory by thinking of so-
ciety in terms of will rather than of force or law. What
Mr. Cole seems to look to is a dominance of principles rather
than of men. He is seeking those principles which meet the
essential conditions of human association. He finds them in
"the principles of democratic functional organization and demo-
cratic representation according to function." To the elucida-
tion of the "principle of function" his book is devoted.
It begins by pointing out that no man liveth to himself alone.
All are members one of another. Men unite in associations to
get things done that they cannot do separately. "The value and
full development of society depends not only upon the wide
prevalence and diffusion of association in the commonwealth, but
also on the successful cooperation and coherence of the various
associations. The possibility of this coherence depends upon the
fulfilment by each association of its social function." Men
should unite on the basis of a common interest. As each man
has several interests, he will be concerned with several social
functions and will accordingly have a part in several associa-
tions. Each man shares equally in the running of each associa-
tion to which he belongs, and each association exercises a limited
coercive power over its members. It is too bad that there should
be coercion anywhere, but in the present state of mankind we
must have some of it to get along. "It is necessary to provide
for its exercise, if only to supply a means for its abolition." If
each association has a little of it instead of any one having all,
tyranny will be at a minimum. The common interest of all
the members of each association is the best assurance of a con-
trol of the association which furthers that interest and uses
coercion only to that end. The trade union will make each
member keep the rules, but it will do so for his own good as a
trade union member. The leaders cannot go far wrong when
each member knows well the common interest with which the
leaders are charged.
After providing for internal harmony in each unit of functional
government, Mr. Cole takes up the relation of the units to each
other and to the wraith of what was once the state. Each associa-
tion should have a single function, and each function should be
vested so far as possible in a single association. Each association
will run its peculiar function. To keep the several associations to
their respective functions, coordination is necessary. There
must be some umpire between them. As the state is but one of
many associations, it cannot act as umpire in disputes between
itself and others of like order. The state will control only in
matters that "affect everybody equally and in the same way."
Stripped of sovereignty with its monopoly of coercion, the state
can no longer lay a heavy hand on the individual. Its officers
will be chosen by universal suffrage, but instead of "one man,
one vote," the principle will be "one man as many votes as inter-
ests, but only one vote in relation to each interest." The con-
stituencies will be made up according to functions and not by the
map. The interesting and fairly important question as to the
number of representatives to be allocated to each functional con-
stituency is not considered. Presumably it will not be one con-
stituency, one representative. But the apportionment is less
vital when the state deals only with matters that "affect every-
body equally and in the same way." Such matters Mr. Cole finds
mainly in the realm of consumption and little, if at all, in that
of production.
There are, it is evident, details to Mr. Cole's plan still to be
worked out. This he recognizes in his quest for a coordinator.
As this "must not be any single association," he makes it a
council composed of representatives from the "essential" associa-
tions. "To determine what actual associations are to be regarded
as essential at a particular time and for a particular society
is a practical question, and is therefore alien to a work dealing
with social theory." But social theory tells us that in this repre-
sentative coordinating council is vested the supreme power of
coercion. Under its control is to be "the judiciary and the whole
paraphernalia of law and police." Force and law thrown out
of the window are let in again through the door. The state is
dethroned, and the coordinator is crowned. Mr. Cole sees his
difficulty and possibly thinks that he escapes from it. He seems
to find comfort in the prospect that each functional body will
act "without interference in its normal operations from any out-
side body." The outside body comes in "only when a question
414
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
affects more than one form of association, that is, affects men in
more than one capacity or function." How often this will
happen is doubtless only a practical question, since Mr. Cole
does not consider it. Nor does he tell how the representatives
on this coercive coordinating body are to be allotted to the
participating associations. This seems a very practical question.
Suppose twenty functional associations are charged with raising
the price of twenty commodities so as to affect all consumers
equally and in the same way, and what is left of the state insists
that it must have its say. Something may turn on the propor-
tion of the votes which these twenty functional associations may
cast in the coordinating council. And what if the members of
the functional associations disobey the decree and the police-
men of the non-sovereign coercive coordinator sympathize with
them? This is another practical question.
Have Mr. Cole's bow and arrow really killed Cock Robin?
Is the omnipotent state destroyed, or has there merely been some
tinkering with its machinery? We need not bother about the
state or sovereignty as abstractions. Both have always had to
be worked by mortal men. Traditional theories of the state
and of sovereignty are not affected by what actually happens.
The abstract state, august old Allgemein, still stands where it
belongs, remote from the realm of actuality. What really matters
in government is who pull the strings and how they do it.
Sometimes the strings are pulled by one group, sometimes by
another. Some of the strings are political, some are economic.
The ballot alone has seldom proved an immediately effective
string. Without joining in Mr. Cole's special psychological
excursions, we may fully agree that representatives from geo-
graphical districts cannot represent the actual wills of those
who live in the district. Still in the long run they trim their
sails to the dominant winds of doctrine and preference in the
constituency. There is a good deal of "pandering to the moral
sentiments of the community"; and economic predilections are
receiving increasing deference whenever they surmount existing
political barriers in the way of getting crystallized. Party
leaders are watchful of the limit of what any considerable
group of voters will stand for. In Great Britain cabinets rise
and fall from pressure outside Westminster without any new
election. When voices get loud enough they somehow get
listened to, however foolish our way of distributing seats in
legislative assemblies. A study of political pressures would
carry us far beyond the formal methods of election. For such
indirect pressure as we now have, Mr. Cole would substitute a
formal mechanism by which men are represented according to
their real interests. He would create new agencies of political
authority, though he would call them by other names. He
severely limits what he calls the state, but his coordinator
might chuckle L'etat, e'est moi.
How far all this functional division and coordination would
serve Mr. Cole's desire to end the confusion of existing society
is a question for him to consider seriously when he turns from
social theory to practical matters. It would seem far better
designed to minister to other desires not so explicitly put for-
ward. Though Mr. Cole is silent about matters of arithmetic
there is little doubt that he means to make numbers pre-
dominant. He would have democracy live up to its professions.
The wheels which he would add to the mechanism seem fairly
well adapted to his purpose. They might not be necessary if
folks were already adept at flocking on the basis of what is good
for them, as the farmers of North Dakota are showing us by
what they are doing through the old-established medium of the
State Republican organization. Mr. Cole's chief practical con-
tribution may well be in the aid which his machinery will give
to a similar pooling of economic interests in more complex in-
dustrial communities. His theory is a device for giving to the
dominance of the Sons of Martha the same moral authentica-
tion that the theory he rejects has given to that of others who
have held the reins of power in what we call the state.
Thomas Reed Powell
Aria and Recitative
Chanteys and Ballads. By Harry Kemp. Brentano's.
The Cairn of Stars. Poems by Francis Carlin. Henry Holt and
Company.
Songs and Portraits. By Maxwell Struthers Burt. Charles
Scribner's Sons.
Songs of Adoration. By Gustav Davidson. New York: The
Madrigal.
Blue and Purple. Francis Neilson. B. W. Huebsch.
New Poems. By D. H. Lawrence. B. W. Huebsch.
The Little School. By T. Sturge Moore. Harcourt, Brace and
Howe.
Country Sentiment. By Robert Graves. Alfred A. Knopf.
Poems. By Cecil Roberts. With a Preface by John Masefield.
Frederick A. Stokes Company.
The Complete Poems of Francis Ledwidge. With Introductions
by Lord Dunsany. Brentano's.
Poems 1908-1919. By John Drinkwater. Houghton Mifflin Com-
pany.
Black Branches. A Book of Poems and Plays. By Orrick Johns.
New York: The Pagan Publishing Company.
Don Folquet and Other Poems. By Thomas Walsh. John Lane
Company.
Jehovah. By Clement Wood. E. P. Dutton and Company.
The Roamer and Other Poems. By George Edward Woodberry.
Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
'X,HE average of lyric accomplishment among American and
*■ British poets today is by no means low, and Mr. Kemp is
not the least of those who have kept it high; but Mr. Kemp's
new volume of "Sea-Chanteys, Tramp-Ballads, and Other Bal-
lads and Poems" is a disappointment. He was fastidious be-
fore, though generous enough in thought and gesture; now he
finds room for commonplace and cant, complacency and swagger.
He is singsong, loquacious, and to all appearances uncritical.
His Biblical paraphrases are rough and right and reverent; it is
possible that he has been true to the sea; but he has not done
his best by poetry. Mr. Carlin's blitheness in song rings as of
a purer kind. His is the folk note, the friendly, Irish-village
voice. Refreshing because naturally gay, all that he needs to
be as truly joyful as Burns is to be as truly profound, which
he is not.
Mr. Burt writes with a communicative rush which might be
other than youthful were it not so eager and innocent. He is
never reflective, though his spiritual pores are wide open, and
he begins to breathe soundly if a little virtuously. When at
last he shall speak thoughts all his own, it is hoped that he will
not have lost his really very lovely gift of expression, his round,
elegant, springtime pregnancy and shapeliness of phrase — the
phrase of glib, high-minded British youth, the phrase and
cadence of Rupert Brooke. Mr. Davidson, also in a fine state
of communication, has drawn his utterance from a source which
also is fervent and pure: the Hebrew Psalms. His rhythmical
prose, though unnecessarily laden with Old Testament lingo,
seems genuine on the whole, and speaks a clear humility.
Mr. Neilson's "Songs to a Wife," though sincere, do not
achieve any effect of passion; their adoration is excessively
spare and cool, while their simplicity, resolute as it may be,
has none of the perfection that moves. Neither imagery nor
declaration is sustained; there is no sure ring of metal, no
clean glint of starshine. The poet's gait too often is stiff with
inversions and hobbled with prose. He has escaped Victorian
verbiage, but he has not yet captured the jewel of seventeenth-
century felicity which it is evident that he desires. Mr. Law-
rence's preface poses spontaneity as an ideal, promising poetry
that "just takes place." That is interesting, but it does not
explain Mr. Lawrence's poetry, which here as always betrays
elaborate trouble in its preparation. The piece called Appre-
hension is an excellent yet complicated metaphor; Seven Seals,
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
415
the best thing in the volume and one of the most passionate
of contemporary poems, recalls the torture no less than the
genius of John Donne.
Mr. Moore, whose book for children comes enlarged from the
edition of 1905, altogether avoids jingle, altogether shuns the
sweet and easy. He deliberately fumbles his rhythms in order
to secure quiet, brown, ingenuous truth. His halting syntax,
unauthorized and quaint, often makes for stupidity, but it makes
occasionally for a solemnity and honesty of prattle which beyond
doubt is effective. Mr. Moore speaks slowly, plainly, primly,
with only once in a while a dash of cunning like this:
A little brown wood-mouse
His ample fur-cloak dons;
Then ties his comforter,
Wool white as down of swans;
And as he left the house,
To see his tail was there,
He turned his head;
Then off he sped,
To look if beech nuts were
Silver or red.
Mr. Graves writes nursery rhymes for the young and ballads
for the old with equal simplicity and gusto. By virtue of an
unusually definite touch he renders ballad dialogue in England
contemporary and usable as well as native. His verses for chil-
dren, far as they are from being as exquisite as those of Walter
de la Mare and William H. Davies, are yet affectionate and
happy, and they inescapably call to play.
What might be called the transparent tradition in English
poetry is represented without much significance by Mr. Roberts
but with a good deal of significance by Francis Ledwidge and
John Drinkwater. It is the tradition of soothing ratiocination
and simple song, executed in lucid octosyllabic quatrains or
couplets. Francis Ledwidge was an honest songster, a poet of
the blackbird in a time of hawks and vultures, a peasant poet
not afraid to be gentle and archaic — to write "athwart" and
"adown" and "anon" — when others beat on loud new gongs. He
was in no sense an important poet, it must be said; there was
a monotony about his processes, a sameness about his exclama-
tions and cadences; he struck out no one stanza that is sure
to resist the mould. Mr. Drinkwater belongs first and last
among the Withers, the Brownes, the Marvells, and the, Dyers
of British verse, the dewy, pastoral octosyllabists who are the
furthest of all away from solemn laughter and excited tears.
He is dull when speculative or satirical; he is never dull when
practicing the folk, the minstrel, the country note. He sparkles
as soon and as long as he describes Derbyshire, Worcestershire,
Gloucestershire, the Cotswolds, and the Lakes, as soon and as
long as he moves among men and trees. His only defect — and
it is serious enough — is a streak of poetical cant. He fondles
blossoms and blackbirds more for their poetry than for them-
selves. He is somewhat femininely on the defensive for roses
and dreams and things — he cannot mention them merely and
let them go, but must expound them. Herrick saw more and
sighed less:. Dimples and ghosts and buttercups once called
for a wink, a frisk, or a frosted phrase; now they find reverence
and girlish worship.
Not many ventures outside the circle of song are destined in
any generation to more than a respectable success. Mr. Johns's
monologues, sketches, and weird "plays in chiaroscuro" abound
in ambitious irrelevancies and irresponsibilities after the man-
ner of T. S. Eliot, without, however, that poet's huge-handed
animal spirits to enliven them. Mr. Walsh has composed a
medieval and monastic narrative in effete, Tennysonian pentam-
eters which singly are good but which in the aggregate are
wearisome. Vividness, and so vitality, he has sacrificed to an
archaic blur like that of William Morris. Mr. Wood is anything
but effete and archaic, though he goes back as far as the Old
Testament for material and momentum. His aim is the ener-
getic documentation, by description, recitative, and song, of an
ancient tongue-encounter between a band of Israelites and a
band of Kenites. "Jehovah" suffers from a too constant strenu-
ousness of reach and a too mighty savagery of diction; there
is more motion than flow, more activity than strength. Yet
certain of the songs genuinely mount; and Uz, the wrinkled
patriarch, spokesman for the Kenites, is a triumph in portrait-
ure— Uz, trudging craftily out before his troops to push in-
credible claims with a soft and terrible confidence in answer
to the taunts of Joab, the Israelite leader.
Mr. Woodberry's latest volume includes his occasional pieces
of the past five years, the sonnet-sequence called Ideal Passion
which he printed more or less privately in 1917, and a long
philosophical poem begun twenty years ago but finished only
now. As an occasional poet, Mr. Woodberry is not exciting
after the occasion has passed; in the present period of en-
forced listlessness toward the war, his poems on that occasion,
at least, seem good work thrown away, seem good words robbed
of their right to ring. No general looks large enough any
more to fill a sonnet, no victory looks certain enough to de-
serve an ode. Mr. Woodberry is more surely a poet when he
is a Platonist, as in Ideal Passion, on the whole the most
vibrant portion of his recent output, wherein tributes are paid
with an almost plaintive clarity to that Ideal Beauty which leans
and touches a poet's temples. The Roamer is estimable blank
verse, but like some others of Mr. Woodberry's major efforts it
produces less poetry and less philosophy than it promises. A
narrative of the soul's search for what is ultimately good, it
proceeds with vague and thin distinction to a banal conclusion.
Mark Van Doren
Lloyd George
The Prime Minister. By Harold Spender. George H. Doran
Company.
]V/f R. SPENDER'S portrait of the Prime Minister can claim
*■ *■ in one respect only to be a faithful one. It is Mr. Lloyd
George as he appears to himself — not to his Maker. His biog-
rapher enjoys in common with his subject the facile romanti-
cism which can pick out telling incidents and work them up,
ignore faults and failures, and present a heroic figure before a
short-memoried, uncritical public. For the lighter sort of
modern "hero" he has enough material to work upon. The poor
Welsh village boy, tended by the pious shoe-maker uncle who
has premonitions of his greatness, his "catechism" rebellion in
the national school before the days of "conscience clauses," his
discovery of the gift of speech, the emergence of the village
Hampden, his bearding of the local potentates as young solic-
itor and candidate for Parliament, his early struggles for the
cause of Welsh nationalism in the House, his bold fight against
the criminal imperialism of the Boer War, his admission into
the 1906 Government as a chief of free-lance radicalism, the chal-
lenge to the Lords in his famous 1909 budget, followed by his
"revolutionary" land policy — all these incidents supply move-
ment and color to Mr. Spender's story. The working up is
flamboyant and rhetorical, filled with interjectory commendation,
such as "ever ready to face the music," "sound at heart but not
a saint," "My audience is the country."
But since every statesman now stands or falls on his war
record, Mr. Spender's best industry is given to showing how
fortunate the country and the world have been in having at its
disposal in this supreme emergency a man of just intuition and
magnificent energy, who would, at the crisis of his country's
cause, resist the scruples which might have made a lesser states-
man hesitate, and seize the reins of power that were his by
right. The account given by Mr. Spender of the ejectment of
Mr. Asquith by Mr. George ("torpedoing" the unkind critics
called it) attains some degree of accuracy by sticking to a bare
record of events, and eschewing all reasonable speculations upon
motives and manners. Here we have a characteristic example
416
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
of the qualities and defects of this biography. Mr. Asquith was
without question a poor leader of his nation in a struggle de-
manding resource and initiation. Mr. George had, and knew he
had, these advantages. The action he took was for the good of
the country. But the pretense that the patriotic motive was
paramount, that no alloy of self-glory and personal will to
power was present, is quite unconvincing to any one who has
followed closely Mr. George's career.
Not merely by such false interpretation of events but by false
attribution of qualities and acquirements Mr. Spender fabri-
cates his hero. He attributes to him "insight into deep truths"
and treats his generous feelings as solid principles. He has
even the audacity to speak of Mr. George as "well read" and he
tells us (on the strength of a short trip) that he "knew Ger-
many." Now Mr. George has no principles of statecraft, knows
little of past history, or of the current history of other coun-
tries. To do him justice, he never professes to deal in prin-
ciples. Politics is to him the art of opportunism, each issue to
be dealt with when it comes up "on its merits," and conformably
with the expediencies of the moment, with very little regard to
distant events, which may or may not occur. In one sense he is
a realist. "Things are what they are" to him. But to hold
that "their consequences will be what they will be" would be
carrying causation or speculation too far. His realism, more-
over, is tempered by a spice of sentimentalism where visible op-
pression of class or nationality comes in. This justifies Mr.
Spender in representing him as temperamentally upon the side
"of the under dog." But this sympathy goes, after all, a very
little way as guaranty of sound statecraft. Mr. George is
primarily an orator and at a time when oratory is most dan-
gerous. He is an improviser of policies at a time when far-
seeing judgment is most necessary. He is always at the mercy
of other people's sources of information, having no stock of
knowledge of his own. He is quick at picking the brains of
those about him, but not so good at choosing whom to put
about him. And his pick does not go deep. Never in modern
English history has so light a man been at the head of affairs
in so grave a time.
All the risks involved in such a situation Mr. Spender ig-
nores. His consistent policy (or should I say dialectical device?)
is to slur over or ignore facts that damage his hero. For Ameri-
can readers his treatment of the Bullitt incident will suffice to
illustrate. "The proposal brought by Mr. Bullitt [from Russia]
was not an offer from the Bolshevists but the suggestion of an
offer by the Allies — a very different thing." And he adds : "The
proposals were not written down by the Bolshevists but con-
veyed to Mr. Bullitt, who placed them on record." Now, as
readers of The Nation are aware, Mr. Bullitt took out to
Russia a draft in the handwriting of one of the British secre-
taries, which, though not a formal proposal, was intended to
convey the terms acceptable to Mr. George. He brought back
a reply to the effect that an offer along the lines of the draft
with certain other provisions would be favorably considered
by the Bolshevists. Mr. Spender says not a word of the false-
hoods told by Mr. George to Parliament relating to his acquain-
tance with Mr. Bullitt.
Even more audacious is the account of the 1918 general elec-
tion. Not a word of Mr. George's furious appeal for the
Kaiser's head and the whole cost of the war in indemnities
election pledges which, futile as they turn out to be, were deeply
responsible for the base peace which Clemenceau and his col-
leagues put upon Mr. George and Mr. Wilson. But Mr. Spen-
der's treatment of this whole historical episode is one of elabo-
rate sophistication. He defends the secret conduct of negotia-
tions, and pretends that the innumerable violations of the prin-
ciples which the Allies solemnly undertook to embody in the
peace were a justifiable compromise between the idealism of
Mr. Wilson and the proposals of Clemenceau, which latter he
euphemistically terms "a peace of security!" And yet he assures
us that Mr. George and Mr. Wilson were "really kindred
spirits." "Both came from Puritan stock, and the high idealism
and noble integrity of President Wilson's character must have
often recalled to Mr. Lloyd George that splendid uncle who
had taught and nurtured him!" The book is rich in such
strokes of undesigned humor. Perhaps the finest is Mr. Spen-
der's presentation of the man who is practicing every wile of
statecraft to hold together his discordant band of profiteers,
so as to maintain a working majority and keep office, as a high-
souled patriot filled with "the vision of a state deliberately
consenting to sink faction in the cause of a larger purpose — of
a community which, with all its passion for the healthy strife
of party, can tell when to forego that strife, and can scent the
danger from afar." Few men save Mr. Spender could have
penned that sentence. Yes, Mr. George has a keen nose for
dangers that threaten his safety. But this keenness has cost his
country and the world pretty dear. For, in maneuvering to
keep in power, he has had to stoop to the lowest depths of popu-
lar passion and credulity, to support terms of peace he knew
to be impracticable and disastrous, to buy Mr. Churchill and
his following with the Russian war, and Sir Edward Carson
with what now comes near an Irish war.
Mr. Spender represents his hero typically as a man of vision,
faith, and sympathetic imagination. There is one supreme test
of this time — the League of Nations. Mr. George's biographer
indulges in desperate wriggles to support his assertion that "he
profoundly believes in the League of Nations." Apart from the
fact that profundity is the last expression to apply to any of
Mr. George's facile beliefs, this is Mr. Spender's own admission
that the Prime Minister felt "there was an element of unreality
in the drafting of a set constitution for the League," and pre-
ferred that it should grow insensibly out of the Peace Con-
ference. This, of course, is what has happened and has made
it not a league of nations. J. A. Hobson
History and History
The United States: An Experiment in Democracy. By Carl
Becker. Harper and Brothers.
The United States in Our Own Times 1865-1920. By Paul L.
Haworth. Charles Scribner's Sons.
'T^O the mind of the speculative student these two books on
*■ American history will suggest a long line of interesting re-
flection. Both are by American scholars of approved training
and academic distinction. Mr. Becker is professor of European
history at Cornell and doubtless more occupied with the gigantic
labors of Diderot than with the multitudinous volumes of
American Foreign Relations. Mr. Haworth is acting professor
of American history at Indiana University and more at home
with the Congressional Record than with that mighty pile, the
Moniteur. Mr. Becker writes a series of essays on the evolu-
tion of American democracy in its relation to government, land,
slavery, education, diplomacy, immigration, and equality, ending
in a serious discussion of pressing problems and a suggestion
that education holds the promise of the future. Mr. Haworth
writes a textbook in recent history for college students, giving
us a clue to what an able and experienced teacher thinks proper
and acceptable in the realm of higher education to which we
are to look for guidance and salvation.
The first of these books is the story of the way in which the
aristocracy of colonial times has been supplanted by a political
democracy, slavery disposed of, the public domain parceled out
into homesteads, the alien brought to our shores, and education
made universal. It is a plain story told by a man with an
eye for the real instead of the mythical. Mr. Becker does not
resort to special dispensation or to heroic qualities, but finds
the secret of American democracy in the conditions of Ameri-
can life. He knows the limits of our boasted toleration and
the intimate character of our prosperity. He refuses to work
up a frenzy over the trade union "dictation" manifest in the
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
417
Adamson law. On the contrary he coldly remarks that for a
quarter of a century capitalists "dictated" to the government at
Washington (for which he has the high authority of President
Wilson) and that now two are playing the same game. He
thinks that the trade unionist has historic, if not ethical, justi-
fication for selling as little as possible for as much as he can get.
He does not shed any tears over Mr. Haworth's "great general
public" which imagines itself so virtuous. He casts doubt upon
the benevolence of our business men, suggesting that the average
among them does not even have the interest in his employees
that induced the master of a slave gang to see that his chattels
were well fed and comfortable. In fact, he thinks Americans
are one flesh with all the world and that now the free land is
gone we face the same problems that Europe faces. Being a
historian and not a preacher he offers no simple remedies ; but he
evidently believes that we may expect a widening of the func-
tions of the state. Moreover he seems to rely upon education
to point the way out — not the education that merely reflects
and confirms the conditions of life, but the education that under-
stands and surmounts them.
Mr. Haworth evidently does not believe that a college course
in recent American history can break with the accredited pre-
conceptions. He gives us a straightforward, chronological ac-
count of the last fifty years. Here we find the recognized
staples: the force bill, Ku Klux Klan, Greenbacks, resumption,
the Hayes-Tilden dispute, the frontier, "rum, Romanism, and
rebellion," free silver, imperialism, the Sherman Act, the strenu-
ous life, reclamation, "onward-Christian-soldiers," and the-world-
safe-for-democracy. They are all presented in an easy, flowing
style which carries the reader along on the current of narra-
tion. All the ceremonials are performed with clean hands.
Greenbackism was "a craze," Russia was a traitor to the Allies,
the recent labor disturbance in Seattle was an attempt to start
the Bolshevist revolution, Ole Hanson was the "courageous"
mayor who saved the day (reward not mentioned), the Depart-
ment of Justice really discovered a Bolshevist plot to overthrow
our government, and everything the Kaiser did was a part of
the great conspiracy against the babes in the woods. To social
and industrial questions Mr. Haworth assigns "a large share of
space," but he cautions us against "swinging too far in that
direction." In accordance with that caution he gives seven lines
to the rise of the American Federation of Labor, without de-
scribing its peculiar policies in detail, and thirteen entertaining
lines to Cleveland's very interesting courtship and marriage.
Thoroughly conversant with modern movements, Mr. Haworth
recognizes the antithesis between political democracy and eco-
nomic plutocracy and in his concluding chapter he mentions the
new phases of the old struggle: "populism, progressivism, so-
cialism, and Bolshevism." But of the many reforms, he thinks it
fitting to discuss in some detail only one, namely, a heavy in-
heritance tax to disperse concentrated wealth — a device which,
as he says, now has the support of many eminent men like
Vice-President Marshall. Perhaps, after all, this is as far as
we need to go in view of the fact that Mr. Roosevelt's "vigorous
deeds and denunciations of dishonesty" drove away "the noxious
vapors that were poisoning American public and private life."
In short, it appears that the college teacher of history should
discard none of the pontificalia approved by the elder statesmen
of the American Historical Association. He should never
apply to the reputable lore of the middling orders the Socratic
elenchus or, as Lord Morley would say, any other engine of
skepticism or verification. He must make no frontal assault
upon the great commonplace. He must upset no reliquaries or
thuribles. He must omit no rubrics or lectionaries. He cannot
essay the role of Jeremiah against the Philistines or invoke the
spirit of Buckle or Darwin. If such is the evident judgment
passed upon collegiate instruction in history by a scholar of
understanding and discernment, like Mr. Haworth, how can Mr.
Becker expect the emancipation of education from "the pressure
of economic and social tendencies"?
Charles A. Beard
Divine Personality and Human Life
Divine Personality and Human Life. By Clement C. J. Webb.
The Macmillan Company.
HP HIS volume contains the second part of the Gifford Lectures,
*■ delivered in the University of Aberdeen in 1918-1919. Mr.
Clement Webb is facile princeps among English writers upon
the philosophy of religion, and he has what is not common in
his class, a singularly simple and lucid style. He is at his best
in criticism; his . well-known critical handling of Durkheim's
group-theory of religion is a much more convincing piece of
work than the present volume or its predecessor, "God and
Personality." Perhaps this is inevitable. It is no doubt easier
to expose the defects in another man's view than it is to
make a wholly water-tight case for your own. This, however,
must not be taken as meaning that the book now before us is
only second-rate. On the contrary it belongs to the front
ranks of its class. The trouble is simply that works on the
philosophy of religion are always fated to end with a note of
interrogation.
It is not easy to define Mr. Webb's philosophical position. He
differs from the Absolute Idealists in affirming that in some
sense or other the ultimate ground and meaning of the Universe
is personal. He believes in a "personal" God. On the other
hand he denies the validity of the position of the Personal
Idealists who "give to the personal principle of unity in our ex-
perience a priority over the rational." He retains the ration-
alism of the Oxford Hegelian school without allowing it to carry
him over to that arid and cheerless devotion to the Absolute
which is meat and drink to Mr. Bradley. That is to say, Mr.
Webb is not merely a philosopher of religion; he is a religious
philosopher.
In the first series of the Gifford Lectures, Mr. Webb argues
for the idea of a "personal God," meaning by the definition a
God with whom men may have personal intercourse. But the
expression "personal God" is intended to express not so much
the notion of "the personality of God" so much as that of "per-
sonality in God." And if this seems to the reader to be a dis-
tinction without a difference, it must be answered that the dis-
tinction is very important indeed. For the phrase "the per-
sonality of God" may suggest a unitary God, and according to
Mr. Webb, the God of the Christian tradition is a Trinity. When
you speak of "personality in God," you leave the door open to
a conception of God as being fully personal, that is to say,
social. The Doctrine of the Trinity gives you a God who not
only has personality, but is a society. Now in this second
series, Mr. Webb turns to an examination of how the concep-
tion of divine personality is affected by those specialized activi-
ties in which human personality expresses itself. He inquires
how far the idea of a personal God fits into the attitudes and
necessities of the economic life, the scientific life, the aesthetic
life, the moral life, the political life; and concludes with an ex-
amination of the value of the individual in the philosophy of the
Absolute and Personal Idealists, and a final chapter on the des-
tiny of the individual person. It is unnecessary to tell those
who know Mr. Webb's work that the whole inquiry is very care-
fully and candidly carried through. The lecturer cannot be
charged with unfairly weighting the scales in favor of his own
argument. Sometimes indeed he seems to give gratuitous over-
weight to considerations that obstruct the conclusion that he
wishes to reach; though it must also be admitted that in one
or two places he appears to infer more from friendly considera-
tions than is legitimate. It is, for instance, difficult to follow
him when he says that the conception of "corporate personality"
(as applied, say, to the state) helps us to a conception of per-
sonality in God. It all depends upon how you conceive of the
state, and one suspects a little residuum of the Hegelian doctrine
of the state in Mr. Webb's view of it. But these are minor and
infrequent blemishes in what is a massive and (so far as the
418
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
subject-matter allows) a convincing argument. It is not impos-
sible that Mr. Webb's interpretation of "personality in God"
may provide that much-needed philosophical via tertia for those
of us who cannot go the narrow road of Absolutist Monism or
the broad road of Pragmatist Pluralism.
This brief notice gives no idea of the extent of ground which
Mr. Webb's inquiry covers. For instance, in his, chapter on the
aesthetic life, there is an important analysis of William Blake's
theological scheme; and in the chapter on Naturalism and the
Value of the Individual, the problem of the pathological disso-
ciation of personality is discussed in connection with the ques-
tion of the relative priority of the personal and rational prin-
ciples in the handling of human experience. These are but two
examples of the range over which Mr. Webb'? investigation
carries him, and they suggest how broad and varied is the
survey of the relevant data from which he weaves his argu-
ment. Altogether the reading of the book is a rich experience,
and its comparative freedom from the jargon of the philosophi-
cal schools makes it available for a much wider circle of readers
than is usually the case with this kind of literature.
R. R.
Sociology in Two Dimensions
The Principles of Sociology. By Edward Alsworth Ross. The
Century Company.
THE most obvious feature of this work is its comprehensive-
ness. Professor Ross has not only duly registered and
pigeonholed a vast variety of social phenomena, but has like-
wise undertaken the far more delicate task of helping people
" arrive at wise decisions as to social policies." Unfortunately
the rationale of his system is not explicitly set forth either for
its theoretical or its practical implications. Why he employs
his particular categories in the order given remains far from
clear, and we are left with the suspicion that the mode of
presentation is one that has come from experience in the class-
room. For the practical philosophy, too, there is no overt state-
ment, but her© the deficiency is of lesser moment because the
author's basic principles generally stand out with sufficient
transparency. Another salient characteristic of the book is the
range of the data from which illustrative material is culled.
Mr. Ross is a far-traveled writer, who has literally surveyed
mankind from China to Peru. His instances have frequently
the piquancy of an eye-witness's report, and even apart from
personal reminiscences he reveals a genuine talent for the use of
striking and even convincing examples. The admirable open-
ing paragraphs of the chapter on Ossification may be cited by
way of illustration. From this it follows that Mr. Ross has
none of the speculative writer's horror of facts. He has a com-
plex in quite the opposite direction: of all the numerous prob-
lems treated there is probably not a single one that is settled by
an appeal to first principles or argued out on its merits. The
author has very decided opinions on the most difficult moot-
questions; but apparently he has arrived at them intuitively or
for some obscure reason has covered the tracks of his reasoning
processes.
Mr. Ross's treatment of the race problem is especially il-
luminating as to this intellectual idiosyncrasy, precisely because
he is not at all an extremist on this subject. He recognizes the
influence exerted by social conditions and he rejects "the doc-
trine of the intellectual superiority of whites over the rest of
humanity"; he finds no ground for believing that any people
is warranted in oppressing, dispossessing, or exterminating any
portion of mankind; the comparative brain power of the races
is represented as not yet finally settled. But this exemplary
caution goes hand in hand with an astonishingly extravagant
credulity. He quotes himself with approval regarding the innate
superiority of the Nordic in ethical endowment over the South
European as proved by comparison of their conduct at marine
disasters. While on one page the establishment of racial dif-
ferences is made to depend on the future development of psycho-
logical experimentation, the preceding page shows a quite naive
acceptance of what "unbiased observers" say about the Chinese
in relation to the Japanese, about the aboriginal Peruvian
superiority to the Indian of Ecuador, and so forth. "Some of
these contrasts may be due to opportunity, stimulation, or social
inheritance," we are told, "but surely not all." Why not all?
And if so, by what objective criterion can one determine what is
due to race and what to social circumstances? On this funda-
mental question there is complete silence. Again, the author is
convinced that the famous Celtic temperament is no myth:
"I believe," he says, "that the innate mental differences between
Celtic Irish and 'John Bull' English or between Bretons and
Normans exceed those between the Chinese of North China and
the old Americans." It would be interesting to get the evidence
for this bold generalization and also to have it formulated in
intelligible biological terms.
It is not the position assumed by Mr. Ross that is primarily
criticized here, but his short-hand method of arriving at results
without disclosing their foundation and his failure to note that
he is advancing mutually contradictory conceptions. While this
refusal to go to the bottom of a problem, this phobia of philo-
sophical argumentation, is typical of the theoretical portion of
the book, its practical doctrines are marred by a corresponding
fault. Many of them are sound enough, but they are sound to
the point of being truisms meaningless without further develop-
ment. Mr. Ross liberally showers us with counsels of perfec-
tion, but how to apply them in a universe far from the best con-
ceivable is another matter. Apropos of miscegenation we read:
"When precious culture elements are in danger of being diluted
and finally lost by fusion, the prohibition of intermarriage is
justifiable." Very well; but who is to decide when there is
danger and what is precious? Again, who ever denied that all
important posts in society should be manned by the talented
rather than the "dunderheads." But that experimental psy-
chology of itself will suffice to oust the numbskulls supported by
privilege and their self-interest is to lay a severe tax on our
optimism. To cite one more example that hardly requires com-
ment: "In the piloting of society no valuable element should
have either too little influence or too much influence."
Alike baneful from a theoretical and practical angle is- Mr.
Ross's conception of progress. He realizes that spiritual and
social progress is not so obvious as material advancement, yet
characteristically enough there is not the slightest attempt at
demonstrating its reality. It never seems to have dawned upon
him that other aspirations than those of Western civilization
might have claims to equal consideration, and Western civiliza-
tion itself appears in that somewhat specialized and attenuated
form it assumes in Ottumwa and Kalamazoo from which some
of us shrink in Nietzschean anguish. Passages there are, to
be sure, in which the common-sense cosmopolitanism bred of
travel asserts itself, but they are submerged in the habitual and
essential attitude. So trivial a feature as the all-day service of
the dining-cars in Russia is mentioned as an example of the
inferiority of Russian standards. In the course of an extraor-
dinary dialogue between an imaginary emotionalist and an in-
tellectual occurs the following passage: "The emotionalist urges:
'How cruel to ostracize this girl for giving herself outside the
marriage relation!' The intellectual [sic] queries: 'Is there any
other way to keep girls from yielding to their tempters?'"
As a final sample of his thinking may be cited Mr. Ross's
comments on alien religions. He completely fails to understand
that the "lower" religions represent values to their votaries that
are quite as definite and unassailable as those associated with
our own. That "the value difference between religions is
enormous" is true only in the sense that to any believer his
own faith is to all others as infinity to zero. Some religions
may, indeed, "embody man's highest aspirations," but I know of
none that can fairly be said to "embody his animal impulses."
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
419
In short, Mr. Ross's cardinal fault is lack of historical-minded-
ness. He accepts as absolute the standards found or conceived
in his own social environment and seems generally incapable of
a Kantian critique of their validity. One need not wonder that
he brands as decadent the noble efforts of the great critical
thinkers of France and elsewhere. Yet with all its defects "The
Principles of Sociology" remains a work of real utility. Though
the author's resolute determination not to think anything
through may deter the philosophical student, the vast scope of
the book with its wealth of illustrative material may well
commend it to the teacher of sociology.
Robert H. Lowie
Ladies and Women
The Learned Lady in England 1650-1760. By Myra Reynolds.
Houghton Mifflin Company.
The Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century. By
Alice Clark. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
DOROTHY OSBORNE writes to her lover, about 1652: "The
heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about
six or seven o'clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by
the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and
cows and sit in the shade singing of ballads." As befits a
"learned lady," Dorothy is reminded of classic pastorals. Only
now and then do the learned ladies throw light on the working
life of their sisters. Had the Dorothy Osbornes and Dudleya
Norths guessed that a twentieth century woman "research
student of the London School of Economics and Political Sci-
ence" would pore over household accounts, state papers, private
letters, and the records of parishes, courts, and gilds, in the
effort to picture woman's place in the economic organization of
their day, they might have made her task easier by doing a
little volunteer field work in sociology. Field work would per-
haps have saved Dudleya North from that fatal "sedentary
distemper" which carried her off after her conquest of Greek,
Latin, and the Oriental languages. Most of the learned ladies
whose achievements fill Miss Reynolds's rather formidable vol-
ume were of noble or gentle birth. A gardener's daughter or so
does not destroy the general impression of class accomplish-
ment. And though the economic motive for authorship emerges
before the close of the period studied, and the desire to see
themselves in print — even under a pseudonym — becomes com-
mon, their learning was mainly for the solace and delight of
themselves and their circle of friends and relatives.
"Learned" signifies in seventeenth-century usage anything
from the solid Anglo-Saxon scholarship of Elizabeth Elstob to
a mere taste for books and a facility in the composition of slight
poems. Ladies were learned if their chosen pursuits had to do
with things of the mind, or if they were demanding new free-
dom of self-expression, new training, new opportunities. Ac-
tresses of the Restoration stage are caught in Miss Reynolds's
net, because they opened up a new profession for women, though
their pursuits (having to do largely with King Charles's cour-
tiers) were far from intellectual. The accident of a favorable
home environment fostered the learned lady's development.
Schools for anything but deportment and trivial accomplish-
ments— where one might learn to embroider in lively colors "four
hundred new sorts of Birds, Beasts, Fish, Flyes, Worms" — were
virtually non-existent. The efforts of a Mrs. Makin or a Mary
Astell to organize sound education for girls did little but pro-
mote discussion. But in homes of cultured leisure, like those of
the Norths or the Evelyns, a studious girl met with encourage-
ment. An archbishop might direct her training, or a John Locke
teach her divinity and philosophy. At the least, she might, like
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, have the run of a fine library.
Usually the "learned" bent revealed itself early. The "match-
less Orinda" read the Bible through before she was four and
carried away whole sermons in her memory. Amazing that her
gift for gracious intercourse survived these appalling religious
performances! Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson as a child inflicted grave
instruction upon her playmates and "plucked all their babies to
pieces." On the whole, even in favorable cases, there was little
of the systematic study, the exacting mental discipline, provided
even for girls a century before in several great Tudor house-
holds. Miss Reynolds sums up the period as one of beginnings,
promises with few results, "a lavish sowing of seed, a steady
infiltration of new ideas, a breaking up of old certainties as to
woman's place in domestic and civic life, and an accumulation of
examples proving women capable of the most varied aptitudes
and energies."
What held back the intellectual development of women? Why
(as Lady Mary wrote from the safe refuge of Italy) was no art
omitted to stifle their natural reason? Why does the eccentric
Duchess of Newcastle hope that her book may be received "for
the good encouragement of our sex, lest in time we should grow
irrational as idiots"? The reason lies partly in the firm clutch
on the seventeenth-century mind, male and female, of the terse
Miltonic "He for God only, she for God in him." The most
advanced demanded little more for women than freedom to read
and study if they so desire. Even Mrs. Makin, educational pio-
neer, claims only that her training will make wives more reason-
ably and intelligently submissive. The Marquis of Halifax, it
is true, admits that a weak husband must be controlled — but
with all outward deference — for his own good: "You must be
very undexterous," he advises his daughter, "if when your hus-
band shall resolve to be an Ass, you do not take care he may be
your Ass." To be submissive, however intelligently, to an Ass —
little intellectual stimulus there! But if the husband happened
to be a man of culture, a Sir William Temple, or a Colonel
Hutchinson (who saw his future wife's Latin books before he
saw her face and promptly fell in love) , a wife might best please
her husband by developing her mind.
Miss Clark gives due weight to this doctrine of female sub-
mission in accounting for the decline in the standard of woman's
education and in her social and economic position during the cen-
tury. But her study reveals the operation of economic forces
as well. The basis of production was beginning to shift from the
still predominating "family industry" organization to the cap-
italistic. Family industry offered wide scope for woman's ener-
gies; the family (including servants and apprentices) was a
productive unit for goods to be sold or exchanged ; the workshop
was within the home precincts, the family owned stock and tools.
Wives of independent farmers and of husbandmen, who sup-
plemented the family income by day labor but worked their own
little plots of ground as well, fed and clothed their families —
spinning wool and flax, brewing, baking, gardening, raising poul-
try, managing dairies, helping in the harvest. Woolen and linen
thread not needed by the family was sold. In the towns the
wives of craftsmen in skilled and semi-skilled trades and of
shopkeepers and retailers were the business partners, assistants,
and frequently successors of their husbands. Servants relieved
them of mere domestic drudgery. Though specialized training
in the trades was seldom given to women, there was ample scope
for their general intelligence and common sense. Women were
engaged in the provision trades; we read of the unruly oyster
wives, tripe wives, and herb wives of London. And up and down
the bad country roads went women peddlers, pack on back, and
buyers and sellers of butter, eggs, and poultry. Laws to curb
profiteering and prevent corners in food were often enforced
against these poor women, in the interest of their strong com-
petitors, the shopkeepers; while the "great Ingrossers," quite in
the modern fashion, escaped.
The woolen industry was already organized on capitalistic
lines and drew largely on women for its supply of spinsters.
Women who had to depend upon their spinning for subsistence
were unorganized and badly exploited, and in the frequent
seasons of depression starving women and children came on the
parish. Linen spinners were also mainly women, of the pauper
class, recruited from the undernourished wives of the landless
day laborers. Women were thus beginning to be forced into the
420
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
open labor market, without organization or specialized training,
and their product diverted from the family to the benefit of the
capitalist or consumer. The sweated woman wage earner at the
bottom of the scale is a portent of change. Equally significant
is the appearance at the top of the parasite leisure class woman.
Though the records of the century show able business women in
every class (many ladies of the aristocracy managed large
estates, especially during the troubled Civil War days), they also
reveal a diminishing contact with business and affairs as the
century progresses. Wives of men who became capitalists with-
drew from productive activity. The rapid growth of wealth
opened up possibilities of idleness to women of the upper class.
New theories of the state made no place for women in public
affairs. Fortunately considerate husbands like Pepys saw the
necessity of "making" work for wives who were not always duly
appreciative. Mrs. Pepys, in fact, became convinced, he tells us,
that "my very keeping of the house in dirt ... is but to
find her employment and keep her within and from minding of
her pleasure, which, though I am sorry to see she minds it, is
true enough in a great degree."
Dorothy Brewster
A Slav in the Austrian Consular Service
The Inside Story of Austro-German Intrigue: or, How the World
War Was Brought About. By Dr. Joseph Goricar, formerly of
the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Service, and Lyman Beecher
Stowe. Doubleday, Page and Company.
T N the spring of 1914 Professor William M. Sloane of Columbia
* University published a volume in which he ventured to depart
from the field of history into the dangerous realms of prophecy
so far as to say: "This [Serbia] is the land which by reason of
its name and language aspires to leadership and control in the
creation of the Greater Serbia. The passion for this ideal among
all Serbo-Croats is a species of imperial insanity. The Serbians
of little Serbia expound it in their newspapers, they set it forth
in their school-books, nourishing their young on wind; it is the
stock in trade of the demagogue, the theme of the rhymer, the
subject of baby talk and cradle song." Before the end of that
very year the age-old dream of the oppressed Slavs of Austria-
Hungary and the theme of the rhymers of little Serbia had been
converted into action, and the eyes of the world were opened as
to the manner in which the Jugoslavs could fight and endure for
the accomplishment of a national ideal. Which simply proves
how far one can go wrong, even if one is a distinguished author-
ity, in deciding off-hand that shadowy national aspirations are
always vain. It is not as a scoffer, therefore, that one must
approach the main theme of Dr. Goricar's interesting book — the
theme of a great Pan-Slav union, reaching from Siberia to the
Adriatic, from the Baltic to the Aegean. Yet it must frankly
be said that it is, and probably will remain, a dream — and noth-
ing but a dream.
Dr. Goricar tells us that the new Jugoslav state is to be the
prototype for all Slavdom hereafter. But making one state out
of the Southern Slavs is a very different thing from making one
state out of the Southern Slavs and the Western Slavs and the
Eastern Slavs. Between the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (who
compose the South Slav bloc) there are, indeed, differences of
religion, customs, and orthography; yet the spoken language of
all three is identical, the national traditions and ideals are iden-
tical, the sufferings of the various sections of the people under
foreign masters, Turk and Magyar and Austrian, have been
identical, and in addition there are no geographic or economic
factors which make union really difficult. But consider uniting
the various nations which own themselves as Slavic; imagine, for
example, a union of the Bulgars with the Serbs, of the Ruth'enes
with the Poles, of the Ukrainians with the Poles, of the Poles
with the Russians. Not only are there present great differences
m religion and in written language, but the speech of one section
is entirely incomprehensible in another, there are utterly dis-
similar customs and ideals, there is a history of bitter strife and
persecutions, a present of jealousies and exploitations, and a
future of antagonistic ambitions. With the original components
of the Southern Slav bloc there have been comparatively few
admixtures of alien stocks — some Turkish (but the Turkish
strain is not enduring like the Semitic), some Albanian, a little
Austrian, and that is about all. But literally over fifty non-
Slavic stocks have mingled to a greater or less degree with the
tribes that go to make up Slavdom as a whole. The Bulgars
were originally Turcoman and so remain, despite their adoption
of a Slav dialect; the Albanians are not Slav, and would be
included in Pan-Slavia only over their undying protests; the
Poles are very largely Germanized and the Serbs of Lusatia
completely so. Then there has been a considerable admixture of
Turkish and various Caucasian bloods in the south, of Finnish,
Lithuanian, Esthonian, and a dozen other non-Slav strains in
the north, of Tartar, Mongol, and Kirghiz stock (there are over
four million Kirghiz dwelling compactly in the southern Siberian
steppes) to the west, not to speak of the vast and widespread
masses of Jews (about five millions) who cling to their religion
and preserve their separate habits and ideals with the greatest
persistence. Slavdom, which Dr. Goricar tells us would com-
prise well over a hundred and fifty million persons, is a mighty
but unhomogeneous collection of peoples, and the possibility of
their ever submitting to union under one strong government can-
not but be considered as remote — to western European peoples,
comfortably remote.
Dr. Goricar is a Jugoslav from the mountainous province of
Styria, formerly a part of the Hapsburg Empire. We are
informed that he entered the Austro-Hungarian consular service
with the idea that as many representatives of the oppressed
races as possible should have a share in executing the policies of
the government under which they were forced to live. He was
sent in 1907 to be Austro-Hungarian consul at Belgrade, where
at that time the notorious Magyar nobleman, Count Forgach,
was minister. It was while Dr. Goricar was in Belgrade that
the Nastich "revelations" of supposed anti-Austrian plots were
framed as a hopeful casus belli against Serbia; and the next
year, when he was consul at Nish, Austria-Hungary turned its
"temporary administration" of Bosnia-Herzegovina into out-
right annexation, thereby throwing the whole Slav world into a
ferment and creating a situation where war was averted only by
Russia's and Serbia's moderation. Apparently during the Bos-
nian crisis Dr. Goricar allowed some of his Slav sympathies to
find expression, for he was recalled from Serbia and ordered to
a quiet post at Denver, Colorado, on the eve of a third Austrian
attempt to provoke war, this time by means of new "revelations"
which were vouched for by a celebrated Viennese historian, Dr.
Friedjung. Dr. Friedjung alleged that the Serbian Government
was engaged in planning with the leaders of the Serbo-Croat
Coalition party in Croatia for the overthrow of the Hapsburgs,
and to support the accusation he produced a set of documents
which, when published in the Neue Freie Presse, provoked a
wave of chauvinism across the two Central Empires. The entire
Serbo-Croat coalition promptly sued him for libel, but dropped
the charge under pressure from the government when Dr. Fried-
jung admitted the documents to be forgeries and made a public
retraction of his wild statements. There is no opportunity here
for a review of the closely-woven chain of Germanic intrigue on
which Dr. Goricar establishes his thesis that the Central Powers
had determined not to postpone a decisive war with Russia and
Serbia beyond 1916, and if possible to provoke it in 1914 or 1915.
The various steps in the plan, culminating in the excellent oppor-
tunity for aggression furnished by the murder of the Archduke,
are interestingly though repetitiously described.
Although the greater part of the historical material intro-
duced by Dr. Goricar is not new, he manages to throw a number
of fresh side-lights on the general program of the German-
Austrian-Magyar war parties, especially by making use of
numerous quotations from the press of Vienna and Berlin.
Reliance on newspaper opinion is notoriously dangerous, but Dr.
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
421
Goricar quotes so profusely and intelligently that his case is
materially strengthened. After the extraordinary scenes in
which Nastich, Forgach, Friedjung, and the other opera bouffe
characters hold the center of the stage, perhaps we are most
interested by the chapters dealing with the intrigues of Berlin
and Vienna to prevent the formation of any sort of a Balkan
confederation, even one under the influence and control of
Austria. A hostile confederation of Serbia, Montenegro, Ru-
mania, and Bulgaria would have been a decided menace, and
Austria determined to prevent its formation at all costs; but a
confederation friendly to Austria was not considered more desir-
able, since in that case Austria would be somewhat embarrassed
in dealing relentlessly with any member state that might be in
the way when the time came to strike toward Salonica and Con-
stantinople.
The almost inevitable bias of the author is not so much Jugo-
slav as Slav, so that he is able to contemplate seriously the possi-
bility of forming the United States of Slavia and to look forward
hopefully to a time when the Slav race will "surpass the western
Europeans in numbers and importance." But this bias, which is
quickly recognized and discounted, does not detract from the
interest and instructiveness of the book; rather does it add to
them, by introducing the reader into a genuine and enthusiastic
Pan-Slavist atmosphere.
Hamilton Fish Armstrong
Foreign Rights in China
Foreign Rights and Interests in China. By Westel W. Wil-
loughby. The Johns Hopkins Press.
PROFESSOR WILLOUGHBY very aptly describes his treatise
as a handbook to the international commitments of China.
The work is seriously conceived for the information of those who
need to know what privileges are enjoyed by foreigners doing
business in the country. It is documented from treaties and
diplomatic papers and bristles with schedules and statistics, yet
it has a quality that renders it easily read from beginning to
end. This happy issue must be ascribed in due degree to the
author's admirable style and control of his material; but while
the book is a model of what a thesis should be, it possesses,
besides its usefulness as a work of reference, a human interest
that is altogether compelling. The subject unfolds as a national
tragedy. The self-sufficient empire of a century ago, that ac-
knowledged no rival and feared no enemy, has been bound by
stipulations which have ravished it of pride, prestige, and the
control of its own property. The outline of the story is by this
time fairly familiar to even Western ears, but its denouement,
comprised in the complex claims and preferential interests now
fastened upon China, and understood by only a few in this part
of the world, is nowhere more strikingly exposed than in this
sober summary of conditions as they are. The situation has
aspects that are pregnant with suggestion to the philosopher
and statesman, and it is these that call for discussion. Princi-
ples of public law are reasonably determined among nations
that exercise authority within their own borders, but (to quote
the longest sentence in Professor Willoughby's book) "when, as
in the case of China, we have a Power which permits the exercise
within its limits of all kinds of extra-territorial rights or priv-
ileges; when there exist within its territory spheres of interest,
special interests, war zones, leased territories, treaty ports, con-
cessions, settlements, and legation quarters; when there are in
force multitudes of special engagements to foreign Powers with
reference to commercial and industrial rights, railways and
mines, loans and currency; when two of its chief revenue ser-
vices— the maritime customs and the salt tax — are under foreign
overhead administrative control or direction; when the proceeds
of these and other revenues are definitely pledged to meet fixed
charges on foreign indebtedness; when, at various points within
its borders, there are stationed considerable bodies of foreign
troops under foreign command — when we have these and other
phenomena all carrying with them limitations upon the free
exercise by the central government of its ordinary administra-
tive powers or its discretionary right to deal as it deems best
with the individual nations with which it maintains treaty rela-
tions, we then have a condition of affairs which furnishes abun-
dant material not only for theoretical or academic discussions by
students of international jurisprudence, but for serious conflict
and dispute between the nations concerned."
To add to these complications we must remember also that
commitments have been made in recent years by local governors
which have never been approved by the Chinese Parliament and
are therefore technically illegal under the existing constitution.
In these issues, where money has been received, public opinion in
China is still honest enough to acknowledge financial obligations,
but it protests concessions granted to foreign agents that are
liens upon the natural resources of the country. Nice ethical
questions are involved in undertakings assumed by irresponsi-
ble mandarins which might seem to release an upright govern-
ment from recognizing obligations, but the case is made worse
when it is realized that many of them have been concocted
secretly, so that the government itself does not know all of its
liabilities. In such instances, and in the quite indefinite mean-
ing attached to the content of the most-favored-nation clauses
in all treaties, lie sources of doubt and international disturbance.
Some idea of the wide range of the interests involved in the
covenants under which China labors is obtained from a mere list
of the categories examined in this solid volume. They are:
Extra-territoriality, foreign commerce (including the tariff, cus-
toms administration, likin, and posts), patents, leases and set-
tlements (including missionary rights), spheres of interest,
Japanese claims and encroachments, the Open Door, foreign
loans, and railway control. In countries really autonomous most
of these are instantly recognized as matters of domestic concern.
When they are not the state is actually a dependency of some
one or more outside Powers ; if of more than one they are bound
sooner or later to quarrel over interpretations. One has only
to follow the evolution of the items on this list to comprehend
the subtle and inevitable force of economic pressure in the polit-
ical world when competing nations strive for mastery in a
country at once unable and unwilling to defend itself by military
force. They may begin softly — as we have done — when there is
no acute urgency at home, but they become greedy in time. The
increment of foreign aggression in China has been due to eco-
nomic need, mitigated, however, by the dangers involved in an
attempt to conquer and govern such a homogeneous mass as the
people of China. As the corpus vile among modern nations this
mass has been condemned to sundry and various experiments by
statesmen and capitalists of the great Powers whose cooperative
action during eighty years has resulted in fashioning bonds and
stipulations the like of which have never been seen before in the
woild's history. There it stands today, a marvel of impotence,
and none so poor as to do it reverence as a nation, yet with such
enormous potential strength and value that none would be
allowed by the others to seize and exploit it. How long can the
unstable equilibrium created by this anomalous condition en-
dure? A triumphant Germany might have tried to incorporate
its vast domain in her empire; Japan would willingly renew the
ambition of Hideyoshi but for the fear of Europe and America
combined against her. China may yet be parceled out when the
economic pressure is severe enough to compel the harpy Powers
to reach some agreement. There is time before this crisis ar-
rives, however, for her regeneration through an effective cen-
tralized government and the administrative reforms necessary
to equip a state for modern subsistence, but this must be at-
tained by the mediation of those who have brought her to this
parlous state. To help China to regain control over her domes-
tic concerns seems to be the only alternative to awaiting the
climax of partition.
Frederick Wells Williams
422
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
Treitschke's History
History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century. By Heinrich
von Treitschke. Volumes V, VI, and VII. Translated by
Eden and Cedar Paul. Robert M. McBride and Company.
THE completion of the translation of Treitschke's "History of
Germany" finds one conjecturing how many readers the
monumental work is now likely to have. In the early period of
the great war when it was not considered too preposterous to
speak of Bernhardi, Treitschke, and, Nietzsche as the triumvirate
who had corrupted modern Germany, the bare mention of the
temperamental Berlin professor's name was a signal for heated
argument. Whatever he had written was sure to be read with
keen interest and interpreted in the light of current events.
Now, however, people are too much involved in the lamentable
sequelae of the war to care to probe much into its causes,
proximate or remote. But no matter what its reception, it is
well that the translation has been carried through to the end;
the work ought long since to have been available for English-
speaking readers. On the whole, the translators have per-
formed their task acceptably. It is assuredly no easy matter
to give an adequate rendering into a foreign language of a
writer who, as is sometimes said, combined the prophetic elo-
quence of Carlyle with the sprightly clearness of Macaulay.
No one would claim for a moment that Eden and Cedar Paul
have achieved this unparalleled result. But their translation
runs smoothly enough and does not often suggest the foreign
idiom.
The introductions to the various volumes by William Harbutt
Dawson, summarizing admirably the contents and pointing out
the salient qualities of Treitschke as they appear in connection
with the various periods, almost render the work of a reviewer
superfluous. For an Englishman writing about one of his
country's arch-enemies Mr. Dawson is singularly unbiased. He
does, indeed, rebuke Treitschke for "ill-conditioned snarling at
England," but he recognizes unstintingly his insight, acuteness,
and complete mastery of his material. One simply does not look
for impartiality or inclusive sympathy in Treitschke. He was
by nature too dogmatic and intensely subjective for that; when
he wrote he nearly always had a theory to substantiate, a
prejudice to humor, or a pet aversion to gratify. His frank
object was patriotic edification. He said in the preface to the
edition of 1889: "I write for Germans. Much water will flow
down the Rhine before foreigners will permit us to speak of
our country with the pride which has ever characterized the
treatises on national history composed by Englishmen or by
Frenchmen." Treitschke could not conceive of Prussia ever
being in the wrong or of any other country being in the right
if it refused to accept the Prussian view of things. All this we
must put down to his excess of patriotism and not allow it to
detract from our appreciation of his vigor, eloquence, and en-
thusiasm, his powerful characterizations, and the many sa-
gacious reflections which are interspersed through a narrative
which with all its weight and erudition nevertheless continues
always to march with a sure tread.
Volume V in the translation covers a comparatively short
period — the several years immediately preceding and following
the Revolution of July, 1830. Questions of present-day import
such as the status of Belgium, Polish independence, the position
of Schleswig-Holstein, are here discussed in their beginnings.
One notes in passing a characteristic remark of Treitschke's:
"Small states are apt to appear ridiculous, for the state is
power, and weakness stultifies itself immediately should it
attempt to masquerade as power." There is no word of rebuke
for German rulers whose idea of statesmanship was to allow
grievances to accumulate indefinitely at compound interest. Of
course, an exception is made in the case of Austria, which as
the hostile rival of Prussia lay outside the range of Treitschke's
Germanic sympathies. He exults in the blindness of the
Austrian rulers in sacrificing to Prussia, in return for the
simulacrum of political hegemony, the real fruits of economic
predominance and the control of federal defense. "There had
come into existence two organizations within the Germanic
Federation: a fictitious Germany centered in Frankfort and a
Germany of honest work centered in Berlin."
The most attractive chapter is the one dealing with the
radical, semi-journalistic agitation known as the Young Ger-
many movement. All the "advanced" thought of the thirties
respecting politics, sociology, religion, and ethics, may be in-
cluded under the title. As might be expected, Treitschke issues
a harsh and sweeping condemnation of the whole movement.
He avers that the minds of the new generation were so corroded
by the evil influences of French culture that "the most out-
standing product of Protestant Germany, the reconciliation of
liberty with piety, was now altogether beyond their under-
standing." He does not even try to be just to Heine, who is the
head and front of the offending tendencies. Heine, he says,
possessed "what the Jews have in common with the French,
gracefulness of vice which makes even the base and the odious
seem alluring for a moment." And again he asserts, referring
to the attacks of Borne and Heine upon Prussian reaction:
"The Aryan nations have their Thersites and their Loki, but
such a character as Ham, who uncovered his father's nakedness,
is known only to Jewish saga." "When we speak German," said
Goethe in a morose moment, "we lie if we are polite." For
Treitschke the radicalism of Young Germany may be summed
up in the outrageous paradoxes: property is theft, God is sin,
marriage is unchastity. He is the true progenitor of Adolf
Bartels and other German anti-Semites of today, much more
surely than he is the progenitor of certain other offspring
ascribed to him in a great many quarters.
The sixth volume, dealing in the main with German home
policy from 1830 to 1845, particularly in its political aspects, i3
the least interesting of the three which lie before us. Even '
steady economic progress cannot be made dramatic if it is ac-
companied by political stagnation. It is a striking merit in
Treitschke that he had the courage to lay bare the weakness of
the character of Frederick William IV of Prussia, who, he
asserts, understood his own heart as little as he understood the
hearts of others. The grotesque flirtations of that romantically
minded monarch with the Roman Catholic church come in for
unsparing ridicule. Treitschke thinks that the uprising of '48
might have been averted if only Prussia and Bavaria had been
ruled by men of greater sagacity. The destruction in 1831 of
the independence of Cracow, which had been guaranteed by
treaty, gives rise to this characteristic comment: "The eternal
progress of human affairs cannot be stayed by the letter of
treaties."
In the concluding volume the author brings before us the
portents of revolution. It seems at first glance like a cruel
irony that he had to lay aside his pen just as he was about to
tell the story of 1848. That year manifestly marks the parting
of the ways for Germany. Should she now go forward con-
sciously and resolutely as a standard-bearer of intellectual and
political progress, or fall back still further into the morass of
stagnation and obscurantism? Left to themselves the Germans
would unquestionably have chosen the worthier and safer alter-
native. But that is precisely the last conclusion in the world
that Treitschke would ever have drawn. His version of the
Revolution of 1848, if it had ever been written, would have been
a demonstration of the futility of liberalism and of all other
forms of idealism in politics. It would have been an additional
heavy item on the debit side of the account when his influence
came to be summed up. For it was a great misfortune, as
later years were to show, that in Treitschke's brilliant master-
piece the Germans saw themselves idealized, their achievements
magnified, their importance and place in the world and the com-
munity of nations distorted and thrown out of balance.
W. K. Stewart
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
423
The Irreconcilable Blind
E. P. Dutton and
Bolshevism: An International Danger. By Paul Miliukov.
Charles Scribner's Sons.
Sovietism. By William English Walling.
Company.
WHEN the Russian revolution broke out and different groups
and parties endeavored to organize the first provisional
government, there was much discussion about the distribution of
portfolios; on one point, however, there was nearly no discussion:
it was generally conceded that Paul Miliukov was the only man
fit to occupy the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. True, he
had his old idee fixe, the idea of the acquisition of Constantinople
by Russia, but it was confidently hoped that he would understand
the new situation created by the revolution and would give up
the "liberal imperialism" which he had learned from his political
friend Sir Edward Grey. Unfortunately, Miliukov the his-
torian and public man, Miliukov the eloquent orator of the Duma
platform and leader of a powerful political party, proved to be
a very poor statesman; less than two months after the revolu-
tion he was compelled to resign, and he left behind him a
reputation as a short-sighted and stubborn politician who could
not see the woods for the trees. One might say that as soon as
the Czar was overthrown Miliukov lost his social vision. Those
who heard his utterances in favor of a monarchy with Nicholas
IPs brother as its head, or witnessed his practical politics during
the revolution, could not believe that this really was Miliukov
who now did such strange things.
Now, after a long period of silence, Miliukov has written a
book. It was to be expected that far from Russia, in the ob-
scurity of private life in Great Britain, Miliukov might have
regained his old masterful qualities as thinker and observer.
But in this respect his book proves a disappointment. He
denies that it is in the nature of a capitalistic state to be im-
perialistic and to menace the peace of the world : "Not capitalism
in itself, but the exclusively national system of capitalistic pro-
duction is dangerous." At the same time he refuses to see any-
where but in imperial Germany such an "exclusively national"
system of production. On one page he says that "the first
[Russian] revolution was national and patriotic and was led by
the Duma representatives"; and six pages later he forgets this
and confesses: "The Duma was prepared to deal with a dynastic
overthrow [Miliukov called it revolution]. . . . The Czar de-
cided to dissolve the Duma. At that very moment, but without
any connection with the dissolution of the Duma, a real revolu-
tion broke out, starting from different sources and basing itself
on forces differing from such as had been confidently expected
by the Duma."
Miliukov pays little or no attention to the political conditions
and economic factors which are now prevailing in the world.
He attributes everything to the wickedness and corruption of the
Bolshevist leaders, who, Miliukov still insists, were paid German
agents. He tries to prove that they demoralized the Russian
army, that their chief goal was to corrupt the soldiers' minds,
and that in this they succeeded. Yet a few chapters later he
again confesses: "I personally as a member of the Duma re-
ceived many letters from soldiers at the front which proved that
the demoralization of the army had already begun before the
revolution of March, 1917" — when no Bolshevist leaders were to
be found on the territory of Russia.
The documentation, too, lacks accuracy and power of convic-
tion: many quotations from Geneva and Zurich correspondents
to the London Times and Morning Post based on anonymous
"absolutely reliable sources" "prove" that Lenin was an agent
of William II. From these facts Miliukov draws the conclusion
that in financing the German Spartacists "the Bolsheviks were
repaying the German 'capitalists' who supplied them with
money for their original propaganda and 'direct action.' "
Again, not the stress and strain of the war and the Versailles
BRENTANOS
Retail Book Department
Fifth. Avenue and 27th Street, New York City
BOOKS ON PRESENT DAY TOPICS
The Peace Conference Day-By-Day
A Presidential Pilgrimage Leading to the Discovery
of Europe. By Charles T. Thompson. With an
introductory letter by Col. E. M. House. $2.50
It is a day-by-day chronicle of just what occurred,
with all the sidelights; what the leading figures in that
memorable assemblage said and did; the fine play of
intrigue and statesmanship; the dramatic incidents;
the secret conclaves and understandings; the rise and
fall of the Fourteen Points; the shattering of high
ideals; the battle of Covenant versus Alliance; the
struggle for the Spoils of War; the matching of wits
between Europe and America in the greatest diplo-
matic game of all time. It is the truth at last.
The Place of Science in Modern Civilization
and Other Essays
By Thorstein Veblen $3.00
A collection of timely papers published in various
economic and sociological periodicals during the past
twenty years.
Russia as an American Problem
By John Spargo $2.25
There are opportunities in Russia that up to now only
Japan has seen. The author brings them home to the
American business man, while for the general reader
he clears the haze of controversy, giving a definite
authoritative picture that shows among other things
why Bolshevism cannot last in Russia.
The Greatest Failure in All History
By John Spargo $2.50
The author in this book gives us the cumulative
benefit of his extensive study of the Russian situation.
Bedouins
By James Huneker $2.00
This new volume of James Huneker contains his re-
cent essays, beginning with a searching study of Mary
Garden and her thrice-subtle art. Miss Garden is
critically considered as singer and actress. Her rare
personality is painted with forthright frankness. Such
diverse Fantasts and Bedouins as Debussy, Mirbeau,
Caruso, Poe, Anatole France, and Botticelli may be
found among others. Several fictions of exotic color-
ing are included.
Books in General
By Solomon Eagle $2.00
For the past six years The New Statesman (London)
has each week had a page of delightfully friendly
gossip by Solomon Eagle. Witness some of the chap-
ters; The Beauties of Baldness, The Muse in Liquor,
Shakespeare's Women and Mr. George Moore, Moving
a Library, and forty other chapters.
The Story of Opal
The Journal of an Understanding Heart. By Opal
Whiteley $2.00
Teeming with human interest, humor, and tragedy,
this story has startled the world of cultivated readers
by its self-taught wisdom and its naive charm.
Postage Additional
BRENTANOS
Retail Book Department
Fifth Avenue and 27th Street
New York City
424
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
peace animated extremism in Germany, but Lenin. Miliukov
quotes another "fact" which is of special interest for the Ameri-
can reader. Colonel Raymond Robins brought with him from
Russia a carload of platinum — apparently as a Bolshevist com-
pensation for services rendered. This is the sort of "facts" given
by Miliukov. Beyond any doubt, he here renders a great service
to the Bolshevist cause by using "propaganda stuff" which is
so easy to refute. One might expect from a man like Miliukov
a sounder criticism of Bolshevism, because it can and must be
criticized from an entirely different angle. The Machiavellian
and Hobbesian principles of Bolshevist philosophy; the central-
ized, omnipotent, bureaucratic, though socialist state; the sup-
pression of individual initiative; the almost blind devotion to
mass movement which is at times bound to become the movement
of a mob — all these elements are easy to criticize and easy to
denounce; but Miliukov does not even mention them, much less
apply to them the analysis which his hostility to Bolshevism
might have suggested.
The famous Winnipeg strike, the recent American miners'
strike, the general economic unrest and political instability in
the New and the Old Worlds, are all interpreted alike: Bolshe-
vist propaganda! As if national economic and political life
were such a percarious thing that every propagandist, every
soap-box orator could shatter the very foundation of social equi-
librium! As if only propaganda were the cause of the decline
of Greece or Rome and the Holy Roman Empire and of Old
Europe of today, and not the weakness and wickedness of
cultures and social orders!
The book is nevertheless interesting as a document which helps
us to study the psychology of those of the old world who witness
their own passing. Miliukov is at times very sincere. Thus he
reports: "When asked by Prince Lvov, I told him that a strong
power, which would necessitate a policy like that of Noske's,
must be established." "I refused to agree," he confesses further,
"to the so-called policy of 'peace without annexations and con-
tributions' on the self-determination principle because I knew
there was German intrigue and the spirit of Zimmerwald be-
hind it." The same German and Zimmerwald spirit is dis-
covered by Miliukov even among the Kerensky and Menshevik
parties, because at the reception of Albert Thomas and Arthur
Henderson in Petrograd their speeches were continually in-
tercepted by queries "What about Ireland? and India? and
Morocco?" To plead the -cause of Egypt, Miliukov says, is to
carry on the old German and Bolshevist plan of sowing revolt
among the British colonial subjects. Analyzing the testimonies
of "professional men in the intelligence service," Messrs. Tunney
and Archibald Stevenson, Miliukov concludes: "In the United
States as well as in other Allied countries, but in far larger
measure than elsewhere, the Bolshevist activities, just as the
Irish, the Indian, the Canadian, are closely interwoven with the
previous anti-Ally and pro-German propaganda."
Mr. Walling, too, in his "Sovietism" fails to attack Bolshevism
in its weakest point and repeats and emphasizes the same
charges of pro-Germanism and anti-Britishism. But quod licet
Jovi non licet bovi. What Miliukov may say Mr. Walling has
hardly the right to say, because he does not possess even a frac-
tion of the facts which Miliukov has observed. Nine-tenths of
the book is made up of quotations taken chiefly from the hostile
press. With bare quotations one can easily prove that Jesus
Christ was a monarchist or else an anarchist. It is worthy
of note that Mr. Walling seems to have found one of the clues
of Bolshevist philosophy: he emphasizes the militarization of
industry which took place in some parts of Russia and which is
incompatible with the principle of industrial democracy. It is
really a strong point, and one should begin with it; but un-
fortunately Mr. Walling mentions it only accidentally and then
again dives into the characteristic anti-Bolshevist hysteria,
which actually denounces anything but Bolshevism and renders
a service to anything but democracy and reconciliation.
Gregory Zilboorg
The Politician of the Middle Valley
Life of Walter Quintin Gresham, 1882-1895. By Matilda
Gresham. Rand, McNally & Company.
"Marse Henry": An Autobiography. By Henry Watterson.
George H. Doran Company.
My Quarter Century of American Politics. By Champ Clark.
Harper & Brothers.
HPHESE three heroes of history, Gresham, Watterson, and
* Champ Clark, belong to the middle valley formed by the
Ohio and Missouri rivers. They are descended from those
pioneers, Scotch-Irish, German, and English, who crossed the
Virginia mountains at the close of the eighteenth century and
settled in Tennessee and Kentucky, whence two of the families,
the Greshams and Clarks, made their way to Indiana and Mis-
souri, respectively. This middle valley has passed through ex-
periences that have made it less partisan and more tolerant
than other sections. When the slavery issue in the middle of
the last century became acute, there were not to be found here
the irreconcilables of New England and Louisiana. On both
sides of the Ohio and along the Missouri Valley lived men
familiar with slavery in its milder aspects.
It was in the environment of this middle valley that all three
of these historic figures grew up. The shadow of the "War
between the States," the popular name for the struggle in this
region, hung over all three of the men and darkens many pages
of the narratives. Mr. Clark, being only a boy during the
war, passes over the story rather lightly; but Mrs. Gresham in
the life of her husband and Mr. Watterson in his autobiog-
raphy devote many pages to this greatest episode in the history
of the valley; and both attempt to correct popular misconcep-
tions by a more tolerant interpretation of the attitude of both
sides. Gresham was a brigadier general in the Union army and
Watterson an officer in the Confederate; their boyhood and
young manhood were passed under the threat and actuality of
armed strife.
Although the three men differ widely in character, educa-
tion, and experience, they all express the same tolerance to-
ward their opponents, even the most partisan of them. Mr.
Clark is excessive in his admiration of his Republican friends
and has slight criticism of their policies. His may be the typical
attitude of the politician; still he, as did the two others,
breathed in the air of the Ohio Valley, where only the breadth
of a river divided the land of freedom from that of slavery and
where men learned by wholesome fear of the pistol shot a respect
for the opinions of others.
The clause "fear of the pistol shot" is not used in a meta-
phorical sense, for in the middle valley it was a very real factor
in forming public opinion. All three works give evidence that
frontier methods of settling disputes passed only yesterday
from this land, if it can be said to have passed; and all seem
to take it for granted that such sudden endings of disputes be-
long to the natural order of things. Mrs. Gresham tells the
story of a lawyer being shot down at her husband's side by "a
delicate, silent young man but a thorough gentleman." "Marse
Henry's" notices of such shootings are frequent, and he says
that the common knowledge of his own prowess with the gun
kept some of the readers of his newspaper from violent assault.
Mr. Clark's memories of bloody encounters are very vivid, scenes
of bloodshed having been frequent in his life almost from baby-
hood, and he describes them with great gusto. When still a
boy he viewed with interest the swinging bodies of victims of a
lynching. The Speaker of the House vouchsafes us this picture
of himself in his first campaign for congressman in 1892: "We
both (the candidates) went armed to the teeth, expecting a
shooting match every time we met, but the very fact that we
did expect it, I think, prevented it."
As books, these memoirs are crude and in their crudities
represent the undeveloped side of the masses of this middle
valley. The men have lived and lived hard; so it is thought
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
425
they have something worth saying. Unfortunately neither Mrs.
Gresham nor the two men possess the literary ability to write
a narrative filling two volumes. In all three cases the unity
of the narrative is badly jumbled; a literary hack, hired to
revise the manuscripts, would have cut them down from a third
to a half and with ease have straightened out the illogical ar-
rangements, the crudities of the paragraphs, the vain repeti-
tions, and tiresome platitudes. Not all of the errors noticed may
be explained by the garrulousness of old age. Clark's fitness
for a literary career was assured by the fact that the reading
of Wirt's "Life of Patrick Henry" marked a turning-point in
his career and by his admiration of Senator Vest's "Eulogy on
the Dog"; he calls it a "gem of oratory."
It might be expected that the books would be failures as
literary productions, but certainly they should be replete with
political information. In this also the reader is for the most
part disappointed. Mr. Watterson's judgment of most of the
men he describes would not require greater familiarity with
them and their careers than could be obtained at a dinner party
or at a poker game; his picture of President Cleveland engaged
in the latter diversion is both interesting and enlightening;
but in most of his portraits Mr. Watterson's pen has failed
him. He is at his best in describing the Liberal Republican
Convention that nominated Horace Greeley, and his portrait of
the candidate has in it much to praise, and the account of the
Tilden campaign with its aftermath is also well told. Strange
to say he has little good to say of the two Democratic presidents,
Cleveland and Wilson. There is in Mr. Clark's autobiography
little more of real information than could be obtained in any
good textbook on the history and civil government of the
country. An exception should be made of his account of the
fight, which he himself led, against the Speaker's usurpation
of power. This portion of the book is well worth reading,
and historians will also find his narration of the Baltimore
convention of value. The objectivity of his story is well
exhibited by the following quotation : "It was on the fourteenth
ballot that William Jennings Bryan violated his instructions
and by base and false insinuations — to use no uglier word —
robbed me of the nomination to which I was entitled by all the
rules of decency, justice, honesty, common sense, and fair
dealing."
Mrs. Gresham's life of her husband is of much more value
as far as political and economic information is concerned than
the two other works. The greater part of her two volumes is
devoted to Gresham's career in the army and on the bench, in
both of which Mrs. Gresham justly takes great pride. She
gives a very full and satisfactory account of Gresham's de-
cisions in the railway cases, in particular that concerning the
Wabash Railroad, and in his execution of receiverships. Still
there are many pages devoted to distinctly political matters.
The story of local politics in southern Indiana is illuminating;
but more general interest will be found in the chapters con-
cerned with national politics. The story grows fuller of politi-
cal interest with the account of the Republican convention of
1888 at which Gresham was placed in nomination for the presi-
dency. Mrs. Gresham relates a most interesting inside history
of the convention and asserts that her husband, if he had been
willing to m?ke terms with Senators Piatt and Quay, would
have been nominated. Gresham's experiences at the convention
drove him slowly into the opposition and prepared him to accept
the appointment as Secretary of State when Cleveland was
elected. The appointment did not meet the approval of Champ
Clark, who writes: "The unalloyed joy of Democrats was of
short duration. March the 5th President Cleveland announced
his Cabinet, and thereby slapped every Democrat betwixt the
two seas squarely in the face by appointing General Walter Q.
Gresham, of Chicago, Secretary of State. The appointment
had the effect of an ice-bath upon the enthusiasm of old, battle-
scarred Democrats — who believed that the election of 1892 was
a Democratic triumph, pure and simple."
Clarence W. Alvord.
id? Plymouth -Co}Mi
NATION READERS
will find their kind of books
at this store. C. Send to us
for the titles that attract
you in this number of The
Nation.
Mail orders promptly filled
MARXIAN SOCIALIST BOOKS
Recent European history and current news from Europe can not be
understood without knowing the Marxian theories by which the modern
working-class movement is animated. These are best explained in the
books here described :
The Communist Manifesto
By Marx and Engels
First published in 1848 ; still the textbook of internationalism.
75 cents.
Socialism, Utopian and Scientific
By Frederick Engels
A graphic prophecy of the wonderful events now unfolding, with an
explanation of their economic causes and their inevitable outcome.
75 cents.
Socialism, Its Growth and Outcome
By Morris and Bax
A condensed economic history of the world, showing the swift
changes from slavery thru feudalism and the successive stages of capital-
ism to the new social order. 75 cents.
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State By Frederick Engels
Explains the economic basis of social institutions, and their necessary
changes in response to new economic conditions. 75 cents.
CAPITAL: A Critique of Political Economy^
By Karl Marx
Greatest of all socialist books ; a critical analysis of the social system
under which we live, showing the source of profits. Cloth, three
volumes, 2535 large pages, $7.50.
For sale at bookstores or sent by insured mail on receipt of price.
Address
CHARLES H. KERR & CO.
347 East Ohio Street
Chicago
426
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
Nationalization
The Case for Nationalization. By A. Emil Davies. London:
George Allen and Unwin, Limited.
THE position of A. Emil Davies is unusual even in England.
He is general manager of the British, Foreign, and Colonial
Banking Corporation, a successful "City man," an authority in
financial writing, a member of the London County Council, and
chairman of the Railway Nationalization Society. When he is
not organizing skilful amalgamations or describing ripe plums
in investment, he is pushing the mass mind on to ever-in-
creasing areas of socialism. It was pleasant to see him at the
Coal Industry Commission. The coal owners had "nothing on
him"; he is an "insider" in their world. They attempted a
little cross-examination and found it disastrous, and "dropped"
him, as Dodson and Fogg dropped Samuel Weller. It was then
that he volunteered the secret of why he, a financier, was back-
ing British labor against high finance and big business. The
reason is that, in his opinion, public ownership and democratic
management mean better finance and business. With the old
game played out, the old order interred, it is the job of a prac-
tical man to help in creating the new social order. To the coal
owners he said: "It is quite conceivable that the miners or the
railway workers might ask more than the conditions of an
industry justify. But so long as you have all this capital-
mongering, they feel that the industry is making millions. Let
those profits be pooled over the whole industry, as they would
be if it were nationalized, with their representatives on the
Board of Management, so that they know that there was no
hanky-panky; it would be possible to show the miners and the
railway workers that there did come a point when they were
asking more than the industry really could stand. I am think-
ing of the trade and industry of this country, which is de-
pendent on cheap coal. If you nationalize this particular in-
dustry, you will bring the workers to what you may call a
reasonable frame of mind."
This off-hand reply of Mr. Davies can be taken as the text of
his published work. His latest book, "The Case for Nationaliza-
tion," is an underscoring of "The Collectivist State in the Mak-
ing." Alderman Davies believes in private enterprise, but he
sees that with certain vital services and industries the profit-
making incentive becomes a hindrance to social development.
Profit-making has brought mines and railways to low efficiency.
The great organized groups of workers will no longer give high
production in a system which pays profits to a small group,
partly non-producing. Mr. Davies wishes to avoid a class war.
"Mixing as I do with men occupying leading positions in finance
and business, I was appalled at the depth of class feeling that
was evidenced" in the railway strike. He analyzes the "public,"
and finds it to be "considerably less than one-fourth of the popu-
lation." From a lifetime of experience as a master in the mod-
ern business world, he has no illusions about the governing class.
"This class is, on the whole, incompetent and not even educated.
How is it that the man who in business may have risen to the
top proves, when he assumes office in a Government department,
to be just as inept as his brother at the War Office and his
cousin at the Home Office? Because, directly the searchlight of
publicity is thrown upon him, his weaknesses are revealed." The
book is filled with illustrations of community-owned undertak-
ings. If any responsible person differs with Mr. Davies, he
has before him the material on which Mr. Davies formed an
opinion. He must disprove the facts, or point to a hiatus m the
induction. There are lively chapters on The Right to Strike,
The Workers' Share in Management, The Press. Men like Emil
Davies, Sidney Webb, Seebohm Rowntree, R. H. Tawney, Jus-
tice Sankey, Bertrand Russell, each in his kind, contribute a
spirit and an intelligence which are enabling England to make a
vast social change without violence and paralysis.
Arthur Gleason
A Conservative on the League
American World Policies. By David Jayne Hill. George H.
Doran Company.
"TT is not," says Mr. Hill, "my purpose here to frame poli-
* cies," and this comes much nearer describing the book than
does the title. It is, to all intents and purposes, an analytical
discussion — a destructive analysis — of the Covenant of the
League of Nations. As such it should be welcome to all think-
ing Americans, whatever their attitude, for it comes near being
the only pamphlet on the subject that bears comparison with the
papers advocating the adoption of the Constitution which we
combine under the title "The Federalist."
Mr. Hill does not, indeed, quite rise to Hamilton, Madison,
and Jay. He does not avoid the tone of personal rancor that
President Wilson seems always to excite. The chapter Nations
and the Law is surprising in its historical statements and inno-
cent in its logic. International law is extolled both as "natural"
and "created through the treaty-making power." "Here is a
process by which a complete system of world-law can eventually
be created; and it can be accomplished as soon as the Great
Powers are prepared to act under a rule of law." Has the
learned doctor forgotten his "History of Diplomacy" and the
occasional insistence by two Powers upon the existence of such
a law, even while fighting vigorously over what it was? He
also thinks "one simple sentence . . . would have provided
all the guaranty necessary for [the Peace Treaty's] execution;
. . . that any attempt to evade the obligations of the treaty
. . . would be regarded as an offense to all of them." Is the
doctor an impractical idealist who thinks each of the allies
would have scorned a generous ransom somewhat conditioned
on winking at a scanted payment to another?
What is really deep down in his heart is concern over the
Constitution of the United States. This he finds endangered,
first, by President Wilson's handling of the Treaty, particularly
his disregard for the Senate, and, secondly, by the League itself.
This negative part is well done and thoroughly worth consid-
eration. He presents no alternative proposal, and while he
expresses himself as favoring some kind of international asso-
ciation, there is no evidence of conviction with regard to it.
His ideal of procedure apparently would have been to make
peace, then to have a world conference to formulate inter-
national law — or rather to accept the American interpretation
of it — and then to draw up articles of association to ad-
minister it. It is doubtful whether he is unduly optimistic or
cynically pessimistic as to the outcome of such a procedure. On
pages 184-190 he seems to doubt whether any form of self-
government can evolve a real foreign policy; on page 90 he
says: "In truth, by whatever name it may be called, whether
'League' or 'Alliance,' such an association has no value except
as it is in fact an entente and continues to be one." On the
other hand, he says that the world-community which he admits
to exist today can, unlike other communities, maintain its peace
"upon* the principle of free cooperation under the regulation of
accepted law," without a government. He is undoubtedly an
anarchist in international affairs, but one remains in doubt
whether he is a cheerful anarchist looking to the perfectibility
of nations, or a doleful one advising the only perfect nation to
avoid contamination from the rest.
Mr. Hill, then, opposes the Treaty from the point of view of
the conservative. It is the League that disturbs him and not
the Treaty of Peace, with regard to which he seems to regret
chiefly that Germany was not forced to surrender uncondition-
ally. His discussion, while at times heated and failing in logic,
is thoughtful and provokes thought. It seems much in the
spirit of the Republican platform. Sixty pages of appendix con-
tain the Covenant of the League, the Senate reservations, and
other documents.
C. R. Fish
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
427
The Advancing Hour
The Advancing Hour. By Norman Hapgood. Boni and Live-
right.
MR. HAPGOOD'S observations take a wide range — too wide,
in fact, to permit him to expand any topic very much or
to enter with any fulness into details. The advancing hour
which he studies, like all the hours that have been, holds wealth
of light and shade; and one who would comprehend at all the
world which is being revealed must turn his eyes all too rapidly
from point to point, happy if in doing so he does not lose all
sense of a common ground, a common effort, and a common hope.
One needs courage, too; and courage, as it happens, is the note
which Mr. Hapgood strikes first of all. The world which he
examines is a world in revolution; and for those who, in the
trying years through which we have of late been passing, sought
refuge in the "storm cellar" of silence, evasion, or weak sub-
mission to the demands of surcharged patriots and bitter-enders,
he has no kind words. Then there was the "blockade of thought,"
when men who knew better fancied that they did God and
country an honorable service by lying, by concealing the truth,
by painting every enemy black and every patriot white, and
by besmirching the character and the intelligence of all who
ventured dissent. To this dark spot, also, Mr. Hapgood points
with mingled sarcasm and contempt. And were they not indeed
rather a sorry lot, these liberals and intellectuals, during the
war?
But the war is over, and there are other issues now. Broadly
speaking, the issues are two: the relations between classes and
the relations between states. The dangers of the new nation-
alism which has sprung from the war are, in Mr. Hapgood's
opinion, so great that they can be overcome only by a league
of nations; and he is still for the Versailles League, even with
its defects, as the only practicable step toward the more per-
fect internationalism which in time may be worked out. We
have a feeling that in this he is hoping against hope, for he
frankly admits that "for the desirable issue of the conflict be-
tween the classes the outlook is much more promising than is
the outlook for preventing further conflicts between the na-
tions." Turning hopefully, then, to the economic field, he finds
in the program of the British Labor Party a basis upon which
all liberals may stand. That leads him naturally to hope for a
new political party in this country which shall represent social
and industrial needs. With Eussia as an object-lesson, how-
ever, he is less sure of socialism than he is of cooperation as a
remedy for present ills. Russia, indeed, appears to be quite the
larger item in Mr. Hapgood's range of interest, one-fourth of
his book being devoted to a long chapter in which he discusses
"our follies in Russia," the issue of Bolshevism, and the achieve-
ments of cooperation.
In the chapter entitled The Answer of Liberalism Mr. Hap-
good sums up his economic creed. Private capital in some form
will remain. Labor will insist upon regular employment, safety,
and a shaie with capital in management. How large the share
shall be will depend upon circumstances, but there must con-
tinue to be saving for capital, and there should be a minimum
of government control. The chapter is a fair enough statement
of a common liberal position so far as it goes ; yet we feel bound
to say that anyone who today really accepts mere liberalism as a
creed is halting between two faiths — an old one which he has all
but rejected and a new one which he has not quite embraced. We
would not do Mr. Hapgood an injustice, however. Writing out
of a long and varied experience as student, author, editor, and
public man, and with an enviable record of courage in cham-
pioning good causes and opposing wrong, he is trying only to
analyze a period of transition. There are unhappily many who
will find even his moderate progressivism too vigorous for their
blood, but we suspect that historians will characterize as an
advance the hour which he has described.
William MacDonald
Open Court Books
Are Long - Lived
The Early Mathematical Manuscripts
of Leibniz
Published by Carl Immanuel Gerhardt. Translated from the
Latin Texts with Critical and Historical Notes by J. M. Child.
Oxford University. Cloth, $1.50
Paracelsus
A celebrated 15th century German-Swiss physician and alchemist,
important in the history of medicine chiefly on account of the
impetus which he gave to the development of pharmaceutical
chemistry. By John Maxson STILLMAN, Emeritus professor of
Chemistry, Stanford University. Cloth, $2.00
An Ethical System Based on the Laws
of Nature
By M. Deshumbert. Translated from the French by Lionel
Giles, M.A. This book has already appeared in seven different
languages, and will shortly appear in three others.
Pages 231. Paper Edition, 75c
Saccheri's Euclides Vindicatus
Edited and translated by George Bruce Halsted. Latin-
English Edition of the first non-Euclidean Geometry published
in Milan, 1 733. Pages 280. Cloth, $2.00
Rival Philosophies of Jesus and Paul
By Ignatius Singer. The author's contention is that there are
two distinct and mutually destructive philosophies in the Gospels,
one by Jesus and one by Paul. Cloth, $2.00
The Gospel of Buddha
By Dr. Paul Carus. Edition de Luxe. New Edition enlarged
and revised. Beautifully illustrated in old Buddhist style by
O. Kopetzky. Price, $3.00
The Elements of Non-Euclidean Geometry
By D. M. Y. So.MMERVILLE, M.A. "An excellent text-book for
teachers of geometry who wish to understand the position in which
Euclid's parallel-postulate has been placed by modern thought." —
Journal of Education. Cloth, $2.00
Letters to Teachers
By Hartley B. Alexander, University of Nebraska. A col-
lection of papers addressed to all who realize the importance of
a critical reconstruction of public education in America.
Cloth, $1.25
Education in Ancient Israel
By Fletcher H. Swift, University of Minnesota. This book is
the first attempt in English to give a full account of the debt
which Christendom owes to Judaism for its religious and edu-
cational conceptions, standards and ideals. Cloth, $1.25
Anatole France
By Lewis Piacet Shanks, Assistant Professor of Romance
Languages and Literatures in the University of Wisconsin. ' Best
book on the greatest living writer of to-day." — The Nation.
Cloth, $1.50
The Open Court Publishing
Company
22 South Michigan Avenue, CHICAGO, ILL.
Publishers of educational and scientific boofys. Send for catalog.
428
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
Steel and Oak
Potterism. By Rose Macaulay. Boni and Liveright.
One After Another. By Stacy Aumonier. The Macmillan
Company.
""POTTERISM" has had a very uncommon reception in lit-
A erary London with Frank Swinnerton leading the chorus
of praise; it is quite likely that that reception will be duplicated
in New York and Chicago. Whether, on the other hand, the great
middle class reading public will be either stirred or stung by
Miss Macaulay's gay yet ultimately tragic satire, remains to
be seen. To call a man yellow in Peking would cause no com-
motion though you shouted at the top of your voice. To de-
nounce Potterism in Birmingham or Topeka may leave large
and respectabla populations unmoved. Matthew Arnold had his
battle with Potterism and barely scratched its hide; aesthetes
and philosophers innumerable have sped their little arrows. The
monster plunges on. Northcliffe or Ochs is in the saddle or —
Bulmer or Potter. For Potterism is but another name for
Philistinism, the same old human lust for "second-rate senti-
mentalism and cheap short-cuts and mediocrity" and "muddle
and cant." But through the mouth of Arthur Gideon, her cen-
tral figure, Miss Macaulay gives what is, perhaps, the complet-
est and most incisive brief description on record. "Potterism
has, for one of its surest bases, fear. The other bases are
ignorance, vulgarity, mental laziness, sentimentality, and greed.
The ignorance which does not know facts, the vulgarity which
cannot appreciate values, the laziness which will not try to
learn either of these things, the sentimentality which, knowing
neither, is stirred by the valueless and the untrue; the greed
which grabs and exploits. But fear is the worst. The fear of
public opinion, the fear of scandal, the fear of independent
thought, of loss of position, of discomfort, of consequences, of
truth."
A group of young men and women set out to fight Potterism.
Among them, honestly convinced, are John and Jane, offspring
of the great newspaper magnate Potter and of his wife Leila
Yorke, the novelist, who shares the popularity of Ethel Dell
and Florence Barclay. The rest are Juke, who seeks an un-
trodden path to the ancient goal of Christian freedom, Kathe-
rine Varick, a new woman with a very old ache in her soul, and
the half Jewish journalist Arthur Gideon, who, having a really
incorruptible mind, is forced to play a Laodicean's part amid
the fevered factions of the world and is killed because he wears
no badge but that of humanity and has no party but the truth
itself. Jane and John, though on a slightly higher plane, revert
to type. Ease and worldly success seduce both. And that, in-
deed, is what makes Potterism so supremely insidious. The
intoxication of the world's applause, the softness of creature
comforts, are on its side. Once in a while the Potterite pays —
as in war. But since the child of light pays too, and pays, in
addition, for something he never wanted, his earthly reward is
reduced to the satisfaction of his own mind. No wonder his
kind is rare.
Miss Macaulay's narrative technique shares the keenness and
distinction of her intellectual outlook. Each section of the book
is told by one of its characters and thus the characterization is
of a rare completeness and inwardness. The section written
by Leila Yorke is masterly in its revelation of a third-rate mind
rendered impenetrable by the shoddy goodness of its own inten-
tions. But from the various narratives there arises not only a
picture of these conflicting minds; there arises also a swift and
tragic action saved from any taint of melodrama by a constant
scrupulousness in the treatment of the psychical values involved.
Thus Miss Macaulay's book is both brilliant and skilful, a
notable story and an incisive criticism of life.
Mr. Aumonier has returned to the sources in life and art
from which he drew his early stories. He has broadened his
scene and enlarged his range of characters. But his essential
method is that of "The Friends," and so "One After Another"
is easily the best novel he has written. Despite the exploits of
the glowing and pathetic Laura, the book is a quiet one. But
its quietude is that which comes from a deep absorption in the
common and concrete things of life. Once more Mr. Aumonier
has his early solidity, his sane earthiness, his thick and crusty
masses of reality. What, in the end, affects the mind most
strongly is the picture of The Duchess of Pless, the old public
house in Camden Town, and the life and death of Purbeck the
publican. Purbeck is almost the last of his kind. The world,
as his children who love him feel very clearly, cannot endure
him any more. Even in his own time the stiff-necked old Puri-
tan caused himself and others endless and needless misery. But
Mr. Aumonier has made him a massive and memorable figure —
hale, earth-rooted, carved as of oak.
Purbeck, queerly enough, married a Spanish woman, and his
two children felt the effect both of that anomalous marriage
and of the changing world into which they were plunged. Tom
goes through life well enough, though with adventures along the
road that would have sickened his father; Laura tarnishes the
beauty that was in her — the inner beauty of her mother un-
tempered by her father's strength — and becomes all healthless
body and ruined nerves. A third generation appears in the
person of Tom's daughter — a cooler, clearer, better-poised gen-
eration that will know how to live far more competently than
the distracted children of the old publican. By this sharp
definition of the generations blended with his brooding sense of
life's fundamental continuance, Mr. Aumonier has made his
book as suggestive as it is entertaining and as philosophical as
it is concrete. L. L.
Notable Fall Books
AMERICAN PROBLEMS
Canby, H. S. Everyday Americans. Century.
Chafee, Zechariah, Jr. Freedom of Speech. Harcourt, Brace
and Howe.
Erskine, John. Democracy and Ideals. Doran.
Fosdick, R. B. American Police Systems. Century.
Friedman, E. P. (editor). America and the New Era. Dutton.
Kerlin, R. T. The Voice of the Negro. Dutton.
Meiklejohn, Alexander. The Liberal College. Marshall Jones.
Stevens, Doris. Jailed for Freedom. Boni and Liveright.
Storey, Moorfield. Problems of Today. Houghton Mifflin.
Thompson, F. U. The Schooling of the Immigrant. Harper.
ART, ARCHAEOLOGY, MUSIC.
Brangwyn, Frank. Book Plates. Lippincott.
Dana, Ethel N. (editor). The Story of Jesus: Pictures from
Paintings by Giotto, Fra Angelico, etc. Marshall Jones.
Dickins, Guy. Hellenistic Sculpture. Oxford University Press.
Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. VI. American
Supplement. Macmillan.
Hill, G. F. The Medallic Portraits of Christ. Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Marriott, Charles. Masters of Modern Art. 3 vols.: Augustus
John; Charles Shannon; Frank Brangwyn. Stokes.
Pennell, Joseph. Art Talks. Lippincott.
Pennell, Joseph. The Graphic Arts. University of Chicago
Press.
Pennell, Joseph. Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen. Mac-
millan.
Pilsworth, E. S. The Technique of Practical Drawing. Mac-
millan.
Rothenstein, William. Literary Portraits: Twenty-four Draw-
ings of Contemporary Men of Letters. Harcourt, Brace
and Howe.
Siren, Oswald. Essentials in Art. Lane.
Stewart, Basil. Japanese Colour-Prints. Dodd, Mead.
Taft, Lorado. Modern Tendencies in Scripture. University of
Chicago Press.
van Dieren, Bernard. Jacob Epstein and his Work. Lane.
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
429
BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIRS
Adams, Charles Francis, Charles Francis, Jr., and Henry. A
Cycle of Adams Letters: 1861 to 1865. Houghton Mifflin.
2 vols.
Adams, Henry. Letters to a Niece and Prayer to the Virgin of
Chartres. Houghton Mifflin.
Asquith, Margot. Antobiography. Doran. 2 vols.
Austen-Leigh, Mary A. Personal Aspects of Jane Austen.
Dutton.
Barrus, Clara. John Burroughs, Boy and Man. Doubleday,
Page.
Barton, W. E. The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln. Doran.
Bernstein, Eduard. My Years of Exile. Harcourt, Brace and
Howe.
Bishop, J. B. Theodore Roosevelt and his Time Shown in his
Letters. Scribners. 2 Vols.
Bok, Edward. The Americanization of Edward Bok. Scribner.
Brown, P. Hume. The Life of Goethe. Holt. 2 vols.
Buckle, G. E. The Life of Benjamin Disraeli. Vols. V, VI.
Macmillan.
Burgess, W. H. John Robinson, Pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers.
Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Carnegie, Andrew. Autobiography. Houghton Mifflin.
Chapin, Charles. Charles Chapin's Story. Putnam.
Deschanel, Paul. Gambetta. Dodd, Mead.
Dombrowski, Eric. German Leaders of Yesterday and Today.
Appleton.
Drinkwater, John. Lincoln the World Emancipator. Houghton
Mifflin.
Ellis, S. M. George Meredith. Dodd, Mead.
Fleury, Comte. Memoirs of the Empress Eugenie. Appleton.
2 vols.
Forkel, I. N. John Sebastian Bach. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Geddes, Patrick. The Life and Work of Sir Jagadis C. Bose.
Longmans, Green.
Gibbons, H. A. Venizelos. Houghton Mifflin.
Gorki, Maxim. Reminiscences of Tolstoy. Huebsch.
Hamilton, Sir Ian. Gallipoli Diary. Doran. 2 vols.
Hazen, C. D. The Kaiser vs. Bismarck; Suppressed Letters.
Harper.
Hindenburg, General. Memoirs from My Life. Harper.
Huneker, James. Steeplejack. Scribner. 2 vols.
James, William. Letters. Atlantic Monthly Press. 2 vols.
Kartini, Raden Adjeng. Letters of a Javanese Princess. Knopf.
Klein, Herman. The Reign of Patti. Century.
Koche Doi and Omori, Annie Shepley. Diaries of Court Ladies
of Old Japan. Houghton Mifflin.
Lehmann, Liza. The Life of Liza Lehmann by Herself. Dutton.
The Letters of Dante. Edited by Paget Toynbee. Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Levine, I. D. (editor). Letters from the Kaiser to the Czar.
Stokes.
Loria, Achille. Karl Marx. Seltzer.
Mallock, W. H. Memoirs of Life and Literature. Harper.
Martin, E. S. Life of Joseph Hodges Choate. Scribner. 2 vols.
Mazzini, Giuseppe. Letters to an English Family. Lane.
Paine, A. B. A Short Life of Mark Twain. Harper.
Raymond, E. T. A Life of Arthur James Balfour. Little,
Brown.
Rochechouart, Count de. Memoirs. Dutton. [Diplomatic rec-
ords, 1788-1816.]
Sharp, W. G. My Embassy at the Heart of Conflict. Harper.
Skeltcn, O. D. Life and Letters of Sir Wilfred Laurier. Cen-
tury. 2 vols.
Spender, Harold. The Prime Minister [Lloyd George]. Doran.
Thackeray, W. M. Letters. Edited by R. R. Wilson. Boston:
Privately printed. 2 vols.
Vaughan, W. The Life and Work of Sir William Van Home.
Century.
Whiteley, Opal. The Story of Opal. Atlantic Monthly Press.
c
TALES of MYSTERY
and HORROR
By Maurice Level : Translated from
the French by Alys Eyre Macklin
Twenty-six pitiless, fascinating little tales
which have made their author famous in
France as "a new master of the terrible."
"Certainly entitle him to a place in the first
rank of contemporary writers of short stories."
— New York Times. "In spots better than the
similar work of Edgar Allan Poe and in gen-
eral better than that of Ambrose Bierce." —
Chicago Evening Post. "Understanding of
elementals in the muck ; a bit of submerged
fantasy ; grim chuckling over the ironies of
reality — all this plus the physician's under-
standing of the sick, human brain. Such are
the tales." — Chicago Daily News. Second
Printing. $2.
THE CORDS of VANITY
By James Branch Cabell
With an introduction by Wilson Follett
A lightly written but acid study of our own times. First published
eleven years ago, it has been thoroughly revised by the author and is
now reissued in a format uniform with Jurgen, The Cream of the
Jest, etc. $2, net.
Early
Fall
Publications
of
Robert
M.
McBride
& Co.
New York
THE BROKEN LAUGH
By Meg Villars
"I turn the pages of this book, 'The Broken Laugh,' with the elation
that has come to me once or twice in the last year. Verily a jewel.
. . . A book so joyously written, so charmingly unconventional in
its acceptance of the facts of life without grumbling ; so deliciously
human in its attitude toward tragedy and joy. So free from literary
pretense and ponderosity when dealing with themes as wide and deep
and terrible as life. . . . You will ponder over its tremendous force.
. . . A book that breathes the breath of life." — Harry Hansen in the
Chicago Daily News. $2.
HIGH LIFE
By Harrison Rhodes
A story filled with delicate humor, adroit and slightly satirical char-
acter drawing. High Life, which appeared serially in the Saturday
Evening Post, is followed by six short stories, each told with a suavity
and a distinction that readers familiar with Mr. Khodes' work will
recognize as his special characteristics. $2, net.
THE GREEN EYES of BAST *s«JM«er
A romance of Ancient Magic at work in modern times. Ranging in
scene from the Egypt of forgotten mysteries to the London of today,
it contains all the glamour and excitement that characterize the best
previous work of Mr. Rohmer. $2, net.
THE MAN WHO CONVICTED HIMSELF
By David Fox
A really original mystery story, dealing with the activities of "The
Shadowers, Inc.," a band of retired criminals who have organized a
unique crime prevention bureau. $1.90, net.
SOUTH of SUEZ
By William Ashley Anderson
An absorbing account of several years of wandering and adventuring
through East Africa. Mr. Anderson went to Aden, Arabia, in 1915, for
an American trading firm ; later he spent much time in Mombasa,
Zanzibar, Port Said and in trekking the great African game country.
He was one of the few white men who witnessed the tragically pictur-
esque civil war which followed the death of Menelik the Great, an
uprising marked by a medieval display of valor and treachery and
knight-errantry. Later as an officer of the King's African Rifles he
led a troop of blacks against the Germans. This book is in no sense a
war book. Rather it is a series of impressionistic sketches and colorful
descriptions ; the record of a man whose eye sees the unusual and
bizarre and who describes it with vividness, humor and rare charm.
"Every page is surcharged with his own emotional reactions to the
sights he saw, every line is alive with poetic thought and overlaid with
his personality." — New York Times. With thirty-one pages of illustra-
tions. $3, net.
A TOUR THROUGH INDIANA in 1840
Edited by Kate Milner Rabb
The Diary of a young Virginian who traveled through Indiana in the
year of Harrison's campaign, visiting the important cities and meeting
their principal citizens. It is at once a fascinating picture of bygone
times and a valuable contribution to local history. With sixteen illus-
trations. $3.75, net.
A TANKARD Of ALE Compiled by Theodore Maynard
"A really glorious collection" (according to The Nation) of the best
English Drinking Songs from the fifteenth century to the present day.
"So sinful, shameful and delightful that I am afraid to read it.
It puts riotous and forbidden images in my skull. This book has power
to crack the will of a revenue agent." — Benjamin de Casseres in N. Y.
Times. $2, net.
ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE ByUosi*^
Bold and unorthodox comments upon literature, philosophy and poli-
tics by one of the leading living Russian critics. $2.
430
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
Villiers, Frederic. Villiers: His Five Decades of Adventure.
Harper.
DRAMA
Duran, Leo (translator) . Plays of Old Japan. Seltzer.
Forbes, James. The Famous Mrs. Fair and Other Plays. Doran.
Glaspell, Susan. Plays. Small, Maynard.
Goodell, T. D. Athenian Tragedy. Yale University Press.
Gregory, Lady. The Dragon. Putnam.
Gregory, Odin. Caius Gracchus. Boni and Liveright.
Lee, Vernon. Satan: the Waster. Lane.
Mantle, Burns. The Best Plays of 1919-1920. Small, Maynard.
Odell, G. C. D. Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving. Scrib-
ner. 2 vols.
O'Neill, Eugene. Gold. — The Straw. Boni and Liveright.
Shay, Frank, and Pierre Loving. Fifty Contemporary One-Act
Plays. Stewart and Kidd.
Symons, Arthur. Cesare Borgia. Brentano's.
ESSAYS AND CRITICISM
Baker, R. P. A History of English-Canadian Literature to the
Confederation. Harvard University Press.
Balfour, A. J. Essays and Addresses. Doran.
Barbellicn, W. N. P. Enjoying Life and Other Literary Re-
mains. Doran.
Beers, H. A. The Connecticut Wits. Yale University Press.
Bourne, Randolph. The History of a Literary Radical. Huebsch.
Browne, Edward G. A History of Persian Literature under
Tartar Dominion (A. D. 1265-1502). Macmillan.
Burroughs, John. Accepting the Universe. Houghton Mifflin.
Canfield, Dorothy. French Portraits. Harcourt, Brace and
Howe.
Croce, Benedetto. Shakespeare, Ariosto and Corneille. Holt.
Crothers, S. M. The Dame School of Experience and Other
Papers. Houghton Mifflin.
Eaton, W. P. In Berkshire Fields. Harper.
Edson, C. L. The Gentle Art of Columning. Brentano's.
Elton, Oliver. A Survey of English Literature: 1780-1880. Vols.
III-IV. Macmillan.
Erskine, John. The Kinds of Poetry. Duffield.
Fellowes, E. H. English Madrigal Verse. Oxford University
Press.
Fowler, W. W. Roman Essays and Interpretations. Oxford
University Press.
Goldring, Douglas. Reputations. Seltzer.
Grandgent, C. H. Old and New. Harvard University Press.
Harris, Frank. Contemporary Portraits. Frank Harris.
Hearn, Lafcadio. Talks to Writers. Dodd, Mead.
Laski, H. J. The Foundations of Sovereignty and Other Essays.
Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Lindsay, Vachel. The Golden Book of Springfield. Macmillan.
Masefield, John, Dean Inge, and Others. Ruskin the Prophet.
Dutton.
Maurice, A. B. The London of the Novelist. Doubleday, Page.
Mencken, H. L. Prejudices: Second Series. Knopf.
Moore, F. Frankfort. A Garden of Peace. Doran.
Murry, J. M. The Evolution of an Intellectual. Knopf.
Perry, Bliss. A Study of Poetry. Houghton Mifflin.
Pound, Louise. Poetic Origins and the Ballad. Macmillan.
Repplier, Agnes. Points of Friction. Houghton Mifflin.
Santayana, George. Character and Opinions in the United
States. Scribner.
Shay, Frank. A Bibliography of Walt Whitman. Friedman's.
Shelley, P. B. A Philosophic View of Reform, 1820 [Edited
from manuscript]. Oxford University Press.
Shestov, Leo. All Things Are Possible. McBride.
Thorndike, A. H. Literature in a Changing Age. Macmillan.
Trent, W. P., John Erskine, Stuart P. Sherman, and Carl Van
Doren. The Cambridge History of American Literature.
Vol. III. Putnam.
Turquet-Milnes, A. Some Modern French Writers. McBride.
Van Doren, Mark. The Poetry of Dryden. Harcourt, Brace
and Howe.
Van Vechten, Carl. Interpreters. Knopf.
Wendell, Barrett. The Traditions of European Literature:
From Homer to Dante. Scribner.
Whitman, Walt. Gathering of the Forces. Edited by Cleveland
Rodgers and John Black. Putnam.
Woodberry, G. E. Collected Essays. Harcourt, Brace and
Howe. 6 vols.
Wright, C. H. C. French Classicism. Harvard University
Press.
Wyld, H. C. A History of Modern Colloquial English. Dutton.
Zweig, Stefan. Romain Rolland. Seltzer.
FICTION
Aleichem, Shalom. Jewish Children. Knopf.
Anderson, Sherwood. Poor White. Huebsch.
Andreyev, Leonid. Satan's Diary. Boni and Liveright.
Asch, Sholom. Uncle Moses. Dutton.
Aumonier, Stacy. One After Another. Macmillan.
Beerbohm, Max. Seven Men. Knopf.
Beresford, J. D. An Imperfect Mother. Macmillan.
Brown, Alice. Homespun and Gold. Macmillan.
Cabell, J. B. Domnei [Originally published as The Soul of
Melicent]. McBride.
Cather, Willa. Youth and the Bright Medusa. Knopf.
Churchill, Winston. The Green Bay Tree. Macmillan.
Couperus, Louis. The Inevitable. Dodd, Mead.
Delafield, E. M. Tension. Macmillan.
Dell, Floyd. Moon-Calf. Knopf.
De Morgan, William. The Old Man's Youth. Holt.
Dodd, L. W. The Book of Susan. Dutton.
France, Anatole. Little Pierre. — The Bride of Corinth and
Other Poems and Plays. — The Seven Wives of Bluebeard
and Other Marvellous Tales. Lane.
Frank, Waldo. The Dark Mother. Boni and Liveright.
Galsworthy, John. In Chancery. Scribner.
Gardner, Gilson. The New Robinson Crusoe. Harcourt, Brace
and Howe.
George W. L. Caliban. Harper.
Goldberg, Isaac (translator) . Brazilian Tales. Four Seas.
Howe, E. W. The Anthology of Another Town. Knopf.
Howells, W. D. The Vacation of the Kelwyns. Harper.
Huneker, J. G. Painted Veils. Boni and Liveright.
Jacobsen, J. P. Mogens and Other Stories. N. L. Brown.
James, Henry. Master Eustace. Seltzer.
Jammes, Francis. Romance of the Rabbit. N. L. Brown.
Leacock, Stephen. Winsome Winnie and Other Nonsense Novels.
Lane.
Level, Maurice. Tales of Mystery and Horror. McBride.
London, Jack. Hearts of Three. Macmillan.
Macaulay, Rose. Potterism. Boni and Liveright.
Masters, E. L. Mitch Miller. Macmillan.
Merrick, Leonard. The House of Lynch. Dutton.
New Decameron, The: Second Day. McBride.
Nexo, M. A. Ditte, Girl Alive! Holt.
Poole, Ernest. Blind. Macmillan.
Saltus, Edgar. The Imperial Orgy. Boni and Liveright.
Sinclair, May. The Romantic. Macmillan.
Sinclair, Upton. The Story of a Patriot. Upton Sinclair.
Vorse, Mary Heaton. Men and Steel. Boni and Liveright.
Watts, Mary S. The Noon Mark. Macmillan.
Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence. Scribner.
Woolf, Virginia. Night and Day. Doran.
HISTORY
Ames, Fisher. The American Red Cross in France: Civilian
Relief. Macmillan.
Bayley, Harold. Archaic England. Lippincott.
Becker, Carl. The United States: An Experiment in Democ-
racy. Harper.
Boulenger, Jacques. The Seventeenth Century. Putnam.
i
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
431
Studies in the History of Human Society.
A History of the [American] Transport Ser-
The Lafayette Flying Corps.
Scrib-
Brinkley, F., and Baron Kikuchi. A History of the Japanese
People. Doran.
Bruce, P. A. History of the University of Virginia: 1819-1919.
Macmillan. 5 vols.
Corbett, Sir Julian S. Naval Operations [of the Great War].
Vols. I-II. Longmans, Green.
Dunning, W. A. A History of Political Theories. Vol. Ill:
From Rousseau to Spencer. Macmillan.
Fay, C. R. Life and Labour in the Nineteenth Century. Cam-
bridge University Press.
Fayle, C. E. Seaborne Trade [during the War]. Vol. I. Long-
mans, Green.
Frank, Tenney. The Economic History of Rome. Johns Hop-
kins Press.
Giddings, F. H.
Macmillan.
Gleaves, Albert,
vice. Doran.
Hall, J. N., and Nordhoff, C. B.
Houghton Mifflin. 2 vols.
Haworth, P. L. The United States in Our Own Times,
ners.
Henry, R. M. The Evolution of Sinn Fein. Huebsch.
Hibben, Paxton. Constantine I and the Greek People. Century.
Hindus, M. G. The Russian Peasant and the Revolution. Holt.
History of the American Field Service in France: Friends of
France, 1914-1917. Told by its Members. Houghton Mifflin.
3 vols.
Hyndman, H. M. The Evolution of Revolution. Boni and Live-
right.
Jackson, Foakes, and Kirsopp Lake. The Beginnings of Chris-
tianity. Part I. Macmillan.
Lake, Kirsopp. Landmarks in the History of the Early Chris-
tian Church. Macmillan.
Laski, H. J. English Political Thought from Locke to Bentham.
Holt.
McMaster, J. B. The United States in the Great War. Vol. II.
Appleton.
M rriam, C. E.
millan.
Neihardt, J. G.
O'Shaughnessy, Edith.
Doran.
Parsons, W. B. The American Engineers in France. Appleton.
Penty, A. J. A Guildsman's Interpretation of History. Sun-
wise Turn.
Pollard, A. F. The Evolution of Parliament. Longmans, Green.
Raven, C. E. Christian Socialism: 1848-1854. Macmillan.
Repington, C. a C. The First World War. Houghton Mifflin.
2 vols.
Sims, Admiral, and Hendrick, B. J. The Victory at Sea. Dou-
bleday, Page.
Smith, Preserved. The Age of Reformation. Holt.
Taylor, H. O. Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth Cen-
tury. Macmillan. 2 vols.
Thwing, C. F. The American Colleges and Universities in the
Great War. Macmillan.
Turner, F. J. The Frontier in American History. Holt.
Tussaud, J. T. The Romance of Madame Tussaud. Doran.
Vander Linden, H. Belgium. Oxford University Press.
Wells, H. G. The Outline of History. Macmillan. 2 vols.
Wright, T. G. Literary Culture in Early New England. Yale
University Press.
LABOR, INDUSTRY, TRADE
Boyle, J. E. Speculation and the Chicago Board of Trade. Mac-
millan.
Budish, J. M., and George Soule. The New Unionism in the
Clothing Industry. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Cole, G. D. H. Chaos and Order in Industry. Stokes,
Cox, Harold. Economic Liberty. Longmans, Green.
American Political Ideas — 1865 to 1917. Mac-
The Splendid Wayfaring. Macmillan.
Intimate Pages of Mexican History.
Messrs. Newson & Compart]) announce the publication of
the following book that will make a strong appeal to
teachers of English:
Effective English Expression
By Edward Harlan Webster
Head of the Department of English, The Technical High
School, and Director of English, Junior High Schools,
Springfield, Massachusetts
This book emphasizes in nearly every exercise the four steps of
procedure associated with the successful working out of The
Project Method; viz., purposing, planning, executing, judging.
The pupil is made to approach each exercise with his purpose
clearly defined and stated as a guide, by means of which he is
encouraged to plan (select and arrange material), present or
execute his organized thought, and finally revise or judge his
product. This emphasis upon purpose guarantees unity, coherence,
emphasis, and gives to each exercise a vitality and an interest
always associated with the purposeful act. The subjects for writing
and speaking deal with social and business life and incorporate the
various school projects characteristic of student activities today.
NEWSON & COMPANY, Publishers
7 3 Fifth Avenue, New York
6 2 3 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago
NATURE CURE
PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE
Based on the Unity of Disease and Cure
By HENRY LINDLAHR, M. D.
Founder and Medical Director of the Lindlahr Sanitarium at
Chicago and the Lindlahr Health Resort at Elmhurst, Illinois.
This book contains a Scientific Regimen for the restoration
and maintenance of health and a complete System of
Treatment for all forms of acute and chronic ailments. It
supplies at once the inspiration and the means to the fullest
possible development of Physical, Mental and Moral Powers.
A Regimen for Wholesome Living and prevention of
Disease. Treatment of all acute diseases by a few sim-
ple natural methods. Treatment of Chronic Diseases.
Natural Dietetics: teaches food values and scientific
combinations of foods in health and disease; Relation-
ship of foods to acid diseases; Fasting, when indicated
and how managed. Prenatal and Postnatal Baby
Culture.
Hydrotherapy; importance of water treatment; Why
we use cold water; Application in acute and chronic
diseases; Packs, how to use them; Air and Light Baths;
Importance of skin as organ of elimination. Correct
Breathing. Physical exercises, classified and described.
Constipation,, cause and cure. Natural Treatment for
the eyes. First Aid. Nervous Diseases. Origin, na-
ture and treatment of mental and emotional diseases.
A Complete Course in the Cure of Acute and Chronic
Diseases and the promotion of Threefold Health.
438 pages; Cloth; $2.15 postpaid.
Descriptive literature FREE.
LINDLAHR PUBLISHING CO.
521 So. Ashland Blvd. : : CHICAGO
432
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
Durstine, Roy S. Making Advertisements and Making Them
Pay. Scribners.
Foster W. T. The Great Steel Strike. Huebsch.
Friday, David. Profits, Wages, and Prices. Harcourt, Brace
and Howe.
Furniss, E. S. The Position of the Laborer in a System of
Nationalism. Houghton Mifflin.
Gompers, Samuel. Labor and the Employer. Dutton.
Goodrich, C. L. The Frontier of Control: A Study of British
Workshop Politics. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Hodges, Frank. Nationalization of the Mines. Seltzer.
Interchurch World Movement, Commission of Inquiry. Report
on the Steel Strike of 1919. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Laughlin, J. L. Banking Progress. Scribner.
MacDonald, J. R. The Policy of the Labour Party. Seltzer.
Mendelsohn, Sigmund. Labor's Crisis. Macmillan.
Moulton, H. G. The Financial Organization of Society. Uni-
versity of Chicago Press.
Schwab, Charles M. Succeeding with What You Have. Century.
Tead, Ordway, and H. C. Metcalfe. Personnel Administration.
McGraw-Hill.
Warne, F. J. The Workers at War. Century.
Williams, Albert. The New Labour Outlook. Seltzer.
Williams, Whiting. What's on the Worker's Mind. Scribner.
Withers, Hartley. The Case for Capitalism. Dutton.
PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, RELIGION
Alexander, Hartley. Latin American Mythology. Marshall
Jones.
Babson, R. W. Religion and Business. Macmillan.
Bergson, Henri. Mind-Energy. Holt.
Bosanquet, Bernard. What Religion Is. Macmillan.
Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook. The Church
and Industrial Reconstruction. Association Press.
Dewey, John. Reconstruction in Philosophy. Holt.
Foster, G. B. Christianity in its Modern Expression. Macmil-
lan.
Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis.
Boni and Liveright.
Graham, J. W. The Faith of a Quaker. Macmillan.
Hall, G. S. Morale: The Supreme Standard of Life and Con-
duct. Appleton.
Herbert, S. Fundamentals in Sexual Ethics. Macmillan.
James, William. Collected Essays and Reviews. Longmans,
Green.
Jastrow, Joseph. Science or Spiritualism. Seltzer.
Jastrow, Morris, Jr. The Book of Job. Lippincott.
Kautsky, Karl. The Origin of Christianity. Seltzer.
Langfeld, H. S. The Aesthetic Attitude. Harcourt, Brace and
Howe.
Marett, R. R. Psychology and Folk-Lore. Macmillan.
Marvin, F. S. (editor). Recent Developments in European
Thought. Oxford University Press.
Mathews, Shailer, and A. B. Smith. A Dictionary of Religion
and Ethics. Macmillan.
McDougall, William. The Group Mind. Putnam.
Patterson, W. P. (editor). The Power of Prayer. Macmillan.
Singer, Ignatius. Rival Philosophies of Jesus and Paul. Open
Court.
Swisher, W. S. Religion and the New Psychology. Marshall
Jones.
Tridon, Andre. Psychoanalysis and Behavior. Knopf.
Watkin, E. I. The Philosophy of Mysticism. -Harcourt, Brace
and Howe.
Whitehead, A. N. The Concept of Nature. Macmillan.
POETRY
Aikin, Conrad. The House of Dust. Four Seas.
Benet, S. V. Heavens and Earth. Holt.
Benet, W. R. Moons of Grandeur. Doran.
Blackwell, Alice Stone (translator). Some Spanish American
Poets. Brentanos.
Blok, Alexander. "12" [the famous poem of the Bolshevist
Revolution]. Huebsch.
Bodenheim, Maxwell. Advice and Other Poems. Knopf.
Braithwaite, W. S. (editor). Anthology of Magazine Verse for
1920. Small, Maynard.
Gibran, Kahlil. The Forerunner. Knopf.
Gibson, W. W. Neighbors. Macmillan.
Guiterman, Arthur. Chips of Jade [Versions of Oriental prov-
erbs]. Dutton.
Hewlett, Maurice. Flowers in the Grass. Dutton.
Hills, E. C. (editor). The Odes of Bello, Olmedo, and Heredia
[Spanish text]. Putnam.
Huxley, Aldous. Leda. Doran.
Masefield, John. Right Royal. Macmillan.
Masters, E. L. Domesday Book. Macmillan.
Maynard, Theodore (editor). A Tankard of Ale. McBride.
Miscellany of American Poetry. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Nichols, Robert. Aurelia and Other Poems. Dutton.
Noguchi, Yone. Japanese Hokkus. Four Seas.
Ridge, Lola. Sun-Up. Huebsch.
Robinson, E. A. The Three Taverns. Macmillan.
Sandburg, Carl. Smoke and Steel. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Scott, Evelyn. Precipitations. N. L. Brown.
Symons, Arthur. Lesbia and Other Poems. Dutton.
Teasdale, Sarah. Flame and Shadow. Macmillan.
Untermeyer, Louis. The New Adam. Harcourt, Brace and
Howe.
Walsh, Thomas (editor). Hispanic Anthology. Putnam.
Wells, Carolyn (editor). An Anthology of Humorous Verse.'
Doran.
RECONSTRUCTION AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Barbusse, Henri. The Creed of a Fighter. Seltzer.
Baruch, B. M. The Making of the Reparation and Economic
Sections of the Treaty. Harper.
Beck, James M. The Passing of the New Freedom. Doran.
Blatch, Harriot Stanton. A Woman's Point of View: Some
Roads to Peace. The Woman's Press.
Brailsford, H. N. After the Peace. Seltzer.
Brandes, Georg. The World Tragedy. Seltzer.
Buell, R. L. Contemporary French Politics. Scribner.
Croly, Herbert. The Breach in Civilization. Macmillan.
Eckel, E. C. Coal, Iron and War. Holt.
Fenwick, C. G. Political Systems in Transition. Century.
Garner, J. W. International Law and the World War. Long-
mans, Green. 2 vols.
Gilchrist, R. N. Indian Nationality. Longmans, Green.
Glasier, J. B. The Meaning of Socialism. Seltzer.
Hapgood, Norman. The Advancing Hour. Boni and Liveright.
Harris, J. H. Africa, Slave or Free? Dutton.
Haskins, C. H., and R. H. Lord. Some Problems of the Peace
Conference. Harvard University Press.
Howe, F. C. Denmark: A Cooperative Commonwealth. Har-
court, Brace and Howe.
Hurley, E. N. The New Merchant Marine. Century.
Leyds, W. J. The Transvaal Surrounded. Dutton.
Paish, Sir George (editor). The Nations and the League. [Es-
says by various writers.] Lippincott.
Piggott, Sir Francis. The Freedom of the Seas. Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Postgate, R. W. The Bolshevik Theory. Dodd, Mead.
Problems of Population and Parenthood : Report of the National
Birthrate Commission of Great Britain. Dutton.
Rolland, Romain. The Forerunners. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Russell, George [JE~\. The Economics of Ireland. Huebsch.
Sanger, Margaret. Woman and the New Race. Brentano's.
Scheltema, J. F. The Lebanon in Turmoil. Yale University
Press.
Spargo, John. The Greatest Failure in All History. Harper.
Oct. 13, 1920]
The Nation
433
4th Printing
THE BLACK KNIGHT
By Mrs. Sidgwick and Crosbie Garstin
An absorbing, vivid, modern story of love and adventure,
richly colored with humor and romance. Price $2.00.
A Baffling Mystery
CAPE CURREY
By Rene Juta
A strange, baffling, mystery story set in picturesque Cape
Colony in 1820. Price $1.75.
Russia's Problem
THE RUSSIAN PEASANT
AND THE REVOLUTION
By Maurice G. Hindus
A study of the motives that govern the actions of the
Russian masses. Price $2.00.
Ein s tein's Explanation
RELATIVITY
By Albert Einstein
This is Einstein's own explanation of his epoch-making dis-
covery. Written clearly and simply. Price $2.50.
Industrialism and War
COAL, IRON AND WAR
By Edwin C. Eckel
An examination into the basis of modern industrialism.
Price $2.00.
3rd Printing
DITTE, GIRL ALIVE!
By Martin Andersen Nex©
The poignant story of a Danish child's struggles with
poverty, by the author of 'Telle, the Conqueror." Price $2.00.
A Brilliant Novel
TRUE LOVE
By Allan Monkhouse
One of the cleverest novels of the year, by the Literary
Editor of The Manchester Guardian. Price $1.75.
America' s Expansion
THE FRONTIER IN
AMERICAN HISTORY
By Frederick J. Turner
The significance of the West in America's political develop-
ment. Price $2.50.
By Henri Bergson
MIND-ENERGY
By the author of "Creative Evolution"
"A great feast for the psychologist and the philosopher."
Boston Transcript. Price $2.50.
Increasing Production
THE SIX-HOUR SHIFT
By Lord Leverhulme
An important discussion of the author's successful methods
of dealing with labor. Price $3.50.
For Your Boys and Girls
THE LIGHT HEART
By Maurice Hewlett
A splendid story of fearless men who
lived and fought in the days of the
Vikings. Price $1.50.
TRUE BLUE
By T. E. Grattan-Smith
A corking good war story set in
Australia. Full of action. Illus. Price
$1.50.
THE WHIRLING KING
By H. M. Olcott
A delightful collection of fairy tales
adapted from the French and illustrated
with silhouettes. Price $1.50.
FIRST STEPS IN THE ENJOYMENT OF PICTURES
By Maude I. G. Oliver
The purpose of this book is to help people, especially children, to appreciate the beauty of
the pictures in American galleries. 55 illustrations. Price $1.50.
HENRY HOLT AND C
19 WEST 44th STREET
P AN Y
NEW YORK CITY
~ »"—■-""
ii'Wiwriiit
434
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2884
Sweetser, Arthur. The League of Nations at Work. Macmillan.
Taft, W. H. Taft Papers on the League of Nations. Macmillan.
Tawney, R. H. The Acquisitive Society. Harcourt, Brace and
Howe.
The Protocols and the World Revolution. Small, Maynard.
Wambaugh, Sarah. A Monograph on Plebiscites. Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Webb, Sidney and Beatrice. A Constitution for the Socialist
Commonwealth of Great Britain. Longmans, Green.
Zangwill, I. The Voice of Freedom: The World and the Jew.
Macmillan.
Zilboorg, Gregory. The Passing of the Old Order in Europe.
Seltzer.
SCIENCE
Alexander, S. Space, Time, and Deity. Macmillan. 2 vols.
Eddington, A. S. Space, Time, and Gravitation. Cambridge
University Press.
Einstein, Albert. Relativity: The Special and the General
Theory. Holt.
Fabre, J. H. More Hunting Wasps. Dodd, Mead.
Fabre, J. H. The Secret of Everyday Things. Century.
Schlick, Morris. Space and Time in Contemporary Physics.
Oxford University Press.
Soddy, Frederick. Science and Life. Dutton.
Thomson, J. A. The System of Animate Nature. Holt. 2 vols.
Yerkes, R. M. The New World of Science. Century.
TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION
Anderson, W. A. South of Suez. McBride.
Berger, Maurice. Germany After the Armistice. Putnam.
Bouton, S. M. The Kaiser Abdicates. Yale University Press.
Brown, W. A., Jr. An American Democrat in Revolutionary
Russia. Yale University Press.
Budge, Sir E. A. Wallis. By Nile and Tigris. Dutton. 2 vols.
Hergesheimer, Joseph. San Cristobal de la Habana. Knopf.
Hudson, W. H. Birds of La Plata. Dutton.
James, G. W. New Mexico: The Land of the Delight Makers.
Page.
Lansbury, George. What I Saw in Russia. Boni and Liveright.
Lumholtz, Carl. Through Central Borneo. Scribner. 2 vols.
O'Brien, Frederick. Drifting Among South Sea Isles. Century.
Pollard, S. In Unknown China. Lippincott.
Reed, Earl H. Tales of a Vanishing River. Lane.
Robinson, Albert. Old New England Houses. Scribner.
Safroni-Middleton, A. South Sea Foam. Doran.
Stefansson, Vilhjahmur. The Friendly Arctic. Macmillan.
Tomlinson, H. M. The Sea and The Jungle. Dutton.
Wharton, Edith. In Morocco. Scribner.
Williams, Mary W. Social Scandinavia in the Viking Age. Mac-
millan.
MISCELLANEOUS
Bryce, Viscount. Democracy. Macmillan. 2 vols.
Foch, Marshal. Precepts and Judgments. — The Principles of
War. Holt.
Holmes, 0. W. Collected Legal Papers. Harcourt, Brace and
Howe.
Laut, Agnes. The Book of Furs. Macmillan.
Saintsbury, George. Notes on a Cellar-Book. Macmillan.
Spingarn, J. E. (editor). The European Library: Titles An-
nounced: People, by Pierre Hamp; The World's Illusion, by
J. Wasserman; The Loyal Subject, by Heinrich Mann; The
New Society, by Walter Rathenau; A Poet's Loves, by Louis
Barthou; Sonatas, by Ramon del Valle-Inclan ; The Reform
of Education, by Giovanni Gentile; The Culture of Ideas,
by Remy de Gourmont. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
EW AND STANDARD BOOKS
V^,:.mi.'
FORTHCOMING
THE GRAPHIC ARTS. By Joseph Pennell. A new volume
in the series of Scammon Lectures at the Art Institute
of Chicago. This volume deals with the modern de-
velopment of all the graphic arts and is richly illus-
trated. $5.00.
MODERN TENDENCIES IN SCULPTURE. By Lorado
Taft. An important volume in the series of Scammon
Lectures at the Art Institute of Chicago. This book,
by the famous Chicago sculptor, discusses the work of
Auguste Rodin, other European sculpture, and Augus-
tus Saint-Gaudens and American sculpture. Profusely
illustrated. $5.00.
THE FINANCIAL ORGANIZATION - OF SOCIETY. By
H. G. Moulton. A study of the financial aspects of
modern society. Money, credit facilities, and our
financial institutions are closely interwoven with the
entire economic organization. They should be studied
in this relation and not as isolated economic agencies.
$4.00.
PRINCIPLES OF ACCOUNTING. By A. C. M. Hodge and
J. O. McKinsey. Designed to help those who expect to
become executives or expert accountants as members
of the organization of a particular business enterprise,
rather than as public accountants. $3.00.
INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. By
Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess. This book
is based on the belief that the use of concrete material
makes possible a clearer understanding of the prin-
ciples of sociology than has been possible with the
method of presentation in the past. It defines and
illustrates the concepts and principles of socioloev
$4.50. .
FOR THE MODERN MAN
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD (Revised Edition).
By George A. Barton. The author gives a keen and
sympathetic interpretation of all the great religions, as
well as such facts concerning their origin and history
as one must have in order to interpret them. $2.00.
CHRISTIAN FAITH FOR MEN OF TODAY (Revised
Edition). By E. Albert Cook. This volume contains
a clear and reasonable interpretation of life from the
modern point of view, and some definite formulation
of those beliefs that have proved most effectual in the
development of individual character and the promo-
tion of the welfare of society. $1.50.
THE NEW ORTHODOXY. By Edward S. Ames. A state-
ment of the modern point of view in religion. This
book seeks to present in simple terms a view of re-
ligion consistent with the mental habits of those
trained in the sciences, in the professions, and in the
direction of practical affairs. $1.25.
THE PROBLEM OF DEMOCRACY. Edited by Scott W.
Bedford. An up-to-date discussion of the problem of
democracy. This volume includes papers on the fol-
lowing subjects: A Working Democracy, Democracy
and Our Political System, Organized Labor and
Democracy, Democracy and Community Organiza-
tion, Religion and Democracy, Bolshevism and Democ-
racy, and Democracy and Socialism. Paper; $1.50.
A GUIDE TO THE STUDY OF THE CHRISTIAN RE-
LIGION. Edited by Gerald B. Smith. A compre-
hensive survey, by twelve well-known scholars, of
progress in the new scholarship of the past twenty-five
years, in its relation to the Bible and theology. $3.00.
Postage extra on direct orders. A new descriptive catalogue will be sent upon request.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
5807 ELLIS AVENUE CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1920
No. 2885
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 435
EDITORIALS :
That League Issue 438
Spies and Spying 439
The German Shipping Plot 440
The Gulf of Henry James 441
Jenny Lind 441
TURNING THE LIGHT ON IRELAND 442
THE OLD KEY-MAKER. By Leslie Nelson Jennings 443
REDWOODS. By Alice Corbin 443
OUR SQUANDERED HERITAGE. By Gifford Pinchot 444
THE CHILEAN ELECTION. By Charles E. Chapman 445
THE PUBLIC PAYS. By Watson Williams 447
THE I. W. W. By Lewis S. Gannett 448
A NEEDED FUNCTIONARY. By Grant Showerman 449
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 450
CORRESPONDENCE 451
THUS MY DREAMS. By Thomas Walsh 453
BOOKS:
Wisdom and Irony. By C. V. D 453
Youth in America 454
The Casual Laborer 455
Books in Brief 455
DRAMA :
Trade-Goods. By Ludwig Lewisohn 458
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION 459
British Correspondence and Sinn Fein 459
Court-Martial Justice in Ireland 461
Balbriggan 641
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER LEWIS S. GANNETT
LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising: Swarthmore Press Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
" T BELIEVE that since the armistice the present admin-
X istration has made a failure by all the tests that we
can apply." Mr. Hoover's unsparing criticism of the Wilson
administration is absolutely justified. It is a pity, indeed,
that the election is so confused by foreign issues that the
electorate cannot pass direct judgment upon the sins of the
Wilson government in the actual conduct of the nation's
business and the working of the governmental machine. In
the bitterness of the quarrel which has arisen over the
treaty, says Mr. Hoover, "the Democratic administration
has so disintegrated as to be incapable of a developed pro-
gram for the great measures of reconstruction which must
follow from the war. We have simply drifted for the last
two years. In political leadership, this party has, at least
for the present, ceased to function." This is the simple
truth, except that the disintegration began long before the
peace treaty. Mr. Wilson has done away with team play
entirely, has paralyzed the usefulness of the Cabinet by
ignoring it and has let his departments go their way, hit
or miss, without coordination. For this alone, leaving out
all question of the treaty and of the crimes against our
civil liberties, the Democratic Party ought to lose every
State in the Union. Nor is this truth weakened by the fact
that the Republicans are also without a program of recon-
struction and that Mr. Harding, in our judgment, is totally
incapable of producing one.
rjlEE NATION'S special correspondent at the Front
JL Porch has resigned, writing that he feels "uncom-
fortable in drawing a salary as a humorist and satirist,"
and that "The Nation really needs, for the lighter touch
that I was supposed to furnish, only to send an ordinary
stenographer with Mr. Harding or to excerpt the press dis-
patches." "When I wrote," concludes The Nation's corre-
spondent, "that Harding, in answer to a heckler's question
'Do you believe that two and two make four,' had replied,
'While sympathizing in a general way with the principle, I
would want to consider carefully the circumstances. It
depends, I think, on what two and two you have in mind,' I
knew the satire to be slight, but still I felt that I was earn-
ing my weekly stipend. Now Senator Harding has com-
pletely invaded my domain and made my craft impossible,
by appropriating practically my exact words. Rest assured
that it is a sense of honor and not professional jealousy
of the candidate that makes my last contribution the in-
closed verbatim press account of Mr. Harding's latest intel-
lectual gymnastics":
The Jim Crow issue was raised here (Oklahoma) for the
first time, the daily Oklahoman submitting the following ques-
tions: Do you or do you not favor race segregation? Do you
or do you not favor separate cars for the white and black races;
separate schools, restaurants, amusement places, etc.? Senator
Harding's answer was: "I have not come from older Ohio to
tell you how to solve your peculiar problems of the South.
Somebody asked what I would do about the racial question.
I cannot come and answer that for you. That is too serious a
problem for some of us to solve who do not know it as you do
in your daily lives. But I would not be fitted to be Pres-
ident if I did not tell you in the South precisely the same
thing I would say in the North. I want you to know that I
believe in equality before the law. That is one of the guaran-
ties of the American Constitution. You cannot give one right
to a white man and deny the same right to a black man; but
while I stand for that particular principle, I want you in Okla-
homa to know that that does not mean, and I do not ever intend
that it mean, that the white man and the black man must be
made to experience the enjoyment of their rights in each other's
company."
GOVERNOR COX and Hamilton Holt alike wonder why
Mr. Taft and Mr. Wickersham and Mr. Oscar Straus
do not bolt Mr. Harding as Mr. Herbert Parsons has done,
now that the Republican candidate has come out against the
treaty. Governor Cox opines it is hardly proper for these
lights to continue to work for Harding upon the theory
that he is going to eat his words, swallow his campaign
promises and break with the Republican anti-Leaguers when
he is elected. Mr. Harding's playing fast and loose with
both sides is certainly a monstrous spectacle; he must, if
elected, betray either the Borahs and Johnsons or the Tafts
and Wickershams. The truth is that the latter stick by
Mr. Harding — for whom it is impossible that they can have
a high opinion intellectually — because they are thick and
thin partisans and will not bolt under any circumstances.
436
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2885
How can they, in view of what they said about Theodore
Roosevelt when he undertook to wreck the party in 1912?
Mr. Harding knows this and takes advantage of it, with the
result that the whole thing becomes nothing but hocus-
pocus practiced upon the innocent voter and affords another
clear illustration of the way party chains operate to make
men do violence to their consciences. Nor will this situation
change now that Mr. Cox has established the fact that
four changes proposed by Mr. Taft during the Paris con-
ference were embodied in the League of Nations, and five
each made by Messrs. Root and Hughes. This merely in-
creases the likelihood of a determined Republican drive to
put us into the League as soon as Mr. Harding is elected—
a drive that only the "irreconcilables" can stop.
SENATOR HARDING'S proposal for a new Cabinet
office to deal with the social welfare of the United
States merits praise as one of the few really constructive
suggestions that have come from the candidates. The ad-
mirable work done by the Children's Bureau under Julia
Lathrop's able guidance has pointed the way ; but there are
limitless fields of activity, now either wholly ignored by
the Federal Government or barely touched by some division
of one or other of the departments, which the Government
should enter. Such a problem, for instance, as providing
great areas, now destitute, with adequate nursing and medi-
cal service must at least be studied by Washington. It
stands to the credit of Governor Smith of New York that
he has called, though as yet vainly, upon the Legislature at
Albany to move in that direction. A Department of Hu-
manity— what might it not do for the United States and
all its people if it had but a tithe of the money we devote
to the instruments of death and destruction? Meanwhile,
we hear encouraging rumors from Marion that Mr. Harding
and his associates are actually planning the Department of
Public Works for which Mr. Hoover is contending, and that
Mr. Hoover is to be its head. If anything like that is really
in prospect, the Senator's stock should rise not a little. Mr.
Hoover's wise suggestion has been to combine in one bureau
— to replace the existing Department of the Interior — all
the various engineering and development functions now dis-
tributed among various departments — to take the Panama
Canal, for instance, and the rivers and harbors and other
civilian tasks away from the War Department, where they
in no wise belong, and, together with the Alaskan Railroad
and a host of other engineering and planning enterprises, to
place them under one head in a scientifically organized and
managed department. That would be a step forward which
would redound to the honor of any Administration that
achieved it.
PEACE in Poland at last! We are so glad to welcome
it that we care not at all whether Poles or Russians
got the better of the boundary dispute, or whether their haste
to end the strife marks great Bolshevist weakness or does
not. We can only rejoice that another bit of the tortured
earth is freed from the most horrible of scourges ; that the
blood-letting which has gone steadily on in Poland and
eastern Russia for more than six terrible years has come
to an end. There ought to be Te Deums in every church
on earth, and a resolute determination on the part of all
humanitarians to stop any further hostilities in Russia. The
Wrangel enterprise is now actually — if dispatches tell the
truth — to be headed by the redoubtable French general with
the German name, Weygand, with the full aid of the French
Republic. Against that aggression every friend of the French
people ought to cry out, for it is a dire blow to the
already fading reputation that France acquired during its
defense of its own soil. As for the Bolsheviki, they will be
taunted now for having made peace so cheaply; it will be
said that they are yellow as well as red; that they were
compelled to grant better terms than they first offered. It
will be forgotten that at the beginning they offered amaz-
ingly generous terms — more territory than the British asked
them to — and actually tried to compel the blood-guilty Polish
Government to promise land to the widows and orphans of
the men who wantonly invaded Russian territory. Surely
this was the most humane peace condition ever demanded of
one antagonist by another. The whole peace negotiation
with Poland reflects enduring credit on Petrograd.
IT is with a sinking heart and a sense of the desperate
tragedy of Ireland that one reads Mr. Lloyd George's
angry refusal to face the facts. Mr. Asquith calls it a
"declaration of insolvency." It is worse; it is a declaration
of war. There has been war in Ireland, but unavowed; and
believers in the British sense of fair play had hoped that
recognition of the facts would bring a new spirit, and that
the publicity which has been given the police "reprisals"
would bring a revulsion of feeling throughout England. It
is not so; Mr. Lloyd George calls the police "these gallant
men who are doing their duty in Ireland" and Sinn Fein a
"murder gang." After toadying to Sir Edward Carson's-
threats of force, Mr. Lloyd George now mounts a moral
horse and says that to give Ireland freedom now would
mean being "bullied by assassins." A free Ireland, he says,
would mean the constant threat of war, the necessity of
conscription in England, and, because of Ulster, "civil war
at our own door." But England has civil war at her door
now; and cannot England learn from the generous response
to her own generous policy in South Africa what would be
the result of generosity, or even justice, to Ireland? Mr.
Lloyd George does not yet believe that Ireland is a nation
of Irishmen, not one of Englishmen under another name;
Mr. Asquith and Viscount Grey and other Englishmen who
have long been half -blind are seeing new light; but until
the rest of England wakes up sufficiently to force Lloyd
George to change his course the Irish question cannot even
begin to be solved.
ONE more coat of whitewash has been given to the
American administration in Haiti in the report of
Major General John A. Lejeune, Commanding General of
the Marine Corps, on the work of his Marine forces in Haiti
— who ever heard of a general censuring his subordinates
under such circumstances? — and in Secretary Daniels's
covering letter. Secretary Daniels explains that "the orders
given by me were uniformly to all officers to regard them-
selves as friendly brothers of the Haitians." We suppose he
includes in his friendly attitude his own approval of the
recommendation of his Judge Advocate General a year ago
to set aside the verdict of a court-martial against an officer
who admitted ordering his troops "to shoot all native pris-
oners captured by them if such prisoners were considered
cacos or persons in revolt." General Lejeune finds the coun-
try peaceful; he was actually able to travel through the
country without a guard and found no evidence of hostility.
But before the American occupation, lone American women
\/
Oct. 20, 1920]
The Nation
437
could and did ride through the country districts unmolested.
He found "throughout Haiti a strong sentiment of grati-
tude to the Marines." Naturally ; Haitians who had showed
themselves ungrateful in the past had had their salaries
stopped, if not worse. Why should they not be grateful?
General Lejeune remarks that he "found in the guardhouse
several marines who had been tried by court-martial for
engaging in brawls with Haitians." And he comments:
"Affairs of this kind are of course very regrettable but are
nevertheless unavoidable." Such partisan "investigation" will
not do; Congress must send a fearless and unbiased com-
mission to Haiti, and witnesses must be safeguarded against
reprisals. And our marines must come out and leave Haiti
free.
GENEROUS and just and heaven-sent at this particular
hour — these are the only words to apply to the action
of the British Government in preparing their plan to retreat
from Egypt and to live up to the solemn Gladstonean pledge
to let that country go her own way. The more the details
of the arrangement leak out, the better they sound. True,
we do not yet know the full scope of the release, and the
plan has yet to go before the Egyptians for ratification and
acceptance — their various leaders in Paris are reported to
have accepted it. But in an hour of rampant imperialism, of
cynical disregard for the rights of small nations and sub-
ject peoples, this action is like a refreshing breeze, all the
more arousing because we Americans are so guilty in Haiti
and Santo Domingo. But how, if England can be so just to
, Egypt, can her Government still refuse to be equally unselfish
and enlightened toward India and Ireland ? That the British
did many admirable things in Egypt will not be denied.
Their experience with the Egyptians proves, however, that
it is by no means enough to improve the courts, develop the
railroads, increase the crops, and better the schools and the
public health. The English have never been able to win
the regard of the natives; mankind is getting beyond that
stage in which peoples accept favors handed down from
above by those who rule without the consent of the gov-
erned. Still, it is possible heartily to approve Lloyd George's
decision to confine English relationship to Egypt to some-
thing corresponding to that between Cuba and the United
States.
"I HAVE come," began Mrs. Arthur G. Hayes, of the
1 Civil Liberties Bureau, "to see if Mount Vernon is a
city where free speech is prevented " whereupon Police-
Lieutenant Silverstein answered her question by taking her
and two men who made much the same remark to Police
Headquarters. The seal of the law was thus put on extra-
constitutional government in Mount Vernon by order of no
less a person than Mayor Kincaid. The Mayor has taken
unto himself powers that even the Department of Justice
might consider arbitrary. By an ancient city ordinance re-
cently revived, no open air meetings may be held in Mount
Vernon without a permit from the Mayor; the Mayor dis-
approves of socialism ; as a result no Socialist meetings may
be held. Little things like the Constitution of the United
States mean nothing to Mayor Kincaid. Special Counsel
Esser, of Mount Vernon, took the stand that the ordinance
was unconstitutional and advised the three persons arrested
to make a test case of their detention; Mayor Kincaid ac-
cordingly suspended Mr. Esser and will ask the Common
Council to make his suspension permanent. Not for nothing
have the dragons' teeth of autocracy been sown for eight
years by the Administration ; from coast to coast the fearful
crop is being gathered in.
THE railroads are taking great pride in the improved
showing they are making in the handling of freight.
Thus they are setting forth that the amount of freight
handled by the railroads in August broke all records for
that month by 4,000 car loads. In July the average mileage
per freight car increased to 25.7 miles per day, or 4.4 miles
per day more than the record for July, 1919. The Pennsyl-
vania system delivered 15,212 cars of coal in May, 1920,
and in August ran the figure up to 41,849. In August,
8,616 cars of ore were loaded in Cleveland, as contrasted
with 2,759 in March and 5,045 in May. Taking the country
as a whole, there were 3,704 freight trains dispatched daily
in August as against 3,538 in July. The number of locomo-
tives awaiting repairs, or undergoing them, has been re-
duced from 1,600 a day at the termination of Federal con-
trol to 1,000 at the beginning of September, while "bad
order" freight cars have been decreased from 26,000 per day
in the same period to 8,700. Individual roads are making
special efforts to speed up unloading, to enlarge the load
per car, and to increase the car mileage. Thus, the Chesa-
peake & Ohio has increased its average freight car mileage
by 33 per cent, contrasting July, 1920, and July, 1919. The
New York Central is setting forth in display advertising
the very considerable equipment orders it has placed and
the rapid progress made in restoring the broken down equip-
ment turned over to it by the Government. All this, if true,
is distinctly encouraging, especially as the coal situation in
the East appears to be much improved. Evidently the rail-
roads are realizing that this is their last chance to show
that railroads managed for private profit can and will serve
the public. Time will prove whether they will be successful,
or whether they will yield to the old temptations to run the
roads with sole regard for private profit.
OUR new poetry is beginning to strike the imagination
of Europe. In the Mercure de France (August 1)
Jean Catel is graceful and sound on the work of Edward
Arlington Robinson. But it is clear that John Gould
Fletcher, Carl Sandburg, and Vachel Lindsay correspond
more closely to his preconceived vision of an American
poetry. He is acutest on Miss Amy Lowell. He sees, of
course, that her polyphonic prose is quite unlike Paul Fort,
but makes the curious mistake of allying it to English
blank-verse which he thinks an ungirdled and prosaic form.
No one, however, has more closely noted her "sharp and
almost morbid perception of the external world," and the
"tenuousness of her Japanese 'stylization'." In the Neue
Rundschau for June, Fraulein Claire Goll treats primarily
Masters, Sandburg, and Lindsay with emphasis on what
she feels to be the limitless and dithyrambic element in their
work. Her imagination, more even than M. Catel's, is fired
by what seems to her an appropriate American contrast to
the tameness of European art. She illustrates her articles
by some notably fine versions from the "Chicago Poems"
and the "Spoon River Anthology," and is amusingly well
informed concerning the "little" magazines of the minute.
Both critics have in mind a somewhat mythical America
which they read into our verse. But both are almost as
instructive through their misconceptions as through their
just appreciations.
438
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2885
That League Issue
BUNCOMBE has always been characteristic of political
campaigns; it is particularly characteristic of the
present campaign, and the discussions of the League of
Nations "issue" have been almost 100 per cent flapdoodle.
Both Republicans and Democrats have misrepresented facts
with an almost violent contempt for truth, and the public,
certain only that it is weary of an issue that does not even
remotely touch the pressing economic problems of daily life,
will elect Senator Harding not only because it is utterly sick
of Wilson and his works but because it has come to believe
that Harding will keep us out of the League, out of Europe,
out of war.
We are not so sure. Senator Harding is a master of am-
biguous utterance. In the same speech in which he declared
himself "against the proposed League" and said "I do not
want to clarify these obligations; I want to turn my back
on them; it is not interpretation but rejection that I am
seeking," he also predicted that "we shall have an associa-
tion of nations for the promotion of international peace, but
one which shall so definitely safeguard our sovereignty and
recognize our ultimate and unmortgaged freedom of action
that it will have back of it not a divided and distracted senti-
ment but the united support of the American people." Sen-
ator Borah and Senator Johnson appear satisfied with this.
It is certainly far enough from the Senator's previous state-
ments that "if the League has been so entwined and inter-
woven into the peace of Europe that its good must be pre-
served in order to stabilize the peace of that continent, then
it may be amended or revised" (August 28), and "We are all
agreed now that amendment or revision and reconstruction
is possible and vastly better than reservations" (September
5). But to us it sounds like straddling, like a step toward
acceptance of a modified league. Lloyd George thinks that
after the elections the United States will come into the
League. We fear it will — unless a sufficiently determined
group of wilful men stand firm. There has been no clear-
cut unambiguous statement from Senator Harding about
this issue. He is against "this league" ; he is for an "asso-
ciation of nations"; he is against Article X; he is for the
Hague Tribunal, and the Root plan of a League Tribunal.
Big business wants America in the League. The govern-
ments of Europe want America in the League, and are ready
to make concessions, modifications, interpretations, amend-
ments, or reservations, to win our support, and Senator
Harding has not yet indicated that he will not be bought
upon such terms, or what changes he would demand. The
United States elected Woodrow Wilson President upon the
issue "He kept us out of the war," and five months after the
election Woodrow Wilson plunged us into the war; shall it
elect Senator Harding upon the issue "He'll keep us out of
the League" only to find itself, five months after, facing
another cold plunge?
Throughout the campaign the fundamental defects of the
League have been neglected. There has been no discussion
of its form, guaranteeing to the great powers associated
against Germany in the late war a perpetual domination
over the small nations, the neutrals, and their late enemies ;
there has been no protest against the nullifying provision
that no amendment can be made without the unanimous
agreement of all members of the Council of the League, nor
against the majority control of that Council by the five
"great powers"; no campaign voice has been raised to de-
mand that the League be democratized, that it be made rep-
resentative of and responsible to the peoples of the world,
rather than solely to the governments, at a time when gov-
ernments, and particularly the governments of the four
dominant powers, are acting with an arbitrariness and irre-
sponsibility almost unique in recent history. Instead, there
has been unmitigated poppycock ; talk of England's six votes
in the League, talk of solving the Irish problem by present-
ing it to the League, talk of what Article X may or may
not be interpreted to mean. The British Empire has indeed
six votes in the Assembly of the League, but the Assembly
has no power, and if it had, Franklin Roosevelt's cynical
reply holds true: the United States, without a semblance of
right, controls the votes of half a dozen Caribbean republics
which are at present pocket boroughs of the Navy Depart-
ment. The Irish case might indeed be presented to the
Council of the League, but the Council can take no action
unless it be unanimous, and with Mr. Lloyd George's British
Government represented on the Council, unanimous action
of any help to Ireland would be impossible.
Whatever may be the merits of the various controversies
between protagonists and antagonists of the League, such as
the present Wilson-Spencer dispute, there emerges from this,
as indeed from all other clarification, defense and explana-
tion by the League's most distinguished champion, the cer-
tainty that his panacea for world peace was conceived in
secrecy and intrigue. The American people, as indeed the
French and British and Italian and every other people,
have a right to know every single word that was said by
their representatives at Paris or Versailles; no man, how-
ever highly placed, has a right to conceal from them any
promise or any statement made on their behalf or in their
name; and one of the greatest among the many Wilson be-
trayals is this practice, he himself so unsparingly con-
demned, of a vicious secret diplomacy which led to such
signal failure at Paris, and continues in Mr. Colby's star-
chamber methods at Washington.
But Mr. Harding does not denounce secret diplomacy; he
does not promise that all his dealings with foreign peoples
or governments will be open and aboveboard; he shows no
penetration of the fundamental vices of Weltpolitik which
gave birth to the war and to the abortive League covenant,
nor any vision of a generous league of peoples meeting the
tragedy of the after-war world in a spirit of reconciliation
and cooperation. He uses the League merely as an instru-
ment for attack upon the Wilson Administration, and the
Democrats reply with the fair phrases and idealistic catch-
words which inspired the world two years ago, but which
were not realized in and do not apply to the deformed Paris
"Covenant." "Bunk" is the word to apply to the campaign
talk about the League. The League as formed has not
stopped war in Europe, and even with the participation of
the United States it would not and could not stop wars, for
it is an instrument of the Great Powers which are responsi-
ble for the twenty-odd wars in Europe today. And Senator
Harding's "outright" repudiation of the League leaves us
with no conviction that, once elected, he too will not lead
us by a camouflaged route into the dishonored League.
Oct. 20, 1920]
The Nation
439
Spies and Spying
NO more striking evidence of the allegation that in war
hostile nations exchange characteristics can be found
than in the development of espionage in the United States.
A recent dispatch to the New York Evening Sun places the
annual cost of government spies at $50,000,000, but admits,
no doubt correctly, that "Uncle Sam is spending considerably
more than that sum." When the faithful historian attempts
to weigh the good and evil results of our participation in the
war, he will balance against the valor of our troops and the
striking technical achievements of mobilization and trans-
port, the growth of a loathsome cancer in the democracy at
home. The destructive effects of war on all decent impulses,
on humanity, kindliness, fair play, and honest thought, have
been painfully evident in the last five years. But few who
love America for the ideal that is hers would have believed
possible so grievous and fundamental a departure from in-
herited traditions.
Expanding rapidly, in keeping with the war machine, not
less than four large organizations, official and semi-official,
devoted to detection, infiltrated the entire land. In every
city, town, hamlet, their agents were appointed, usually from
the upper walks of life, friends of friends in the original
organization nuclei, or members of local branches of security
and defense societies. These amateur sleuths accepted the
important task of passing upon the acts, beliefs, and
thoughts of their neighbors. With the war hysteria rapidly
created by official propaganda and a shrieking press,
straitjacket standards of opinion were rigidly formulated
and the country's thought conscripted into an army of
mental regulars. The phantasm of German intrigue, pass-
ing from mouth to mouth, spread easily in a country where
hundreds of thousands still believe that arms are stored in
Catholic Church basements with which Knights of Colum-
bus drill regularly. It is an ancient story, but the people of
today are not informed of the Spanish Inquisition, the Cal-
vinistic persecutions, the Titus Oates plots, and the other
Terrors, nor would they, even if informed, apply the obvious
moral. The present is always a different story! Yet at
least American history, excepting the minor febrility during
the Alien and Sedition Acts, over one hundred years ago, had
been singularly free from Russo-Prussian methods. But
now not only was the Hun at the gates — he was among us.
That scholarly professor who had studied in Leipzig and
would not join in reviling all German science; that lover of
fair play who remarked that the Germans were putting up
a great fight ; that student of affairs who alleged that Italy's
motives seemed less lofty than those of the other Allies ; that
sincere preacher unable readily to accept the gospel of the
Mannings and the Hillises that "Jesus was no mollycoddle
pacifist" ; that peaceable old farmer with the German name,
suspiciously minding his own business and not mingling
with the "Soys" at the store; that employer who would not
promptly discharge his faithful German employees, or those
of German descent; that "defeatist," who said that the war
Would last a long time and that Germany would be hard to
beat; that optimist who said that victory would be easy and
that there was no need of extending ourselves ; that humani-
tarian who did not believe babies of any nationality should
be starved, not even German ones; that economist who
thought that the expenses of the war should be raised wholly
by taxation ; that liberal who quoted Thomas Jefferson, Wen-
dell Phillips, or Abraham Lincoln on the subject of rights
and liberties; that philosophical radical, anticipating by two
years Woodrow Wilson's opinion that this was a commercial
war ; that young fellow who said honestly that he didn't like
the idea of getting shot: each one of these was reported to
the authorities. The acquaintance with whom he rode daily
in the train, the "friend" with whom he lunched at the club,
the fellow worker at the next desk, the nodding acquaintance
who strolled over for a bit of a chat about the war, these
listened, often agreeing; they duly noted, they transcribed,
they transmitted to Washington. Meantime they also spread
the report, for there's nothing like giving a dog a bad name,
and no hearsay rumor was too vague, too casual, to be glori-
fied into a Washington department dossier, to be trans-
formed in turn into an efferent force to hunt, to persecute,
and, in the language of the day to "get" the object of sus-
picion. If possible his job was taken away from him by
false and malicious reports, with the implication to any
hesitant employer that he, too, might be suspected. The loss
of the job then became proof of guilt, to be used for further
persecutions. The opportunities for satisfying personal
grudges were immense. The informer, of course, always
remained safely invisible, incognito, and the victim was
given no chance to clear himself. Innocent persons might
be persecuted, but the excuse that Blasco Ibanez so effec-
tively placed in the mouths of German officers was as cur-
rent here, "Maybe, but this is war, and the country must be
given the benefit of the doubt."
What a tragic farce it all was! What a jest to perpetrate
on a nation proud of its sense of humor! Judge Anderson,
United States District Attorney in Massachusetts at that
time, and therefore well informed, found 99x/2 per cent of all
the alleged plots entirely spurious. And doubtless the re-
maining one-half per cent, like the Administration beer of
equal content, was exceedingly thin. Bernstorff's recent
memoirs reveal his appreciation of being credited with a
far-reaching organization which existed only in minds bent
on "seein' things at night."
Indeed the great German spy system in America was but
another colossal myth, the deep-laid Teuton conspiracies:
newspaper yarns, motion picture scenarios, dime novel plots.
Except the self-proclaimed German agents — the Boy-Eds,
Papens, and von Igels, unearthed by their own conspicuous
acts and the ubiquitous British secret service long before
our entry into the war, who were the super plotters, the
"master spies"? A few miserable Hindus, a handful of in-
surgent Irish, some scattering loose-tongued aliens and hair-
brained radicals were the only minnows in our vast net.
Not a single first-class spy was caught, and had such existed
it is doubtful whether any one on the fifty million dollar
salary roll could have recognized him. For the great one-
half per cent efficient army of gum-shoe informers was 99^
per cent in one respect only. It was a detective force of
Americans to detect Americans, as the honor roll of an
Archibald Stevenson "list" made thoroughly clear.
The war has been over for two years, sanity is slowly
returning, and the sick old world is trying to throw off the
poison injected by men loudly boasting 100 per cent Amer-
icanism, but with no real concept of American ideals, no
instinct of honor and square dealing. When justifying their
sneaking and spying on friends and neighbors by refuge to
440
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2885
"patriotism," and the allegation that the Hun was in our
midst, they were, after all, right. They themselves were the
Huns— shadow Huns, if you will, the foes within of de-
mocracy.
The virus still remains in our body politic. Red-hunting
has replaced Hun-hunting with the same injustices, the
same persecution of decent and harmless persons, the same
letter-steaming and telephone tapping. The infection of the
spy idea has permeated other departments of the Govern-
ment. The prohibition amendment has opened a new para-
dise for under-cover informants. Not needed to enforce
the law, they are merely furnishing endless opportunities
for graft, bribery, and law-breaking on their own part.
The public, of course, pays the bills in staggering taxes.
The New York police department has just been handed an
extra $100,000 to help its work on the utterly unsolved
Wall Street explosion mystery, but thus far federal and
municipal agents have succeeded only in arresting, terrify-
ing and beating up a few innocent alien laborers. Private
industry, meanwhile, has taken a leaf from the Government
book, as the Interchurch steel report so graphically revealed,
and the political opinions of workmen rather than the qual-
ity of their work are becoming in many instances the deter-
minants of their employment. How long will the American
people stand for all this? How long will they continue to
pay for a Czarist system of espionage, never needed, never
in the least justified in this country, which poisons the well-
springs of our national life, creates ill-will, distrust and
hatred — of all things best spared in the world just now?
"Until it is eliminated," to quote Judge Anderson, "decent
human relations cannot exist between the employers and em-
ployees, or even among employees," which means that decent
human relations cannot exist at all until the spy is routed
out of American life.
The German Shipping Plot
THAT another German plot to injure the United States
has been discovered must now be apparent to every
one who peruses the daily press. The contract between the
Hamburg-American Line and the Harriman shipping in-
terests has been so beclouded by charges and counter-
charges, by criminations and recriminations, by revelations
as to the conduct of Hamburg-American officials during the
war, that any reader is entitled to feel that the Germans
have been caught once more at their old tricks. True,
Admiral Benson is most emphatically in favor of the con-
tract, and somehow one does not regard a Harriman as the
kind of person who readily has the wool pulled over his
eyes; but even this will not avail. Plainly, America has
been gulled once more.
Yet the simple facts of the case are worth recalling.
What is the one outstanding difficulty in the way of the
establishment of a great American merchant marine? It
is that while we have the ships and the men to man them
obviously we lack technical experience and knowledge in
the handling of ocean-going vessels. No one can go into the
business of running ships with complete success if his busi-
ness has hitherto been the buying of bonds or the selling
of automobiles. This business has its technical difficulties
and pitfalls, like any other trade which requires experts to
manage it. No new owner of American tramp ships can
hope to compete off hand with the great English firms whose
experience in handling tramp steamers has been acquired
by more than a century of familiarity with the handling of
cargo vessels. Such a family as the Runcimans of Newcastle-
on-Tyne, for instance, inherits skill in this field from the
labors of four successive generations. All the great English,
French, and German lines have brought together technical
staffs of the highest training and of long service; and these
were kept together during the war even when the ships of
the various lines were taken over for war purposes by
their governments. No such staffs existed in America when
the war broke out, with possibly two or three exceptions.
They cannot be created over night. Every new group of
capitalists which since the sudden expansion of our fleet has
entered the field with the idea of running ships on regular
routes or of handling tramps that wander from harbor to
harbor, has been confronted with this difficulty.
It is no wonder, therefore, that Americans like Mr. Harri-
man and Admiral Benson saw in the opportunity of bringing
together American ships and German technical skill an ar-
rangement the advantages of which were overwhelmingly
on the American side. The German lines are stripped of
vessels; up to this time they have been able to purchase no
vessels abroad, not even to repurchase any of their old ves-
sels turned over to the Allies. They may not be able to
build or buy for years to come. Naturally they welcome the
opportunity to turn over their former trade lines to Ameri-
can ships, giving them all their facilities, such as docks and
wharves in foreign ports, and the benefit of their technical
knowledge and equipment so that they may keep their staffs
intact toward the day when in the far distant future they
may be able to reestablish their own great fleets. The
informal initiative in this matter came from the United
States and at the very time the contract was concluded
at least a half-dozen other countries were seeking the privi-
leges which Mr. Harriman obtained. Of course, this will not
satisfy the super-patriots who think that we should never
deal with Germans again, but it looks to us suspiciously
like good American business sense and enterprise.
It may well be that certain clauses of the contracts are
vague, and that the arrangement, if successful, will improve
Germany's trade status and that ships built by American
taxpayers' money will help to bring about this result. It does
not seem true to us that rates may be so fixed by the Germans
as to enable them to underbid us in the export markets of the
world. There is, moreover, a clause in the contract that it
may be terminated by either side if it does not work out well.
If the Germans profit unduly the arrangement can be ended
at once. We have no hesitation in saying that if this contract
does not stand Great Britain or some Scandinavian country
will be remarkably happy to take it over. At any rate, the
contract is now before the public. If there are jokers in it
which are not apparent to the naked eye, they can be un-
earthed by the experts. If Congress wishes to appoint a
committee to overhaul the whole shipping situation, as it is
likely to, the facts are now open to it. Now the contract is
being attacked, as Admiral Benson has said, chiefly by rival
business interests, and he himself regards the contract as a
"heaven-sent opportunity." Certainly, we have not too
many such. The task of keeping an American fleet upon
the seas is going to be tremendously difficult and will call
for wisdom and statesmanship in unusual degree. Can use
really be found for all the ships now in commission as well
as purchasers? Truly, Admiral Benson is justified in seek-
ing legitimate aid in any quarter.
Oct. 20, 1920]
The Nation
441
The Gulf of Henry James
ACROSS a vast gulf those who like Henry James view
with contempt those who do not, and in return those
who do not like him view with incredulity those who do.
Neither his alleged obscurity nor his avowed cosmopolitan-
ism explains this gulf. Rather may it be ascribed — though
it has not been — to the fact that he attempted, in a demo-
cratic age, to write courtly romances. He did not, of course,
go back for his models to the "Romance of the Rose" or the
"Morte d' Arthur" or Sidney's "Arcadia" or the "Grand
Cyrus." But he did devote himself almost entirely to those
classes in modern society which descend from the classes
represented by the romancers of the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance. His characters, for the most part, do not toil
or spin, do not trade or make war, do not bear children in
pain or bring them up with sacrifices. The persons who do
such things in his novels are likely to be the servants or
dependents of others more comfortably established. His
books consequently lack the interest of that fiction which
shows men and women making some kind of way in the
world — except the interest which can be taken in the arts
by which the penniless creep into the golden favor of the
rich or the socially unarrived wriggle into an envied caste.
Henry James is the laureate of leisure. Moreover, the
leisure he cared to write about concerns itself in the slight-
est degree with any action whatsoever, even games or sport.
Love of course concerns it, as with all novelists. Yet even
love in this chosen universe must constantly run the gauntlet
of a decorum incomprehensible to all but the initiate.
Decorum is what damns James with the larger public.
In one of Chretien de Troyes's romances, Lancelot, on his
way to rescue Guinevere from a most precarious situation,
commits the blunder of riding part of the way in a cart and
thereby brings upon himself, since he is seen doing it, a
disgrace which his most gallant deeds can scarcely wipe
away. Sensible citizens who may have happened upon this
narrative in the twelfth century must have felt mystified
at all this pother much as do their congeners in the
twentieth who stare — and then yawn — at the wounds which
James's heroes and heroines suffer from blunders in-
trinsically no more serious than Lancelot's. How much
leisure these persons must enjoy, the sensible citizen
thinks, to have evolved and to keep up this mandarin
formality! And how little use they make of it! Only
readers accustomed to such decorums can walk entirely at
ease in the universe James constructed. They have, in-
deed, the privileges of a domain unprecedented and un-
matched in modern literature. It is not merely that he is
the most fascinating historian of the most elegant society
of the century. He is the creator of a world immensely
beautiful in its own right: a world of international dimen-
sions, peopled by charming human beings who live graceful
lives in settings lovely almost beyond description; a world
which vibrates with the finest instincts and sentiments and
trembles at vulgarity and ugliness ; a world full of works of
art and learning and intelligence, a world infinitely refined,
a world perfectly civilized. In real life the danger to such a
world is that it may be overwhelmed by some burly rush of
actuality from without. In literature the danger is that
such a world may gradually fade out as dreams do. De-
corums die; it is only the simpler manners of men and
women which live forever.
Jenny Lind
AT a recent charming celebration in New York of the
Jenny Lind Centennial, Mr. Thomas Wise, speaking in
the guise of the late P. T. Barnum, said that no great
singer ever dies, as there is always another great singer
to take his or her place. It was a pretty compliment,
directed most deservedly toward Mme. Frieda Hempel, who
had just given an exquisite impersonation of the "Swedish
nightingale." If it had been entirely true, however, it is
doubtful whether we would be paying tribute today to an
artist who, for most of us at least, would be no more than
a name and a tradition were there nothing else to recom-
mend her. Jenny Lind has been called the greatest singer
of her time. Yet both in voice and in execution she was,
from all accounts, equaled, if not surpassed by her rival,
Grisi, and her successor, Patti. Nevertheless, she had long
reigned supreme in the great Continental opera houses
when P. T. Barnum, relying on her European reputation,
as well as on his own inward conviction that the public was
gullible, brought her to this country by means of a fabulous
contract, without either having seen or heard her. Barnum's
faith in his own deductions was more than justified. The
famous cantatrice stayed over here for about two years,
giving, in that time, fully one hundred concerts, and making
a fortune both for her manager, and for the numerous char-
ities to which, with characteristic generosity, she donated
her share of the receipts.
Yet her prolonged popularity can scarcely be attributed
either to the spectacular advertising methods of her
showman-impressario, or to his practice of capitalizing
her generosity. Sensationalism seldom has lasting effects,
and certainly no amount of glorified press-agenting could
make any one so loved as Jenny Lind was loved. There
must indeed have been some compelling quality of spirit or
mind, some flowering virtue or grace that could so dis-
tinguish her art above that of her great contemporaries,
and keep her memory fresh and fragrant so long after her
passing. Wherever she went, she was received with honors.
People literally fought their way into her concerts, where
she would arouse them to storms of almost terrifying en-
thusiasm. We have, in our own day, witnessed much deep
and touching devotion to singers. We have seen audiences
rise in reverence when Marcella Sembrich came upon the
stage. We have watched lines of men and women stand
for hours in the bitter cold, and for as many more again in
the stifling heat, in order to hear Caruso sing. But only
once have we known people to go mad with the disappoint-
ment on being refused admission, and beat with their fists
against the closed doors of an overcrowded concert hall.
This was at the recital of a Russian singer who made no
pretence either to the art of Sembrich or to a voice of
gold, but who merely tried to sing her native folk songs
in the way her hearers would understand. Jenny Lind, too,
sang simple ballads and folk songs, with a wealth of ten-
derness and simplicity that has done more to hallow her
name than all the dazzling fioratura with which she embel-
lished her arias. And it was because she sang them, to
use Beethoven's phrase, "vom Herzen zum Herzen," that
the world pauses now, as it did then, to do her homage, and
in pausing to do homage to a great artist and a lovely woman
recalls us most happily from the anxieties and the material-
ism of the hour.
442
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2885
Turning the Light on Ireland
WHEN, four weeks ago, The Nation began sending out
invitations to persons who it thought would be
willing to become members of a Committee of One Hundred
for the investigation of outrages in Ireland, it felt confident
that the response would be generous and nation-wide. The
result thus far has more than met expectation. The Com-
mittee of One Hundred has grown to be a committee of
nearly 150, and the number continues to grow. "Add name
Cardinal Gibbons to Committee" was the stirring message
brought by telegraph on the day these lines are written. The
presence of the venerable and beloved Cardinal on the Com-
mittee— only one of the numberless services which he has
rendered to his country and to humanity — emphasizes more
than almost anything else could do the national, nonpartisan,
and nonsectarian character of that body. United States Sen-
ators and Congressmen, governors, mayors and city officials,
Catholic and Protestant bishops and clergymen, Jewish
rabbis, editors of conservative and liberal journals, uni-
versity and college presidents and professors, lawyers,
authors, officials of labor organizations, business men, men
and women long and widely known for their work in varied
lines of social betterment — all have given their names and
their influence, not at all because any of their own pro-
fessional or public interests will be directly served thereby,
but solely that they may, by helping in the determination of
facts, aid the people of Ireland and Great Britain in a time
of desperate need and make a tangible contribution to the
cause of world peace and happiness.
It was fondly hoped that the announcement of the forma-
tion of such a Committee, divorced as the Committee was to
be from consideration of any mere political questions, might
strengthen the influences which were working for the release
of Mayor MacSwiney and other hunger-strikers who were
suffering and dying for Ireland in Irish and English prisons
and jails. It was hoped that, once the nonpartisan and
friendly character of the proposed inquiry was known, and
the deep concern of representative American citizens over
the grave events in Ireland was realized, there might be
some mitigation cf the lawless outbreaks which were terror-
izing Ireland from one end to the other. Those hopes, un-
fortunately, have been disappointed. With the Commission
of inquiry on the point of beginning its sittings, the dis-
tressing events in Ireland must not, of course, be prejudged.
Day by day, however, the newspapers have continued to tell
the appalling tale of murder, assault, and robbery, of towns
and villages sacked and burned, of whole populations terror-
ized and rendered homeless, of mails rifled and public build-
ings raided, of police, soldiers, and citizens fighting in the
streets or sniping at one another from ambush or conceal-
ment. The air is heavy with charges and counter-charges,
allegations and denials. British partisans blame Sinn Fein,
Sinn Fein blames the British, and many outsiders blame
both. What are the facts in this unprecedented reign of
terror? At whose door is to be laid the responsibility?
These are the questions which the Committee, acting through
a Commission whose members it is to select, will undertake
to answer.
It was not to be expected that the undertaking, novel as it
is from the point of view of ordinary procedure, should pass
without a great variety of criticism. Comments of every
shade of dissent and approval have been received ; some have
been based on a misunderstanding of the purpose of the
Committee and the Commission; a few have been ill-tem-
pered. One writer affects to see in the proposal some deep-
laid scheme for setting the United States and Great Britain
by the ears, thereby endangering peace rather than further-
ing it. Another sees in it a British plot to draw a red herring
across the path of British wrongdoing. Still another per-
ceives in it an example of Sinn Fein propaganda. Some
hold that the plan constitutes an unwarranted interference
in the affairs of the British Empire; others that it is a
constructive effort toward improving international rela-
tions; some express doubt whether the project can be effec-
tive; others see in it a hopeful method of allaying one of
the greatest sources of national and international irrita-
tion. It has been varyingly held practical, idealistic, impu-
dent, dignified, constructive, destructive, sensible, foolish,
epoch-making, unimportant.
These criticisms, whatever their source and kind, are grate-
fully received, not only because it is upon the public opinion
that they represent that the success of the inquiry depends,
but also because they give an opportunity to state once more,
and in fuller fashion than has heretofore appeared neces-
sary, precisely what the Committee of One Hundred stands
for and what it is hoped the investigation by the Commis-
sion will accomplish. From the very inception of the idea, ■
every important step in the organization of the Committee
and in the work of preparing for the Commission has been
given to the press of this country and of Great Britain. The
text of the invitation which was extended, the names of
members of the Committee, the names and addresses of wit-
nesses invited from Ireland, and the opening of a public
subscription for meeting the expenses of the Commission —
all these things have been made public so far as the press
was disposed to use or circulate the news. In addition,
every reasonable inquiry by mail or telegraph that has
reached the office of The Nation has been answered.
The list of persons to whom invitations have been sent
includes all the members of the United States Senate; many
members of the House of Representatives; the governors of
all the States; the mayors of about 75 leading cities; the
editors of some 20 leading newspapers, including such
papers as the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the
Boston Transcript, the Philadelphia Ledger, and the Pitts-
burgh Leader; some 35 heads of universities or colleges and
professors ; bishops of the Roman Catholic, Protestant Epis-
copal, and Methodist Episcopal churches ; a large number of
heads of labor unions or other labor organizations ; and men
and women in other walks of life. Where the person invited
was a public official, the character and importance of the
office was the only test applied. Where the person invited
was a private citizen, the test of inclusion was the business,
professional, or other interests which he represented as well
as his repute as a public-spirited and fair-minded citizen.
In less than a score of instances were the views regarding
any phase of the Irish question of the persons invited known
to the Editors of The Nation, and in no case has any inquiry
as to such views been made. If the present membership of
the Committee is felt by anyone to lean more to one side
than to another, the preponderance is due solely to the fact
Oct. 20, 1920]
The Nation
443
that some who were invited accepted while others declined.
As for 'the personal opinions of the members regarding Ire-
land, The Nation in most cases does not know them and will
make no effort to ascertain what they are.
It is not proposed that the Committee shall itself conduct
the investigation. With a body of 150 members such a
course would be impracticable. The first function of the
Committee is the choice of a Commission of not exceeding
seven members, which will make the inquiry ; and the ballots
for that purpose are now being sent in. Each member of the
Committee will exercise in the balloting precisely the same
weight as any other. It is hoped that the choice of the Com-
mission will be completed by the time this issue of The.
Nation reaches its readers.
In preparation for the meeting of the Commission a list of
outrages in Ireland is being prepared, and a number of im-
portant witnesses have been invited to come to this country
and testify. Other important witnesses will continue to be
summoned until the Commission begins its sessions.
Once the Commission is ready to take up its duties, however,
the direct connection of The Nation with the inquiry will
cease, and the Commission will prosecute its investigation in
any way and to any extent that it may deem proper.
The Nation has repeatedly stated that the proposed in-
vestigation does not extend to a consideration of any polit-
ical question, but is limited to the determination of the
facts and the fixing of responsibility in the matter of alleged
atrocities in Ireland. It has incorporated the statement in
the invitation which members of the Committee of One
Hundred have accepted, and the same statement will be
made to the Commission. There is no political purpose
in the investigation, and the public may rest assured that the
Commission will carry on its inquiry regardless of the indi-
viduals, factions, or parties that may be affected by it. For
the first time since trouble between England and Ireland
began, an opportunity is now to be afforded to all persons
and parties who have knowledge of outrages in Ireland, by
whomsoever perpetrated, to testify to the facts before an
impartial body having no political connection with the coun-
tries or peoples that are in turmoil, and governed by no other
purpose than that of arriving at the truth regarding the
alleged acts.
Since the last issue of The Nation appeared, an important
contribution to the progress of the investigation has been
received in the form of a statement authorized by Arthur
Henderson, George Lansbury, Robert Smillie, C. T. Cramp,
Robert Williams, and W. C. Anderson, members of the Brit-
ish Labor Party, "strongly deprecating Irish outrages and
more strongly deprecating reprisals," declaring an "inde-
pendent inquiry advisable," and expressing "full sympathy"
with The Nation's proposal, but urging that the inquiry, in
order to be complete, should take place in Ireland. In reply
the editors of The Nation, while expressing their grateful
appreciation of the sympathetic support accorded to the un-
dertaking, have pointed out that the proposed investigation
must go on as planned, in the confident expectation that
neither from the British Government nor from any other
source was opposition or impediment to be anticipated, and
that only in the event of an incomplete result here should
the question of continuing the investigation further in Ire-
land be considered. A full account of the steps which have
been taken in the organization of the Committee and the
Commission has been sent to Mr. Henderson and his asso-
ciates, and it is believed that their cooperation, so far as co-
operation is possible at this time, may be counted upon. In
pursuance of the same policy of perfect frankness and im-
partiality, full accounts of the work and purposes of the
Committee have also been sent to Sir Auckland Geddes and
President De Valera.
The following names are to be added to the lists of mem-
bers of the Committee of One Hundred already published in
The Nation:
His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons, Baltimore, Md.; the Rt. Rev.
James Atkins, Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Nash-
ville, Tenn.; Mary Austin, New York City; Abraham Baroff,
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, New York City;
Mayor Martin Behrman, New Orleans, La.; the Rt. Rev. E.
Thomas Demby, Protestant Episcopal Suffragan Bishop of
Arkansas, Little Rock; Clemens J. France, Seattle, Wash.; Zona
Gale, Portage, Wis.; William Hard, Washington, D. C; the
Rt. Rev. R. L. Harris, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Mar-
quette, Mich.; Mayor John F. Hylan, New York City; John S.
Leahy, St. Louis, Mo.; Bertha H. Mailly, Rand School of Social
Science, New York City; Basil M. Manly, Washington, D. C;
Mrs. Katherine M. Meserole, Bellport, L. I.; the Rt. Rev. H.
C. Morrison, Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South
Leesburg, Fla.; the Rt. Rev. Thomas Nicholson, Bishop of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, Chicago, 111.; Edward N. Nockels
of the New Majority, Chicago, 111.; the Rt. Rev. Charles
Tyler Olmstead, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Central New
York, Utica; the Rt. Rev. E. L. Parsons, Protestant Episcopal
Bishop Coadjutor of California, San Francisco; J. C. Skemp,
International Union of Painters and Decorators, Lafayette,
Indiana; William H. Johnston, President International Machin-
ists' Union, Washington, D. C. ; Archbishop James J. Keane,
Dubuque, Iowa; the Rt. Rev. John J. O'Connor, Bishop of New-
ark, N. J.; J. H. Walker, President Illinois State Federation
of Labor, Springfield; William J. Mulligan, Chairman Knights
of Columbus Committee on War Activities.
The Old Key-Maker
By LESLIE NELSON JENNINGS
The old Key-maker took his file and drew
Its edge across the metal. "This," he said,
"Fits a dark door I never once passed through,
For all I keep the lock." He shook his head,
And gave his vise another turn. "I make
This one to please a fool who offered me
His hoped-for immortality to take —
Shaped like a woman's lips, this little key!
"How can I serve you ? Is it you would gaze
Into the secret garden where is grown
Tomorrow's rose; or fain of Yesterday's
Lost magic, would you wander back alone?'
But I had come there just to watch a while
The old Key-maker bend above his file.
Redwoods
By ALICE CORBIN
Where are the giants
Who could top your boughs,
0 tall Sequoia tree?
Under your shade
We faint, and cry for sun.
444
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2885
Squandering Our Heritage
By GIFFORD PINCHOT
THE people of these United States are the most wasteful
in the world — wasteful in living, wasteful in manu-
facturing, and wasteful in their failure to conserve our
natural resources. Ever since the white man set foot
upon American soil he has been destroying forests and
making no effective provision for their renewal. The early
settlements were built chiefly in the Eastern valleys, which
were covered with unbroken stands of hardwood forest.
In these valleys the early pioneers found the best agricul-
tural land, which they had to clear in order to make it
available for farming purposes— a practice which became
so general that it was accepted as normal and necessary.
As a result we have today almost endless miles of barren
mountain slopes which are producing no crop of any value.
Of the 822,000,000 original acres — matchless miles of
virgin forest— only 137,000,000 now remain, and our
total forest area, good, bad, and indifferent, amounts to
but little more than half of what we once had— 463,000,000
acres to be exact. Of these 137,000,000 are still virgin
forest; 112,000,000 are of second growth, saw timber size;
133,000,000 are also of second growth, but below saw timber
size; and 81,000,000 have been cut over without restocking.
This shows the deplorable condition of what we have left.
The aggregate area of this 81,000,000 acre desert is equiva-
lent to the combined forest areas of Germany, Denmark,
Holland, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Spain, and Portu-
gal. And this is not the whole story of our unproductive
forest land, for there is in addition an enormous area upon
which the growth of real timber is so small in amount and
so inferior in quality that its commercial value is negligible.
Then another enormous difficulty is that the source of
raw material for the wood-using industries has shifted
until the distance between markets and forests is now in
many cases so great as to make shipping prohibitive, or at
least unduly costly and uncertain because of an unsettled
labor situation, inadequate railroad facilities, and congested
shipping conditions.
The real significance of the present forest situation may
be set forth most vividly by considering for a moment the
present condition of the newsprint industry. The begin-
ning was in 1840 when Keller patented his process in
Germany for a wood-pulp grinding machine. The process
was not, however, placed upon a commercial basis until
1854, and it was introduced into the United States by War-
ner Miller as late as 1866. Since then the growth of the
industry in America has been prodigious. Within a half
century it has developed from practically nothing until in
1900 two million cords were consumed and six million in
1919. The amount of pulpwood used annually if stacked
upon an acre would make a solid pile over four miles high.
The estimated value of the paper products derived from
pulp is at present about $780,000,000, made up according to
the War Industries Board as follows: newsprint papers,
$136,000,000; book paper, $125,000,000; paper boards, $156,-
000,000; fine writing paper, $142,000,000; wrapping paper,
$89,000,000, and all other miscellaneous paper, $132,000,000.
The annual per capita consumption of newsprint is now
at least 33 pounds, of all kinds of paper about 100 pounds,
and there is no basis for assuming that it will be materially
less in the near future. Our country was self-supporting in
newsprint as late as 1909 — a decade later we were dependent
upon foreign supplies to the extent of two-thirds of our
newsprint or the raw material from which it is manufac-
tured. It seems to be true that the present newsprint short-
age goes back fundamentally to overcentralization of the
industry during its formative period, and to overcutting and
neglect of the pulp-producing lands of the Northeast and the
Lake States. As late at 1904, for example, most of the Wis-
consin pulp mills found their supplies within the State.
About ten years later it became necessary for the same mills
to procure considerable quantities of wood from a distance
of 700 to 750 miles and some wood is now being shipped to
the Wisconsin mills from a distance of 1,000 to 1,200 miles.
Furthermore, it is clear that in the not distant future they
must go farther yet. The lumber industry is necessarily
and decidedly migratory. It must move from place to place,
always following the supply of raw material. But the eco-
nomic conditions of the pulp industry are different. There
the initial investment is so heavy that it prohibits a migra-
tory existence, and requires the transportation of raw ma-
terials from remote regions.
Forest depletion in America has reached a critical stage,
which is, unfortunately, not realized by the public in gen-
eral. People still think that conditions can be remedied in
a few months — an entirely incorrect and untenable point of
view. There appears to be little hope of relieving our news-
print and other paper shortage by any possible increase of
importation. The pulpwood resources of Canada have been
grossly overestimated, and the utmost possible importations
from Europe will do little more than temporarily alleviate
the existing situation. There is greater hope in the develop-
ment of untouched native supplies — immense supplies in the
national forests of the West which are still almost wholly
undeveloped. The Tongass National Forest in southeastern
Alaska has about seventy billion board feet of material suit-
able for pulpwood in a narrow belt along the coast with ade-
quate waterpower and excellent sites available for the loca-
tion of mills. But the forests of the West and Alaska can-
not supply all the demands of the future. Neither would it
be wise, even if it were possible, to localize the industry in
the West and Alaska. Increased production on the severely
cut and continuously burned lands of the East will not only
prolong the life of the existing mills but help stabilize the
industry by restoring our endless mountain waste to produc-
tivity. Idle mountain land has no place in a well-balanced
economic system. It is an economic crime to maintain un-
productive wastes when — if handled properly — the cut-over
forest lands would yield a continuous flow of products to
benefit us and future generations.
The first step in the restoration of these profligate wastes
is the stopping of forest fires, which are the most formidable
foe of our forests. It is our business, as well as our civic
duty, to give our forests adequate protection and provide for
a systematic and scientific renewal of a forest growth on all
soil mainly valuable for growing trees. Increased produc-
tion is, however, not a solution unless it stop the stupid
waste of raw material in the process of manufacture.
Shortage and the high price of wood and woodpulp affect
the whole nation. The restoration of thrifty forests to our
unproductive hillsides is the only thoroughgoing remedy
for a scarcity which is already serious and may soon be-
come critical. We must have wood, and since we can get it
nowhere else, we must grow it at home.
Oct. 20, 1920]
The Nation
445
The Chilean Elections
By CHARLES E. CHAPMAN
BY a majority of one, the electoral vote finally standing
177 to 176, Arturo Alessandri, the Liberal Alliance
candidate, has been declared President of Chile. When the
popular election was held the vote for presidential electors
stood 179 for Alessandri and 175 for Barros Borgono, the
candidate of the National Union, but the final decision as to
who should be the next president lay with a Court of Honor
formed with the consent of both parties to pass on the quali-
fications of the electors. This Court decided in favor of
Alessandri by a vote of five to two, and the Chilean Con-
gress has accordingly proclaimed him president, and has
ended an election which was the greatest and most signifi-
cant that ever took place in Chile.
In the Constitution of 1833, the fundamental document
of Chile, there is the following statement: "There is no
privileged class in Chile." Justice requires one to say that
there has been a steady and notable social advance in
Chilean affairs since that sentence was written, but candor
compels one to add that it never was and is not yet repre-
sentative of the truth. There has always been a more or less
dominant aristocracy in Chile, made up largely of the great
land-owners and the church. For many years they were the
directing force in all branches of Chilean life. The first
great break from traditional influences came during the
presidency of Balmaceda, toward the close of the nineteenth
century. Meeting with tremendous opposition in his efforts
for reform, Balmaceda illegally assumed dictatorial powers.
There followed the revolution of 1891, in which Balmaceda
was defeated, committing suicide rather than surrender to
his opponents.
Balmaceda's reforms, many of which were aimed against
the church, have since his death in great part been attained,
but it is not precisely on their account that he stands out as
a great figure in Chilean history. Rather it is because he is
looked upon as the martyr in the fight on behalf of the
masses. Their cause has made great strides since 1891.
The Conservatives, the traditionalist party in Chilean poli-
tics, are no longer dominant, though they have heretofore
held the balance of power — and may yet. The Liberals are
now the most numerous element, but they have split into
four groups: Liberals proper (Doctrinarios) ; Liberal Dem-
ocrats (or Balmacedists) ; Nationals; and Nationalists. The
Liberals, however, are no longer the chosen prophets of the
people. Two new parties have appeared, one of which, the
Radical, has pushed forward so rapidly that it is now the
most numerous single group in Chilean politics. The Radi-
cals represent what was until recent years a new element in
Chilean society. They contain the bulk of the fast-growing,
educated "middle class." They are the party of the youth
of Chile, standing for social and political reforms which
are not at all "radical," as that word is understood in the
United States, but more in line with what North Americans
would term "progressive." They are bitter enemies of
the traditionalist elements, and are greatly feared by the
church. A second party, the Democrats, is made up mainly
of laborers, whose radicalism is more extreme than that
of the Radicals. They had not heretofore attained to any
considerable power, but the importance of their role in
the recent election cannot be denied. There are also
some other insignificant groups — Socialists, for example.
Straight through and across these groups there is another
line of cleavage, made necessary by the cabinet system and
the election of a president both of which demand a major-
ity. Thus there has sprung into being what amounts to two
parties, the National Union and the Liberal Alliance. Both
have their origin in the Liberal party. Strangely enough,
some members of a single group may belong to the Alliance
and others to the Union. Most of the Liberals, however,
lined up with the Union. The real strength of the Alliance
was the Radical party. The Democrats and Socialists were
also enthusiastic supporters of the Alliance. On the other
hand, the Conservatives threw their weight to the Union.
Both candidates for the presidency — Seiior Alessandri and
Barros Borgono — were not only Liberals, but also Doc-
trinarios, belonging, that is, to the same group, but the
real battle was between the Radicals and Conservatives, as
personified in the opposing candidates.
A natural query on the part of North Americans would
be : What were the issues in the recent campaign ? A study
of the two platforms would lead one to believe that there
were none, for both proclaimed the same things, differing
only in phraseology and in degree. Thus, both came out
strongly for educational reform, emphasizing the same
needs; both stood for the protection of national products;
and both called for legislation on behalf of the workingman.
And yet there is a profound difference between the two
parties, though it. is mainly psychological and exists to a
great extent in the minds of each with respect to the other.
The Union holds that its members are the "true Chileans,"
not opposed to reforms, but wishing to advance toward them
at a safe and sure pace. The Alliance considers the Union-
ists reactionaries, opposed to any and all reform, lest it
injure their selfish interests, and its own members to be
progressives, standing for a hastening of internal reforms.
The Union regards them as dangerous innovators, ready to
ruin the country to vent their spite on the church and the
aristocracy.
These feelings found perfect expression in the two can-
didates. Barros is the type of man who would appeal to
certain elements of the better educated classes. Member of
an old Chilean family which has produced one of the great-
est historians in Hispanic-American historiography (Barros
Arana) , he, too, has won distinction as historian and man of
letters; for years he was a professor in the University of
Chile; his political achievements have been more than
usually notable, especially in his capacity of Minister of For-
eign Affairs ; and to round out a long, varied, and successful
career, he is at present one of the leading figures in the most
powerful banking institution of the country. Nor can it be
claimed that he is an out-and-out reactionary. Indeed, his
nomination displeased the Conservatives, because in the past
he has advocated reforms that were unwelcome to the
church; before they would join the Union they exacted cer-
tain pledges from him. Barros is therefore a figure that
commands respect. But he does not possess the divine fire
that wins the multitude.
Alessandri is just the opposite kind of man. He is a new
man, of Italian descent, a self-made man, and a young man
for a Hispanic-American presidential candidate, for he is
only in the forties. For some twenty years he has been well-
known as a lawyer and politician. As Deputy, Senator, and
Cabinet Minister, he has won a reputation for fearlessness
and for moving oratory, such that he is known popularly as
446
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2885
"the Lion of Tarapaca" (the province he represents). He is
distinctly a man for the attack. If Barros is in a sense a
Chilean edition of Nicholas Murray Butler, Alessandri is
another Hiram Johnson. Like the Senator from California
he has a wonderful personal magnetism that binds the crowd
to him body and soul. No man in Chile has been more
severely maligned. Every other person one meets will tell
you of "crooked deals" that Alessandri has been mixed up in,
but the masses either do not believe these charges or do not
care about them. Never have I known a man to be so enthu-
siastically accepted as the prophet of the people.
On June 25 the election was held. In Santiago there were
mounted carbineers and lancers everywhere; policemen and
soldiers, be it said in passing, do not possess the vote. The
day was more like the occasion of a glad picnic, however,
than a riot, for the manifest Alessandri sentiment was over-
whelming, almost to the complete exclusion of any in favor
of Barros. On ensuing days news items were given out pro-
claiming— what seemed incredible — that Barros was win-
ning, or at least making it clear that Alessandri could win
by only a narrow margin. Then indeed there was a little
trouble. Business houses closed (with shutters down),
street cars stopped running, crowds of ragged commoners
filled the center, and soldiers were at all strategic corners.
Now and then there were mild clashes, serious only in that
they might have become worse. Alessandri himself saved
the situation, calling upon the people to return to work. The
prophet had spoken, and all became again serene.
Chile has long been a country of two principal and widely
separated classes, the aristocracy and the rotos (literally,
the "broken"), as the common people are usually called. The
lot of the roto has indeed improved, and many have emerged
therefrom into the comparatively new middle class, but the
majority of Chileans are still utterly poor, illiterate, and
almost without hope. Leading politicians can refer to them
as "canaille" or "rag-bags" (chusma) without fear of dam-
age to their career ; indeed, that happened during the recent
campaign. To be sure, great numbers of the rotos do not
possess the vote, since the law disfranchises those who can-
not read and write, but there are many who do vote. They
certainly do ! For in Chile vote-buying has not been frowned
down by public opinion. In past elections the roto got five
or ten pesos ($1 or $2). This time it was different. The
Alliance organized a League Against Vote-buying, which
their opponents styled a "League to Monopolize Vote-buying
for the Alliance," and the rotos resolved to stand by Ales-
sandri. Unquestionably many votes were bought, and by
both parties, even though the price went up to fifty, a hun-
dred, and as much as two hundred pesos. Many took these
sums from Union supporters, but voted for Alessandri just
the same. But the real heroes, of whom one hears on every
side — I have even heard men of opposite party refer to
them with a certain amount of pride — were the thousands
in all parts of Chile who refused even the semblance
of being bought. In some cases they took the money,
and tore it to shreds before the eyes of their would-be
corrupters. This,, to my mind, is the most admirable
and by all odds most hopeful, sign in Chilean poli-
tics in recent years. It gives one confidence in the future
of Chile. Here there is the making of a real democracy!
Outwardly the Chilean method of electing a president is
quite like our own. The people vote for electors, who a
month later cast ballots for the president. One important
difference in the Chilean system is that electoral districts
are separate. Thus the vote of each province (state) and
even of each department (county) does not go as a unit, but
may, and usually does, split. Speaking generally, northern
Chile, the mining district, went for Alessandri. The Union
displayed most strength in central Chile, an agricultural sec-
tion of vast estates and the nucleus of the country. The far
south, the new and coming Chile, a land of great variety
(though mainly agricultural), leaned toward the Alliance.
Santiago, though in the center, seemed to be all for Alessan-
dri, but on the official return he carried the department by
twenty to nineteen, and lost the province twenty-nine to
twenty-two. Great numbers of those who cheered, sang, and
paraded in his honor must have been non-voting illiterates.
It was five days before the vote of Santiago was declared.
Three days more, and the full count for the country was an-
nounced as 179 for Alessandri to 175 for Barros Borgono.
Not until the last day was the former assured of his ma-
jority. Late in July the electors cast their ballots. One
month afterward Congress was to pass judgment on the
legitimacy of the electoral vote, but at the suggestion of
Eduardo Juarez Mujica, former Chilean Ambassador to the
United States, the Court of Honor was formed instead, and
both parties agreed to abide by its decision.
In addition to the political factors already indicated for
which this election is significant — the rise of a new democ-
racy and the installation in the presidency of the first candi-
date of the people in Chilean history — there are two others
worthy of note. One is that the presidency is returning to
its one-time prestige. Formerly the president was the prin-
cipal element in the Government, even going so far as vir-
tually to choose his successor. The revolution against Bal-
maceda ended that. Then Chile went to the opposite ex-
treme, making Congress the arbiter. In imitation of the
English system, the cabinet, representing the majority in
Congress, took charge of the executive branch. The presi-
dent was merely to "preside," as the king of England
"reigns," but was not to "rule." This system has, however,
proved something of a failure, because of the instability of
Congressional majorities. The average life of a cabinet has
been about three months ; during four months recently there
were four cabinets. Inevitably, therefore, the president has
been recovering prestige and power, even though legally he
is still a figurehead. The importance which all classes attach
to the present election is proof enough that the presidency
is no longer what the victors of 1891 intended it to be. At
the least it amounts to an active party leadership.
It seems inevitable that some change in the method of
choosing the president will be made. The Unionist papers
are advocating the French system, of election by Congress.
There are two preliminary questions that ought first to be
solved, it would seem. Is it possible, or advisable, to have
that system when the president is not in fact an innocuous
abstraction like the president of France? Is it advisable, or
possible, to have it until such time as a thoroughgoing re-
form shall have removed Congress from even the suspicion
of the venality and graft from which few Chileans of the
present day absolve it? The basic question, after all, is not
one of constitutional systems, but rather the development of
a civic righteousness which will insist upon clean politics —
whatever the system — and will then abide by the result.
Such a spirit, I believe, has made its appearance (at least in
one of its aspects) in the present election. This is a new
force, of which it is to be hoped, for the good of Chile, that
the leaders of both parties will avail themselves.
Oct. 20, 1920]
The Nation
447
And the Public Pays
By WATSON WILLIAMS
STREET railway fares in Minneapolis have just been
raised to six cents, with a provision for an automatic
increase to seven cents, or four tickets for twenty-five cents,
on December 15. The question has long been before the
public. For three years it has taken up much of the city
council's time; the State legislature has been bombarded
with it; a year ago the mayor sought to stop a city ordi-
nance which practically guaranteed the street railways
company a seven per cent income on what he characterized
as a capitalization $8,000,000 in excess of actual value; and
finally last November the citizens of Minneapolis rejected
this same proposition with a decisive vote of three to two.
But the cat came back this summer with all her wounds
healed and a nice new coat of fur. Something novel in cor-
poration tactics was injected into this last and successful
campaign ; and since, because of its success here, it is likely
to be tried elsewhere, it should be of interest outside Minne-
apolis. This time the initiative was practically taken by the
company employees. Dissatisfied with their wage of fifty
cents an hour, they made representations in June to the
president of the company, Mr. Horace Lowry. He informed
them through their representatives that the company's
finances would not allow the increase requested unless he
was permitted to increase fares. Whereupon Mr. Lowry
and his employes held consultations, the outcome of which
were representations from both to city council and public,
the employer setting forth his financial needs and the em-
ployees their wage demands with a threat by the latter to
strike unless the desired increases were given by the end
of June. In interviews Mr. Lowry deplored the situation
and declared himself unable to avert the threatened tie-up
of traffic if he did not have increased fares. The employees
backed his stand with reiterated assurances that they would
certainly strike if the matter was not settled by the date
fixed. The city council became alarmed. The public, so used
to traction controversies, scarcely took heed. Besides, it
was summer, and many were away. One commercial organ-
ization did arise in its indignation and declare in scorching
terms what it chose to consider this newest attempt of the
street railways company to mulct the public.
Nor were those lacking who thought that they saw un-
usual elements in this situation. They observed that Mr.
Lowry for the first time dealt with a militant organization
of his employees; that he sat in a joint meeting with them
and listened to their strike threats without turning a hair
and even issued a statement to the public that he was help-
less. It was recalled that almost three years ago his com-
pany had locked out a group of mild insurgents merely
because they wore union buttons; and, in defiance of the
recommendations of the War Labor Board, these had not
been readmitted to work until the buttons disappeared.
The nascent union was ruthlessly broken, and more tractable
employees, drawn largely from the country and small towns,
have since been selected by the company. It was therefore
a matter of great surprise that Mr. Lowry now felt himself
so helpless, for no one believes him to be a timid man where
his own interests are involved.
The city council, a majority of which has always been
friendly to increased fares, was duly alarmed, but de-
clared itself unable to pass on the question by the end of
June. A compromise with the militant employees was ef-
fected and accountants were called to verify the company's
estimates of the fares necessary to grant the men's demands.
Definite resolutions were not placed before the council for
its consideration until the last of July. The company's
proposal was a seven cent fare, but a poll of the council
showed that this could not pass. Also it was known that
the mayor would veto such an ordinance. The action finally
taken gave the employees sixty cents an hour for a nine-
hour day and seventy cents for overtime, while the com-
pany, awarded the increased fares set forth above, will have
some surplus for improvements and further dividends. For
awhile it was thought that the mayor would veto the ordi-
nance on the ground that the automatic increase to seven
cents provided for December 15 does not properly protect
the public, since there is a large probability that it will not
be needed. He proposed that the question of a further in-
crease should either be left until the need was ascertained
or that a provision should be included in the ordinance that
the higher rates should take effect only in case the finances
of the company demonstrated the necessity. But the council
was obdurate.
However, the mayor did not veto the ordinance, as was
confidently expected by many, stating that he wished the
city council to have the undivided responsibility for the act.
It was well known that the act could not have been passed
over his veto, because eleven of the twenty-six councilmen
were opposed to the ordinance. Seven of these are Socialists
and the four others are more or less sympathetic with labor.
It is significant that some of the strongest supporters of
the ordinance are anti-labor in their allegiance. In the
twin-city of St. Paul, where half of the city commissioners
are labor representatives, a similar proposition by the same
street railways company was rejected, although the com-
pany in St. Paul is less prosperous than that in Minneapolis.*
Neither was organized labor favorable to the increase in
fares, appearing to regard it as an employer's ruse, the
more so because the employees of the traction company are
not unionized. Organized labor appeared fearful lest the
public — the great body of unorganized workers and con-
sumers— begin to think that labor is uniting with capital
to exploit them in their long-suffering and much-profiteered
condition. What the public itself thinks of it can be ascer-
tained only at the fall elections, if at all. There was then
no press in Minneapolis which reflected its views. But the
significance of this instance of cooperation between capital
and labor for common ends cannot easily be overlooked.
Is it the end of an old system or the prophecy of a new
order? In the northwest the two leading old parties have
recently been fusing their strength to delay the final victory
of new movements awakening in the public consciousness.
Possibly certain types of capital and labor are here forced
to make together their last stand in their old and outworn
policies of disregarding the public interest. Or is it a
sign of a new harmony between long discordant elements
to bring through their combined powers an awakening
of the public to its obligations to the workers as well as to
capital engaged in those industries which serve it?
* On September 13 St. Paul adopted an ordinance similar to that adopted
by Minneapolis early in August, after renewed and increased agitation by
employees of the street car company in concert with employers. The Minne-
sota Daily Star (Farmer-Labor) said of this ordinance: "St. Paul, too, has
now surrendered to the threats of the street car company. But the St. Paul
city council has the defense that the fight there was hopeless after th«
Minneapolis council surrendered to the company without setting up safe-
guards for the public."
448
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2885
The I. W. W.
By LEWIS S. GANNETT
A LEGEND has been built up about the I. W. W. The
Department of Justice, federal district attorneys and
local prosecutors, the newspapers and the copper interests
have joined in spinning a veritable saga about these men.
They are pictured as cut-throat, pro-German, or, latterly,
bolshevik, desperadoes who burn harvest-fields, drive iron
spikes into fine timber and ruin the mill-saws, devise bomb
plots, who obstructed the war and sabotaged the manufac-
ture of munitions — veritable supermen, with a superhuman
power for evil, omnipresent and almost omnipotent. And as
a result of this legend which has crept deep into the con-
sciousness of millions of honest and well-meaning Ameri-
cans, they have been hounded and harried as no other organ-
ization in American history has ever been, tarred and feath-
ered, lynched, shot outright, imprisoned by the thousand,
deported into the parched desert of Arizona ; every I. W. W.
headquarters in the country has been raided, its furniture
smashed, its records carried off, its money taken from it, and
some fifteen States have passed laws intended to make mere
membership in the I. W. W. a crime sufficient to warrant the
imprisonment of the member.
Yet the I. W. W. persist. Despite the "criminal syndical-
ism" law they still virtually control the lumber industry of
the State of Washington ; they are the strongest labor organ-
ization in Montana, and former dues-paying members of the
I. W. W. who have never recanted are running for State
office there on the Democratic ticket with Cox and Roosevelt;
they are strong in Arizona and Oklahoma, and they control
the waterfront of the Delaware River in the East.
Who and what are the I. W. W., and how much truth is
there behind the legend? They are the cheerful left wing
of American labor, the militant industrial unionists of haz-
ardous and irregular trades. They preach and practice an
outspoken doctrine of class solidarity ; they have no mutual
welfare funds piling up in the banks, few of them have
homes, and most of them are men who literally have nothing
but their chains to lose and a world to gain. They are a
rollicking jovial lot; the only group in American labor which
sings. Their "preamble," denounced as seditious during the
war, but which had been widely circulated ever since its
adoption in 1905, is their credo:
The working class and the employing class have nothing in
common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want
are found among millions of the working people and the few,
who make up the employing class, have all the good things of
life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the
workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the
earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage
system. . . . Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair
day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our ban-
ner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage sys-
tem." It is the historic mission of the working class to do away
with capitalism. The army of production must be organized,
not only for the everyday struggle with capitalists, but also
to carry on production when capitalism shall have been over-
thrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the struc-
ture of the new society within the shell of the old.
The I. W. W. do not believe in separate unions for each
craft within an industry. They want all grades of labor to
act together for their common interest. "A craft union,"
says Haywood, "is just a little job trust."
The entire case against the I. W. W. as revealed in the big
federal prosecutions is based upon their speeches and writ-
ings. The I. W. W. were charged with organizing an anti-
war conspiracy: the prosecutors produced only isolated edi-
torial articles and speeches of rebellious individuals. The
I. W. W. were charged — in the newspapers — with spending
German gold; in court the prosecutors admitted that they
could find no trace of it. They were charged with sabotag-
ing wartime production : the record shows that the I. W. W.
had three strikes in the whole course of the war (the Bisbee
copper strike, in connection with which 1,169 I. W. W. and
suspected I. W. W. were deported into the desert; the Butte
copper strike, in the course of which Frank Little was taken
out of his bed and lynched; and the intermittent Washing-
ton lumber strikes) while the "patriotic" American Federa-
tion of Labor had more than 2,000 strikes! An I. W. W.
union loaded every shell shipped from the Delaware River
during the war. The I. W. W. have been charged with vio-
lence, but in none of the big I. W. W. prosecutions has any
evidence been introduced to show actual violence by the men
convicted. The MacNamara dynamitings, the violent team-
sters' and longshoremen's and street car strikes of the past,
have been American Federation acts. The I. W. W. have
been charged with sabotage, a word of many meanings.
They have been charged with burning Kansas wheat-fields;
that was never proved, but it was proved that the wheat-
fields in question had been heavily insured by their owners.
The I. W. W. call slacking on the job, poor work, a form of
sabotage, and admit they practice it. But their General
Executive Board defines their position on violence thus :
. . . [The I. W. W.] does not now and never has believed
in or advocated either destruction or violence as a means of
accomplishing industrial reform; first, because no principle was
ever settled by such methods; second, because industrial history
has taught us that when strikers resort to violence and unlawful
methods, all the resources of the Government are immediately
arrayed against them and they lose their cause; third, because
such methods destroy the constructive impulse which it is the
purpose of this organization to foster and develop in order that
the workers may fit themselves to assume their place in the new
society.
The one court case in which violence has actually been
proved against them was the Centralia case. Their head-
quarters had been burned down by "loyal" citizens. They
had been warned that their new headquarters would be at-
tacked, and armed men were ready to defend it. The Armis-
tice Day parade left its prescribed route to pass the hall;
the evidence differed as to who started the firing; at any
rate both ex-service men in the parade and I. W. W. members
were killed. Wesley Everett, lynched as an I. W. W., was
bunkmate of Sergeant LaMay, another I. W. W., who is said
to have won more medals in France than any other private
or non-commissioned officer in the American Army, and who
was paralyzed for life after his return, by a falling tree in
the woods of Washington.
That is the fact-record of the I. W. W. — a record of radi-
cals preaching syndicalism, opposed to the existing order,
Oct. 20, 1920]
The Nation
449
uninterested in the European war, but not a record of vio-
lent revolutionaries. For this between three and four thou-
sand have been jailed; a thousand are still in jail. They
have been convicted wholesale: ninety-three at Chicago, thir-
ty-eight at Kansas City, etc. The Circuit Court of Appeals
has just reaffirmed the Chicago sentences, and the men out
on bail are ordered back to prison. Twelve of the ninety-
three have served out their sentences. One, a nineteen-
year-old Harvard boy, sentenced to five years in prison, had
a change of heart and went to Washington to tell the Depart-
ment of Justice. He was pardoned a week later — a curious
commentary on the official statement that no one is im-
prisoned for "opinion." Thirty-three face ten-year sen-
tences; sixteen, twenty-year sentences. And among the
sixteen who face twenty years is Big Bill Haywood —
wheezy, one-eyed, gentle — yes, gentle, Bill Haywood who,
despite the legend, could not kill a fly and cannot be per-
suaded to denounce even an apostate I. W. W., a purchaser
of immunity from prosecution by writing denunciatory ar-
ticles for the Sunday papers — who has given all his life to
the labor movement, and talks of "the boys" in the affec-
tionate tones of a father. The movement for amnesty and
the spirit of revolt both gain by the reassertion of the
verdict.
A Needed Functionary
By GRANT SHOWERMAN
I DIDN'T mean to do it: the cat was excited at the pros-
pect of the supper I was about to set down for him and
got between my legs, and I stepped on his paw. At the
terrific squawk he uttered, I too became excited, and in the
blind effort to spare him brought my heel square down on
his tail.
It was excruciating, but economical. Ever since, the cat
has kept clear of people's feet.
"There's good pedagogy in that," said my friend the
father of eight boys. "The cat got his lesson. It's the same
with children. A single good sharp cut of a switch across
the legs, one that really and truly hurts, will break up a bad
habit or institute a good one in a moment's time where a
year's employment of the 'reasoning' they are always talking
about will leave the case exactly where it was. I am not
advocating harshness, or tyranny, you understand — only, I
believe in good, hard shock for proper cause at the proper
time. There is such a thing as surprising the system out of
or into mental and physical habit. Take, for example, the
case of lifelong invalids or cranks who have been shocked
into health or sense by accident of some kind, or even by
merciful conspiracy. You've read about them, haven't you?"
"It's kind of like a machine sometimes," I said. "It hesi-
tates, and sticks, or jams, until you get out of patience and
give it a kick, and then it goes beautifully."
"Only," I continued, "I suppose you must be careful and
not smash the machine — or hurt your foot. You must kick
judiciously."
"Nonsense!" he cried, "that's some more of the 'never
punish in anger' sort of rot. Exactly what you need with
both machine and child is to get out of patience. Punish-
ment ought to be as quick as the lightning-stroke. Any
machine worth talking about, or any child, will be in no
danger of permanent injury from a good jolt."
"That's just the word," I said.
He went on. "Within limits, of course, I am assuming
ordinary intelligence and a human disposition. And I am
talking of real children, not the kind you read about."
"It makes me think," I said. "The jolt is a good thing
for grown people as well as for children, cats, and dogs.
You know Dulley, don't you? I've seen him come down the
street a thousand times with ladies who had their hands
full, never offering to take a thing. But one day, I happen
to know, he was with little Miss Fitz, letting her struggle
along with a heavy pack of books, when all of a sudden she
stopped stock still and literally threw them into his arms.
'There!' she said, 'carry those books for me, will you? It's
no more than manners.' It made him mad, of course, but it
was exactly what he needed. Since then he's been a regular
parcels post. He simply can't do enough draying — and all
because of a merciless jolt at precisely the proper moment.
It put his machine into good running order, you see.
"Then I was attending a concert service at church the
other Sunday evening — "
My friend threw up his hands. "Yes, I know what you're
going to say," he said, "And you're right. Of all the mad-
dening torment that people who love music have to undergo
in this land of ours, where idiots go to a concert as if it were
a reception, or a convention, or a mass-meeting — ! Some of
the worst crimes are not in the statute-books." He was al-
most incoherent.
"Well," I said, "for once I did my bit to abate the nui-
sance. There was a couple sitting beside me. I endured
their whispering through the prayer, and then part way
through a delicate Handel organ number, and was just nerv-
ing myself to endure to the end, when, quite to my surprise,
the great God of Jolts suddenly turned me in my seat and
made me say, 'Would you mind not talking while the music
is going on?' Of course they both glared at me, and of
course I have made two enemies for life; but there are also
two people who will never expose themselves to that again."
"You're a public benefactor," said my friend warmly, "and
we ought to have a score or two like you distributed through
every concert hall, and theater, and church. It would do
more for manners at public functions than ten thousand
reams of 'reasoning.' "
"But it would take a lot of courage, and it would stir up a
lot of ill feeling, wouldn't it? They'd call us ill-tempered,
and bad neighbors, and undemocratic."
"It would be worth the price," he said. "And I am not so
sure about the ill feeling. I have had experiences of my
own. Of course I don't look back with delight upon either
the process or its authors, but at the same time I am ever-
lastingly thankful for the result. Oh, I could tell you some
interesting stories about jolts that I have known, if I only
cared to."
"So could I," I said, "but I don't care to, any more than
you. I'm not great enough a character to make it safe for
me to publish my confessions. Saint Augustine could lay
bare all his weaknesses and not be afraid. But I am no
saint."
"Anyway, we seem to have proved the virtues of jolting,"
he said, "and since that thought about the concert halls and
theaters, I have been wondering whether we couldn't turn
our conclusions to account. I just happened to think of
years ago when we used to maintain, or pretend to maintain,
a useful servant of the public called the Fool-killer. You
450
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2885
remember? He used to make inspectional tours once or
twice a year. It used to be, 'When the Fool-killer comes
round — ' "
"Yes, I remember," I answered. "We used to save up all
the cases for him."
"Precisely," he said. "But in these days of shorthanded-
ness and economy, we can't afford to destroy anything that ,
can be made serviceable by reconstruction, especially if re-
construction involves nothing more expensive than jolting.
The difference between a fool and a philosopher is often only
the matter of a good, vigorous jolt. Why not a Jolter, and
have him come round every so often?"
"A sort of Lord High Jolter, after the fashion of the Lord
High Executioner," I suggested. "He'll have 'em on the
list — and they'll none of 'em be missed."
"Perfectly," he agreed. "And you and I'll help him make
out his little list."
"For example, — " I suggested.
"First of all," he responded, promptly, "the aforesaid
nuisances at musical functions."
"And at the theater," I added. "Not forgetting the bush-
men who come late with their females and spoil the whole
first act crawling over you to their seats and getting set-
tled."
"And actors with absurd mannerisms which they think
captivating," he said.
"And preachers who use Billy Sunday vocabularies before
Jonathan Edwards congregations," I said.
"And tell slangy stories, thinking they are putting them-
selves on a level with the common people," he said.
"And there are some private nuisances we mustn't for-
get," he added. "We must put down the people who stop you
when you are in a hurry and take fifteen minutes to say
what could be said in two, or didn't need saying at all."
"The buttonholers," I said.
"Yes," he answered, "they need a jolt to get their machin-
ery to running."
"And then there's the other kind," I said, "the ones that
talk so fast and so long you never get a chance to say a word
of your own. Every time you try it they simply increase in
speed and volume, and leave you overwhelmed and gasping."
"The steam roller sort," he said.
"Yes," I said. "Total recall, I believe, is the name they
give it. We'll have them on the list. The Jolter will surely
do them good."
My friend hesitated.
"I doubt it," he said. "Jolting really does better for slow
machinery than for gearing that works with such absolute
smoothness."
"But these people have never once in the course of their
whole lives had it occur to them that what is of interest to
them is not every bit as interesting to everybody else," I
said. "Couldn't the Jolter jolt it into their heads?"
For the first time my friend looked discouraged.
"Yes, I know," he said, "but how is he to get at them?
Wouldn't they go right over him, the same as with the rest
of us?"
I remembered various experiences. "Yes," I said, "I'm
afraid they would."
My friend was thoughtful for a moment. "I'm afraid re-
construction in some cases is impossible," he said. "I don't
know but we'll have to retain the Lord High Executioner for
occasional service, after all."
In the Driftway
THE exigencies of modern travel forced the Drifter into
a drawing-room car. His negotiations with the
porter for a seat that wasn't to be had were about ending,
when he was forced to step aside to let a girl pass. She
had obviously overheard the conversation and paused now,
to look at the Drifter. He was shabby, but presentable.
"If you care to, you may have a seat in my drawing-room
as far as Philadelphia." The Drifter settled himself with
his back to the engine, wishing he might smoke, while his
new found friend sat opposite and discoursed of cabbages
and kings. The Drifter didn't in the least care what she
talked of, as long as she talked, for she was comely to look
at and her face lighted pleasantly when she was interested.
Her grandmother had just sold her New York house and
there had been several happy, dusty days in the attic.
She exhibited part of her spoil, opened one book, and
began to read. The Drifter unfolded a newspaper, but was
interrupted by a giggle and the book was passed across to
him. It was a small "Guide to New York, Its Buildings,
Places of Amusement, Churches, Banks, &c, &c." On the
title-page was printed the announcement "Not to be taken
from the Hotel Astor" and the date 1867. The Drifter
wondered what crinoline lady or foppish beau had slipped
the little book into pocket or handbag. On the open page
he read:
Politeness in Railroad Cars
1 — Always show your ticket (without getting in a bad humor)
whenever the conductor asks for it. Observe this as a rule, it
will pay.
2 — A gentleman should not occupy more than one seat at a
time.
3 — Gentlemen will not spit tobacco juice in the cars where
there are ladies; it soils their skirts and dresses.
4 — Ladies without escort in travel should be very particular
with whom they become acquainted.
5 — "If you your lips would keep from slips,
Five things observe with care.
With whom you speak, to whom you speak
And how and when and where."
THE Drifter looked up to meet a pair of twinkling eyes
opposite.
6 — Where you see a fellow overzealous for your comfort and
pushing himself forward saying "are you traveling alone? —
allow me to — " etc., etc., just say to him "Thank you, sir, I
require no assistance." By observing this rule, ladies will often
save themselves and others trouble.
7 — Ladies traveling with children should invariably have a
Contributors to This Issue
Gifford Pinchot, formerly chief of U. S. Forest Service,
is professor of forestry at Yale and president of the
National Conservation Association.
Watson Williams, a writer resident in Minneapolis, is a
student of economic questions.
Grant Showerman is professor of classics at the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin and a contributor to literary maga-
zines.
Charles E. Chapman, associate professor of history at
the University of California, is at present U. S. ex-
change professor to Chili.
Oct. 20, 1920]
The Nation
451
basket of eatables, a tumbler or goblet for the children to drink
from, and keep the children in their seats.
8 — Keep your head and arms inside the windows.
9 Never sit in a seat, in warm weather, with a man weigh-
ing 244 pounds.
10 — Always carry greenbacks instead of individual promises
to pay.
11 — Ladies who wear hoops should make them small before
leaving home.
12 — Never let your bandbox, valise, or cloak occupy a seat
when there is a rack for them; it looks bad for you to occupy
a whole seat when there are passengers standing without seats.
13 — Always be polite to everybody while traveling, don't get
into a bad humor.
14 — Never give information without being asked, then you
will not be contradicted.
15 — When a lady enters a car and there is no vacant seat,
rise and offer her yours, it is true politeness.
16 — Never smoke in a car where there are ladies. No gentle-
man would be guilty of such an act.
* * * * *
JUST here the Drifter's young companion interrupted to
offer him a cigarette from a neat leather case.
17 — Never use profane language in a railroad car.
19 — Never talk politics in the cars; — it is usually disagree-
able to some of your fellow travelers.
20 — Never sit beside a person who is hard of hearing and has
never traveled any; get away, there are too many questions to
be answered.
21 — Never talk loud while the train is in motion; it may not
annoy anyone, but it will injure your lungs.
22 — Making love should be done outside of railroad cars. By
being too affectionate in the cars people will talk.
The Drifter
. Correspondence
Maupassant and Spoon River
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: One of Maupassant's tales seems to anticipate the Spoon
River Anthology. In the collection La Main Gauche, in the story
La Morte [1890], a young man, crazed by the death of his mis-
tress, passes the night in the cemetery where she is buried. His
delirium grows as the darkness falls, and the stone upon which
he is seated seems to be shaken. He jumps aside and reads on
the cross marking the grave: "Ici repose Jacques Olinant, decede
a l'age de cinquante et un ans. II aimait les siens, fut honnete
et bon, et mourut dans la paix du Seigneur." But a skeleton
rises from the open tomb, effaces the epitaph, and changes the
second sentence to read as follows: "II hata par ses duretes la
mort de son pere dont il desirait heriter, il tortura sa femme,
tourmenta ses enfants, trompa ses voisins, vola quand il le put
et mourut miserable." And as the young lover looks around him
he sees that all the graves have opened and that skeletons are
engaged in scratching out "les mensonges inscrits par les parents
sur la pierre funebre pour y retablir la verite. Et je voyais que
tous avaient ete les bourreaux de leurs proches, haineux, deshon-
netes, hypocrites, menteurs, fourbes, calomniateurs, envieux,
qu'ils avaient vole, trompe, accompli tous les actes honteux, tous
les actes abominables, ces bons peres, ces epouses fideles, ces fils
devoues, ces jeunes filles chastes, ces commercants probes, ces
hommes et ces femmes irreprochables." And in horror the young
man turns to the tomb of his beloved. In place of the simple
epitaph he had engraved there "Elle aima, fut aimee et mourut/'
he reads: "Etant sortie un jour pour tromper son amant, elle
prit froid sous la pluie et mourut."
I am not suggesting La Morte as the "source" of Spoon River.
Very few of the true histories of those villagers recall at all the
stories of Maupassant, so few that one is surprised at not find-
ing more. I have noted nothing closer than Nellie Clark and
Madame Baptiste. Masters may owe nothing directly or even
indirectly to Maupassant, but the parallel seems close enough to
permit a query as to whether La Morte may have suggested the
fundamental idea of the Anthology.
Benjamin M. Woodbridge
University of Texas, September 2
Socialism Yesterday and Today
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: Why, oh why, do persons as intelligent as Mr. F. Lin-
coln Hutchins, persist in making statements like, "I abhor the
doctrine of the Socialists that calls for governmental regulation
of our lives, and that would put all the industries of the country
under the control of government agents?" [The Nation, Octo-
ber 6, 1920]. Any one who has taken the trouble to discover
what present-day Socialists advocate, can tell that the foregoing
conception of Socialism is as extinct as the dodo, except in the
minds of those who are still under the influence of the mid-
Victorian fear of the Coming Slavery. The Socialists of today
demand that industries be controlled by the workers themselves,
through democratically elected shop, district, and national coun-
cils or committees. There is nothing to indicate a desire on their
part of control by "government agents." Similarly, it is diffi-
cult to see how the modern Socialist advocates "government reg-
ulation of our lives." On the contrary, everything in Socialist
theory indicates an overwhelming desire for complete individual
freedom, such as is impossible under the capitalist system.
■ Brooklyn, October 6 Alexander Fichandler
Are We Marching or Marking Time?
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: Headed by the motto, "The Spirit of 1776," a letter has
gone out broadcast from the Chicago headquarters of the Na-
tional Young Men's Republican League declaring the League's
purpose to educate Young America "to respect and cooperate
with the constructive business thought of the nation, as dis-
tinguished from the socialistic thought of the agitator," and ap-
pealing for financial support "in our work for Republicanism
and against bolshevism."
One must be very young, indeed, in years and in politics, to
indorse the proposition of these embryonic statesmen — that the
constructive economic thought of the country is embodied in the
philosophy of smug standpatism, while the belated suggestion
that this is a campaign against bolshevism will scarcely appeal
to any intelligence, however undeveloped, outside the Department
of Justice, and that is safely beyond the reach of Republican
reasoning. The wildest stretch of the imagination fails to
establish any connection between the marching revolutionary
spirit of '76 and the static reactionary time-markers of 1920.
Rock Island, Illinois, September 10 E. W.
Education by Celluloid
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: Within the week I have seen two moving picture films.
One was called "The Riders of the Dawn," the other "The
Flame of Hell Gate." The acting in the first was clever, in the
second, abominable, crude, and ludicrous. The effects of each,
the ideas suggested to the mind of the spectator, were vicious
in the extreme. In the first, a lynching-bee was applauded by
the crowded house. A raid upon a labor-camp supposedly
I. W. W. was cheered. The I. W. W.'s were chased out of town
with bull-whips, much to the enjoyment of the spectators. For
misrepresentation of the I. W. W. it would be hard to beat "The
Riders of the Dawn."
452
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2885
In the second film, outlawry was idolized. Extra-legal
methods of securing justice, of getting revenge, were applauded.
Government was held up to contempt. Due process of law was
ridiculed as entirely inadequate and undependable in both films.
Violence of the mob was pictured as the only means of pun-
ishing I. W. W.'s in the first film and of punishing a cattle-thief
in the second. Thus do the movies teach Americanism!
Perhaps Freud would explain it in terms of the sadistic
impulse. In the movies, people have a means of obtaining
vicarious satisfaction for their suppressed desires. But the
suggestions in such films do harm that is beyond the possibility
of calculation. There was a boy in our neighborhood who,
having stolen a revolver and jewelry, set fire to several build-
ings. At each place he left a sign "The Black Mask." It is
easy to see where he got the suggestion.
Berkeley, California, August 20 Allen Oak
Catching Up With George Washington
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: In these days of buzzing of the Department of Justice,
and of general reluctance to lay aside the philosophy, hatreds
and superstitions of war, it is of interest to come across the
following statement of George Washington, in a letter of
acknowledgment to a committee of Congress, which had in-
formed him of his extended military powers. Washington's
letter was dated Trenton, Jan. 1, 1777.
". . . Instead of thinking myself freed from all civil obliga-
tions by this mark of . . . confidence, I shall constantly bear in
mind that, as the sword was the last resort for the preservation
of our liberties, so it ought to be the first thing laid aside when
those liberties are firmly established."
Also, those who feast at the table of your trenchant journal,
may be comforted by some assurance that it is not in the present
generation only that the world has been going to the dogs. It
had started dogwards at least as far back as December 30, 1778,
when Washington wrote to Colonel Benjamin Harrison (Speaker
of the Virginia House of Delegates), what might have been an
editorial in The Nation, had that been then existent:
". . . . If I were to be called upon to draw a picture of the
times and of men from what I have seen, heard, and in part
know, I should in one word say, that idleness, dissipation, and
extravagance seem to have laid fast hold of most of them; that
speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for riches, seem
to have got the better of every other consideration, and almost
of every order of men ; that party disputes and personal quarrels
are the great business of the day; whilst the momentous con-
cerns of an empire, a great and accumulating debt, ruined
finances, depreciated money, and want of credit (which in its
consequences is want of everything) , are but secondary consid-
erations, and postponed from day to day, from week to week, as
if our affairs wore the most promising aspect. . . ."
Dorset, Vermont, September 28 Viola I. Paradise
The Rights of Conscience
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: A few days ago, on glancing through the 1920 World
Almanac, I came across the tabulated list of the qualifications
for voting in the various States. The last column enumerates
those who cannot vote. I glanced down that column, and my
attention was suddenly arrested by the word "atheist." I found
that it had to do with requisites for voting in the sovereign
State of North Carolina. I looked again, and yes there it was.
Atheists are denied the vote in North Carolina.
It struck me as very strange. I had come to believe that it
was an axiom that in this free land each could believe according
to the dictates of his conscience, whether it be the belief in an
Almighty God or the denial of the existence of such a being, as
long as such belief did not disturb the welfare of society. The
Almanac was in error, thought I. Why, the unabridged exercise
of one's conscience in matters religious was the bulwark of the
Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution, in fact, formed
the very basis for the founding of this great land. Surely no
State could deprive a citizen of such fundamental right.
I turned to another page of the Almanac, and there read
through the United States Constitution. Yes, religious liberty
is guaranteed to us all, and furthermore it is provided that no
State shall deprive a citizen of his rights as guaranteed to him
by the United States Constitution, among which rights is the
right of believing according to the dictates of conscience. Fur-
ther on I also saw the provision that no religious test shall ever
be required for holding any office under the United States.
Surely no State could ever get around all these defenses.
In the Library of Congress I obtained the latest official copy
of the North Carolina constitution.
I glanced quickly down the page. Ah, there it was. Art. 1,
Sec. 26.
"All men have a natural and unalienable right to worship
Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience,
and no human authority should in any case whatever control or
interfere with the rights of conscience."
The second half of that section certainly seemed reassuring.
If no human authority can interfere with the rights of con-
science then it would seem that one could believe that there is
no God and yet be entirely within the law. Yet who knows the
intricacies of legal phraseology? What about the first half of
the article? I must search on further. At last I have it.
"Art. 6. Suffrage and Eligibility to Office." I read the section
enumerating the lequisites for voting, and hallelujah, there is
not a word about religion. The vile Almanac. Casting calumny
on the fair name of a great State! But something made me
read on, and holy Jehosaphat, what do my eyes behold.
"Art. 6, Section 8. The following classes of persons are dis-
qualified for office. (1) All those who shall deny the existence
of Almighty God." '
I hastened for the open air.
Is Article 1, Section 26 annulled by Article 6, Section 8, or is
it vice versa, or is it neither, or are they both treasonable and,
if so, should not A. Mitchell Palmer get busy? If a man cannot
hold office unless he believes in God, is it not depriving him of
the free exercise of his conscience?
Let us be duly thankful that the Almanac was somewhat in
error. It is not the voter who must believe the religion laid
down for him, but rather the seeker for office. And perhaps
those who seek office in North Carolina will not be over scrupu-
lous in such a little thing as the belief in a God, and will take
the requisite oath with due piety.
Washington, D. C, September 2U Herman Berman
The Community Church
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: The decadence of the pulpit is often remarked upon in
the public press. There is in New York City a pulpit that
stands out from the multitude — as progressive — from which the
truth -is told as fearlessly as it is found in The Nation. I am
confident that thousands of your readers would be glad to hear
John Haynes Holmes or Dr. John Herman Randall if they once
found the place where they preach. It is in the Lyric Theatre,
Forty-second Street, near Seventh Avenue, every Sunday morn-
ing at 11 o'clock. These men discuss the issues of today, and
their message is always constructive and inspiring. Here is
no catering to vested interests and rich pewholders. The Com-
munity Church for which they speak has no creed but brother-
hood. It is like old Plymouth Church was when the great
Beecher was hurling his thunders at Slavery. Here Protestant,
Catholic, and Jew meet on common ground, and worship God
by rousing their own enthusiasm to work for mankind.
New York City, September 18 Charles H. Cochrane
Oct. 20, 1920]
The Nation
453
Thus My Dreams
(From the Spanish of Roberto Lievano of Bogota, Colombia)
By THOMAS WALSH
A nightingale with silver flourish told
Of thine approach, high in the lemon-tree,
And lo! before me rises dreamily
Thy form upon the lily paths of old.
How thy hands tremble as with light! How cold
The starry glisten of thine eyes on me !
How lightly stir thy breasts (in them I see
Twin doves that whisper love where branches fold) .
The breeze is sifting through the grove; it shakes
The sacramental lemon-trees in flakes
Of snow upon thy breast and silken hair;
Dawn rises, veiling thee in mist that seems
To take its whiteness from thee ; thus my dreams
Behold thee, flowerlike in thy bridal wear.
Books
Wisdom and Irony
The Three Taverns. By Edwin Arlington Robinson. The Mac-
millan Company.
IV/fR- ROBINSON has never learned the arts by which some
*■ *■ verse men can lighten three or four serious poems with
trifling pieces until they will float a volume. Every volume he
publishes is packed; and every poem, as such things go in the
world, is perfect. After his two longer poems "Merlin" and
"Lancelot," he now returns to collecting certain brief pieces
written in the intervals of the last few years. Separate enough
in themselves, they yet stand with respect to each other in a
sort of pattern, like the monoliths of a Druid circle. Like those
monoliths, too, these poems seem to be more than mortised in
the underlying granite; they seem to grow out of it in the mere
course of nature. And like the Druid stones they wear each
an air of ominous, enormous mystery, themselves substantial
enough to the casual eye and yet hung about with dim memo-
ries and unargumentative though powerful significance. What
holds them in the pattern is that tone of mingled wisdom and
irony, that color of dignity touched with colloquial flexibility,
that clear, hard, tender blank verse and those unforgettable
eight-line stanzas and dramatic sonnets which go to make up
one of the most scrupulous and valuable of living poets.
Five of the larger poems in "The Three Taverns" are epi-
sodes based upon history: Rahel telling Varnhagen of the ad-
ventures of her heart before her marriage to him; Hamilton
and Burr in 1795 at the not quite conscious parting of their
ways; Paul at the Three Taverns, to which the brethren of
Rome came out to meet him, greeting them with his doctrine;
John Brown, on the eve of his execution, defending the revolu-
tion he had attempted; Lazarus, back from the tomb, shaken
by his return and able to say no more than that he forgives
the Master for bringing him to life again. These characters,
as so often with the characters in whom Mr. Robinson inter-
ests himself, appear at some moment of transition from an
old order which they have outlived to a new one about which
they are uncertain but which they face with a courage born
of humility — humility toward the ungovernable flood of destiny
on which they ride.
If the world
Were not a world of aches and innovations,
Attainment would have no more joy of it,
says Paul.
When our eyes
Have wisdom, we see more than we remember;
And the old world of our captivities
May then become a smitten glimpse of ruin,
Like one where vanished hewers have had their day
Of wrath on Lebanon.
******
But think you not the world is ashes yet,
And you have all the fire. The world is here
Today, and it may not be gone tomorrow;
For there are millions, and there may be more,
To make in turn a various estimation
Of its old ills and ashes, and the traps
Of its apparent wrath.
Again and again these poems, and others in the volume, recur
to the pains of change, now tragically, now with a caustic
lightness :
Longer ago than cave-men had their changes
Our fathers may have slain a son or two,
Discouraging a further dialectic
Regarding what was new;
And after their unstudied admonition
Occasional contrition
For their old-fashioned ways
May have reduced their doubts, and in addition
Softened their final days.
Neither conservative nor revolutionary can take excessive com-
fort from a poet who unites the fullest courage of innovation
with the unhurried wisdom which the most exciting movement
of the current day cannot excite out of an aloof and profound
reflectiveness.
It is not, of course, by being topical that Mr. Robinson
achieves his immense pertinence to the moment. He speaks
only by indirection of actual events, but almost every line bears
acutely on the times. The False Gods is a magnificent epi-
graph on the evanescence of trivial ideals. Demos, a pair of
sonnets, says nearly all that can be said on the high ground
which Mr. Robinson takes, as a friend of democracy, between
its fanatics and its foes. In The Old King's New Jester, with
the stern seriousness of a poet and the whimsical grace of a
man of the world, he unforgettably advises all those who out
of discontent with the new wrongs of the world turn back to
approbation and acceptance of the old wrongs. It is these same
persons whom Mr. Robinson symbolizes in The Wandering Jew,
a quiet comment upon that strange folk-figure as if he had
been met in New York and heard reviling the world for its
pitiful emptiness.
For now the gloom that hid the man
Became a daylight on his wrath,
And one wherein my fancy viewed
New lions ramping in his path.
The old were dead and had no fangs,
Wherefore he loved them — seeing not
They were the same that in their time
Had eaten everything they caught.
*****
Where, then, was there a place for him
That on this other side of death
Saw nothing good, as he had seen
No good come out of Nazareth?
*****
Whether he still defies or not
The failure of an angry task
That relegates him out of time
To chaos, I can only ask.
But as I knew him, so he was;
And somewhere among men today
Those old, unyielding eyes may flash,
And flinch — and look the other way.
454
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2885
The penalty of looking and flinching and turning away is worse
than death.
Such moments of blindness furnish Mr. Robinson with one of
his most frequent dramatic themes — the contrast between a
woman who sees and a man who does not, as in The Evangelist's
Wife, London Bridge, Tact, Rahel to Varnhagen ; or between one
of them who sees what the other cannot bear to see, as in the
vivid little tragedy, Late Summer. And it is a blindness as
regards the world without and an "invidious insight" as re-
gards oneself which characterizes the actionless protagonist of
Tasker Norcross, the most memorable poem in this volume.
He is nothing, and he has no illusions.
He knew, and in his knowledge there was death.
He knew there was a region all around him
That lay outside man's havoc and affairs,
And yet was not all hostile to their tumult,
Where poets would have served and honored him,
And saved him, had there been anything to save.
But there was nothing, and his tethered range
Was only a small desert.
******
"Art," he would have said,
"Is not life, and must therefore be a lie";
And with a few profundities like that
He would have controverted and dismissed
The benefit of the Greeks. He had heard of them,
As he had heard of his aspiring soul —
Never to the perceptible advantage,
In his esteem, of either. "Faith," he said,
Or would have said if he had thought of it,
"Lives in the same house with Philosophy,
Where the two feed on scraps and are forlorn
As orphans after war." He could see stars,
On a clear night, but he had not an eye
To see beyond them. He could hear spoken words,
But had no ear for silence when alone.
He could eat food of which he knew the savor,
But had no palate for the Bread of Life,
That human desperation, to his thinking,
Made famous long ago, having no other.
It is difficult to determine, Mr. Robinson seems to say, whether
it is worse to see and not suspect the truth, like the Wandering
Jew, or to suspect it without really seeing it, like Tasker Nor-
cross. The supreme tragedy of human existence is
That earth has not a school where we may go
For wisdom, or for more than we may know;
and yet there is no cure and no hope except in wisdom. In
this uncompromising position may be found the secret of Mr.
Robinson's failure ever to catch the hasty ears of his genera-
tion— and the secret of his power over all who have taken the
pains to understand him. C. V. D.
Youth in America
Youth in Harley. By Gordon Hall Gerould. Charles Scribner's
Sons.
Prologue. By Phyllis Duganne. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
T N the days when the election of Grover Cleveland made good
*■ New Englanders feel that the country was headed for de-
struction, a Litchfield youth named Stephen Quaid, having grad-
uated from Harvard College, became principal of the academy
in Harley, Massachusetts. He remained just one year, during
which he became engaged to Cynthia Darnell and determined to
study law and become a force in the affairs of the nation and
the world of men. The story of that year is the subject matter
of Mr. Gerould's novel. He writes with none of the disdainful
tension, lapsing into grisliness, of his wife, Mrs. Katherine
Fullerton Gerould. His style is amorphous within and fuzzy
without. But he, too, is by implication a violent anti-modernist
and intent on showing the strength, serenity, and comeliness of
an older order of American life.
A great and impassioned and tragic novel could be written on
that theme. The passing of things venerable and long loved has
all but the highest spiritual and literary values. Yet the efforts
of the praisers of things past among us seem always to miss
those special values altogether. Is the fault in themselves or in
their theme? We expect Mr. Gerould to show us plain living and
high thinking; he shows us dull living and no thinking at all. We
expect Emerson and are put off with a future party-politician.
We wait for a flicker of the spirit of Thoreau and get discus-
sions of the "unsettling effects" of "Robert Elsmere." Mr.
Gerould, if we are to trust his report, appeals to the wrong
period. The old New England hardihood of thought had died
out. Stephen Quaid, one may be sure, was a corporation attor-
ney in 1914 and is now a war millionaire and a reactionary, and
weighs nearer two hundred pounds than he likes to be told.
The great New England, the immortal New England, was as
tameless and as revolutionary as the world which now fills Mr.
Gerould with dismay. It was unbelieving and radical; it was
full of heretics and abolitionists — enemies of the dominant order
in matters of convention and property. How do people as clever
as the Geroulds miss that essential point? To appeal to the
barren and prosaic nineties is mere self-stultification. Revolu-
tion is the note of a great age even as change is the note of life
itself. Mr. Gerould's Stephen Quaid is an ugly little material-
ist; Cynthia has no vision, only stubbornness and bad temper.
Among the village elders an older and a better tradition faintly
glows. But youth in Harley was opaque and stodgy; it knew
what it wanted and wanted nothing worth having. It was not
austere, only strait-laced; not self -mastered, only pig-headed;
not even, in a deep and fine sense, conservative, but only profit-
ably correct.
One can imagine Stephen Quaid and his Cynthia aghast
at Rita Moreland, the ultra-modern minx of Miss Duganne's
"Prologue." Consider Rita's excessively visible silk stockings,
bobbed hair, and one-piece bathing suit. Consider, furthermore,
that she was kissed by half a dozen men between her sixteenth
and her twentieth year and that she very nearly went to live
with one of them. No wonder, since in her middle teens she read
"Mile, de Maupin" and Marie Bashkirtseff and George Moore's
"Confessions of a Young Man." She had her Oscar Wilde
period before she proceeded to Shaw and Wells; she fore-gath-
ered with radicals and labor people; she worked in an editorial
office, discussed sex, and drank cocktails, and quoted Karl
Marx. And yet, if Margaret Fuller could come back from the
other shore, and see Cynthia and Rita, to which of the two would
she feel herself more closely akin? The question is a pretty one.
For one thing is indisputable: Rita is the one who is spiritually
by far the more alive. She is giddy, careless, raw. But she
seeks vision. She starts out with a pagan clearness to discover
the nature of things. She accepts their reality — the character
of her mother — for instance — with an honesty not untinged by
sadness; she is self-centered and yet capable of a sane detach-
ment. There is flexibility in her and sympathy and hope. If
one could expose today the inner history of the marriage of
Stephen and Cynthia, one would probably find a good deal that
is furtive and cruel, ugly and tyrannous. Its outer show has
always, of course, been beyond criticism. Rita marries, too.
"All the things that I could not have alone," she says, "that I
do not want alone, are waiting for me now. I think that mar-
riage is less fair to a man; for me it means freedom, all the
things I desire. But for Donald there is a certain amount of
restraint, of responsibility. But he says that he doesn't care. I
shan't let him care; I shall make life and marriage very beauti-
ful for him." How wise the minx is and how those kisses seem
actually to have made for a fundamental decency and honesty
and justice in her view of human relations. Miss Duganne
writes with a clear, staccato, bird-like note; she visualizes men
and things with cool precision.
Oct. 20, 1920]
The Nation
455
The Casual Laborer
The Casual Laborer and Other Essays. By Carleton H. Parker,
with an Introduction by Cornelia Stratton Parker. Harcourt,
Brace and Howe.
IN a recent book on employment management, edited by Daniel
Bloomfield, and containing selections from the writings of
more than half a hundred business men, industrial engineers,
and social economists, the position of initial importance is given
to Carleton Parker's Motives in Economic Life. It is signifi-
cant of the place which Carleton Parker achieved in the newly
shaping world of industry. Among forward-looking business
men his name is now as familiar as the names of Taylor, Hoxie,
Gilbraith, Gantt. He is an accepted industrial engineer, but an
engineer of a new type. He laid hold of the deeply important
fact that economic enterprise is human enterprise, and that no
amount of analysis of pecuniary values and laws will avail if
an understanding of the human element is omitted. He brought
up with a round turn a one-sided and pseudo-psychological
economics. He showed how helpless it was in the face of
present crises. "Why," he asked, "are economists mute in the
presence of the most obvious crisis in our industrial society?
Why does an agitated officialdom search today in vain among our
writers for scientific advice treating labor inefficiency or indus-
trial disloyalty? . . . The fair answer seems to be this:
We economists speculate little on human motives. We are not
curious about the great basic facts which dynamic and behavior-
istic psychology has gathered to illustrate the instinct stimulus
to human activity. Most of us are not interested to think of
what a psychologically full or satisfying life is. . . . Our
economic literature shows that we are but rarely curious to
know whether industrialism is suited to man's inherited nature,
or what man in turn will do to our rules of economic conduct in
case these rules are repressive."
The conclusions which Carleton Parker reached are already
creating a new economics and a new type of business enterprise.
In Bloomfield's book, for example, we find such titles from busi-
ness men and engineers as Humanizing the Management of In-
dustry; The New Profession of Handling Men; The New Art of
Hiring and Firing; A New Profession in American Industry;
Playing Fair with the Workers; Foremen Such as America
Needs. And we find, almost on every page, the recognition of
the human turnover as the great problem of industry. We are
apparently entering the second stage of the industrial revolution.
We are, in short, passing beyond the understanding and use of
the mere machine to the understanding and use of the human
creature who runs the machine. We need not speculate as to
what has carried us to this second stage. No doubt the shortage
of labor following the war has brought business men to a sharp
realization of a more careful conservation of — which means a
more careful consideration for — the scanty labor supply they
have. Were there no shortage no doubt the old ways would
still, in the main, be the good ways. Nevertheless, even in the
good old days of a beneficent "labor reserve" business men had
begun to be disquieted. It was not pleasant to know of human
wreck and ruin all about one. Then in 1913 an eager young
economist was sent to "cover" the Wheatland strike in Cali-
fornia. The outcome of his seeing was a new understanding
on his part of the human fundamentals of the whole economic
situation, an understanding which, communicated to others, has
been widening and deepening throughout the country ever since,
so that today it is creating a new type of industrial attitude and
organization.
Carleton Parker's thesis was very simple — so simple one won-
ders that it had not been discovered by economists before him.
Self-expression, he felt, and therefore freedom of choice and
movement, were presuppositions to a satisfying human state.
Check self-expression and there is sure to be a psychic revolt,
"a slipping into abnormal mental functioning"; and society
finds on its hands the revolutionist, the alcoholic, the supersensi-
tive, the violent anarchist, the insane. If society prefers not to
have revolutionists, alcoholics, etc., the way is clear: let it
remove the checks to self-expression.
It is this conclusion which forward-looking business is taking
to heart nowadays. The "new art" of the employment manager
is the art of fitting round pegs into appropriate round holes, of
keeping men and women happy at their work, of supplying
variety, interest, outlook. The "new art" of the industrial rela-
tions manager is, by invoking the participation of the workers
in the organization of the going enterprise, to give them that
sense of self-respect which is fundamental to full human self-
expression. Keeping Men at their Jobs correlates with Making
the Job Worth While; and Making the Job Worth While corre-
lates with New Men for Old; while basic to all of them is the
understanding of what Parker seemed to find in his Motives in
Economic Life.
For the psychologist, the study of instinct equipment opens
up fields as yet but hastily traversed. It will be easy, by a too
swift acceptance, to make a pseudo-science out of Parker's eager
tentatives. It will be easy, too, to reject the tentatives, because
they are not yet scientifically accurate. The truer attitude of
the psychologist will be to recognize that he has here an oppor-
tunity for immense service to the new economics that is even
now in the making. For the economist, the book is like one of
those impressive events that make history. It marks the clos-
ing of a chapter.
To those who have read "An American Idyll" it need hardly
be said that Mrs. Parker's introduction is of the very essence of
the book. We shall never be able to separate her clear and
warm perception from the eager questing of the young econo-
mist. It is they — the two of them together — who have written
this new chapter in the economic life of America.
H. A. OVERSTREET
Books in Brief
fpHE question which most naturally occurs to a reviewer of
* "An Ethical System Based on the Laws of Nature" (Open
Court Publishing Company) , now translated from the French
of M. Deshumbert by Lionel Giles, is — why is such a book, why
is this book interesting to people of many tongues? Portuguese,
Rumanian, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Hindi, Bengali,
English — all these, besides the original French, surely bespeak
a varied and moving appeal; the book is clearly a phenomenon,
interesting, if not for the subtlety of its thought, certainly for
its power to evoke response. Assuredly it is not a subtle book.
It is in four parts, of which the first is a statement of the theory
— a vague "cult of life," and of a Nature which everywhere
strives for the fullness of life, and of a Good which is "every-
thing that contributes to the conservation and the enlargement
of life," all sustained by an array of curious information, mostly
Darwinian in inspiration, about the life-conserving habits of
plants and animals. But Nature is obviously quite as swift in
the infliction of death as she is in the generation of life; hence
a second part is devoted to answers to objections that might be
raised — as the first, "Since Nature's desire is for life, why
should there be death?" And so of disaster, disease, pain,
cruelty, evil. The answer given is the old one, of compensa-
tion, or, where this seems somehow futile, the ancient one of
Cleanthes: there is no ill save sin's self -blindness. "Law" is
made to bear the heavy burden of justification, and "the Whole"
is idolized as the harmonizer of all desires: "Let us love the
Whole with a great and passionate love. Let us pursue the
object which it pursues, let us go wheresoever it goes, let us
help the Whole to live its great life." The note is that of the
Stoics, and indeed, in the next part, which is devoted to Duties
and Precepts, the sages of antiquity, especially Marcus Aurelius
and Epictetus, are quoted along with Confucius, Mencius, and
among moderns an odd group of physicians and hygienists — all
456
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2885
very sensible and many very high-minded. The author adds
epigrams of his own which are quite in the tradition of French
letters and worthy of the company they keep: "The chief value
of thoughts lies in the acts which they engender"; "Devotion to
others is admirable; devotion to an idea is sublime." These
are examples. But one need not have read so far to discover
the source of M. Deshumbert's appeal: it is not in realism, it is
not in logical acuteness or consistency, it is not in depth of in-
sight; it is in a moral zeal which amounts to religious fervor,
and the religion is the worship of Nature conceived with that
plenitude of emotion which makes the word equivalent to God.
The book belongs with the Meditations of the Stoic emperor,
with the Discourses of the lame freedman; and its appeal to
American and Japanese, to Rumanian and Hindu lies without
doubt in its possession of the same high and tranquil mag-
nanimity of spirit which marks these reflections of the past
with an eternal humanity. The last part of the volume is a
consolatory discourse On Death. Marcus Aurelius is still
quoted on the last page. But has M. Deshumbert forgotten, is
there no truth in, the dark and bitter thoughts of his own great
countryman on this same subject — of La Rochefoucauld, vis-a-
vis with death?
IT is a commonplace of knowledge that Wagner harked back
to Greek practice for the union of music and dramatic action.
It is a much less appreciated fact that of all the really great
masters of the musical art he was the only one who enjoyed a
thorough classical education. At thirty-five he resumed the
study of Greek and mastered Aeschylus, as he says himself,
"with real feeling and understanding." Miss Pearl Cleveland
Wilson, author of "Wagner's Dramas and Greek Tragedy" (Co-
lumbia University Press), appears successful in her attempt to
dispel the impression that Wagner's dramas uphold the doctrine
of might and glorify the hero who forces his will upon the world
about him. She demonstrates the opposite truth, that Wagner
upheld constantly — even in the pagan drama of the Ring — the
Christian ideal of sympathy and self-sacrifice. Those who, like
Nietzsche and Bernard Shaw, interpret his dramas differently,
have either been misled by such incidental motives as the self-
glorification of Wotan, or else they have grown enthusiastic
over Siegfried the Ubermensch. It is here, then, that the paral-
lel with Greek tragedy comes in. "As the Greek tragic poets
were constantly showing how insolent pride (tf/3/ns) brought
destruction on the man who flaunted it, so Wagner shows how
greed (for gold or for power) destroys those who harbor it;
and as the Greeks exalt the virtues of moderation and self-con-
trol (both included in ffoxppoawri) , so Wagner exalts the love
that rises from sympathy and leads to forgetfulness of self in
the service of others." It was by Aeschylus that Wagner was
most influenced. With Sophocles he had perhaps nothing in
common except the perfect command of his chief medium of
expression. But there is an Aeschylean grandeur in his scores
whose harmonies like the images of the Greek poet blaze with
imagination and glow with passion without losing for a moment
their essential majesty. Even more striking than the resem-
blance of form is the parallelism of substance. "Aeschylus
makes us realize that there is no punishment more terrible than
that which sin draws upon itself; Wagner makes us see that
there is no action more noble than that which begins in the sor-
row of sympathy and ends in the joy of self -forgetfulness in
heroic service." This point is amply illuminated by several
detailed comparisons, the most compelling of which is the one
drawn between the "Oresteia" and the "Ring of the Nibelung"
as dramas of crime and atonement.
VT OW that we have a new Laocoon and a new Job, a new
Inferno and a new Lear, it is pleasant to welcome among
this society of revenants "A New Robinson Crusoe," resur-
rected by Gilson Gardner (Harcourt, Brace and Howe). The
lonely outcast on the desert island is metamorphosed into a
textbook of elementary economics — "baby eke" it is called in
colleges — and into a tract for the very gentlest brand of social-
ism. By his own experiences and unaided reflection he learns
the truths once divined by Adam Smith; thence he proceeds to
Ricardo and thence to Marx, ending up at about the Sidney and
Beatrice Webb stage, without diving into the more intricate
theories of J. B. Clark, Carver, and such. He learns that gold
on his island is a drug, not worth its weight in grass; that men
work partly for exercise and partly to support themselves; that
tools and other "capital" add to the productive power of labor.
But after all he could not have gone very far with his re-
searches but for the opportune plantation of a colony of politi-
cal exiles in neighboring islands. Association with them
teaches Crusoe the advantages of trade, the law of supply and
demand, the effects and limits of competition. These sweet des-
peradoes start taking the land on Crusoe's island, but he pro-
tests and they acknowledge his rightful title to the land he
has discovered first. By monopolizing the natural resources at
his command, he soon reduces his neighbors to a proletariat,
himself representing the capitalist class. He sets up a church
and a constitutional government, taking care to allow only his
henchmen to be elected to office. Finally, he has himself elected
president, thus remaining, as before, monarch of all he surveys.
He marries, begets children, and makes a will leaving the
archipelago to them. But then a fatal accident happens. His
docile subjects discover the diary in which, for the mere pleas-
ure of thought, he has recorded his economic observations. They
discover that the whole source of his power is his monopoly of
natural resources; they turn him out to sea in an open boat,
make him revoke his old testament and sign a new testament
leaving all the land to the community. And thus they leave
him, and us, to conjecture what happens to their communism.
The historical novel has long been recognized ; the economic .
novel is somewhat less exploited. Could not other sciences be
taught thus delightfully? An anthology of poems to birds
would form a nice textbook of ornithology; Zola's "Pot-Bouille"
would not need much changing to make it give instruction in
anatomy; and "Twinkle, twinkle, little star'r would form a
pleasant introduction to astronomy and celestial physics.
"rpHE Hart, Schaffner and Marx Labor Agreement" (Hart,
* Schaffner and Marx) is a brief monograph indispensable
to every student of collective bargaining. It supersedes a pam-
phlet issued in 1916, and brings down to date the essential infor-
mation about the most successful and most highly developed
machinery of labor adjustment in the United States — perhaps
in the world. Since this agreement was first reached in Janu-
ary, 1911, there has not been a strike in the large Hart, Schaff-
ner and Marx establishment, although the employees, virtually
all of whom are members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers
of America, have gained a long succession of improvements in
hours, wages, working conditions, and shop control. This book
contains the text of the original agreement, with its subsequent
modifications, and the rulings of the Trade Board and Arbitra-
tors which have developed it, as court decisions have developed
the English common law. It also contains articles by Earl Dean
Howard, the labor manager of the firm, and by Ray Stannard
Baker, who described the system for the New York Evening
Post. The significance of this "industrial constitution" is en-
hanced by the fact that in many respects it has become the model
for others, including not merely the shops of one firm, but the
employers of entire clothing markets, such as Chicago, New
York, Baltimore, Rochester, and Boston. It is in documents such
as this that future historians will find the sources of an indus-
trially civilized society.
A LTHOUGH the apostasy of Marie Ganz furnished the occa-
■**• sion for her "Rebels: Into Anarchy and Out Again" (Dodd,
Mead), it is the period of her rebellion that engages one's in-
terest and gives the book its attraction. Her rebellion defied all
sociological classification. The papers called her an anarchist,
but she was no more an anarchist than a socialist. Her rebellion
.
Oct. 20, 1920]
The Nation
457
arose from that direct and sympathetic pain of which hunger,
overwork, and an easy sensibility to the sufferings of those
about her made her the victim. So, suffering and unrestrained
by the dictates of any manual of manners, she uttered what she
felt. She made no elaborate preparations. She got up on a
soap-box on an East Side corner and spoke her mind. Then
they called her anarchist because they thought her manner in-
temperate and her disrespect for the law obvious. Today, in the
midst of comfortable surroundings and removed from that
squalor the consciousness of which so sharply pained her, she
enunciates the doctrine of content. Yet her memory will not
permit her to make an unconditional surrender. "No matter how
conservative I may possibly become under broadening influ-
ences," she writes, "I know I shall never be able to recall with-
out bitterness and without a stirring of the old hatreds the hard-
ships and cruelties that darkened our lives."
FIVE hundred pages are not excessive for a book which,
according to the publisher's jacket, undertakes to give "a
complete treatment, clearly and concisely stated, of the entire
field of business law." Judge A. B. Frey's treatment of the
subject reviewed in his "American Business Law" (Macmillan)
is undeniably concise. So far as it goes, it is clear. But it is
complete only in the sense that something is said about all of
the apposite judicial attitudes that have become crystallized into
formulated rules. A thirteen-page treatment of the entire law
of partnerships and corporations can hardly be called complete.
Perhaps such books have their place, notwithstanding their
offense against the maxim that a little learning is a dangerous
thing. But they must be handled with care. The bite of the
law is in its applications, not in definitions or generalizations.
As Mr. Justice Holmes reminds us, "general propositions do not
decide concrete cases." To definitions and generalizations
Judge Frey adds illustrations of their application, but he sel-
dom ventures into the why and the wherefore. His effort on the
whole seems like an attempt to substitute an escalator for the
royal road to learning. His escalator is as good as any
of those with which it competes. He has done well enough what
he set out to do. Whether it was worth doing is another ques-
tion, on which opinions may differ.
THE awakening of Canada's national self-consciousness man-
ifested in the studious zeal with which Canadians are
beginning to collect and publish the records of their country's
history is strikingly exemplified in the recent appearance of a
voluminous work, "Louisbourg from Its Foundation to Its Fall
1713-1758" (Macmillan), by the Hon. J. S. McLennan. While
Senator McLennan's laborious compilation lacks most of the
graces of literary craftsmanship, it will be welcomed by stu-
dents of North American colonial development, for it furnishes
either through its text or bibliography exhaustive and appar-
ently complete guidance to all of the many and widely
scattered sources of information concerning one of the most
interesting attempts of the French nation to establish itself on
this continent. In spite of its thoroughness, however, apart from
considerable new material on the social, governmental, and
economic aspects of the early struggles of the much neglected
and long suffering French emigrants to maintain themselves at
Louisbourg, there is surprisingly little in this latest account of
the rise and decline of "the Dunkirk of America" that is not
to be found in the older recitals of this same series of episodes
in New World conquest and settlement. Especially is this true
of its author's treatment of the first and second captures of
Louisbourg. Nevertheless it must be said that Senator Mc-
Lennan has made it more evident than any of the previous
chroniclers of those events that the earlier of the two was
largely an unprovoked attack on the part of the British, brought
about by the secret machinations and the selfish ambitions of
officials who found themselves in authority over the New Eng-
land colonists. Had the rank and file of the transplanted
French and English provincials been left to follow their own
BRENTANCTS
Retail Book Department
Fifth. Avenue and 27th Street, New York City
BOOKS ON PRESENT DAY TOPICS
The Peace Conference Day-By-Day
A Presidential Pilgrimage Leading to the Discovery
of Europe. By Charles T. Thompson. With an
introductory letter by Col. E. M. House. $2.50
It is a day-by-day chronicle of just what occurred,
with all the sidelights; what the leading figures in that
memorable assemblage said and did; the fine play of
intrigue and statesmanship; the dramatic incidents;
the secret conclaves and understandings; the rise and
fall of the Fourteen Points; the shattering of high
ideals; the battle of Covenant versus Alliance; the
struggle for the Spoils of War; the matching of wits
between Europe and America in the greatest diplo-
matic game of all time. It is the truth at last.
The Place of Science in Modern Civilization
and Other Essays
By Thorstein Veblen $3.00
A collection of timely papers published in various
economic and sociological periodicals during the past
twenty years.
Russia as an American Problem
By John Spargo $2.25
There are opportunities in Russia that* up to now only
Japan has seen. The author brings them home to the
American business man, while for the general reader
he clears the haze of controversy, giving a definite
authoritative picture that shows among other things
why Bolshevism cannot last in Russia.
The Greatest Failure in All History
By John Spargo $2.50
The author in this book gives us the cumulative
benefit of his extensive study of the Russian situation.
Bedouins
By James Huneker $2.00
This new volume of James Huneker contains his re-
cent essays, beginning with a searching study of Mary
Garden and her thrice-subtle art. Miss Garden is
critically considered as singer and actress. Her rare
personality is painted with forthright frankness. Such
diverse Fantasts and Bedouins as Debussy, Mirbeau,
Caruso, Poe, Anatole France, and Botticelli may be
found among others. Several fictions of exotic color-
ing are included.
Books in General
By Solomon Eagle $2.00
For the past six years The New Statesman (London)
has each week had a page of delightfully friendly
gossip by Solomon Eagle. Witness some of the chap-
ters; The Beauties of Baldness, The Muse in Liquor,
Shakespeare's Women and Mr. George Moore, Moving
a Library, and forty other chapters.
The Story of Opal
The Journal of an Understanding Heart. By Opal
Whiteley $2.00
Teeming with human interest, humor, and tragedy,
this story has startled the world of cultivated readers
by its self-taught wisdom and its naive charm.
Postage Additional
BRENTANOS
Retail Book Department
Fifth Avenue and 27th Street
New York City
458
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2885
inclinations it seems that they, and even the Indians, too, might
have prosecuted in fairly amicable rivalry their fish and fur
trading enterprises for at least as long as the natural resources
of the eastern seaboard were not seriously depleted. Moreover
Senator McLennan discounts the military glory usually ascribed
to the New Englanders for their victorious assault on Louis-
bourg in 1745, emphasizing not only their awkward and undis-
ciplined maneuvers in conducting the siege and their orgies of
drunkenness afterwards, but also their downright cowardice
during various stages of their operations against an inferior
enemy and their wanton cruelty once they had occupied the sur-
rendered town. There is here also much evidence confirming the
fact that the French settlers in Cape Breton Island and its
environs, like the English colonists along the coast to the south
of them, were the victims of an unbelievably gross and stupid
indifference on the part of their governing superiors who re-
mained at home.
HASBROUCK 0. PALEN has brought together in "The
American Voter's Handbook" (Poughkeepsie: The Helper
Press) a body of material which should be of interest to every
independent voter in the country. His pamphlet contains the
platforms of the Republican, Democratic, Prohibition, Socialist,
Farmer-Labor, and Single Tax Parties, with certain important
American state papers and statistics, and a minimum of editorial
matter, which has the stamp of a liberal spirit trained in the
traditional doctrines of American liberalism.
Drama
■ Trade-Goods
THE managers are at ease in their particular Zion. Why
should they not be? Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, Presi-
dent of Columbia University, philosopher and publicist, wit-
nessed a performance of "Poldekin" and saw that it was good.
Every morning paper chronicles his words: "Poldekin is at
once the most interesting and amusing play that I have seen in
years." It reminds one of the great days when Mr. Wilson
called "Friendly Enemies" a beautiful play and the posters rep-
resented him in his box — lank of jaw, glittering of eye, with
lifted forefinger, half menacing and half paternal. If one
desired to be quite irreverent, one would say that Dr. Butler
really means "Swat the Bolshevik!" even as Mr. Wilson meant
"Swat the Hun!" The significance of these critical perform-
ances grows clear if one tries to imagine M. Clemenceau or
the Rector of the University of Paris — both good reactionaries
— commending a brainless farce of the boulevards on account of
its political intention. Yet beneath even this depth one fears
a lower still. What if Mr. Wilson sincerely believed "Friendly
Enemies" to be a good play? What if Dr. Butler's words are
those of soberness and truth? Then why should we poor scrib-
blers seek to tamper with masterpieces? And did not "Friendly
Enemies" make a great fortune? Why should the managers
not be at ease? Mr. Wilson is in the White House and all's right
with Broadway.
There was a time when Mr. Edward Knoblock had neither
changed his name nor his nationality and was a promising play-
wright. Now he is pontifical and dull and shrinks from nothing.
To justify the furious nonsense of "One" (Belasco Theater)
he quotes Leonardo da Vinci and — Bulwer-Lytton. Were he to
write again on so indelicate a subject as the body of man, he
would, no doubt, quote Lord Lister and the lamented Munyon.
Today he is all soul. In beautiful Belascan stage-dusks — you
must not miss the patch of starry sky in the last act — he lets
two sisters discover that each has only half a soul. They speak
to each other, using red roses as wireless instruments, across
three thousand miles. This, clearly, could not go on. One of
the two had to die a death of sacrifice. She does. Her half
soul slides into the survivor who is now one, or, like a well-
known shoe-polish, "two-in-one." Perhaps Mr. Harding or Mr.
Cox would find this sweet and consoling. They might even
learn from it, speak to each other across the political gulf, and
in the end come tenderly together.
They could not but be pleased with "Anna Ascends" (The
Playhouse) by Harry Chapman Ford. For here we have the
great theme of Americanization. Perhaps Mr. Brady could
entice Mr. Mitchell Palmer to pronounce an encomium. Anna
is a Syrian. Observe the delicacy of this choice. Central and
Eastern Europeans cannot be mentioned in good society. The
Swedes were suspected of error during the war. The Italians
are heading for naughtiness. Suppose Anna had been from
Milan where they have just declared for the third Internationale!
But a Syrian, since neither French nor British oil magnates are
in the audience, is blameless and her Americanization a matter
for edification. So Anna foils designing men and at twenty-odd
is a distinguished and successful author, affianced to a rich man's
son. This proves, does it not, both the beauty of the Syrian
character and of our institutions? Miss Alice Brady gives a
duskily brilliant and eloquent performance. But how, being so
intelligent and gifted, could she have endured the play at all?
Mr. Edgar Selwyn opens his new Times Square Theater with
"The Mirage," by himself. He retells the story of "Iris" and
of "The Easiest Way." He cannot be said to approach the
strength of Pinero's statement of the case; he does not improve
on the moral muddling of Eugene Walters. He deserves praise,
however, for at least seeking the stuff of drama where it really
is. If he fails to illuminate an obscure problem of human con-
duct, it is because he takes all moral attitudes at their public
and advertised value. He shows us a soul whom degradation
could not corrupt. But he lets that soul be overwhelmed by
sharing the opinion of others that, under the circumstances, the
stain must have soaked in. If Irene was the woman whom Mr.
Selwyn describes and whom Miss Florence Reed projects so
richly and meltingly, she would have risen in her own defense
and sent both men magnificently about their business. But 'on
Broadway Nora and Magda have protested in vain and the
ballot has not touched the mid-Victorians' assumptions. There
are "good" women and "bad" women — none are human. Mr.
Selwyn's heroine is human. That is his play's virtue. But he
thinks he ought to believe her bad. That is its undoing.
The comedies are more agreeable because they are less pre-
tentious. "The Tavern" (G. M. Cohan Theater) is half morality
play, half burlesque on melodrama. An obscure author wrote
it with stodgy seriousness. Then it was "Cohanized," not, cer-
tainly, without adroitness and wit. But the result is a jumble
in which Arnold Daly, once the delight and glory of our stage,
postures with a tawdry romantic elegance. To have seen him
in Shaw and Bahr and now to see him here tinges one's thoughts
with a wintry sadness. "Welcome Stranger" (Cohan and Harris
Theater) , is excellent in intention and rich, during one act, with
authentic observation. But since it was doomed to end in the
spirit of Tiny Tim, the exact human data of that act are swept
aside. Mr. Aaron Hofman understands his theme and knows
how to build a play. But the cheap optimism that makes for
long runs was too much for him. "Three Live Ghosts" (Green-
wich Village Theater), although written by Mr. F. S. Isham of
Detroit, is cockney in scene and subject. It is, moreover, easily
the most amusing play of the season. Being farce, it is non-
sensical. But the nonsense is full of human nature, of natural
gaiety, and spontaneous high spirits. Tbe characterization,
within the limits of its kind, is sharp and racy. Miss Beryl
Mercer as Mrs. Gobbins gives one of her priceless portraitures.
Her art is prosaic, but it is quite perfect. It is like a realistic
etching in which every touch tells and every touch is supremely
right. The public runs after gaudy displays of second-rate
personalities. Here, far too • little known and sparingly ap-
plauded, is an artist of first-rate intelligence and finish who
saves or adorns every play that has the good fortune of her
presence. Ludwig Lewisohn
International Relations Section
British Correspondence and Sinn Fein
THE Irish Bulletin for September 10, a type-written
circular regularly issued by Sinn Fein, consists wholly
of charges against Dublin Castle. The London Times in
printing extracts from this circular confirmed the peculiar-
ities of type with regard to "T's" and "h's" noted by Sinn
Fein. The text follows.
ON November 11, 1919, British military and police raided
Number 76 Harcourt Street, the headquarters of Dail
Eireann, the elected Government of the Irish people. The armed
forces removed great quantities of literature, and members of
the clerical staff of the raided officers saw the police tie into
bundles several reams of the official notepaper of Dail Eireann
and carry it away with them.
On May 14, 15, and 16, 1920, many of the members of Dail
Eireann received letters sent to them through the post and
bearing Dublin City postmarks. The letters when opened were
found to be typed on the official notepaper of Dail Eireann.
Each letter was similarly worded; each consisted of these words
typed in capital letters:
"An eye for an eye
A tooth for a tooth
Therefore a life for a life."
The addresses on the envelopes were also typewritten but in the
addresses small as well as capital letters were used. It was
obvious that all these threatening letters had come from one
source. It was obvious that that source was hostile to Sinn
Fein. It was obvious that at that source there were quantities
of the official notepaper of Dail Eireann. It was obvious that
in Dublin City that source was situated.
On May 18, 1920, Mr. Arthur Griffith, acting president of the
Republic of Ireland and member of Dail Eireann for East
Caban and Northwest Tyrone, was interviewed by representa-
tives of the Dublin press to whom he stated that the notepaper
upon which the threatening letters were written was the same
notepaper which had six months previously been taken by
British police from the headquarters of Dail Eireann at 76
Harcourt Street. That statement appeared in the Dublin even-
ing press of May 18 and the Dublin morning press of May 19.
Eight days later, on May 27, Colonel Edgeworth Johnstone,
Chief Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, wrote the
following letter to the Irish Independent.
"Sir: With reference to an article appearing in your issue
of the 19th relative to threatening letters received by Sinn Fein
members of Parliament and to the statement that paper similar
to that on which the threatening notices were written had been
seized by the authorities at 76 Harcourt Street, I am directed by
Government to inform you that there is no foundation for your
report that notepaper or any writing paper was removed from
76 Harcourt Street or taken possession of by the police or by the
military.
"W. E. Johnstone, Chief Commissioner"
"Dublin Castle, May 27, 1920."
Colonel Edgeworth Johnstone's phrase is important in view
of the sequel: "I am directed by Government to inform you,"
he says to the Irish press, "that there is no foundation for your
report that notepaper or any writing paper was removed from
76 Harcourt Street or taken possession of by the police or by
the military."
Certain official correspondence of high placed British Gov-
ernment officials in Ireland is now in the hands of the Irish Re-
publican authorities. The part of that correspondence which is
treated of in the following has been photographed and copies of
these photographs are now in the possession of certain Ameri-
can citizens and other persons to whom the original letters have
been submitted for examination. A full set of these photo-
graphic reproductions has been sent to the editor of the London
Times. One of these letters is a report by Inspector McFeely
of the "G" Division (political) of the Dublin Metropolitan
Police. It reads :
"15th January, 20.
"Frenchman Lands at Kingstown
"I beg to report that the above named turned out to be Paul
Roger Chauvire, professor of French in the National University,
and a native of Paris. He served in the French army during
the war, returned to Dublin on February 26, 1919, and lodged
at 19 Fitzwilliam Place. He changed to 45 Lower Leeson Street
about April, 1919, where he has since resided. He has visited
Paris two or three times during 1919, the last time being on
13th ultimo, remaining away for a month. He has a wife,
daughter, and maid. His movements were watched on 14th and
15th instant and he attended the University, Earlsfort Terrace,
during teaching hours on both days. No known Sinn Feiners
called to his lodgings, and he was not observed to associate with
any extremists now or at any time.
"W. McFeeley, Inspector."
This report is initialed on the margin in the following man-
ner: "The I. G. Transmitted. W. C. F. Redmond, Ass. Comm.
16/1."
The report is typed on the back of a sheet of the official note-
paper of Dail Eireann.
That report is dated "15th January, 20." It was initialed
at Dublin Castle on January 16, 1920, by Assistant Commis-
sioner Redmond of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (assistant
to Colonel Edgeworth Johnstone who denied that any such
notepaper was in the possession of the police of the military)
and was transmitted on that date to the "I. G.," viz.: the In-
spector General of the Royal Irish Constabulary.
The following letter was written on April 8, 1920. It is ad-
dressed from the North Dublin Union ("N. D. U.") which was
then and is still in the possession of the British military au-
thorities :
"N. D. U., 8/4/20
"Dear Ward: Thanks so much for your letter which I passed
on to Hyam, who sends many loving messages to you.
"We have a typist (lady, cela va sans dire) and Hyam is well
away, she has ginger hair so draw your own conclusions.
"Reverse your deductions about the Howth show and you
will be nearer the mark, things have been rather quiet here of
late. I am just back from a show and its now 4.0 a. m. or
should I say 04.00 hrs.?
"How does it feel being a 'civvy' again? I expect we shall
miss the army a bit when we leave it. In case you feel inclined
to change your political views I inclose a pamphlet which might
interest you!
"No news at all here, everything just the same, except we had
a fine day yesterday.
"All the best, Old Thing, a line any time you feel inclined
to write will be greatly appreciated.
"Yrs to the sticky end,
"P. Attwood."
The signature is that of Lieutenant P. Attwood, Royal Sus-
sex Regiment. Lieutenant Attwood is a member of the General
Staff (Intelligence) of the British Army of Occupation in
Ireland.
The letter is written on the official notepaper of Dail Eireann
of which it covers the whole of the front of one sheet and half
of the back.
The man Hyam mentioned in the letter is Captain A. F. Hyam,
First South Lancashire Regiment, who is also a member of the
British General Staff.
On April 24, 1920, the following report was forwarded to the
460
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2885
Chief Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. It is
addressed from the General Staff (Intelligence)— "G. S. (I.)."
It is specially stamped "Secret."
"G. S. (I.), 24/4/20
"The Chief Commissioner, D. M. P.
"On reliable information received today:
"1. Before May 6 a 'grand coup' will be made by Sinn Fein
unless forestalled. It is believed that the capture of Govern-
ment securities, etc., is the. aim, and in consequence will con-
sist of simultaneous raids on or burning of post offices, etc.,
throughout the country. It is definitely stated that whatever
this plan may be, it should be completed by May 5/6.
"2. It is also stated that officers and soldiers will be shot in
future under similar circumstances to the murders of police.
"3. When the hunger strike was decided on by the leaders
of Sinn Fein in Mountjoy Prison, the rank and file were or-
dered, under the same system as hostile raids are conducted,
to join the strike.
"The above system was especially mentioned in order to ter-
rorize those who were unwilling to join the movement (inci-
dentally there were many against it). The result of this is
that a number of Sinn Feiners whose sentiments were greatly
in favor of their respective leaders, but who had never had an
opportunity of knowing their methods, are now assured that the
organization is largely carried on by the leaders at the expense
of the rank and file and also through sheer terrorism. During
the strike the leaders were freely given whiskey by the warders,
and at the end of the strike were very little the worse, whereas
the rank and file were in a bad way. The leaders, i. e., Hunter,
Clancy, Brennan, Gallagher, etc., shook hands with each warder
before leaving the prison.
"F. Harper Shove,
"Captain, General Staff (I) Dublin District
"Lr. Castle Yard, Dublin, K. P."
The signature is that of Captain F. Harper Shove, General
Headquarters Staff, Ireland.
The report is typewritten. Wherever a capital "T" and a
small "h" occur together a marked unevenness in the alignment
of these two letters is noticeable. Certain other inequalities are
evident in the typing. These peculiarities are as clearly marked
in the typewritten addresses on the envelopes containing the
threatening letters sent to the members of Dail Eireann. An
expert on typescript has been given the envelopes, letters, and
this secret report for examination. He has reported that he is
prepared to -swear on oath that the threatening letters, the en-
velopes, and the above secret report were all typed on the same
typewriting machine, which is an "Underwood."
Thus far it is demonstrated:
1. That Colonel Edgeworth Johnstone, chief commissioner
of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, lied when on May 27 under
the direction of his Government he informed the Irish press that
no official notepaper was seized or was taken into the possession
of the British police or military authorities.
2. That on January 15 an inspector of the "G" Division of
the Dublin Metropolitan Police sent a report to the Assistant
Commissioner of that force, which report was typed on the back
of a sheet of the official notepaper of Dail Eireann.
3. That the Assistant Commissioner initialed that sheet with
his own hand on January 16.
4. That a letter was written on the official notepaper of
Dail Eireann by a British staff officer on April 8, 1920, showing
that at that date that notepaper had for some reason passed
into the hands of members of the General Staff in Ireland.
5. The reason why some of that notepaper passed into the
possession of British staff officers was made clear on May 14-
15-16, when members of Dail Eireann received death notices
typed on one of the typewriters at the British Military Head-
quarters at Dublin Castle — on the same typewriter as that on
which Captain F. Harper Shove of the General Staff had had
typed on April 24 his lying secret report on the Mountjoy
hunger strike.
One other of the letters of British officials written during the
last four months is necessary to these disclosures. It is quoted
as written, the spelling and grammar unaltered.
"St. Andrew's Hotel, Exchequer Street,
"Dublin, 2nd March, 1920.
"Dear Hardy: Have duly reported and found things in a
fearful mess but think will be able to make a good show. Have
been given a free hand to carry on and everyone has been very
charming. Re our little stunt I see no prospects until I have
got things on a firmer basis but still hope and believe there are
possabilities. As I intend to put in for my allowances for
February should be awfully grateful if you would kindly tell
me the War Office rates for Ration-Servant, Lodging Fuel and
Light and shall I send them to you for signature or put them
thro' Irish Command? — Hill-Dillon tells me they are trying to
get me G.S03 and not F.F. is this correct? and will you please
send me the number of my warrant to Ireland as I have mislaid
it and cannot claim travelling allowance without it. . . .
"Yours very sincerely,
"F. Harper Shove."
Of all the documents quoted this letter is the most sinister. It
it written by a British staff officer to a British secret service
agent. It is dated March 2. In it Captain F. Harper Shove,
from whose office at Dublin Castle the notices threatening the
members of Dail Eireann with assassination were sent out two
and a half months later, mentions that he has "been given a
free hand to carry on." It refers to "our little stunt."
The little stunt is the assassination of prominent Republicans
in various parts of Ireland.
Oh March 2, 1920, Captain F. Harper Shove of the General
Staff saw no prospects "until I have got things on a firmer
basis." But he still hoped and believed "there are possabilities."-
Within eighteen days Captain F. Harper Shove and those whom
he was "given a free hand" to direct had got things on a firmer
basis. Alderman Thomas MaeCurtain, Lord Mayor of Cork,
was assassinated by British police on the morning of March 20.
Before the end of March two other prominent Republicans had
been assassinated, James MacCarthy at Thurles, County Tip-
perary, and Thomas O'Dwyer of Bouladuff in the same county.
The method, even the hour of assassination, was similar in all
three cases. Captain F. Harper Shove had got things "on a
firmer basis." "The little stunt" was being successful. It was
then decided that the members of Dail Eireann should be made
to feel the effects of it. On May 14-15-16 the chief directing
agent of the assassinations sent from his office at Dublin Castle
his death notices. The object in using the official notepaper
of Dail Eireann is not difficult to understand. The British Gov-
ernment tried to explain away the assassination of Lord Mayor
MaeCurtain as Captain F. Harper Shove carefully planned they
should be able to explain away the assassination of Dail
Eireann members. The receipt by the men who had been killed
of death notices on the official notepaper of Dail Eireann would
have been used by British propaganda as proof that these mem-
bers were shot down by the "small group of Sinn Fein terror-
ists" to whom Mr. Lloyd George even now attributes the murder
of Alderman Thomas MaeCurtain. It was to provide the mur-
derers gathered under the "free hand" of Captain F. Harper
Shove with this shield that the official notepaper passed in
April, 1920, from the possession of British police who up till
then had used it for their reports, into the possession of the
British General Staff whose purpose for it was a cover for a
campaign of assassination by which they had hoped to rid
themselves of the Irish people's demand for national independ-
ence. This plan of assassination has not yet been carried out.
It is still the policy of high placed officers on the Head-
quarters Staff of the British Army of Occupation in Ireland.
The originals of the letters quoted above are in the possession
of the Republican movement in Ireland. They are here ac-
curately copied and truthfully described. The conclusions
drawn from them have been come to cautiously after an ex-
haustive investigation.
Oct. 20, 1920]
The Nation
461
Court-Martial Justice in Ireland
THE following letter, signed by men well known in the
United States as well as in England, is reprinted from
the Times (London) for September 14.
To the Editor of The Times:
Sir: On August 24 a conference in Dublin of moderate men
of all parties demanded, among other things, as the preliminary
condition of an Irish settlement, the abandonment of the policy
of repression.
Few Englishmen have any idea of the lengths to which this
policy has been carried. Most Englishmen know simply that
some eighty members of the Royal Irish Constabulary have
been murdered, and they take it for granted that the Govern-
ment's repressive measures are necessary to put an end to these
outrages, and that they are designed for this and no other pur-
pose. Consequently, the actual state of government and justice
in Ireland has not been scrutinized carefully, and Englishmen
hear little of proceedings that are bringing danger and dis-
honor upon us. If these proceedings were of a kind to put an
end to outrages and not to cause further mischief, they would
not have called down the condemnation of men like Lord Mon-
teagle, Lord Shaftesbury, Sir Horace Plunkett, and the other
leading Irishmen who took part in the conference at Dublin.
The Coercion Act, with the regulations issued for its admin-
istration, marks the climax of this policy. Court-martial justice
will become the rule. It is provided that men may be kept in-
definitely in prison without trial. A court may sit in secret. If
a court believes that a particular person is able to give evidence,
he or she may be arrested. Any person who does an act with
a view to promoting or calculated to promote the objects of an
unlawful association is guilty of an offence against these regu-
lations. As the Gaelic League, which was founded to re-
vive Irish culture, and Dail Eireann, which represents two-
thirds of the Irish people, are unlawful associations, all
but a small minority of Irishmen may be convicted on this
charge. This is not a system of justice adapted for the detec-
tion and punishment of crime; it is designed for the punishment
of a political movement, and it puts every Irishman who holds
the opinions held by the great majority of Irishmen at the mercy
of the military authorities.
. Not for a century has there been such an outbreak
of military violence in these islands. The Government have
failed to restrain or punish this violence, and they have now
taken steps to prevent any civilian court from calling attention
to it. They have issued an order forbidding the holding of
coroners' inquests in nine counties. This removes the last ves-
tige of protection from the civilian population. In the "Manual
of Military Law" it is laid down that, whereas a man acquitted
or convicted by a civil court may not be retried by a military
court, a person subject to military law is not to be exempted
from the civil law by reason of his military status. The Gov-
ernment have now decided that if soldiers or policemen fire a
town or shoot civilians they are to be immune from the danger
of an inquiry by a court not under military direction.
In Ireland Englishmen are judged by their actions alone. No
assurances of good will have the slightest effect on public opin-
ion there; no English promises make it easier for moderate
opinion to get a hearing. Every solution of the Irish question
presupposes a friendly feeling between England and Ireland,
and we are stimulating hatred. Thus only by changing our
executive policy can we create the atmosphere necessary to the
successful working of any solution whatever of the Irish ques-
tion.
We are, sir, yours faithfully,
Ernest Barker, Philip Gibbs, Charles Gore, Hubert Gough,
J. L. Hammond, L. T. Hobhouse, Desmond MacCarthy, John
Masefield, C. E. Montague, Gilbert Murray, C. P. Scott,
H. G. Wells, Basil Williams.
Balbriggan
THE sack of Balbriggan took place on September 21.
The account given below is reprinted from the Man-
chester Guardian of the following day.
The police reprisals in Balbriggan this morning are indis-
putably the worst that have yet occurred in Ireland. In its
brutality, wantonness, and destructiveness last night's work of
the uniformed forces of the Crown is comparable only to the
story of some Belgian village in the early days of the war. Two
men were dragged from their homes to the police barracks,
bayoneted, and beaten to compel them to reveal secrets, and
then taken out into the street and shot in cold blood, their bodies
left to be picked up by any passer-by. When I reached Bal-
briggan at noon today smoke was still rising from rows of
burned cottages, shops, and public houses. People were fleeing
the town in conditions as pitiable as any set of refugees ever left
Louvain or district.
If English people are really to understand the things that are
done in the name of the British Government in Ireland and that
the Cabinet allows to go unchecked, one must go into the history
of last night's happenings in some detail. The origin of the
trouble was the shooting of two policemen. District Inspector
Burke was killed, and his brother, Sergeant Burke, wounded.
This was not a police murder of the common type. The two
Burkes had no connection with the district, but were out on a
motor ride from Dublin with five or six other police and all were
in plain clothes. They stopped at Miss Smyth's public-house in
Balbriggan and remained here for well over an hour. They
became noisy, and the landlord sent down to the police barracks.
Constables came up, but things were quiet and they returned.
The noise apparently broke out again, and this time the local
Republican Volunteers were called in and cleared the bar. What
happened then is obscure, but there was some shooting, but
whether it was on the Volunteers' side one cannot say.
The wounded men were taken to the house of a doctor. All
was over by 9:30. An hour later an invasion of the "Black and
Tans" began. These, one should perhaps say, are the new re-
cruits of the Royal Irish Constabulary, enlisted in England at a
pay of 10s. a day and perquisites. They mostly wear the khaki
uniform of soldiers with a constable's black cap. .
In the three hours of terror that followed one can trace no
sequence, for all the frightened people kept to their houses, ex-
cept those who were driven out when their roofs began to burn
over their heads. One party seems to have gone first to the
barber's shop of James Lawless, just opposite the police barracks
in Bridge Street. The family of Lawless, his wife and their
eight young children, were in bed. Hearing the smashing of the
shop windows and loud cries of "Lawless, are you there?" Law-
less ran downstairs, to be seized by the police and taken across
to the barracks.
The family were then told to get out as the shop was to be
fired. That did not happen, but I saw this afternoon evidence
of the wanton wreckage that followed. There is hardly a piece
of furniture or crockery left whole. The family were scattered
among neighbors and relatives. One woman in the same street
described to me how "Black and Tans" came to her door and
handed over two of Lawless's little children — a girl of three and
a boy of four. Lawless did not see his family again, for he was
shot shortly before dawn.
Other "Black and Tans" meanwhile had begun incendiarism
in another part of the town. Two grocers' shops, large and
well built, were attacked, the bottles thrown out into the road,
petrol poured about the place, and bombs thrown in. The two
buildings were utterly consumed by the fire — even the solid outer
walls have broken down in places. All that is left of the con-
tents is the twisted bars of bedsteads and piles of smouldering
ashes.
In Drogheda Street, the principal thoroughfare, half-a-dozen
462
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2885
houses and shops were fired. When the public-house of Mr.
James McGowan was attacked he and his young family escaped
by ladders from a back window. Armed men rushed round to
them, and they had barely got clear of the yard when a rick of
hay in it burst into flames. The burning of the house and a
cottage next to it followed. . . .
No street suffered more than Clonard Street, in which I
counted twenty houses of which only the outer walls stand.
One best realizes here the cruelty and wickedness of which the
police are guilty. On one side of the street was a long row of
one-story thatched cottages, the homes of the poorest. They are
now black and ruined, their thatch lying smouldering like a mass
of hay and all their contents destroyed. People ran from these
houses into the fields around and sheltered under hedges and in
ditches. Men and women told me of how they had rushed,
clothes in hand, to the fields and dressed there while their home
was blazing. Across the street five stoutly-built brick houses in
the middle of a row are gutted. From one of these two bed-
ridden women of over eighty years were carried out into the
fields. I saw in one house in this street evidence of the in-
cendiary methods. Two petrol tins lay among the debris, and
one of them had been pierced by eight bayonet thrusts to empty
the liquid the sooner. I did not see a whole pane of glass in the
street. Where the house had not been burnt the windows had
been broken by rifle-butt or bayonet.
Not only has a good proportion of the town been made home-
less, but many of these poor people will be workless as well.
A party of "Black and Tans" set on fire the big hosiery factory
of Deedes, Templar, and Company. It was completely destroyed.
The damage may run up to £75,000. The company is an English
one. Three hundred people will be rendered idle, 150 of whom
were in direct employment and the rest workers who took out
hosiery for manufacture in their own homes. The largest mill
in Balbriggan, Messrs. Smyth's, was saved from destruction by
the local constables of the old Royal Irish Constabulary, who
dissuaded some "Black and Tans" who had already gone so far
as to break windows in the mill.
What one has said so far can be verified and tested by ex-
amining the ruins and by questioning many victims. It is much
harder to arrive at the true facts of the murder of Lawless and
Gibbons. One can gather little of what happened after they
were taken into the police barracks until their bodies were
found in a side street close by. The evidences of their fate are
clear. Two pools of blood, now covered with ashes, lie in the
street. The wall behind is pitted with bullet marks and spatters
of blood. I picked up a small piece of metal which is plainly
part of the outside cover of a service bullet. The bodies them-
selves are in an outhouse unguarded and one may see them with-
out formality. The wounds are appalling, a description would
be sickening, but they suggest that the men were not merely shot
but battered and stabbed with bayonets. .
One has given these details badly. To realize the full horrors
of the night one has to think of bands of men inflamed with
drink raging about the streets, firing rifles wildly, burning
houses here and there, and loudly threatening to come again
tonight and complete their work. From beginning to end there
was no apparent check on them, if one excepts the efforts of
the few local police who tell me they took no part in the business
and hate it. . . .
The only news that the authorities in Dublin have yet received
of the Balbriggan reprisals is the following official telegram,
which is a very clear indication of how little trust may be put on
the reports issued by police. ... It reads:
"Head Constable Burke, of the Royal Irish Constabulary,
Dublin, was shot dead at Balbriggan at 9:30 last night. His
brother, Sergeant William Burke, was wounded by revolver
shots at the same time. He has been removed to the Mater
Hospital. Two civilians have been shot dead and several houses,
including one of the hose manufactories (sic!) have been de-
stroyed by fire."
Rupert Blue says:
Surgeon-General U. S. Army,
"Dr. Stokes' work is a splendid presentation of
the subject, and a book which should be in the
hands of all workers who are participating in the
fight against the scourge of syphilis."
The author is Dr. John H. Stokes, of The Mayo
Clinic. $2.50
At Bookstores or
W. B. SAUNDERS COMPANY
Philadelphia
THE NEGRO YEAR BOOK, 1918 1919
Fifth Annual Edition 523 Pages
Covers every phase Negro activity. Reviews progress
in all lines. Presents all phases Race Problem.
Price: Paper cover, 75c; board cover, $1.25.
NEGRO YEAR BOOK COMPANY, Tuskegee Institute, Alabama
When you write to an advertiser, please say that
you saw his advertisement in The Nation. It will
help you. him, and The Nation.
790
BOOK BARGAINS
Publishers' Remainders and
Overstocks — at an average
half of publishers' prices. Every book
perfect. Send for new catalogue No. 7.
HOCHSCHILD, KOHN & CO.
Baltimore, Md.
Studies in History, Economics,
and Public Law
Edited by the Faculty of Political Science ef
Columbia University
No. 206 India's Demand for Trans-
portation.
By W. E. WELD,
Paper covers $1.25
No. 208 International Labor Legisla-
tion.
By I. F. AYUSAUA,
Paper covers $2.00
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. Publishers
FOURTH AVE. AND 30TH ST., NEW YORK
d^arijera' Agwtroa
THE FISK TEACHERS' AGENCIES
I Everett O. Fisk & Co. , Proprietors.
Boston, 2a Park Street. Chicago, 814 Steger Bids
New \ork. 225 Fifth Ave. Denver, 317 Masonic Bid*
Syracuse, 402 Dillaye Bid. Portland, 509 Journal Bldg
Pittsburg, 549 Un. Arcade. Berkeley, 2161 Shattuck At.
Birmingham. 809 Title Bid. Los Angeles, 510 Spring St.
Send to any address above for registration form.
filiations Hantefl
A YOUNG woman, thoroughly educated,
wishes employment as editor's assist-
ant. Address, 117 East 21st Street, New
York City.
WRITER of experience, discrimination,
clarity ; with knowledge of literature,
science, current questions ; several
languages ; desires connection. Special ability
to make "heavy" subjects intelligible and in-
teresting to average readers. Publishers. — Have
you work for such a writer on re-writing,
editing, compiling, making popular scientific
series ? Address Box No. 56, The Nation.
INDIVIDUAL NEWS SERVICE
for students, lecturers, research de-
partments— concerning all economic
and working class developments. In-
dustrial and social facts soft-pedaled
or suppressed by the big dailies and
news associations. $20 a year; $6 for
3 months.
THE FEDERATED PRESS
31 Union Square,
New York City
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1920
No. 2886
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 463
EDITORIALS :
Last Aid to Voters 46G
Murder Will Out 467
The China Consortium 468
The Ancient Hunger Strike 469
Sports and Arts 460
WHAT HAPPENED IN ITALY. By Hiram K. Moderwell 470
CHANGING PRICES AND THE COST OF LIVING. By W. Jett Lauck 471
SEAMS. By Hazel Hall 473
POETRY AND WORK. By John Erskine 473
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By The Drifter 475
CORRESPONDENCE 476
PLATFORM OF THE FARMER-LABOR PARTY 476
BOOKS:
Middle-of-the-Roadism. By George Soule 478
"A Country Without a Guide Book." By Irita Van Doren. 479
Medieval Economics. By Charles A. Beard 480
America and the Gods 480
A New Miscellany 481
Books in Brief 482
DRAMA :
The Real Thing 483
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION:
The Constitution of Fiume 484
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MacDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER LEWIS S. GANNETT
LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising : Swarthmore Press Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
WITHOUT even a noteworthy dying flurry the Demo-
cratic campaign comes to its foredoomed end. That
Governor Cox faces an overwhelming defeat is now freely
conceded by the political correspondents of even the pro-Cox
newspapers. For this he is in no wise responsible. True,
he has not bettered his chances by his campaign, or made
them much worse. He has not been the issue, and so the
public has cared very little what he has said, as it cares
precious little about the League of Nations. The one funda-
mental issue is now evident : it is Woodrow Wilson himself.
Upon that issue the electorate of the United States made
up its mind long ago and it now looks as if it would be so
nearly unanimous as to place the verdict beyond insinuations
that it was due to money, to the Irish, to the Germans, or
to any other of the seventeen groups whom Governor Cox
is charging with a wicked conspiracy to defeat him — he has
now forgotten all about the alleged Republican purchase of
the presidency. Doubtless there are seventeen — and more —
groups determined to turn out the Democrats, but that only
means that Wilsonism with its administrative inefficiency,
its incredible hypocrisy and insincerity, its needlessly put-
ting us into the war which has neither ended war nor safe-
guarded democracy, its betrayal of American idealism at
Paris, has gradually offended one set of Americans after the
other. Let us hope there are seventy groups who still value
the old qualities of sincerity and intellectual honesty, who
still have consciences to be reckoned with, who still burn
with sufficient loyalty to our institutions to turn out their
unworthy servants from the highest offices of the land.
IN New York political interest centers upon the candidacies
of Governor Smith and Senator Wadsworth, with the
women of the State making a special campaign to defeat
the latter. Thoroughly does he deserve defeat. Not because
of his opposition to suffrage. He had a right to stand by his
opinion however antedeluvian, and the issue is now dead. It
is his generally reactionary attitude which marks him as one
who should be retired from public life. His grandfather
died in the Wilderness as a major general. Senator Wads-
worth, as ardent a militarist as any Prussian, failed to go
with his troop of cavalry to the Mexican border and hastily
resigned his commission before the war with Germany. He
is none the less for universal military service in peace time
and automatic conscription in war time — the author of the
first universal training bill reported in the Senate. If he
were to control America we should be in Germany's old
place in no time. But his militarism is only one of the
counts against him. There is nothing of the democrat about
him; he is distinctly a representative of corporation con-
trol in politics and it is a disgraceful thing that the Repub-
lican nomination went to him almost by default, for he is
without the ability or the industry requisite for the posi-
tion. Yet the prospect is that the Republican tidal wave
will sweep him back into the office he in no wise adorns.
FOR Governor Smith, on the other hand, who deserves re-
election, the prospect is less favorable. Whereas Sen-
ator Wadsworth comes from perhaps the most patrician of
our great land-holding families, "AT Smith, as everyone
calls him, comes right out of the plain people that throng
the East Side of New York City. His rise is the sort of
thing that Americans were once proudest of as most typical
of this republic, and it is conceded that he has made, as
Governors go, an excellent Governor. A product of Tam-
many Hall, he none the less has the respect of all the enemies
of that institution — the founder of the Citizens' Union, Mr.
R. Fulton Cutting, so long a leader of the reform forces, is
working for his reelection. Governor Smith bravely vetoed
the reactionary bills passed by the Republican Legislature
last spring which practically abolished freedom of education
in New York State and appropriated $100,000 for the crea-
tion of a State secret service bureau to hunt down "criminal
anarchy," and met with amazingly little criticism for so
doing. He has outlined numerous constructive suggestions
for the Legislature, some of which have been adopted. If
he and the Legislature have not even scratched the surface
of the housing problem, his desire to aid the State and his
own personal rectitude are such that he frequently does
things unscathed which would get others into serious trou-
ble. Thus, to the Legislature which expelled the Socialists,
Governor Smith recommended in his annual message nine
out and out socialistic proposals, ranging from the State's
going into the business of producing and distributing milk
to the owning and operating of grain elevators. Yet not
even the New York Times scolded him for it. The Governor
will run thousands upon thousands of votes ahead of his
ticket.
464
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2886
THE noisy patriots who howled down Major George Haven
Putnam at the lecture he tried in vain to deliver at the
Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn were absolutely in
the wrong and deserve unequivocal condemnation. Nor
should any one take more than the hastiest pleasure in the
fact that poetic justice has returned with the neatness of
melodramas and boomerangs upon the head of a man who
has done as much as any private citizen in America to en-
courage the kind of lawlessness which here exercised its
tyranny upon one of its instigators. Major Putnam feels
that his seventy-six years as an American give him the right
to be heard; we should say that the mere fact of his exist-
ence gives him the right to be heard by any one whom he can
get to hear him. Speech must be free, no matter whose
speech it is. Retaliations are as obnoxious in one place as
another, and all the more regrettable in this particular case,
since those who practiced retaliation may be said to repre-
sent, doubtless unconsciously, the cause of those American
citizens who were repressed during the war and who still
continue to be repressed whenever they venture upon a
minority opinion. Those who repressed Major Putnam
ought to know that such behavior discredits a cause which
becomes more, not less, sacred in proportion as it suffers
from official usurpation. That the authorities of Mount
Vernon, New York, on October 12 arrested John Haynes
Holmes, Rose Schneidermann, and Norman Thomas for read-
ing the Constitution of the United States in the open streets
of that spotless town, is surely enough lawlessness for one
week. Fortunately, an able and upright judge— Judge
Keogh— has declared the offending local ordinance uncon-
stitutional, and he is a judge who is rarely reversed.
THAT the long delayed trial of strength between the
British miners and the Government should take place
over a slight difference between the wages asked and the
wages offered is utterly regrettable. The miners may be
asking for only what is their just due, but this is no time
for a strike over a shilling or two a day forced by the failure
of the Government to live up to its promises. A great
part of Europe depends upon British coal and to forbid its
export was one of the first acts of the Government. From
France to the Near East the news of the strike will bring
consternation to peoples for whom the struggle for exist-
ence is already drear enough. In England, too, the price to
be paid by innocent sufferers is likely to be staggering if
the struggle lasts long. The Government could and should
settle the question by honestly applying the findings of its
own commission. But, meanwhile, democratically as this
strike has been called, it seems unlikely that it will have the
sanction of public opinion or of that part of it which has
been standing behind the miners in their fight for lower
prices of coal, for state ownership, and for decent living
conditions for the mineworkers. Finally, the strike is a
tactical mistake; if Lloyd George should seize upon it as an
excuse to go before the voters for a fresh mandate raising
the cry of bolshevism and dictation by a minority, he would
in all likelihood be returned to a fresh lease of power — and
that is something which for the sake of the peace and prog-
ress of the world, to say nothing of Ireland and England,
ought not to come to pass.
B
RITAIN, it seems, sees her future better secured by a
peaceful Europe producing and demanding goods than
by a Europe tearing itself to fragments in an endless com-
petition in slaughter. If peace and productivity involve
"shaking hands with murder" the British statesmen now in
control will find themselves able to grasp the hands of the
erstwhile bloody Bolsheviki without flinching. If Germany
must be restored in the process of making Europe again
a valuable property, why, Germany will be restored and old
promises to the British people will be quietly forgotten.
England wants no more wars than her own empire and its
fringes and outposts have already provided for her. Whether
the British Government will go to the length of an actual
alliance with its recent enemy may well be doubted, but
the crumbling of the Entente, presaged since the early days
of the Peace Conference by a hundred rumors denied, differ-
ences "adjusted," and incidents "minimized," can no longer
be questioned. For the hour Great Britain wants peace and
trade and a chance to settle the affairs of her own con-
siderable portion of the globe. If the Russian debt is left
unpaid, if the German indemnity goes by the boards — so
much the worse for France. That seems to be the current
British attitude, and the responsibility for the strain on
Anglo-French relations cannot by any means be wholly attri-
buted to the indefensibly warlike policy that dominates the
present government of France.
WHETHER France can produce another war against
Russia, as "authoritative French quarters" have re-
cently hinted, is not altogether certain. The Polish peace
was undoubtedly a blow to the busy imperialists — French-
and Russian and Polish — gathered at Paris. It gave Poland
a better line than she is likely to be able to hold, but the
Bolsheviki are still the masters of Russia, and the Czar's
debts are still bad debts. A recent dispatch to the New
York Tribune stated that conversations with the object of
initiating anti-Bolshevik policies are taking place "under
French inspiration among all the border peoples from the
Baltic to the Black Sea." The Poles, it reports further,
"intend to take the leadership in the new operations" using
the armistice and peace with Russia as "an interval" in
which they can "prepare a new offensive." Thus would the
upholders of Western idealism and honor put an end to those
breakers of treaties, the Bolsheviki. The fact is, however,
that France and her friends may not be able to indulge their
malevolence to the extent that "authoritative quarters"
would like the American public to believe. The various
minor imperialisms have doubtless men enough to make a
showing; men are cheap and hungry and work is every-
where scarce. But France will have to resolve the bitter
contentions now existing between the small nations them-
selves; she will have to exercise considerable finesse, for
instance, to induce her present protege, Hungary, to battle
on the same side with her former protege, Rumania, and
Lithuania to side with the Poles. Moreover, wars cost
money and the small nations have none to draw upon and
France has none to lend — unless the United States helps out.
Incidentally, the reported decision of our War Department
to send further supplies to Poland is worth investigation.
AUSTRIA, feeble remnant of the old and mighty Aus-
trian Empire, wants to join Germany. It was so obvi-
ous at the time of the "Peace Conference" that she wanted
to join Germany and that annexation to Germany was the
only way to avoid her economic ruin that the treaty with
Germany included a clause forbidding Germany to accept
Oct. 27, 1920]
The Nation
465
Austria, and the treaty with Austria a clause forbidding
Austria to join Germany, unless the League of Nations gave
its sacred permission. As the League cannot give its permis-
sion except by unanimous vote of its Executive Council, and
as France, haunted by the fear of an imperialist Germany
redivivus, has a representative on that Executive Council,
the loophole left for Austria was small indeed. But the
Austrians, with a pitifully faint hope in the past utterances
of Entente statesmen about self-determination and the
League, are taking a plebiscite vote on the question of an
appeal to the League. The now almost universal realization
in Europe of Austria's desperate plight might give the Aus-
trians some hope if there were left any reason to expect any
change of mind and heart from French statesmen; instead
their real hope is that France may look with favor on the
proposal that they join clerical Bavaria, and thereby
strengthen the forces opposing both radicalism and Prussia
in present-day Germany. England and Italy appear at last
to have realized the necessity of union, and our own Gov-
ernment has as yet shown no intent to intrude.
LENIN'S strenuous conditions for admission to the
Third Internationale seem to many of the tried leaders
of western Socialism too high a price to pay for entrance
to any show. But the rank and file, convinced that Russia
has the only real live revolution now running, seem ready
to gamble any stakes to join hands with it. Most of the
old leaders of the German Independent Socialists balked at
the sacrifice of the party's independence of action involved
in acceptance of Moscow's conditions, but the delegates over-
whelmed them and insisted upon Moscow at any price. The
party is left almost leaderless, the leaders almost partyless.
In France the Confederation of Labor, where Jouhaux,
Gompers-like, still holds the throne, voted, as was expected,
two to one against joining Moscow, but the Socialist Party
will probably follow the German lead and crowd to the
Moscow show. The Executive Committee of the Swiss
Socialist Party has withdrawn its previous adherence to the
Third Internationale, but the membership referendum may,
as in Germany, overrule the action of the leaders. Mean-
while the Italians seem quite content to make their own
revolution in their own way, while demanding the recogni-
tion of the Soviets, and the British continue their tradi-
tional course, independently of continental winds. The
split between dictatorial Communists and Social Democrats
is wider than ever.
THE first of the Cork hunger strikers has died, there
have been more murders in Ireland, and there has been
no indication of any change in the attitude of the British
Government. Reprisals and counter-reprisals are the order
of the day, and the public is still left in the dark, uncertain
amid the welter of charges and counter-charges where lies
the truth. Daily the necessity for the Committee of One
Hundred on Ireland organized at the suggestion of The
Nation becomes more apparent. Viscount Grey, Lord Morley,
and Mr. Asquith have demanded an immediate change in
British policy; Lord Robert Cecil has called for investiga-
tion by a British constitutional tribunal. But obviously the
findings of no official or semi-official British tribunal would
be accepted as impartial outside of England, and should the
tribunal hold its sessions in England or in Ireland under
present conditions witnesses would hardly feel safe in speak-
ing their minds freely and the suspicion would be inevitable
that the bitter edge of the truth was dulled by fear of re-
prisal. Preparations for the public sessions of the Com-
mittee of One Hundred are proceeding steadily; the five
members of the Commission of Inquiry which will actually
hold the sessions are now being chosen by vote of the mem-
bers of the Committee of One Hundred, which has grown
to a Committee of One Hundred and Fifty.
JOHN REED was of the fellowship of adventure, of ex-
plorers and prophets. He had in him a capacity for
living and daring and loving that made him a flaming em-
bodiment of the rebellious spirit of the younger generation.
He had already distinguished himself before he left Har-
vard; from college he went to the American Magazine,
where he published one of the finest tributes ever penned to
William James. His power of painting pictures with words
made him a natural, perhaps sometimes too vivid and dra-
matic, reporter; the Metropolitan Magazine sent him to
Mexico, where he found in Villa a temporary hero of ro-
mance; he told colorfully the story of the Colorado massa-
cres in the 1914 strike; then, when the war broke out, he
became of course a war correspondent — and one of the most
highly paid in America. But unlike Sir Philip Gibbs he
could not reserve three-quarters of the truth he saw for
later telling, but poured out all his soul, and lost his job.
He wrote as well as ever, but as his observations and always
intense sympathies dictated, not as he was told, and so the
paying magazines would have no more of him. When the
Russian Revolution broke out, the Masses sent him to Rus-
sia, where he lived enthusiastically in the era of realization.
He came back filled with a new dream and a new vision and
found life in America and the American Socialist Party dull
and halting. He was arrested here and there, but always
acquitted — it would be hard to persuade any jury to convict
John Reed ; he organized the Communist Labor Party, edited
two or three radical magazines, spoke, wrote, and then — not
to escape trial, for that he had faced time and again, but as
a moth turns to the flame — returned to Russia. And there,
not yet thirty-three, still crusading, he has died of typhus.
THE publishers of books are unhappy. They wonder
loudly how, at the present cost of production, they
are going to continue to provide us with reading matter.
Like other people they would like to double their prices.
But since they know that their wares are considered far
more dispensable than lip-sticks or chewing-gum, they are
wary of demanding what they need. Ice-cream sodas have
gone up from ten cents to twenty and more; the $1.50 novel
has crept timidly to $1.90 or two dollars. The difficulty is
very real. But the publishers themselves are not quite
guiltless of clouding their situation. If you are so hard
put to it, the intelligent public may well ask, why do you
waste labor and material on volumes of third-rate verse and
insignificant essays? A notable volume should command
publication without question. But why, to take a recent
example, make a handsome book of twelve literally worthless
poems by a British editor? Why, in addition, do certain
houses continue the bad old habit of gambling in cheap and
lurid fiction? For one such book that makes money a dozen
barely pay the printer's bill. In brief, the slogan "fewer
and better books," which was tentatively raised recently,
is needed not only from a literary but also from an economic
point of view.
466
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2886
Last Aid to Voters
THE position that The Nation has taken in the present
campaign against both Cox and Harding and in favor
of a vote either for Christensen or Debs, has aroused con-
siderable inquiry, much approval, and some dissent among
our readers. Some have assumed, because we declined to
subscribe in toto to either the Socialist or the Farmer-Labor
platforms*, that we did not want to see either Debs or
Christensen elected and were advocating a protest vote for
them which we would not advise if they had any chance of
success at the polls. But the choice is rarely poor this year
and we would rather see Christensen or Debs or Macauley
chosen than Cox or Harding. We do not accept all that
any one of them stands for, but practical politics is usually a
compromise; few thinking men ever have had, or ever will
have, a chance to vote for a party whose platform they ac-
cept in its entirety. The point is that the Farmer-Labor
and the Socialist programs present at least the basis for
more hopeful development than the old party policies, which
fail to meet any of the demands of the new age which is
upon us.
It is obvious that the determining factor in this campaign
is a desire to rebuke and put an end to the policies of the
Wilson administration. So strong is this desire that many
intelligent voters make no attempt to distinguish between
the indistinguishable Governor Cox and Senator Harding.
The state of war with Germany would probably continue
longer under Cox and we might more immediately and un-
critically be committed to the League. Harding, on the other
hand, might easily lead us into war with Mexico or sponsor a
high tariff measure. To the average voter, however, these
possibilities are of no consequence beside his desire to get
rid of Wilsonism. To do this he imagines the most effective
way is to vote for Harding. We do not think so. By elect-
ing Harding the country will get rid of Wilson next March.
But in his place will be an unenlightened and reactionary
Republican machine, its face set flintily toward the past,
totally out of touch with the spirit of a new age to which it
will be unwilling and unable to adapt itself. What the coun-
try needs above all, to borrow one of the Wilsonian phrases
which have never been taken from their oratorical shelves
for use, is to "give the government back to the people."
Something closely akin to this desire underlies the electo-
rate's purpose to rid itself of the autocrat in the White
House. Yet the idea that this can be accomplished by voting
for the self-effacing Mr. Harding seems ludicrous when one
considers the prospect of Boies Penrose and the Senatorial
clique as Mr. Harding's collaborators in the task of restoring
the government to the people.
Who is against Wilson? Nearly everyone, if one may
exclude the solid South, where voting Democratic is as much
a religion as a political faith, and those still considerable
though steadily dwindling voters for whom party regularity
transcends policies, facts, and the urge of a. changing time.
Lifelong Democrats and hereditary Republicans unite in
their determination to shuffle off Wilsonism. Why is it that
the opposite poles of political faith, from reactionary to
radical, with the many shades of average American be-
tween, are linked in their detestation of Wilsonism? Well,
for one thing, because of its insincerity. Reactionary as
* The Farmer-Labor platform is printed in full in this issue.
Union League Club Republicanism, Wilsonism, with its
spurious liberal professions, has never secured the confi-
dence of American Bourbons. Moderate conservatives, lib-
erals, and radicals on the other hand are the more incensed
because of the varying degrees of deception to which they
were subjected by its erstwhile fine phrases and flowery
rhetoric. Essentially there is no difference between the two
major parties, but superimposed on the reaction that each
spells the Democrats are accountable for conspicuous incom-
petence and glaring hypocrisies. That is the motif of
the present campaign and the reason Wilson and all his
works will be overwhelmingly rejected despite the pathetic
ineffectiveness of Harding ; despite the widespread antagon-
ism to Old Guard control, dating from 1912; despite the
Lusks and the Sweets who balance Palmer and Burleson;
despite the knowledge of millions who will vote for Harding
that he will not and cannot touch problems which most
vitally affect them. It will be, as we have said, "election by
disgust."
Recommend so gloomy a prospect to our readers? Never!
To vote for Harding in order to repudiate Wilson is in effect
setting the stamp of approval on the very system which
quadrennially offers only so nauseating a lack of choice. "A
yellow dog year," was the boast last spring of the Repub-
lican Old Guard. Did the spectacle of Democratic misman-
agement and wrongdoing stimulate the Republican powers
to pick as good, as able, and as antithetical a candidate as
they could find? On the contrary. It impelled them_ to
select as incompetent, as inconsequential, and as hitchable an
Ohio politician as they thought they could "put over" on
the writhing electorate.
No ! The course for every one who values American tradi-
tion and ideals, who believes in the persistence of what was
and is good in our national life, who desires the elimination
of what is bad, who looks for progress and hopes for better
things, seems so unmistakably clear as to disparage dis-
cussion. It is to vote against the old parties, except where
individual candidates who have conspicuously and valiantly
stood up against the tide of reaction deserve election on
their personal merits. Eclectic voting is always preferable
to blind party adherence. There are men running for Con-
gress on all four tickets who could form a progressive bloc
which might often tip the scales. But for President, the
choice is clear. A vote for Cox or Harding means nothing;
only a protest vote will count. Neither Farmer-Labor nor
Socialist parties will elect the President this year, but votes
cast for them will have unmistakable political meaning. The
Nation makes no recommendation of choice between Farmer-
Labor and Socialist Party beyond the suggestion that in
certain regions where one party's prospects are unmistak-
ably fair its choice would be logical. In South Dakota, for
instance, where the Farmer-Labor has an excellent chance
of carrying the State, it is the Liberal's duty to support
Christensen. Finally, if there be those too timid to cast
their political lot with a party the doctrines of which they
cannot wholly or even in large part indorse, who do not
realize the crying need of new purpose and new vision in
national politics, let them stay away from the polls this year
and spend election day tramping the woods or the fields
where the air is pure and the sky is clean.
Oct. 27, 1920]
The Nation
467
Murder Will Out
THE truth will out — even about Haiti, and despite the
daily newspapers. Major General George Barnett's
report of "practically indiscriminate killing" in Haiti more
than confirms the charges which The Nation alone in the
American press has made about the foul record of our
Administration in Haiti. The Nation has been maligned,
abused, denounced, sneered at, for printing the truth about
Haiti. Only three days before General Barnett's report was
published, the New York Times wrote that
Mr. Harding got his information about conditions in Haiti
from a weekly paper in this city which if not actually Bolshevist
is so near it that the distinction is not visible to the naked eye.
Will he get his information when he is President from profes-
sional admirers of Lenin and Trotzky, part of whose creed is
that their own country is always wrong? And will he continue
to talk about "thousands" as he did of the Haitian brigands
killed by our marines when the facts show that there were only
a few hundreds?
Now that General Barnett states that 3,250 Haitians — even
more than The Nation, and Senator Harding, using the data
of The Nation, had charged — were killed — and time will
reveal that the killing was in many instances deliberate cold-
blooded murder — the Times does not apologize for its past
prevarications or for its slurs at those who told the truth ; it
merely says : "The American people have not had the details.
They have not known what was going on." Whose fault was
it if not that of the newspapers pledged to give "all the
news that's fit to print," of the newspapers which denounced
those who did tell the public what was going on as "profes-
sional admirers of Lenin and Trotzky, part of whose creed
is that their country is always wrong"? The New York
Evening Post calls General Barnett's revelations "a shock to
those who have cherished the conviction that American mili-
tary rule did not imitate the coercive methods of some more
experienced and more callous governments." But General
Barnett's revelations were no news to the editors of the
Evening Post, who read The Nation regularly; when Mr.
Seligmann, three months ago, compared our record in Haiti
to that of Belgium in the Congo, of Germany in Belgium,
and of England in Egypt and India, the Evening Post
remarked that "he only excites distrust of his own judg-
ment." None so blind as those who will not see!
The Nation hopes to print extended extracts from General
Barnett's report in a later number. The meager summaries
published in the daily press give sufficient indication of the
shameful data which exist in the files of the Navy Depart-
ment, and throw a curious light upon General Lejeune's
whitewashing report issued only a week before the Barnett
report, and upon Secretary Daniels's note published at the
same time regarding his own instructions to treat the
Haitians "as friendly brothers" and his statement that,
"with a very few exceptions, the officers and men carried
out in letter and in spirit the order to set an example in
helpfulness and kindness in the discharge of a difficult
duty." Thirty-two hundred and fifty Haitians killed, as
against a total American loss of one officer and twelve men
is a strange "example of helpfulness and kindness" !
General Barnett tells us that there are further records
which have disappeared from the files of the Marine Corps,
and further reports which have not been made public. The
American people cannot and will not permit these facts to be
hidden permanently. Their honor is at stake; it is not
helped by concealment of disgraceful truths, and can only
be preserved by the relentless publication of the whole truth
and the unhesitating punishment of those responsible, up to
the very top of the naval hierarchy. They will not be sat-
isfied to know that a Lieutenant Brokaw, guilty of atrocities,
has since been committed as insane; they will want to know
why Secretary Daniels reinstated Captain George D.
Hamilton, convicted of giving orders to shoot prisoners;
they will want to know why the Navy Department has syste-
matically concealed and suppressed the truth, and lied about
it when it leaked out; and they will demand that the wrong
done to Haiti be redressed.
The silence of our American newspapers regarding the
news in Haiti and Santo Domingo has been one more proof of
the low estate to which the press has fallen. The facts which
The Nation has revealed and which General Barnett has con-
firmed are not new facts; they are merely revelations of a
festering canker which has existed for five years. Indeed,
there are indications that conditions, in Haiti at least, are
somewhat better than they have been. The big daily news-
papers with their immense staffs of skilled reporters and
highly paid correspondents have done nothing to tell the
American people the facts regarding the conduct of the
United States Marine Corps. The evening edition of the
New York World, thick and thin apologist for the Adminis-
tration, sent a reporter to the island. He gave us only offi-
cial eye-wash, and now the morning edition attempts to
deprecate even General Barnett's damning report. The
newspapers which boast of their freedom and independence
have tamely acquiesced in the censorship and have cast slurs
upon those who protested. It took the protest of a presiden-
tial candidate in a campaign year and the report of a major
general to squeeze mention of the facts into their news col-
umns. And if these revelations force the printing of more
news than hitherto, we may confidently expect it to be of the
apologetic and deprecatory character of the editorials on the
Barnett report in the World and Evening Post. We shall
watch the Republican papers to see whether their sudden
interest in Haiti survives the election. For Haiti is as truly
as Russia the acid test of our democracy, and it is the acid
test of our press as well.
A bumper harvest of excuses is sure to follow upon the
Barnett report. The fact that men in American uniform
have shot down Haitians en masse and in cold blood has
been established beyond cavil or doubt; we shall now be told
that these Haitians were "bandits," "niggers," "bad actors."
It will be hard for the defenders of our course to continue
their oft-repeated assertions that the shootings were in
self-defense, or in retaliation for the murder of Americans.
Thirteen Americans in all were killed: for every American
killed, two hundred and fifty Haitians met death. This was
not defensive warfare, it was not even war; it was
slaughter. Despite the statements of the New York World
which must know better, we were not invited by Haiti to
land our forces; we forced ourselves upon Haiti. We did
not prevent bloodshed nor have we increased the safety of
travel in Haiti. The thing for us to do is to cease making
lying excuses and to get out, and make such belated amends
for our murders as we can.
468
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2886
The China Consortium
IN the formation of the new China consortium, the bankers
of the United States have committed this country to a
foreign policy beside which the ratification of the League of
Nations covenant may be academic and unimportant. The
consortium is nothing less than a working league of nations,
whose officials are financiers and whose covenant is the
agreement reached last week by bankers representing
France and England, Japan and the United States. Whether
this financial league is to be a league for peace or for war,
for preserving the rights of a backward nation or for assert-
ing the ambitions of groups and interests, depends upon the
men who dominate it, and the methods they use. Mr.
Thomas W. Lamont has said that the consortium is to be
"an international partnership for the purpose of assisting
China in the development of her great public enterprises."
It may result in such a partnership or it may not; but the
first thing the bankers and the State Department should do
to prove their honest intention is to publish the entire agree-
ment.
The public cannot take any one's word for the contents
or intentions of that document; too much is at stake and
too many conflicting interests are involved. When, during
the Peace Conference, bankers representing the four great
Powers met at Paris on the suggestion of our Department of
State to negotiate a new consortium, the attitude of the
United States — always humane and honest in its intentions
toward China — seemed for the moment to prevail. It was
not a time when selfish desires and dishonorable plans could
safely be revealed. But elements of dissension were present,
and after Japan had concluded her successful negotiations,
after Mr. Wilson had even yielded up Shantung, the Japa-
nese Foreign Office repudiated the action of the Japanese
bankers in submitting to American domination at Paris and
announced that Japan would enter the consortium only with
certain "reservations." Specifically it demanded that Mon-
golia, Manchuria, and— at that time— Shantung be exempted
from the operations of the consortium. The Government of
the United States refused this demand, but Japan set to
work, none the lers, to spread the impression that the Powers
had assented to the Japanese reservations.
Mr. Lamont's mission to Japan and China was undertaken
to induce the Japanese Foreign Office to withdraw its reser-
vations and enter the consortium, and to undo the harm
Japan had wrought in China by its propaganda. The delays
and shifts, the promises and procrastinations of the Japa-
nese Government made the final outcome a dubious victory.
After endless conferences Mr. Lamont was assured that the
Japanese Government would join the consortium without
reservations. Official announcement of this action was to be
made at a public dinner with Mr. Lamont taking part. Both
Mr. Lamont's and the Japanese representative's speeches
were prepared in advance, and submitted to both sides for
approval; copies were given in advance to the press. On
the day prior to the dinner, the Kokusai (the Japanese semi-
official news service) distributed throughout China and
Japan a version of the speeches that made it appear that
Japan's reservations had been accepted by the American
group. From that time until the present, Japan's press
propaganda in China has maintained by innuendo and even
by direct assertion that Japan's reservations have been
accepted as the basis of her entering the consortium.
However, it has been announced by the group of bankers
which has just consummated the new agreement in New
York that Japan has entered the China consortium on equal
terms; that Chinese representation will be welcomed (an
ironical bit of liberality) ; that the originally disinterested
aim of the United States to keep the "open door" at least
a crack open has been maintained. But more than mere
assurance is needed. If the consortium should be dominated
by Japan's reservations it would become nothing better than
an international agreement to rob China of her last shred
of independence; while even if it is not actually controlled
by Japan, a widespread suspicion to the contrary in China
would quite as effectively ruin its chances of usefulness.
Sir Charles Addis, British representative at the New York
conference, said : "Without the assent and goodwill of China
the consortium is not only powerless to act, but has no
desire to act." The assent and goodwill of China can only
be gained by throwing open every channel of publicity and
proving by the terms of the agreements that the proposed
domination of Japan is not being secretly ratified.
The people of the United States have every reason to
demand the facts. Not only is American honor at stake,
not only is the question of peace or war in the East involved
in the terms of the agreement, but American money must-
stand behind any loan to China. Great Britain and France,
and Japan, too, can lend money to China only by first bor-
rowing it from the United States. There seems to be little
doubt among students of the Far Eastern question that
foreign intervention is required in the development of China.
The United States is in a position to insist that such inter-
vention be sincere. We can force Great Britain and France
and even Japan to cooperate on our own terms. We can
insist that the foreign concessions be merged under the con-
trol of the consortium and prevent future incursions of
greedy concessionaires. We can keep the door into China
open. We can preserve to China at least what is left of her
rather technical independence. We can utilize Chinese help
in the administration of the consortium. The issue really
amounts to this : Is the United States about to yield its tra-
ditional policy in China in favor of a policy dictated in
Europe and Japan, and to lend American money to sustain
that policy; or will the United States insist upon the adoption
of its own policy — which has been formally assented to by
all the Powers— and refuse credits to Governments which
oppose it? Only the publication of the consortium agree-
ment can answer that question. A copy of the text of the
agreement is certainly in the hands of the Department of
State; copies have presumably been sent to the Governments
represented by the cooperating groups; the financial inter-
ests involved have copies of their own. If public opinion in
China is to be mollified and public opinion in the United
States enlightened, if reasonable suspicions are to be re-
moved, the text of the agreement should immediately be
made public, for all of the public has not forgotten that on
March 18, 1913, Woodrow Wilson said of the original pro-
posal that the responsibility it involved was "obnoxious to
the principles upon which the Government of our people
rests."
Oct. 27, 1920]
The Nation
469
The Ancient Hunger Strike
THE fast of the devoted Lord Mayor of Cork and his
fellow hunger-strikers has become an international
drama, its tension heightening week by week. This lonely
and hideously slow adventuring into the Dreadful Valley is
different from any other kind of martyrdom: it demands a
courage which only scientific or religious fanatics have
shown. Indeed the psychology of suicide as a means of de-
fense, a method for justice, is hardly known today although
every hunger-strike tends to establish this form of social
protest more potently. The roots of this method go deep.
It was practiced by ancient Hindu and Celt and in modern
India survived to be condemned in the English penal code as
"barbarous and immoral." In Ireland today its recurrence
takes on for those who know Irish legend the character
of repeated episode in a long epic tradition. The "fast for
constraint" as it was practiced in Irish antiquity has been
learnedly dealt with in the Putnam Anniversary Volume of
Anthropological Essays (1909) and elsewhere. Only a few
examples need be given to prove. the brotherhood, not only
by blood but by custom, of the Lord Mayor of Cork and hi3
dying associates with those who have so long gone before
them.
The Brehon laws of Ireland, traditionally ascribed to St.
Patrick's fifth century day, give some curious details. Fast-
ing upon debtors was evidently one way of getting swift
settlements. If the faster died, his debtor owed not only his
original debt but also the death fine, a kind of Celtic wergild.
If the debtor offered food to the faster but gave no pledge
of payment, he owed, according to law, double the amount
of his original debt. On the other hand if he offered the
pledge and gave security and still the faster would not break
his fast, the latter forfeited his legal rights. If the debtor
would give no pledge, he was in the eyes of the law "an
evader of all," to be paid neither by man nor God.
In old Irish literature the fastings are of the most pictu-
resque character. Thus, a father fasts against three rebellious
sons to make them grant him a month's truce; three landless
men fast even on the Tuathade Danann until they are given
a domain. St. Finnen and his followers fast on a re-
calcitrant pagan until he admits them to his home. Evil
living men, whether kings or nobles, were fasted upon by
the saints until ruin or remorse overtook the sinners. In
their turn mere mortals made fasts upon saints to constrain
them to grant victories or to intercede with God on their
behalf. In such cases it was conceived that mortal will and
mortal suffering created as it were immortal obligation. At
need the saints might even fast upon God himself. In a re-
cently published sixteenth century Life of Columcille (Uni-
versity of Illinois, 1918) the story is told that St. Columba
did thus so fast upon God that he obtained from Him a
victory for his friends though the boon was so ill-pleasing
to God that He required in expiation Columba's perpetual
exile from Erin.
There are many other beloved legends of a people always
mystically minded, to prove that what has seemed an in-
congruous resistance to imperial law has merely followed a
custom and spirit older than the British empire itself. It is
a dull heart, indeed, that does not feel something echo from
"the hid battlements of Eternity," before this spectacle of
historic continuity.
Sports and Arts
THE report that Man o' War, having beaten Sir Barton
on the great day that saw Carpentier knock out Levin-
sky and saw the Indians take the World Series from the
Robins, will now retire to private life and give up racing
forever, has shocked all those who believe the report. This,
say the eugenists, is asking too much of the present genera-
tion for the sake of the next ; it is like always getting ready
for the millennium and yet never enjoying it. The true-
blue sportsman naturally repines that so much sport is
spoiled by the decision. The moralist complains that for the
sake of mere money-making the toils of life are being
avoided. And the poets twang their lyres and lift up their
most elegiac voices. No more, sing they, will the keen hoof
cut the flying track in the full rapture of contest. No more
will the happy mane flash in the mad wind of the scamper.
No more the paddock tingling with expectation, the grand-
stand a turmoil of hope, the familiar dust and the arousing
glory of the races. After these felicities, the snuffy life of
chores and respectability.
Peace, poets ! It might not be a bad idea to wait a little
until you can find out whether the rumor of Man o' War's
retirement is really true. Do you not remember all the fare-
wells which Patti made one after another in the country of
her most profitable audiences? And as men of letters your-
selves, do you not understand the device by which books are
issued in limited first editions so that they will ever have the
special value of the rare and the precious? What has hap-
pened is merely that the wiles of the arts have entered into
the domain of sportsmanship. Patti came back, you will
remember, after every last appearance but one. When the
first edition of a book has been exhausted there is every
reasonable certainty that there will soon be another one, if
the populace demands it vigorously. Man o' War of course
will never be three years old again, but there are more
seasons yet to come, and something tells us that the horse is
not finally tucked away under the extinguishing bushel.
But if he is shelved forever, we anticipate for him some-
thing like the immortality which has recently come upon
John Barleycorn since he left these shores for less pestered
regions. Books about John multiply almost daily. The
anthologists follow his trail through a thousand tomes of a
thousand years and take down all his paeans and epitaphs
to preserve them in graceful volumes assembled in commem-
oration. Now that he is dead there are more recipes for
making him than there ever were while he was in the pride
of his strength. Professor Saintsbury, whose erudition in
matters literary is, like the sequoias of California, merely
without an equal, now turns out to be what gossip said he
was — as learned in liquor as in letters. His "Notes on a
Cellar Book" (Macmillan) will stand, though all the world
turn to perpetual drouth, as a monument of the day when
things were different.
Drinking, perhaps, though associated enough and too
much with sports, was never itself a sport. But it and
they are now making common cause at least in their dex-
terous encroachments upon the art of the arts. Although
they have so far progressed no further than through the
initial stages, more will come. John Barleycorn will yet
have his Homer; some Carpentier will have his adequate
Rembrandt; and some Man o' War his exultant Pindar.
470
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2886
What Happened in Italy
By HIRAM K. MODERWELL
Rome, September 2U
THE chief difficulty in the way of writing news of Italian
events for American publications is the impossibility
of writing a last sentence. Events develop out of each
other so restlessly that it is never possible to narrate the
end of the story. Even if one uses the cable, one's con-
clusion is likely to be absurd by the time the dispatch is
printed. The present industrial upheaval — by far the most
significant Italy has experienced since the armistice — began
with a simple wage demand on the part of the metal work-
ers' union. The union made such demands a year ago,
struck, and won its strike. In August of this year it made
new demands, designed to meet the still rising cost of living,
and met with a stubborn refusal. Instead of going on
strike and losing several weeks' wages, it initiated "ob-
structionism," which it has reduced to a science. Now this
loafing on the job may be very annoying for the owners,
but it is far removed from social explosion. A year ago
revolution was in the air. This year it is — or was — dis-
tinctly under a cloud. The collapse of the Turin general
strike of last spring had left the revolutionary forces di-
vided, discouraged, and perplexed. The metal agitation
looked like a mere incident. The leaders, convinced that
the times were unpropitious, were noticeably cautious in
framing their demands.
Then, overnight, this discreet agitation transformed it-
self into a revolutionary act. In five hundred factories the
employees turned their employers out, raised red flags over
the plants, painted the sickle and hammer over the doors,
placed red guards on the walls, and elected Soviets — pardon,
councils — to direct the daily work. Since that time many
other factories have been so occupied. Not one has been
abandoned, save those whose owners accepted the principle
of workers' control. Italy was astonished, certainly. The
workmen's leaders themselves were astonished. In view
of the accomplished fact they demanded the least that could
possibly be considered commensurate with the reality of the
situation. They demanded, in addition to the original in-
crease in wages, acceptance of control over all factory opera-
tions to be exercised by committees of the workers them-
selves.
The Socialist Party, seeking the leadership of the move-
ment, demanded the convocation of parliament to enact
factory control into law. Strange phenomenon, that the
Socialists who were elected on the pledge that they would
sabotage parliament, should be clamoring for parliament to
help them. But stranger still, the bourgeois parties, elected
on the pledge that they would preserve the orderly function-
ing of parliament, sabotaged by every evasion the pro-
jected convocation. The revolutionists placed their faith
in bourgeois institutions, the bourgeois in the class struggle.
This is only the beginning of the paradoxes and mys-
teries of the situation. I fancy a foreigner, reading the
narrative of this episode, must wonder if he is not by mis-
take reading the history of the planet Mars. The foreigner
— par excellence, for example, the Frenchman — exclaims:
"Why did not the government send the troops to restore
the factories to their rightful owners?" Or, why did the
industrialists abjectly concede control to the workers? Or,
why did a loudly proclaimed "strong" government declare
itself neutral in the face of such a massive act of illegality?
Or why, after declaring itself "neutral," did it take the side
of the law-breakers and bring every pressure upon the in-
dustrialists to surrender to them? Yet Italy is not Mars.
It is simply a portion of post-war Europe. The foreigner
may hope to see some sense in the situation if he will apply
himself diligently to realities, and forget, for one bright
half hour, the slogans taught him by hard-working editorial
writers whose knowledge of the labor movement is confined
to the observation of subway guards.
First, the diligent foreigner must understand that the
seizure of the Italian factories was not the work of "agi-
tators." The agitators in the case urged caution. They
were so cautious that they did not even have courage to
risk a strike. They insisted on the safer, less glorious,
resource of "ca' canny." The factories were seized by the
workmen themselves, on their own initiative. One day,
soon after obstructionism had commenced, the Romeo fac-
tory in Milan announced a lockout. The workers, gathered
for the day's work, simply tore down the notice, and enter-
ing the factory, went to their jobs as usual. The news
spread through Milan. The fear of a lockout, and a repeti-
tion of last year's six weeks' strike, stirred the workers to
action. Without waiting for the lockout to come, they
ejected their employers, elected their committees, chose
their red guards, and raised the red flag. Within forty-
eight hours all the important metal factories in Milan,
Turin, and Genoa were thus seized and guarded with guns
in hand, day and night. In those cases where the workers
werfe slow to act, the troops got there first. But these
cases were few. The "agitators" began agitating for parlia-
mentary action.
Next, the student must clearly grasp that these workers
did not fancy they could run the factories without direction
and discipline. On the contrary, so highly did they prize
direction that they arrested their directors and threatened
them with dire penalties if they did not go on directing.
In many instances the technical chiefs stayed on the job
and the majority of the minor bosses and specialized clerks
openly cast in their lot with the manual workers. And
though some of the technicians were kidnapped from their
homes arid compelled to go to work, not one has been mis-
treated by his subordinates. Again, so highly did the work-
ers prize discipline that they instituted a regime far more
severe than any which the employers would have dared im-
pose. Any man loafing on the job was subject to punish-
ment at the hands of the factory council. No worker might
leave the grounds without special permit (except the women,
who were required to go home at night) . The lunch period,
in many factories, was cut by a quarter of an hour. The
introduction of alcoholic liquors into the factories was se-
verely prohibited. Sleeping bunks in the factories were
assigned. Disorderly sports in the factories in the evening,
or anything approaching rowdyism, were severely pro-
hibited. Choral singing was not discountenanced, but the
reading of improving books was recommended as preferable.
And again, the searcher after truth must know that the
Oct. 27, 1920]
The Nation
471
concept of workers' control was not drawn from the essays
of Lenin. It arose from the realities of the industrial situa-
tion itself. In the present wage dispute, as in all previous
ones, the industrialists protested that their industry was
already losing money and an increase in wages was eco-
nomically impossible. The workers quoted figures to prove
their side of the dispute. The industrialists replied with
better ones. They proved with figures that they could not
grant increased wages. I do not know whether or not their
proof was valid. Neither did the workers. That is just
the point. So they decided — not by any fancy imitation
of Russian theories, but by a simple Q.E.D. out of experi-
ence^— that they had better know. They felt the helpless-
ness of their situation in the face of the mystery that is
called business. They quite simply did not want to be help-
less. " So they asked for "control," which means merely
"supervision of the books." The movement, then, has taken
its form from the spontaneous thought and action of the
masses, reacting simply and logically to their experience.
The "agitators" have merely made the best of it. Each of
their acts and declarations has been subsequent to a clear
act of the masses.
The workers on the first day of the occupation issued rules
for discipline. The central committee followed with a mani-
festo on the need for discipline. The workers decided to
drop obstructionism and intensify labor. The committee
harangued them on the need for hard work. The workers
sent committees to ask other groups — factory workers, rail-
road men, seamen — for fuel and raw materials. The cen-
tral committee appointed a Technical-Commercial Commit-
tee for the supply of raw materials and fuel. The workers
undertook to sell their products in order to finance them-
selves. The committee formed a commission to centralize
sales. The work done has, of course, been unequal. In the
large Pirelli rubber factories it has been 100 per cent. In
others, because of lack of materials or of technical direc-
tion, it has been little or nothing. On the whole, this ex-
periment in self -management has worked lamely enough on
the economic side. The metal industry is too complicated,
too ramified, to be taken over in a day. Even when all else
went well, the workers found themselves up against the
stone wall of lack of credits. With the banks in the hands
of their enemies, they could achieve no final results. This
may, it is said, show them the folly of their ways. Or
again, it may put a new idea into their heads.
In any case, the solidarity, the moral resistance, the
realism of the movement have been proved. And the final
result has been — there is my difficulty, I cannot write the
final sentence. In another article I must set down, if not
a final, at least a subsequent conclusion. I must try to ex-
plain the mystery of the government's action. And I must
tell how the leaders plan to develop their present success —
if, by the time I next write, it proves to have been a success
at all.
Contributors to This Issue
Hiram K. Moderwell is an American journalist now trav-
eling abroad.
W. Jett Lauck is the consulting economist for the rail-
road brotherhoods.
John Erskine is professor of English at Columbia Uni-
versity.
Changing Prices and the Cost of
Living
By W. JETT LAUCK
THE reported tumbling in prices has perhaps created
more interest than any other news since the armistice.
During many weary months people of all conditions in all
countries have been struggling with an ever-increasing cost
of living. Hoping and praying for a change they now joy-
ously contemplate a possible escape from the stressful con-
ditions under which they have labored. On every hand, the
uppermost questions are: "What are the causes of declining
prices?" "How far will the reductions go?" "Will they be
permanent?" "Will they find concrete expression in an
actual decrease in the cost of living for the average indi-
vidual and his family?"
The factors depressing prices at present are not difficult
to ascertain. The Federal Reserve Board may be said to
have started the movement. By its action in suggesting
the calling or curtailment of loans based on luxuries and of
loans arising from attempts to control the domestic supplies
of foodstuffs and other necessaries, credit was made avail-
able for the increased production of essentials. Before long
the bottom fell out of attempts by profiteers to manipulate
arbitrarily the supply and prices of certain necessaries such
as sugar.
Then came the decline in the purchasing ability of foreign
countries, probably the most important factor in price-
dropping. Raw materials, as well as foodstuffs and manu-
factured products, could not be disposed of abroad because
foreign countries had exhausted their purchasing power in
money and credit. Exports remained at home, adding
greatly to the domestic supply. And the resulting price
decline has been further accentuated by the action of large
domestic consumers of raw materials, such as cotton and
wool, in curtailing the normal demand for these products.
The temporary closing of their mills by certain textile manu-
facturing companies is in point.
Several months ago the orgy of profiteering — in full swing
since the signing of the armistice — reached the limits of
human endurance, and an awakened and nearly desperate
public decided to take matters into its own hands by refus-
ing to purchase goods at prevailing prices. This unorgan-
ized but effective movement forced the retail merchants,
especially those dealing in shoes, clothing and fabrics, to
cut prices in order to meet their obligations, and to clear
their shelves for new consignments.
These tendencies in general have been accompanied by a
deflation in prices and credit, or a writing down of values,
with no decrease in production, but, on the contrary, with
an increase in available supplies. The voluntary action of
Henry Ford and other manufacturers in cutting the prices
of their products has also in the same way had a beneficial
and wholesome effect. In addition large agricultural crops,
an increase in the production of mines and mills by the
lessening of industrial controversy and conflict, and the
gains in the productive efficiency of labor, have greatly as-
sisted the forces of supply and demand in asserting them-
selves against speculation, manipulation, profiteering and
arbitrary price control.
The most important questions, however, in the minds of
472
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2886
the public are to what extent has the cost of living been
reduced, and what further permanent reductions in prices
may be expected? Unfortunately when one turns from
hopeful press reports to hard, cold facts, one finds that
actual living costs have been only slightly reduced, and that
the prospect for material relief in the near future is not
encouraging. By way of illustration, the wholesale price
index number of the United States Bureau of Labor Sta-
tistics dropped from 272 in May to 250 in August, a decline
of 8 per cent. The decline in wholesale prices was not re-
flected in retail prices for several months. The retail food
price index number rose from 217 in May to 219 in June,
remained the same in July and then dropped to 207 in
August, a decline of slightly less than 5 per cent.
These decreases are, of course, important, but it is by no
means clear that they represent a permanent price reaction
to a level below, or at least very much below, the price level
of the past several months. Examination of the very recent
price changes in comparison with those of preceding years
and an analysis of the particular groups of commodities in
which the decreases have taken place throw an interesting
light upon the probable tendencies of future prices. Thus,
a general drop in wholesale prices of 8 per cent between
May and September of this year is in itself not particularly
significant. Similar periods of decline have at various times
interrupted the general upward trend of prices since the
beginning of the European war. In the Autumn of 1919 a
general slump in prices was widely heralded as the turning
point. Dun's wholesale price index number had slumped
from 200 in August, 1919, to 197 in September, and to 191
in October, a total decline in four months of almost 5 per
cent, yet after October the upward movement was resumed
almost without interruption until last May.
Again, it may be noted that despite the recent sharp de-
cline in wholesale prices, present prices still remain at a
level higher than existed at the armistice. Moreover, the
decline in general wholesale prices as represented by the
usual index numbers has been confined chiefly to two gen-
eral groups of commodities, food products and clothing.
Fuel and light have mounted steadily, as have house-fur-
nishing goods. Certain other important groups, such as
drugs, chemicals, lumber, and building materials, have shown
only the slightest decreases. In other words, the recent
price decreases have been largely limited to products, the
market conditions of which have been abnormal, with noth-
ing to indicate a continued downward trend.
The above facts are emphasized by an examination of
recent cost of living figures of the National Industrial Con-
ference Board, a federation of manufacturers' associations,
which, through its research department, issues monthly
reports on prices and the cost of living. The figures of this
Board showed that the cost of living in July, 1920, was 104.5
per cent higher than in 1914. By September, 1920, the
Board's figures showed a decline to 99.4 per cent as com-
pared with the first year of the war. An examination of the
commodity groups making up this total, however, reveals
that the decrease was solely in food and clothing. Thus, the
percentage figure for food dropped in July from 119 to
107 in September, while clothing dropped from 166 to 155.
On the other hand, during the same period the cost of
shelter or housing increased from 58 to 59, fuel, heat, and
light from 66 to 78, and sundries from 85 to 88. The cost
of living figures of the Massachusetts Commission on the
Necessaries of Life are even more striking. Here the most
recent data available show that the cost of living was 98.4
per cent higher in July, 1920, than in the year 1914. By
August this percentage had fallen to 94.4 per cent as against
1914, but this reduction of only 4 per cent in the general
cost of living was again due solely to a decrease in food
prices.
Retail prices of foodstuffs, fabrics, and clothing have not
as yet perhaps fully responded to the fall in wholesale prices,
and other things being equal some further decrease in retail
prices may be expected. There is no ground for the hope,
however, through the forces now at work, for any radical
and permanent reduction in the cost of living. There has
been some deflation and wiping out of arbitrary domestic
values through the policy of the banks, the voluntary action
of certain producers, and the adverse conditions of foreign
trade. There is no evidence, however, of a widespread re-
plenishing of stocks of commodities, an increased supply, or
a greatly accelerated production, which would permanently
relieve the scarcities created by the war throughout the
world, or remove the fundamental conditions which have
made it possible to profiteer; that is, to take advantage of
abnormal conditions to charge arbitrary and excessive
prices. The provision of credit for foreign trade, or greater
stability in international relations might give such a vent
to our raw materials and foodstuffs as to destroy the tem-
porary price reduction which has arisen from their recent
confinement to domestic markets. Moreover, a reactionary
control of the federal government might have the same effect
even if it is not possible to stiffen prices by securing access
to the foreign demand.
The chief significance of the present political campaign
is to be found in this fact. No legislation to curb profiteer-
ing or to reduce the cost of living has been permitted to go
through Congress since the termination of the war. If reac-
tionary interests strengthen their hold on the federal gov-
ernment in the November elections, not only will all further
attempts at remedial legislation be blocked but positive
measures will be adopted to insure the extension of the
present era of profiteering and exploitation. And such a
prospect is more than probable. Behind a smoke-screen of
meaningless campaign verbiage centering mostly about the
League of Nations the program of "Big Business" has al-
ready been carefully planned and made manifest. A protec-
tive tariff measure will first be passed for the purpose of per-
petuating an exorbitant level of retail prices through the
elimination of possible foreign competition. At the same
time the margin of profits will be further increased by ex-
ploiting the producer of raw materials. Any reductions in
the cost of living which might otherwise be obtained
through increased production, the shutting off of foreign
markets, or the free play of supply and demand, will thus
be effectually denied. Profiteering and exploitation will
continue until modified by the more complete recovery of the
world from the devastating effects of the war, coupled with
a genuine purpose on the part of government to check those
evils.
The abnormal conditions created by the war, as was to be
expected, greatly increased prices and the cost of living.
The war-time era of destruction, restricted production and
unproductive consumption, reduced pre-existing stocks of
goods and made additional accumulations more difficult, and
thus brought about an excess of demand for commodities
over the supply available. The net result has been scarcity
values and constant rises in prices during and since the war.
Oct. 27, 1920]
The Nation
473
These fundamental causes of high prices are still opera-
tive and but slightly modified by post-war production. They
must, of course, be corrected by greater production, thrift,
and economy. This will require time and sustained effort
by all the principal commercial and industrial nations of
the world. There is no indication in our recent price flur-
ries that we are approaching any consummation of this
much desired object, or that there is any hope offered for
an immediate and substantial reduction in the cost of living.
On the other hand it is evident that the scarcity situation
arising from the war is, and will continue to be, taken ad-
vantage of by conscienceless producers, distributors, and
speculators, to exact huge and indefensible profits from all
classes of the people. This condition of affairs must be
remedied if we are to have any relief from excessive living
costs while we are waiting for the economic structure of
the world to right itself. Prices must be reduced to con-
form to costs of production, and indefensible profits must be
eliminated.
The obvious emergency solution, if practical, would be
governmental price control. Although this method has been
continued abroad since the armistice, it was abandoned here
soon after the termination of hostilities. There are other
measures, however, which have been put forward and which
would be even more effective. One of the most advantageous
would be the enactment of a law requiring that all com-
modities entering into interstate commerce should be
marked with the price at which they left the producer. All
succeeding profits would thus be made evident to the ulti-
mate consumer, and public opinion could be relied upon to
see that they were reasonable. Supplementary legislation
limiting the period during which goods might be left in cold
storage and requiring that they should be marked with the
price at which they were placed in storage, together with a
law licensing all corporations and firms engaged in inter-
state commerce, would constitute an effective program for
preventing arbitrary price exactions and making possible
substantial reductions in the cost of living. Consumers
should not permit themselves to be unduly encouraged by
present price reduction, but should demand the adoption of
such a program if they would secure immediate and proper
relief from the existing pressure of unwarranted living
costs.
Seams
By HAZEL HALL
I was sewing a seam one day —
Just this way —
Flashing four silver stitches there
With thread, like this, fine as a hair,
And then four here, and there again,
When
The seam I sewed dropped out of sight.
I saw the sea come rustling in,
Big and gray, windy and bright. . . .
Then my thread that was as thin
As hair, tangled up like smoke
And broke.
I threaded up my needle, then —
Four here, four there, and here again.
Poetry and Work
By JOHN ERSKINE
THE problem of work in the world is a problem of poetry.
To state the matter in these terms is to raise questions,
if not derision. To speak of- poetry and of work together at
any time would suggest to most hearers two separate inter-
ests, as though the words brought into contrast the luxury
and the discipline of life. At any time such a juxtaposition
would raise the unsympathetic query whether when the
worker has accomplished his hours we shall advise him to
dilate his soul with a book of verse, or whether the poet
should sing of the delight of labor, in the hope of casting
upon drudgery some alleviating magic. If the mention of
poetry and work together produces little enthusiasm, the
reason probably is that we understand but vaguely the
nature of poetry.
Many brilliant definitions of poetry have set the matter
clear enough before us in times past and in our own day.
In Max Eastman's "Enjoyment of Poetry" the first
chapter, which describes "poetic people," reminds us that
on every ferryboat some of the passengers are inter-
ested in crossing the river, and others are interested merely
in getting across. All the people in the world, or all the
moods of people, said Mr. Eastman, may be divided in the
same way. Those who are interested in arriving at ends
are the practical people; and those who realize, as they
go through an experience, all the quality it has to yield,
are the poetic folk. There could hardly be a simpler or
truer indication of the poetic attitude. A statement of it,
however, can be quoted from a book already immortal.
"Not the fruit of experience," says Walter Pater at the
close of his study of the Renaissance, "not the fruit of
experience but experience itself is the end" — that is, in Mr.
Eastman's words, not getting across the river but being
aware of the experience of crossing, is success in life.
In other words, the essence of poetry is the realization of
life, of the flavor of experience; it is the awakening to the
quality of what we see or hear or do or think or feel. Habit
dulls our sight and our hearing, and the tendency of all
experience is, in the old phrase, to live much rather than
well, to survive many moments without distinguishing each
moment as it passes. From time to time, however, impelled
by some unfamiliar stimulus, we become unusually sensitive
to what life at that moment is, and such a realization ia
poetry — not verse, but the living poetry which may go into
verse or into some other art or which may simply be ab-
sorbed in conduct. This poetic experience may be of a very
humble physical order, no more than the exhilaration of the
senses after a good night's rest, when all colors of the land-
scape, all sounds of the fields or of the streets, seem un-
usually vivid ; or it may be the exultation of a Newton when
he first imagines the true motion of heavenly bodies; but
in either case whether the experience realized is of the
senses or of the mind, the realization itself, the poetry is of
the spirit. Nothing is more natural than such a realizing
of life. If as we grow older the ability to seize the flavor
of experience fades from us, it is only because we are jaded
by unreflective living; at least we begin life sensitive to the
world about us.
Wordsworth is an inevitable example. One desire directed
his days from boyhood to old age — to have a passionate
474
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2886
acquaintance with life. There might seem to be a break in
his career when he abandoned hope of sharing personally
in the French Revolution and took up, in a quiet English
village, his daily round of plain living and high thinking;
the change, however, is only on the surface, and is more
apparent than real. In both periods he desired to live pas-
sionately. Having learned by experience, however, that im-
mense and feverish activity does not end in a deeper reali-
zation of life, but rather in a deadening to it, he tried the
other method ; he relaxed his nerves and opened his heart in
tranquillity for the universe to lay myriad hands upon him.
And in an age of increasing activity, of more and more cruel
noise and friction, men turned to Wordsworth as a seer, a
prophet ; even those who cared little for verse could see that
happiness lay in the refinement rather than in the number
of our sensations, and that the simple life was the solution
for modern perplexities — the life, that is, in which men
keep themselves calm and steady to receive that wealth of
experience which might be different in quality but which
could not be greater in quantity in one place than in an-
other.
Almost at the same time something threatened to take
from modern society any opportunity to become sensitive.
The invention of machines, the application of power to
looms, the organizing of the factory, that symbol of our
latest world, took from us not only leisure to observe life
as it streams by, but at last even the ability to observe it
when we have the leisure. It is considered in some quarters
the sign of a feeble brain to protest at this late hour
against the development of machinery. "Too bad that life
shouldn't continue picturesque and poetic and that sort of
thing, but machinery has come to stay, and we'll have to
put up with it." It may have come to stay, but apparently
they are least willing to put up with it who have to use it;
they seem more and more reluctant to use it for any long
period at a time ; they show an invariable delight in getting
free of it, into some other form of work. They express
their discontent by demanding higher wages, but higher
wages cannot make them happy, for the machine has taken
from them the capacity to distinguish among experiences,
to realize the quality of life — in short, to find the poetry
of it. A college class might judge Pater academic, but a
group of tired mill-hands would hear their own thoughts
when he says: "To burn always with this hard, gemlike
flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense
it might even be said that our failure is to form habits;
for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and
meanwhile it is only the roughness of the eye that makes
any two persons, things, situations, seem alike." Unfor-
tunately, the machine and the factory make a stereotyped
world, compel the eye to be rough, blot out distinctions of
persons and things. To the shoemaker each shoe that
leaves his hands has its personality and therefore its inter-
est; each is an adventure toward the perfect shoe he will
some day make. In the factory, however, the perfection
sought for is an identical quality in all the shoes. When
Wordsworth found joy in the "mighty sum of things for-
ever seeking" he assumed that the innumerable experiences
of life are infinitely varied. If the touch of the universe,
however, should turn out to be but one finger laid on the
same nerve incessantly, without variation or hope of respite,
we should not grow more sensitive to it; we should become
callous, or we should go insane.
Even if we could greatly diminish the amount of machin-
ery in the world, we should not thereby, with any certainty,
diminish drudgery or the callousness that monotony in-
duces. So much at least should be said on behalf of the
machine advocates. Doubtless the woman who made gar-
ments by hand often missed the poetry of life as she plied
her needle, and the first news of a sewing-machine was to
her the tidings of leisure and release. For those women
who do not earn their living by sewing, it would be foolish
to deny that the sewing-machine has proved indeed a useful
instrument, a means of escape from fatigue. But when we
see the men and women at their machines in a sweat-shop,
we question whether the mechanical invention was a bless-
ing or a snare. The inventor thought he had solved a
problem for humanity, but the solution brought a new world
into being, with problems of its own.
In America we have become exponents of efficiency and
prophets of scientific management. Certainly there is no
reason why in some good sense all work should not be
efficient, nor why whatever must be managed at all should
not be managed scientifically; but when we reflect on the
large possibility of loss in what we call efficiency, and the
not inconsiderable element in scientific management which
is really unscientific, we find it easy to be pessimistic or
even cynical. Many waste motions in all labor can be saved
by forethought; it is better, for example, that the brick-
layer should have the bricks on a table near the level at
which he works than that he should stoop to the ground for
every brick. So far without question scientific management
confers blessing upon us. But this diminution of drudgery
does not in itself make the bricklayer's toil more interest-
ing. There is nothing in efficient management, so far, to
teach him the meaning of the house he puts up, or to make
it in any way his personal concern. Moreover, scientific
management goes further and suggests that labor, which
once was varied, should be subdivided and thereby made
monotonous ; that one man should give all his time — literally
all his lifetime — to a single motion or to a very brief series
of motions. At this point we begin to talk of the maximum
product from the point of view of the producer, but from
the point of view of the laborer we begin to think of hell.
We are not surprised when several passages in Taylor's
book on scientific management advise us that for certain
kinds of work we should seek a man of dull intelligence or
of no intelligence at all, since a finer brain would be wasted
on such drudgery. From the point of view of the employer
this may be good sense, but what shall we think of it from
the point of view of those to whom it seems unfortunate
that any of the human race should remain dull or brutish,
or should be set to work which will make them so?
It would be profitable to know what Europeans think of
us, in this matter of the poetry of life. They will grant
that we are idealists. But idealism and poetry are not
quite the same thing. Although the European credits us
with generous purposes, and applauds our execution of
them, he will not altogether admit that we get the flavor
of our energy as we exercise it, nor that we realize emo-
tionally or intellectually the bearings of our own good in-
tentions. We are becoming a bit mechanical, he feels, even
in our virtues; we care more for efficiency than for life.
At the end of the war, a report on industrial conditions in
the United States was made by a labor commission to the
government of a small country allied with us. The condi-
tion of the small country at that moment was so wretched
that any American would have said his own land was, in
Oct. 27, 1920]
The Nation
475
comparison, absolutely happy. Yet the report, based upon
interviews with laboring men and employers here, and
upon inspection of many of our industrial centers, con-
cluded that Europe had quite as much to avoid as to imi-
tate in our devotion to efficiency. M. Brieux has said as
much for the French opinion of us in "Les Americains Chez
Nous." In significant phrases the French workingman
gives the American employer some comments on our in-
dustrial system. "Economy of effort, maximum product,
Taylorism, as you say. ... I call it terrorism. . . .
You must stand in front of a machine and obey it, wait on
it. . . . Tick, tick, tick, steady as clock-work, always
driving on, driving on, driving on. It never gets tired;
it is steel, it can't think. . . . And you must obey it
and move with it. . . . If you miss once, it rings a bell,
and registers your failure. I tell you, it is madness. . . .
It is humiliating. You feel that if you are there at all,
it is only because the engineers have not yet discovered how
to replace you by a more efficient connecting-rod or spring.
. . . Each nation has its own character. In France the
workman likes to know what he is doing; he likes some-
times to flirt with his work, as it were; he has pride in
doing well, he has the pleasure of trying to do better.
When you've finished a job, you caress it with your hand,
and you say: 'It's done, sure enough: it will do as it is;
but I'll give it just a touch here and there.' "
Not every American will agree that M. Brieux has por-
trayed us correctly, sympathetic though he is, but he has
indicated for us what are the ideals of his own countrymen.
Not all nations, fortunately, have been swept into the mael-
strom of unreflecting activity. France is the notable in-
stance of a whole people preferring the poetic experience
even at the cost of commercial advancement and physical
luxury. There is a profound reason, therefore, why poets
and artists from the rest of the world should make their
pilgrimage to this one land where life is still lived simply
and, as far as the outer eye can see, quietly, but where
spiritual and intellectual excitement is most intense and
most refined. Indeed, France is today a challenge to the
other nations, and especially to the United States and to
Great Britain, an incarnate question whether any place
shall be left in the world for a people who would rather live
simply and poetically than efficiently and monotonously. If
the American or the Englishman does not find himself com-
fortable in France, he need not go there; but he ought to
observe that the Frenchman finds our superior railways,
elevators, and bathrooms but an inadequate substitute for
that higher kind of convenience which he has left at home —
the privilege of enjoying the moments of existence as they
pass, and of selecting from them the experiences which
have meaning.
Shall we say that the United States is not France, and
that with us the question of poetry in our lives is an aca-
demic rather than a vital issue? In our workmen, at least,
it begins to become vital. They feel very much as the
French workman does; they do not like a mechanical life;
they have insisted on leisure, and they will insist on more
of it. Not among the workmen but among the employers
must you look for the difference between the French and
the American points of view. The French employer still
respects the workman's desire to be a craftsman, an artist,
a maker, rather than a "hand." Until the American em-
ployer understands and encourages this desire, we cannot
be happy again in our work, nor can he be happy in his — for
he too, alas, has missed for the most part the poetry of
life. And if we have more leisure, we must have the means
and the training for spending it poetically, not on the pleas-
ures which pass the time, but on those which give quality
and distinction to each fragment of time as it passes.
Here is a gigantic task in education. It is worth our
while to plead for more attention to it, for the sake of
poetry, or, if the word "poetry" still frightens the prac-
tical, then for the sake of a better kind of efficiency; for
if all spiritual meaning departs from the labor of the mo-
ment, if we are allowed or encouraged to ignore the far off
end to which that labor contributes, we shall become des-
perate even to the point of starving before we will work
at all.
In the Driftway
THE Drifter walked briskly along the road and the gor-
geous, flaming autumn marched with him shoulder to
shoulder. Gray branches bowed with bittersweet were on
his right hand, and a young maple whose leaves were pure
gold on his left. He had just come from an orchard where
the branches, heavy with ripe fruit, bent and touched the
earth. He knew that if he were to climb the elm tree just
ahead, whose trunk was wreathed with blood-red creeper,
he would see not only the shining ribbon of the Hudson but
Bear Mountain in all its vivid autumn beauty. He could
feel his soul expanding genially as his lungs expanded with
the clear, sharp air. Life was very good, and all dull and
dusty things were a thousand miles away. There was no
particular reason, he reflected, why they should not remain
so. He owned an excellent though very tiny house whose
staunch oak beams had withstood the weather for upwards
of 200 years ; it boasted not one fire-place but two, each big
enough to hold a six-foot log with ease; it was set in a
valley so beautiful and gracious at every season of the year
that it was impossible to tell which was most desirable;
why not stay there, and forever abandon all less simple
things, even driftways? Just then, for no reason at all, the
Drifter remembered that he had forgotten to order the
winter's coal as he had promised, and that the electrician
was coming next day to do something to the electric wires ;
also that he had an appointment with a man for lunch. Life,
after all, was not simple; it was unutterably complex. And
while it was quite possible to settle permanently in his house
in the valley, it was unlikely that he ever would. He reached
absent-mindedly in his pocket and pulled forth — a railroad
timetable.
* * * * *
WHILE never in the least able to sympathize with the
indignation of certain of our gentlemanly elite over
the wearing of silk shirts by workmen, the Drifter always
had been puzzled to understand why anyone should want to
wear a silk shirt. The Drifter has at last been enlightened
by the explanation of Captain Kelly of the New York police
who apologized for not interfering with the waving of the
American flag and the singing of the Star Spangled Banner
which so effectively prevented a lecture by Major George
Haven Putnam. "The audience," protested the doughty
police captain, "was a well-dressed and educated one and
not an audience the police could have sailed into with their
night sticks."
The Drifter
476
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2886
Exhibit A in Re Mr. Colby
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: May I submit the following as Exhibit A in the inquiry,
"Does the Secretary of State attempt to twist and taint public
opinion and to duck responsibility therefor?" On July 24 the
New York Evening Post printed on page 2 a "special dispatch"
signed with the initials of H. C. McMillan, its Washington cor-
respondent, a story beginning as follows:
"Washington, July 24. — Some of the highest officials in the
Wilson administration are for war with the Bolshevists. If
there was not an election coming on there is no telling how far
the Washington bureaucracy (the term as used is descriptive,
not derogatory) would go in cooperation with the European
Allies to aid Poland and oppose Soviet Russia.
"The United States is bourgeois. The vast majority of Ameri-
cans have or want property, expect to work to get it, revere the
institution of property possessed by achievement or inheritance,
and detest communism. So said one of the highest officials of
the Government to the Evening Post correspondent today. This
statement was part of his call 'to arms.' 'America, wake up/
the slogan which placarded the country in 1917 and before, just
about expresses what this official had to say today."
This high nameless official was then directly quoted as follows :
"What I want to drive home to Americans, to the vast ma-
jority who believe in the individual right to achieve and possess
property, is that that right is now threatened. In America every
other average boy of fifteen years has $100 in the savings bank.
That is the bourgeois spirit. The workers in Henry Ford's
factory are bourgeois. They save and own. Every lot owner
and small farmer is bourgeois. The proletarian classes in the
United States are very few in number. The number of Ameri-
cans who have no land or other producing possessions is too
small to count anything. ... In Minnesota, within a few
days, a labor union convention approved the soviet form of gov-
ernment. This economic epidemic, like influenza, has spread all
over the world, moving from East to West, and only an inten-
sive study can determine the relative severity of the local ab-
sorption of the germs."
His concluding statement, also in direct quotes, was:
"There's a lesson there for communities like ours where indi-
viduals have always had the right to possession of land, to the
possession of other property, as aids to comfort and pleasure;
communities where thrift, one of the highest virtues, has been
rewarded, where the tyranny of labor unionism has been curbed.
Bolshevism is the overdevelopment of unionism."
On July 27 business took me to Washington, where I asked
a group of three newspaper men, frequenters of official inter-
views with government officers, who was this nameless one who
spoke too intelligently to be either Palmer or Burleson. The
newspaper men said, "That's Colby." I remarked that no story
sent out on July 24 named Colby, and, of course, could not.
They said, "Oh, of course not." I tested another newspaper
man by reading extracts from the clipping. He said at once,
"Secretary Colby." I asked whether any press correspondent
at the interview had objected to what the Secretary said. The
newspaper man replied, "A fellow named Todd, represents labor
papers, wanted to know Colby's evidence on unions, I believe.
Colby got angry."
Now, two months after the above interview comes the news of
the exclusion of Mr. Todd and his colleague, Mr. Paul Hanna,
from the press sessions at the State Department on the ground
that Mr. Hanna had asked the Secretary of State to defend
himself from charges of "forbidding reporters to tell what the
Secretary of State had said to twist or taint the news." Is it
impertinent to ask Mr. Colby:
1. Did you try to get the country's press to publish Bol-
shevism as the overdevelopment of unionism?
2. If that is your sincere belief, on which you act officially,
why do you object to letting the press say so?
New York, October 8 Heber BLANKENHORN
Platform of the Farmer-Labor Party
[Note: In response to numerous requests The Nation
prints herewith the platform of the Farmer-Labor Party.
That of the Socialist Party will appear in next week's issue.]
PREAMBLE
THE American Declaration of Independence, adopted July 4,
1776, states that governments are instituted to secure to
the people the rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness
and that governments derive their just powers from the consent
of the governed.
Democracy cannot exist unless all power is preserved to the
people. The only excuse for the existence of government is to
serve, not to rule, the people.
In the United States of America the power of government, the
priceless and inalienable heritage of the people, has been stolen
from the people — has been seized by a few men who control the
wealth of the nation and by the tools of these men, maintained
by them in public office to do their bidding.
The administrative offices of the Government and Congress are
controlled by the financial barons — even the courts have been
prostituted — and the people as a result of this usurpation have
been reduced to economic and industrial servitude.
Under the prevailing order in the United States, wealth is
monopolized by a few and the people are kept in poverty, while
costs of living mount until the burden of providing the neces-
saries of life is well-nigh intolerable.
Having thus robbed the people first of their power and then of
their wealth, the wielders of financial power, seeking new fields
of exploitation, have committed the Government of the United
States, against the will of the people, to imperialistic policies
and seek to extend these enterprises to such lengths that our
nation today stands in danger of becoming an empire instead
of a republic.
Just emerging from a war which we said we fought to extend
democracy to the ends of the earth, we find ourselves helpless
while the masters of our Government, who are also the masters
of industry and commerce, league themselves with the masters
of other nations to prevent self-determination by helpless people
and to exploit and rob them, notwithstanding that we committed
ourselves to guaranty of self-government fo* all such peoples.
Following the greedy spectacle of the peace conference, the
money-masters feared an awakening of the people which threat-
ened to exact for mankind those benefits for which the war was
said to have been fought. Thereupon these masters, in the
United States, through their puppets in public office, in an effort
to stifle free discussion, stripped from the inhabitants of this
land, rights and liberties guaranteed under American doctrines
on which this country was founded and guaranteed also by the
Federal Constitution.
These rights and liberties must be restored to the people.
More than this must be done. All power to govern this nation
must be restored to the people. This involves industrial freedom,
for political democracy is only an empty phrase without indus-
trial democracy. This cannot be done by superficial, palliative
measures such as are, from time to time, thrown as sops to the
voters by the Republican and Democratic parties. Patch-work
cannot repair the destruction of democracy wrought by these
two old parties. Reconstruction is necessary.
The invisible government of the United States maintains the
two old parties to confuse the voters with false issues. These
parties, therefore, cannot seriously attempt reconstruction,
which, to be effective, must smash to atoms the money power of
the proprietors of the two old parties.
Into this breach step the amalgamated groups of forward
looking men and women who perform useful work with hand
and brain, united in the Farmer-Labor Party of the United
States by a spontaneous and irresistible impulse to do righteous
battle for democracy against its despoilers, and more especially
determined to function together because of the exceptionally
Oct. 27, 1920]
The Nation
477
brazen defiance shown by the two old parties in the selection
of their candidates and the writing of their platforms in this
campaign. This party, financed by its rank and file and not
by big business, sets about the task of fundamental reconstruc-
tion of democracy in the United States, to restore all power to
the people and to set up a governmental structure that will
prevent seizure, henceforth, of that power by a few unscrupu-
lous men.
The reconstruction proposed is set forth in the following plat-
form of national issues, to which all candidates of the Farmer-
Labor Party are pledged.
1. 100 PER CENT AMERICANISM
Restoration of civil liberties and American doctrines and their
preservation inviolate, including free speech, free press, free
assemblage, right of asylum, equal opportunity, and trial by
jury; return of the Department of Justice to the functions for
which it was created, to the end that laws may be enforced
without favor and without discrimination; amnesty for all per-
sons imprisoned because of their patriotic insistence upon their
constitutional guaranties, industrial activities, or religious be-
liefs; repeal of all so-called "espionage," "sedition," and "crimi-
nal syndicalist" laws; protection of the right of all workers to
strike, and stripping from the courts of powers unlawfully
usurped by them and used to defeat the people and foster big
business, especially the power to issue anti-labor injunctions
and to declare unconstitutional laws passed by Congress.
To Americanize the federal courts, we demand that federal
judges be elected for terms not to exceed four years, subject to
recall.
As Americanism means democracy, suffrage should be uni-
versal. We demand immediate ratification of the nineteenth
amendment and full, unrestricted political rights for all citizens,
regardless of sex, race, color, or creed, and for civil service
employees.
Democracy demands also that the people be equipped with the
instruments of the initiative, referendum, and recall, with the
special provision that war may not be declared except in cases
of actual military invasion, before referring the question to a
direct vote of the people.
2. ABOLISH IMPERIALISM AT HOME AND ABROAD
Withdrawal of the United States from further participation
(under the Treaty of Versailles) in the reduction of conquered
peoples to economic or political subjection to the small groups
of men who manipulate the bulk of the world's wealth; refusal
to permit our Government to aid in the exploitation of the
weaker people of the earth by these men; refusal to permit use
of the agencies of our Government (through dollar diplomacy
or other means) by the financial interests of our country to
exploit other peoples, including emphatic refusal to go to war
with Mexico at the behest of Wall Street; recognition of the
elected Government of the Republic of Ireland and of the Gov-
ernment established by the Russian people; denial of assistance
financial, military, or otherwise, for foreign armies invading
these countries, and an embargo on the shipment of arms and
ammunition to be used against the Russian or Irish people;
instant lifting of the blockade against Russia; recognition of
every government set up by people who wrest their sovereignty
from oppressors, in accordance with the right of self-determina-
tion for all peoples; abolition of secret treaties and prompt
publication of all diplomatic documents received by the State
Department; withdrawal from imperialistic enterprises upon
which we already have embarked (including the dictatorship we
exercise in varying degrees over the Philippines, Hawaii, Haiti,
the Dominican Republic, Porto Rico, Cuba, Samoa, and Guam) ;
and prevention of the imposition upon the people of the United
States of any form whatever of conscription, military, or in-
dustrial, or of military training.
We stand committed to a league of free peoples, organized
and pledged to destruction of autocracy, militarism, and eco-
nomic imperialism throughout the world and to bring about a
world-wide disarmament and open diplomacy, to the end that
there shall be no more kings and no more wars.
3. DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OF INDUSTRY
The right of labor to an increasing share in the responsibili-
ties and management of industry; application of this principle
to be developed in accordance with the experience of actual
operation.
4. PUBLIC OWNERSHIP AND OPERATION
Immediate repeal of the Esch-Cummins Law; public owner-
ship and operation, with democratic control of all public utilities
and natural resources, including stockyards, large abattoirs,
grain-elevators, water-power, and cold-storage and terminal
warehouses; government ownership and democratic operation
of the railroads, mines, and of such natural resources as are in
whole or in part bases of control by special interests of basic in-
dustries and monopolies such as lands containing coal, iron,
copper, oil, large water-power and commercial timber tracts;
pipe lines and oil tanks; telegraph and telephone lines; and
establishment of a public policy that no land (including natural
resources) and no patents shall be held out of use for speculation
or to aid monopoly; establishment of national and state-owned
banks where the money of the government must, and that of
individuals may, be deposited; granting of credit to individuals
or groups according to regulations laid down by Congress which
will safeguard deposits.
We denounce the attempt to scuttle our great government-
owned merchant marine and favor bringing ocean-going com-
merce to our inland ports.
5. PROMOTION OF AGRICULTURAL PROSPERITY
Legislation that will effectively check and reduce the growth
and evils of farm tenancy; establishment of public markets;
extension of the federal farm loan system, making personal
credit readily available and cheap to farmers; maintenance of
dependable transportation for farm products; organization of a
state and national service that will furnish adequate advice and
guidance to applicants for farms and to farmers already on the
land ; legislation to promote and protect farmers' and consumers'
cooperative organizations conducted for mutual benefit; com-
prehensive studies of costs of production of farm and staple
manufactured products, and uncensored publication of facts
found in such studies.
6. GOVERNMENT FINANCE
We demand that economy in governmental expenditures shall
replace the extravagance that has run riot under the present
administration. The governmental expenditures of the present
year of peace, as already disclosed, exceed $6,000,000,000 — or
six times the annual expenditures of the pre-war period. We
condemn and denounce the system that has created one war-
millionaire for every three American soldiers killed in the war
in France, and we demand that this war-acquired wealth shall
be taxed in such a manner as to prevent the shifting of the
burden of taxation to the shoulders of the poor in the shape of
higher prices and of increased living costs.
We are opposed, therefore, to consumption taxes and to all
indirect taxation for support of current operations of the Gov-
ernment. For support of such current operations, we favor
steeply graduated income taxes, exempting individual incomes
amounting to less than $3,000 a year, with a further exemption
allowance of $300 for every child under eighteen and also for
every child over eighteen who may be pursuing an education
to fit himself for life. In the case of state governments and of
local governments we favor taxation of land value, but not of
improvements or of equipment, and also sharply graduated taxes
on inheritance.
7. REDUCE THE COST OF LIVING
Stabilization of currency so that it may not fluctuate as at
present, carrying the standard of living of all the people down
with it when it depreciates; federal control of the meat packing
industry; extension and perfection of the parcel post system
478
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2886
to bring producer and consumer closer together; enforcing ex-
isting laws against profiteers, especially the big and powerful
ones.
8. JUSTICE TO THE SOLDIERS
We favor paying the soldiers of the late war as a matter of
right and not as charity, a sufficient sum to make their war-pay
not less than civilian earnings. We denounce the delays in pay-
ment, and the inadequate compensation to disabled soldiers and
sailors and their dependents, and we pledge such changes as will
promptly and adequately give sympathetic recognition of their
services and sacrifices.
9. LABOR'S BILL OF RIGHTS
During the years that Labor has tried in vain to obtain
recognition of the rights of the workers at the hands of the
Government through the agencies of the Republican and Demo-
cratic parties, the principal demands of Labor have been cata-
logued and presented by the representatives of Labor, who have
gone to convention after convention of the old parties — to Con-
gress after Congress of old-party office-holders. These conven-
ti ns and sessions of Congress have from time to time included
in platforms and laws a few fragments of Labor's program,
carefully rewritten, however, to interpose no interference with
the oppression of Labor by private wielders of the power of
capital. It remains for the Farmer-Labor Party, the people's
own party, financed by the people themselves, to pledge itself
to the entire Bill of Rights of Labor, the conditions enumerated
therein to be written into the laws of the land to be enjoyed
by the workers, organized or unorganized, without the ameliora-
tion of a single word in the program. Abraham Lincoln said:
"Labor is the superior of Capital and deserves the highest con-
sideration."
We pledge the application of this fundamental principle in
the enactment and administration of legislation.
(a) The unqualified right of all workers, including civil
service employees, to organize and bargain collectively with em-
ployers through such representatives of their unions as they
choose.
(b) Freedom from compulsory arbitration and all other at-
tempts to coerce workers.
(c) A maximum standard 8-hour day and 44-hour week.
(d) Old age and unemployment payments and workmen's
compensation to insure workers and their dependents against
accident and disease.
(e) Establishment and operation, through periods of depres-
sion, of governmental work on housing, roadbuilding, reforesta-
tion, reclamation of cut-over timber, desert and swamp lands,
and development of ports, waterways, and water-power plants.
(f) Reeducation of the cripples of industry as well as the
victims of war.
(g) Abolition of employment of children under sixteen years
of age.
(h) Complete and effective protection for women in industry,
with equal pay for equal work.
(i) Abolition of private employment, detective and strike-
breaking agencies and extension of the federal free employment
service.
(j) Prevention of exploitation of immigration and immi-
grants by employers.
(k) Vigorous enforcement of the Seamen's Act, and the
most liberal interpretation of its provisions. The present pro-
visions for the protection of seamen and for the safety of the
traveling public, must not be minimized.
(1) Exclusion from interstate commerce of the products of
convict labor.
(m) A federal department of education to advance democ-
racy and effectiveness in all public school systems throughout
the country, to the end that the children of workers in indus-
trial and rural communities may have maximum opportunity
of training to become unafraid, well-informed citizens of a free
country.
Books
Middle-of-the-Roadism
The New Frontier. By Guy Emerson. Henry Holt and Com-
pany.
MR. EMERSON begins with a search for the sources of Amer-
ican character. He finds our difference from other peoples
not in love of liberty or in adherence to republican principles of
government, but in survival of the traits of the frontiersman.
Self-reliance, versatility, a combination of courage and prac-
tical ability — characteristics such as these, he contends, are
dominant in us. This theory of the influence of the frontier,
which Mr. Emerson borrows from Professor Turner, is a ser-
viceable one, provided it is applied with discrimination. Ob-
viously it does not account for our differences from Canada,
Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, much of South Amer-
ica, and Siberia, which are also frontiers. But it is useful in
any analysis of our inheritance. As types of the frontiersman
Mr. Emerson cites five surveyors: Washington, Daniel Boone,
Andrew Jackson, Thoreau, Lincoln.
Another of Mr. Emerson's primary assumptions is that the
dominating portion of our population is "liberal, rather than
radical or conservative." Later he defines these much abused
terms. He roughly divides us into five groups, ranging from
the extreme left to the extreme right: "violent radicals," who
he says are typified by the syndicalists; "law abiding radicals,"
among whom he places socialists; "liberals," in the mathemati-
cal center; "conservatives," at their elbow; and "reactionaries,"
who, he assures us, are more tolerable than syndicalists be-
cause they "do not believe in violence."
This mechanistic terminology obscures much truth, because
it confuses temperament and method with economic doctrine.
If we used the words in their traditional senses, we should see
that many syndicalists and socialists are at heart liberal, and
that no one is more conservative than the doctrinaire socialist
or anarchist. We should see that those who "believe in vio-
lence" are distributed among all economic groups, as are those
who do not. We should understand that many a reactionary
is a violent radical. But as Mr. Emerson's definitions are
substantially in accord with contemporary popular usage, they
help to define his own attitude and program.
The liberals who, according to his definition, take the "mid-
dle of the road," are in a vaguely explained way the inheritors
of the pioneer tradition. They are the "practical men" who
stand between the "now" of the radical and the "never" of the
conservatives with their "not yet." Somehow one doubts that
if Lincoln's father had taken the middle of the road he would
ever have reached Kentucky. If John Brown was a violent
radical — as he certainly seems — Lincoln was at least a law-
abiding radical. Would not anyone say that Andrew Jackson
was more a radical than a liberal? And as for Thoreau,
imagine him on the twelve-hour shift at the bottom of the
military hierarchy in a steel mill, and then ask yourself whether
he would have stayed safely in the center of the highway, or
would, have plunged into the untracked wilderness.
More important than argument about terms, however, is the
present content which they are given. This middle-of-the-road
liberal — what does he think about existing problems? Two
hints are given by Mr. Emerson near the beginning. The first
is that he believes the Harvard Liberal Club to be more radical
than liberal. The second is that he believes Governor Coolidge
of Massachusetts was reelected by liberal rather than by con-
servative votes. Probably Mr. Emerson does not know all the
facts about the grievances of the Boston police and about their
strike. But many liberals would say that if ever there was
illiberal action it was that of Governor Coolidge in his vindic-
tive refusal to reemploy the policemen after the strike had been
broken, although it had been demonstrated that neither the pub-
lic nor the government had taken the slightest pains to remedy
Oct. 27, 1920]
The Nation
479
their grievances before they took matters in their own hands.
And if ever there was a radical acceptance of a radical doc-
trine, it was the acceptance by Governor Coolidge and his par-
tisans of the doctrine of the sanctified supremacy of the state —
the very doctrine which we had so recently condemned in Ger-
man historians. One wonders whether there would have been
such a soul-stirring rally to this standard if the power of the
state had been invoked to confiscate property rather than to
deny unionism to policemen.
The labor problem Mr. Emerson approaches in a truly liberal
temper. His language is the language of a moderate and a
generous man. He advocates the rule of reason in industrial
disputes; he admits the danger of violence, but believes any
large break between owner and worker can be avoided if both
sides "get together" without undue hostility. Slavery might
have been abolished, he thinks, without secession and a war,
if only the compromisers had dominated the extremists. It
would be interesting to propound just the opposite theory.
During the critical decades before the Civil War, the Northern
compromisers actually did rule. They hesitated to predicate
that slavery must go; they tried simply to localize it and make
terms with it. Lincoln, who understood that no nation could
endure half slave and half free, did not arrive until the breach
was imminent. Suppose Lincoln, with his radical view of
slavery, and his practical and progressive way of attaining his
ends, could have come to power in 1830. Then, truly, slavery
might have been abolished without a war. But just because no
radical like Lincoln could control affairs in the early stages of
the conflict, it ripened into hostilities. This view is surely as
tenable as Mr. Emerson's. And its analogy to the conflict over
the wage system is no less pertinent.
Mr. Emerson is not against unions, but he insists that unions
must be of the conservative variety, who believe in the "in-
violability of contracts" and in the present economic order.
Yet his understanding of the facts is, to say the least, super-
ficial. Does he know that many more contracts have been
violated by so-called conservative unions than by socialist bodies
like those in the clothing industry? Does he know that the
preservation of agreements depends not half so much upon
good faith on the part of officials as it does upon the democratic
structure of the unions, and the flexibility of the agreements
in question?
In defense of unionism he uses probably the worst possible
example — the New York printers' strike of last year. To him,
informed as he was by the employers and their press, this seems
a simple case of attempted violation of agreement by a Bolshe-
vistic rank and file, who were nobly opposed and defeated by
their own officials. He does not know that the president of the
union chiefly concerned had been accused by its members of
misappropriation of funds, and that the controversy is still
pending in the courts. He does not know that this president
unconstitutionally changed the mode of election and so kept
himself in office contrary to the Will of the majority. He does
not know that the striking pressmen violated no agreement, but
merely an informal understanding arrived at between this un-
popular president and an employers' association. Similarly,
in spite of Mr. Emerson's verbal approval of unionism and
conference, he condemns Fitzpatrick and Foster for calling the
steel strike.
It would be possible similarly to analyze his acknowledgment
that the workers justly desire a greater control over the in-
dustrial process. Suffice it to say that he accompanies this
statement with another: "There is nothing uncompromisable
between the demands of labor and the reservations of capital,
except where either the demands of labor or the reservations
of capital prove to be inconsistent with the American form of
government." His emphasis is not upon the exception, but
upon the assertion. It is evident that he does not contemplate
giving the workers a real voice, or allowing them to make
many changes. To him, their participation would be rather in
the nature of satisfying the ego and discovering the difficulties
of the employer. For he goes on to praise thrift and to assert
that the chief cure for capitalism is more capitalists. He is
enough an economist to see the fundamental need of "more
production," but not enough to see that production depends on
something more than hard work, or to inquire into the relation
between production and the control of industry.
For the rest, he recommends universal military training,
higher salaries for teachers and clergymen, better vocational
education, more attention by business men to the press in order
that radical propaganda may be counteracted by "truth," and
participation by America in the League of Nations, not because
it is yet perfect, but because "half a loaf is better than none."
In making adjustments to a limited environment, the "prac-
tical man" is doubtless more successful than one who thinks
more radically. Where there is a road in good condition, mid-
dle-of-the-roadism wins. But the world just now is full of
examples of what happens to the counsel of such men when
the road is broken by floods, and a new country appears over
the hill-top. The limitations of their practicality, their knowl-
edge, and their temperament are revealed. Sometimes there
is more danger in keeping to the road than in blazing a new
trail. George Soule
"A Country Without a Guide Book"
In Morocco. By Edith Wharton. Charles Scribner's Sons.
I N 1918 Mrs. Wharton, under the guidance of a French mili-
*■ tary mission, in a French army motor, spent a month trav-
eling in Morocco. Her account of her travels in a country
without a guide book is for the benefit of the travelers who
she feels sure will flood the land when the war is over. All
the properties of an Arabian Nights tale are here — camels and
donkeys, white-draped riders, palmetto deserts, camel's hair
tents, and veiled women; and in the midst of blazing sands
such incongruities as the rescue of the French official motor,
stuck fast in the desert, by a passing army of turbaned white
figures on pilgrimage under many-colored banners to pray at
some holy tomb. Towns are few, in scattered oases or fertile
valleys marked from afar by minarets rising from olive gar-
dens and inclosed in red earthen walls overhung by fig and
stunted cork trees. An odor of spices rises from the bazaars.
Within the walls are turquoise-blue and white buildings, orange
gardens, irises and blue aloes around secret pools to which
childless women are brought to bathe; mosques with inlaid
ivory, ebony, and sandalwood, and inscrutable cedar doors;
bazaars where men of all tribes and nationalities offer their
wares; ghettos, filthy and dark, in which babies are nursed on
date brandy, and fat grandmothers still in their thirties shuffle
along by the side of "incalculably aged ancestors"; and close
by the jasmine and the rose.
There are fascinating pictures of Sale, where Robinson Cru-
soe was held prisoner; of Volubilis, the ruin of a Roman city;
of Moulay Idriss [Mrs. Wharton uses the French spelling of
proper names], the sacred white city of Morocco, forced only
as late as 1916 to admit the Christian tourist and the French
uniform; of the crumbling ruins of imperial Meknez, built in
the seventeenth century by Moulay Ismael with his Black
Army of 150,000 men all trained and brought up by his orders
from the age of ten, and by 25,000 Christian captives. It was
here that "any prisoner who died at his task was built into the
wall he was building." From Marrakech come the beautiful
"pomegranate red" book bindings made by the guild of Mo-
rocco workers. Under the reed-roofed streets of Fez the song
of the blind beggars, "Dust and ashes, dust and ashes," con-
stantly symbolizes the life of this land where there is no merry-
making in the Occidental sense of the word, where even the
dances are all static or ritualistic, and where dreams and reali-
ties are inextricably intermingled by the all-pervading spirit
of languor.
Under the guidance of the French Ministry of Fine Arts and
480
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2886
as the guest of Madame Lyautey, Mrs. Wharton found herself
admitted to many ceremonials from which she as a foreigner
and as a woman would under ordinary circumstances have
been doubly barred. She was entertained by the ladies of
various harems, and in all found the same lassitude and dul-
ness, relieved only by the passionate fondness of the women for
their children, who if girls are married at eight or nine and
if boys are "given their first negress" at twelve.
Mrs. Wharton, who has long loved France, has unqualified
admiration for the way in which the French Ministry of Fine
Arts has gone about its task, and the tact shown by General
Lyautey in dealing with the native problems. She accepts
without question the general theory of imperialism — "and the
European powers were attempting, in the confusion of an un-
governed country, to assert their respective ascendencies. The
demoralized condition of the country justified these attempts
and made European interference inevitable." In the light of
this premise it is easy to see how she regards General Lyautey's
"pacification" of Morocco as an act of accommodation to the
Moroccans and the French occupation as a benevolent institu-
tion. Caillaux's complacent revelations throw a somewhat dif-
ferent light on the matter. Irita Van Doren
Medieval Economics
An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching. By George O'Brien.
Longmans, Green and Company.
THE thesis of this volume may be briefly stated. It is doubt-
ful whether the Church at Jerusalem, as described in the
Acts, practised communism at all apart from great liberality
and benevolence; if there was communism it was communism of
use, not of ownership ; and furthermore it was purely voluntary.
The Church Fathers cannot be drawn to the support of an
attack on private property. On the contrary they believed that
property was one of the normal and legitimate institutions of
human society. The great rule with regard to the user of prop-
erty in the Middle Ages was "liberality" and "a wise and prudent
saving of money for investment would be considered a course of
conduct within the meaning of the word liberalitas." In the
matter of human slavery as well as of property it is possible to
cite many critical texts, but the burden of patristic reasoning
was in favor of bondage. "Slavery wa^ declared to be a bless-
ing, because, like poverty, it afforded the opportunity of practis-
ing the virtues of humility and patience." As to the sale of
property or goods the Fathers believed strongly in "the just
price," although modern writers have some difficulties in dis-
covering whether the "just price" was subjective or objective.
The just price for labor is not very much discussed in medieval
economic writings, because "the proper remuneration of labor
was so universally recognized as a duty and so satisfactorily
enforced that it seems to have been taken for granted and there-
fore passed over. . . . What the workers of the present day
look to as a desirable but almost unattainable ideal was the uni-
versal practice in the ages when economic relations were con-
trolled by Christian principles." The Church dignified labor.
The Fathers looked upon commerce as a dangerous occupation,
but "the attitude toward commerce seems to have grown more
liberal in the course of the Middle Ages." The Fathers con-
demned usury firmly and squarely, but they did not condemn
interest. By various fine and reasonable distinctions under the
titles poena conventionalis, damnum emergens, lucrum cessans,
and periculum sortis, they showed how just it was under certain
circumstances for the lender to receive back more money than he
lent. The scholastics recognized the legitimacy of unearned
income and the lawfulness of rent. Medieval economic teaching
"aimed at extended production through its insistence on the
importance and dignity of manual labor." Respecting the dis-
tribution of wealth, the Church "insisted [it] must be regulated
on a basis of strict justice." Socialism "is founded on a philo-
sophical basis which conflicts with the very foundations of Chris-
tianity. . . . As an economic system it finds no support in
the teaching of the scholastic writers."
Mr. O'Brien's book is not a weighty treatise. It is a tract —
a polemical tract — based mainly on secondary sources. Its
design is to give aid to those who are somewhat uncomfortable
under capitalism and would escape in the direction of sweetness
and charity rather than Moscow. At the same time, it will
reassure those who have been frightened by Christian socialism
buttressed by patristic learning. It therefore fits neatly into
one of the most obvious niches in our present intellectual life.
With such an enterprise I have no quarrel. I should be inter-
ested to know how it happened that men living in the ideal state
portrayed by Mr. O'Brien ever came to choose Protestantism,
the French Revolution, and our "admittedly diseased society."
As to the rest I am content. So far as I am concerned anyone
who thinks that private property is an institution caused by the
fall of man may continue to do so. Anyone who thinks that
medieval economic practice grew out of medieval teaching and
was "controlled" by the Church, may continue to do so. After
laborious days among manorial records, capitularies, charters,
deeds, statutes, and court rolls, I am of opinion that religion
controlled economic life in the Middle Ages about as much as it
did slavery in America, capitalism in France, communalism in
old Russia, and syndicalism in Spain. But I have no desire to
enter the lists with those who think otherwise. Anyone who
believes that there was a consistent and closed system of eco-
nomic reasoning in what appears to my poor mind to be a con-
fused jumble of patristic writings may continue to do so.
Against him I lift no cry. Neither am I disposed to wrangle
with Utopians of any kind. Mr. O'Brien believes that Utopia was
in the Middle Ages. The classical school associated Utopia with
anarchy and the police constable. Adolescent socialists place it
in the future, not even at Petrograd. Judge Gary with equal -
rectitude places it in Pittsburgh, now.
Still, this is a reassuring book. The treasurer of St. Mary's
in-the-Woods may cut the coupons from steel fives with the same
sweet insouciance that gave seraphic rest to the bailiff of St.
Thomas's in-the-Fields as he collected beer and" barley from the
villeins. Charles A. Beard
America and the Gods
The Dark Mother. By Waldo Frank. Boni and Liveright.
100%. The Story of a Patriot. By Upton Sinclair. Pasadena:
Upton Sinclair.
THHE author of "Our America" has given us a picture of life
*■ in the country of which he would be a prophet. He has
chosen a highly impressionistic method of conveying his per-
ceptions and observations. There are few or no connectives.
Sentences and paragraphs stand alone and unfriended. Indi-
vidually they are pitched in an extremely high key. The result
is both nerve-racking and, in the end, without true effectiveness.
Where everything is emphatic, nothing is; where simplicity is
an outcast, subtlety loses its edge; a tension that never relaxes
gives an impression of terror rather than of power. Where
breakfast ends with "coffee that cuts mental mists," what
heightening of speech will be adequate for love or hate or death?
No, this cultivation of a special and esoteric way of seeing and
recording things is a clever man's substitute for the creative
energy he would himself like to possess and see the literature
of his country display. Without sharing many of Mr. Frank's
views, we have a very vivid sympathy for his situation. His
is an essentially critical mind. Like so many American minds
it is rootless. It tries to deposit a cultural and creative soil
for its own health and nurture. Its dilemma is really a tragic
one. But the thing, obviously, cannot be done.
Who are these New Yorkers in "The Dark Mother" into
whose circles David Markand and Tom Rennard are drawn?
They are themselves accidental, unrelated to any permanency,
hopelessly deracines. Modern life, Mr. Frank may urge, makes
Oct. 27, 1920]
The Nation
481
against the permanent and the home-rooted. But there is such
a thing as inner stability and a spiritual alliance with large
and vital forces. There are other homes than houses. But
these people are indescribably vague and dreary; they are
strangers by their own hearths and in their own breasts,
strangers, moreover, who, unlike their creator, do not long for
home. If Mr. Frank had desired to add to our understanding
of American life by describing these paltry creatures, he should
have stood above them with irony not, if he pleased, unrelieved
by compassion, in his mind. But he accepts and magnifies them.
Once only does he show some glimpse of the real nature of their
case when he lets Tom Rennard say to his sister: "We are
neither the old nor the new. I sometimes think we are nothing.
We are not happy. We are not strong. We have no gods at
all." A great novel might have been written on that theme.
But Mr. Frank has not even attempted that task. The real and
creative motive of his book seems to have come to him as an
afterthought when most of it had been written. Yet that mo-
tive is at the center of his own failure in power. He is him-
self neither the old nor the new, neither happy nor strong.
He tried to make him some gods in "Our America," but they
are only manikins in mask and buskin. He must seek gods,
not try to create them in his own image.
Let him observe Upton Sinclair. Mr. Sinclair does not need
to go about in studios and drawing-rooms seeking idols for his
worship. He has "great allies." His
friends are exultations, agonies
And love, and man's unconquerable mind.
Mr. Frank may be a little disdainful of our using those strong,
immortal words in connection with Upton Sinclair and his
rudely named narrative published by himself at Pasadena. They
happen to fit the case. Mr. Sinclair has no graces and no fine
gestures; he is too busy to search for new modes of expression
or a new narrative technique. Sometimes, in the matter of
mere words, he writes thickly and shabbily. But he has aban-
doned the Zolaist symbolism and declamation of his earlier
books and has chosen an intellectual and artistic method which
is none other than that of Swift. Throughout the long story
of Peter Gudge, red-blooded, one-hundred-per cent American,
Mr. Sinclair is studiously dry and calm. He permits himself
no outcry, no passion, no invective, no over-emphatic word.
The grim, quiet, unhurrying irony marches steadfastly on. It
has no need of haste or rhetoric. For Mr. Sinclair has gods
and a great subject burning, literally burning, out his heart.
And so it comes about that this pedestrian mass of graceless
prose achieves — in the most fundamental sense — literary values
that young intellectuals seeking cultural modes for our Ameri-
can life can never reach.
Mr. Sinclair tells the story of Peter Gudge, who becomes, in-
voluntarily enough, a spy and an agent provocateur. He is
perfectly fair to Gudge and to the accesses of sincere patriotic
sentimentality that persuaded the fellow's weak mind to every
treachery and every infamy. Through Gudge's career Mr. Sin-
clair tells us more concretely and therefore more creatively than
anyone else has done, how the Mooney Case was framed up;
how Big Business, under cover of the Department of Justice,
pursued the Reds during and after the war; how men and
women were betrayed and beaten and killed for their opinions;
and how, in the name of privilege tricked out as patriotism,
our country has become darkened and shamed by wrongs that
have no parallel except in the Spain of the Inquisition and the
Russia of the Czars. At the end of the story, which is authenti-
cated in every detail not only by Mr. Sinclair's appendix but
from a thousand other sources, all that one has of honor or
humanity is justly set on fire. The book will not, of course,
be reviewed or advertised in the press controlled by Big Busi-
ness. Hence it is the more necessary to repeat that it is a
literary achievement of high and solid worth and that it illus-
trates— especially for Mr. Waldo Frank and his friends — that
literature is born when passion compels speech and the gods
who are within will not be denied their resistless utterance.
A New Miscellany
A Miscellany of American Poetry, 1920. Harcourt, Brace and
Howe.
I F this volume, anonymously edited and ordered, makes no
*■ claim that it offers the best recent work of only or all the
representative American poets, it must at least be said to con-
tain some reasonably representative poems by those eleven "in-
dependent personalities" who separately consented to appear
here in what the publishers call a first "biennial exhibition."
Containing whatever it does, it vindicates with unusual ac-
curacy the critical preferences which seem to prevail just now
and so embarrasses the reviewer who would like to declare
something newer than that John Gould Fletcher, Robert Frost,
Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and
Carl Sandburg are better than other poets today — better, for
instance, to take up the "Miscellany" itself, than Conrad Aiken,
James Oppenheim, Jean Starr Untermeyer, Louis Untermeyer,
and Sara Teasdale, the last at any rate as she is found here,
in less than her true form.
Mr. Fletcher and Miss Lowell, by this evidence if no other,
continue to lead such poets as confine themselves to rich and
rare appearances, and, loving words mostly for their color or
their shape, write for other poets. Mr. Fletcher, in Noon, The
Stone Place, Sunset, and Exit, carves four of the most solid
landscapes that purely literary hands are likely to achieve for
a time. The earth he looks down upon is granite and marble,
pale brown and gray, with occasional lines of scarlet cliff or
creamy strand. Miss Lowell, on every page her customary
vigorous self, distributes epithets with brisk and admirable
precision, particularly in New Heavens for Old, an allegory of
the quiet life no less vivid, but of course infinitely less resigned,
than George Herbert's The Collar.
My fellows call to me to join them,
They shout for me,
Passing the house in a great wind of vermilion banners. . . .
They roar down the street like flame,
They explode upon the dead houses like new, sharp fire.
But I—
I arrange three roses in a Chinese vase:
A pink one,
A red one,
A yellow one.
I fuss over their arrangement.
Then I sit in a South window
And sip pale wine with a touch of hemlock in it,
And think of the winter nights,
And field-mice crossing and re-crossing
The spot which will be my grave.
Mr. Lindsay, Mr. Sandburg, Mr. Frost, and Mr. Robinson
reap richer rewards only because they work in deeper material.
Mr. Lindsay's sympathies cavort with their old agility between
the corners of the world, from Carmi, Illinois, to the moon, and
from a golden-haired girl in Louisiana to the horses of the sea.
Mr. Sandburg's loyalties and angers are fierce as few things
are in poetry or in life; they shoot like bolts into sockets, with-
out hesitation, without restraint, without any undue fear of
noise. Perhaps no poem in the volume is as profound as The
Runaway, by Mr. Frost, wherein behind an absolutely lifelike
surface lie spaces only half seen through, spaces dim with the
mystery of familiar fact, spaces hooded with the falling white
silence of a poet's puzzled, affectionate thought.
Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall,
We stopped by a mountain pasture to say "Whose colt?"
A little Morgan had one forefoot on the wall,
The other curled at his breast. He dipped his head
And snorted to us. And then he had to bolt.
We heard the miniature thunder where he fled
482
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2886
And we saw him or thought we saw him dim and gray,
Like a shadow against the curtain of falling flakes.
"I think the little fellow's afraid of the snow,
He isn't winter-broken. It isn't play
With the little fellow at all. He's running away.
I doubt if ever his mother could tell him 'Sakes,
It's only weather': He'd think she didn't know.
Where is his mother? He can't be out alone."
And now he comes again with a clatter of stone
And mounts the wall again with whited eyes
And all his tail that isn't hair up straight.
He shudders his coat as if to throw off flies.
"Whoever it is that leaves him out so late,
When other creatures have gone to stall and bin,
Ought to be told to come and take him in."
Thought is provoked here, rather than expressed, as thought
is provoked by anything that really and quietly happens in the
world. Mr. Frost says nothing about life, but he has a sense
of it which he can communicate. The earth is not empty while
he speaks; it is filling with all the mountain pastures that one
had forgotten existed, with all the sounds and sights that never
are heard or seen.
Books in Brief
THE Book of Genesis has been interpreted in countless ways
both by Jewish and non-Jewish authors. But, according to
Professor Julian Morgenstern in "The Book of Genesis. A Jew-
ish Interpretation" (Department of Synagogue and School Ex-
tension), "the Jewish interpreters have confounded Biblical
myths, legends, and traditions with what they have mistakenly
called Biblical history." On the other hand the work of the non-
Jewish scholars has been almost entirely analytic in character.
"They have picked Genesis, and the entire Bible in fact, to
pieces. They have resolved it into its component sources, and
have determined with quite reliable accuracy when and under
what conditions these were written. . . . But singularly
enough they have failed almost completely to determine the ends
for which these sources were combined, and the thoughts and
aims which animated the editors. . . . Therefore they have
failed to realize, except in the most superficial manner, that the
Bible, and particularly the Torah, is entirely a Jewish work,
written by Jewish authors, and edited by Jewish thinkers, the
product of Jewish religious genius, and a unit of Jewish religious
thought and doctrine, and that it must be animated throughout
by some deep Jewish purpose, and can, in the final analysis, be
correctly understood only when interpreted from a positive Jew-
ish standpoint." To fill this gap is the purpose of Professor
Morgenstern's own book. While accepting the most advanced
results of Biblical criticism, the author tries to bring out the
truths which were meant to be conveyed by those who gave the
Bible its final shape and are still of value to modern man. Thus,
the first chapters of Genesis, while consisting of myths and folk-
tales similar in many details to those of other primitive peoples
and in some respects borrowed from non-Israelite sources, "yet
breathe throughout the spirit of the one living God, the Creator
of the university and of life, who looks out upon what he has
made and finds it very good." The story of Eden is here con-
ceived as the attempt of a nomadic people to explain why man
is compelled to work. The account of Jacob, which is regarded
as a compilation of various Jacob legends, is interpreted to con-
vey Jacob's objectionable character and his ultimate repentance
and change of mind.
rPHROUGH the exploits of their soldiers in Siberia and the
*■ standing which their country has gained among the nations
of Europe, Bohemians have in recent years acquired a new
ALFRED ' A ' KNOPF
MOON-CALF
220 W. 42, Street, NEW YORK
l^«^ll^*^ll(£«^IIe£«2allBk>2allBt«2alliv*.dll^^0ll^*^ll^*.<al
By Floyd Dell Author of "Were You Ever a Child?"
"IV/r OON-CALF is by far the most distinguished and most significant first novel by
an American that has ever been offered me for publication. It will, /!U/<jus(^L/^u>^L
I believe, command wide attention and universal respect. $2.50. " D\
LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS
By Raddl Adjetlg Kartilli With an Introduction by Lonis Couperus
This remarkable autobiography of the first
feminist of the Orient should be studied by
everybody who is interested in education for
women anywhere, in the political situation in
the East Indies, and in oriental literature.
Couperus says in his introduction : "The soul
of this girl was one with the soul of her peo-
ple ; Holland may well be grateful to the hand
that revealed it." $4.00.
YOUTH AND THE BRIGHT MEDUSA
By Willa Cather
PSYCHOANALYSIS
AND BEHAVIOR
By Andre Tridon
Max Beerbohm's
SEVEN MEN
("The best of his books."— J. C.
Squire in The New Statesman)
is ready
Author of "Psychoanalysis"
One of the most important features of Mr.
Tridon's newest book is the summary and dis-
cussion of the four schools of psychoanalysis — those of Freud,
Jung, Kempf and Adler. This book duplicates none of the ma-
terial in Mr. Tridon's earlier book but discusses mainly (from
the standpoint of a successful practitioner) the relations of the
science to every-day life. $2.50.
The first American edition (lim-
ited to two thousand numbered
copies) contains an Appendix and
six original illustrations by Max
never before published. $4.00.
Author of "My Anton ia," etc.
Eight distinguished stories. "Her vision has
come to be one of an intense and naked clear-
ness and she herself one of our few thoroughly
serious artists. The book is more than a ran-
dom collection of excellent tales. It constitutes
as a whole one of the truest as well as, in a
sober and earnest sense, one of the most poeti-
cal interpretations of American life that we
possess." — The Nation. $2.25.
THE FORERUNNER
By Kahlil Gibran %^t^°i£$%2r
"An imagination which goes to the mountains
and elements for strength." — The Dial. With
five original drawings by the author. $1.50.
SONGS FOR THE NEW AGE
By Jame8 Oppenheim Author of "The Book of Self
A new edition of Mr. Oppenheim's first work which brought him
recognition. "A milestone in our poetic progress." — Boston
Transcript. $2.00.
^^%%gfg^^i5SHgsnggJ^
Oct. 27, 1920]
The Nation
483
dignity in the minds of Americans. To take advantage of the
prevailing mood of appreciation, Mr. Thomas Capek has writ-
ten "The Czechs in America" (Houghton Mifflin). The work is
in the nature of a compilation, bringing together the available
facts in an evidently painstaking and accurate manner. The
history of the Bohemians in this country is not an eventful one,
and their contribution to American life not brilliant, though in
every way respectable and creditable. They began arriving in
large numbers simultaneously with an important stratum of
German immigration, after the revolution of '48. The sub-
stantial quality of the immigrants may be inferred from the
two records which they made at Ellis Island: Mr. Capek points
out that they stand lowest in the percentage of illiteracy and
highest in the percentage of skilled labor. They spread freely
over the farming areas of the Middle West, and agriculture
became their chief occupation. In the cities they were general
laborers and tailors, the second generation also contributing its
quota of clerks, salesmen, and mechanics. While they enjoy
their share of the country's prosperity, they are conspicuously
absent from the ranks of big business. As might be expected,
they have poured into the general current men of public affairs,
professional men, and scientists, though but few of national dis-
tinction. They have also had their own intellectual movements,
fed from European sources, their waves of rationalism in re-
ligion and of radicalism and socialism in politics. In their cul-
tural habits and ideas they have been closely akin to the Ger-
mans, with whom they have frequently intermarried in this
country. This is not to say that they have merged their na-
tional loyalty. They have tenaciously adhered to their native
grouping and, like all the ether strains in our population, have
piously preserved the ties which bound them to the land of
their origin. They have organized their own fraternal orders,
supported newspapers in the parent language, and maintained
schools for teaching that language to their children. Their de-
votion culminated in a liberal and enthusiastic response to the
appeal of Professor Masaryk for aid in obtaining Bohemian in-
dependence. Of their showing on this occasion they are justly
proud, and no patriotic American has seen fit to reproach them
for it. It would seem, after all, that it is not the hyphen that
is objectionable so much as the thing hyphenated.
Drama
The Real Thing
rpHE Neighborhood Playhouse is opening its first season as
* a regular repertory theater. Performances will be given
six nights a week; the actors are professionals; the maximum
price of the ticket has been kept at one dollar. The directors,
consciously or not, are testing the theatrical temper of New
York. For if any competent critic had been asked to name the
conditions of such a test, he would have replied without hesi-
tation: first-rate plays adequately presented at a very moderate
entrance fee. The fact that the Playhouse is on Grand Street
makes the test no less fair, though a little more searching.
A slothful impulse will have to be overcome.
Galsworthy wrote "The Mob" in 1913. It grew out of his
memories of the Boer War, and it was his intention to state
dramatically the case for a parliamentarian who opposes his
country's wrong-doing and suffers martyrdom at the hands of
the populace. Now Galsworthy's intellectual courage was, even
in those days, gallant and clean. But his moral courage was
impaired by a touch of sentiment and a fear of impropriety.
The consequence is that he sacrificed a great deal to an artificial
lucidity and balance which give the play a structure as cal-
culatedly geometrical as Hervieu's own. His protagonist, hav-
ing thought thus far, could not but have thought a good deal
farther. But in 1913 Galsworthy was, evidently, quite as afraid
of making Stephen More a "crank" as More's wife was of hav-
ing him called one. Ibsen, dour old soul that he was, saw deeper
and more intensely. Dr. Stockmann is indeed something of a
crank. What does it matter? What have these vain fashions
of the world to do with everlasting issues? Galsworthy stops
just short of that perception and so he stops where greatness
begins. He would write an exquisite panegyric of Socrates.
He would not dine with the old man. There are table manners !
Another and an external circumstance tends to diminish the
original force of the play. The World War has taught us the
insufficiency of its vision and its protest, the thinness of its
voice. Either the predatory imperialisms are curbed or man-
kind goes under. It is they who sting the mob to madness.
From the grimy confusions of the oppressed and deceived Gals-
worthy would today, one hopes, turn to sinister and immaculate
old men in foreign offices and banks. When these two deduc-
tions have been duly made, "The Mob" remains a noble work
of art and its production a service of the highest order to our
theater.
That production has moments of excess in its emotional ex-
pression. The interpretation of the leading part is spasmodic
where all should have been impassioned firmness. But there
are also not a few moments of beauty both to the mind and to
the eye. And ripeness and more inner harmony will doubtless
come as time goes on. The directing, especially in the mob
scenes, leaves no room for criticism. But in all these matters
the true friend of our theater will let a too tender sensitive-
ness stay at home. A good production of "The Mob" enriches
and clarifies us; a superb production of "Call the Doctor" adds
to our poverty and our confusion.
The Theater Guild begins its season with David Pinski's
"The Treasure." The play has been before the public in book-
form for some years and is tolerably well known. It is a
somber comedy of life in a Jewish village of the old Russian
pale and deals in a fashion that is at once concrete and sym-
bolical with man's lust for gold and for possessions as instru-
ments of both distinction and liberation. The production is,
on its own theory, of unexceptionable excellence. But the
theory is a mistaken one. There is no doubt that the play has
universal values, though the expression of those values suffers
cruelly through the omission of the epilogue. But because it
has universal values, it occurred to the producers to file down
the concreteness of its folk characteristics and to emphasize
the universal at the expense of the particular. But that is
precisely what the nature of art forbids. Not too often nor
too insistently can a certain saying of Goethe's be quoted: "All
that happens is a symbol and, by representing itself perfectly,
it reveals the significance of all else." The particular contains
the universal; man is most broadly human when he is most
highly individual. In proportion as these Jewish villagers are
utterly themselves will they instruct us concerning the nature
of all men.
In the actual production the theory of stressing the universal
alone could not, of course, be faultlessly carried out even on
its own ground. Miss Celia Adler, whose art is much more
admirable in English than in Yiddish because it is far more
disciplined from within, could not help giving a thoroughly
authentic interpretation of the girl Tille. Mr. Dudley Digges,
persuaded by his innate sense of the preciousness of the homely
truth, is admirably and unexpectedly Jewish in speech and
gesture. The others, among whom are such gifted players as
Edgar Stehli, Helen Westley, Henry Travers, and Erskine San-
ford, are neither Jew nor Gentile. They are neither concrete
nor symbolical, because only the sharply concrete can be the
broadly symbolical. Hence the character of "The Treasure" as
a Jewish folk-play is deliberately blurred for the sake of those
universal implications which that very blurring obliterates.
Yet it must be clear from these very considerations that even
the Guild's errors are on a plane of artistic perception and
creative intelligence that renders its productions unique and
uniquely valuable. The modern art of the theater still keeps
its abiding-place among us on the stage of the Garrick.
Ludwig Lewisohn
International Relations Section
The Constitution of Fiume
THE Constitution of the free State of Fiume, dated
August 27, 1920, was written by Gabriele d'Annunzio,
Regent and Director of Foreign Affairs. The following
translation was made by the courtesy of Mr. Whitney War-
ren, official representative in the United States of Com-
mander d'Annunzio and the National Council of Fiume.
The Perpetual Will of the People
Fiume, for centuries a free Italian commune, by the unani-
mous vote of her citizens and through the lawful voice of the
National Council, openly dedicated herself wholly and entirely
to her mother country, on October 30, 1918. Her right is three-
fold like the impenetrable armor of Roman myth.
Fiume is the guardian out-post of the Giulian Alps; it is the
remote fortress of Italian culture; it is the last bearer of the
standard of Dante. It was by her efforts that, throughout the
centuries, through vicissitude after vicissitude, struggle after
struggle, and suffering after suffering, the Quarnero of Dante
was preserved Italian. Through her were kindled and are still
kindled the spirit of Italian' national character from shore to
shore, from island to island, from Volosca to Laurana, from
Moschiena to Albona, from Veglia to Lussino, from Cherso to
Arbe. This is her historical right.
Fiume, originally the old Tarsatico situated at the southern
extremity of the Liburnian Valley, rises and stretches over the
Giulian Alps. It is wholly inclosed within that circle which
tradition, history, and science attest to be the sacred confine of
Italy. This is her terrestrial right.
Fiume, firm of will, heroic in her endurance of pain, insidious
plotting, and violence of all sorts, has for the past two years
been vindicating her right to choose her own destiny and her
own task by virtue of that principle expressed to her people by
one of her own unjust adversaries. This is her human right.
Iniquity, greed, and foreign arrogance dispute her three-
fold right; sorrowful Italy does not oppose these, but leaves her
very victory to go unrecognized and to be of no avail. For this
reason the people of the free city of Fiume, ever mindful of
their Latin destiny and intent upon the fulfilment of their lawful
desire, resolve to arrange their affairs according to the spirit of
their new life, and will limit the privileges to that territory
which under the title of "Corpus Separatum" was assigned to
the Hungarian Crovn, but will extend these privileges in a
fraternal spirit to those Adriatic communities which may decide
to cease delaying, to shake off their oppressive sadness, and to
revolt and rise again in the name of the new Italy.
And so, in the name of the new Italy, the people of Fiume,
bound together by justice and liberty, solemnly swear to fight
with all their might to the bitter end to preserve against any
contestant the contiguity of their land to the mother country,
perpetual champion and defender of the Alpine boundaries
established by God and Rome.
Fundamental Principles
1. The sovereign people of Fiume, availing themselves of
their unassailable and inviolable sovereignty, take as the center
of their free state the "Corpus Separatum" with all its railways
and its entire port. But, just as they are determined to preserve
the contiguity of their land to the mother country on the west,
they do not renounce their right to a more just and more secure
confine on the east, which may be eventually determined by
future political changes and by agreements made with rural and
maritime communities attracted by the free port rights and by
the liberality of the new statutes.
2. The Italian Regency of Quarnero consists of the territory
of Fiume, the islands of ancient Venetian tradition which have
voted to share her fortunes, and all those kindred communities
which because of their sincere act of adherence can be admitted
according to the spirit of an appropriate prudential law.
3. The Italian Regency of Quarnero is a government purely
of the people — res populi — which has as its basis the power of
productive labor, and for its plan the most liberal and most
varied forms of autonomy such as were understood and prac-
ticed during the four glorious centuries of our communal period.
4. The Regency recognizes and confirms the sovereignty of
all its citizens, without any discrimination as to sex, race,
language, class, or religion. But it amplifies and elevates and
sustains above every other the right of the producers; it abol-
ishes or reduces the excessive monopoly of power; it divides the
powers and duties so that through harmonious cooperation com-
munity life may become more vigorous and rich.
5. The Regency protects, defends, and preserves the liberties
and rights of the people; it insures internal order through dis-
cipline and justice; it seeks to instil into the daily life a sense
of that virtuous joy which ought to revive the spirits of a
people liberated at last from the yoke of restraint and falsehood ;
it constantly strives to elevate the dignity and increase the pros-
perity of all its citizens; so that citizenship will come to be
considered by the foreigner as a noble title and the highest
honor, as was the case under the Roman law.
6. Under the new law all citizens of the state, regardless of
sex, are and consider themselves equal. The exercise of the
rights recognized by the Constitution cannot be lessened or sup-
pressed in any case except by public judgment and solemn con-
demnation.
7. The fundamental liberties — freedom of thought and of the
press, of meeting and association — are guaranteed by the statutes
to all citizens. Any religious cult is permitted and respected,
and can build its own temple; but no citizen can invoke his
beliefs and his religious rites to escape performance of the duties
prescribed by the existing laws. The abuse of constitutional
liberties, when it tends toward an illicit end and disturbs the
equilibrium of the community, can be punished by laws drawn
up for this purpose; but these laws must in no way impair the
principle of these same liberties.
8. The statutes guarantee to all citizens of both sexes:
primary instruction in light and healthful schools; physical
training in open and well-equipped gymnasiums; labor rewarded
by the minimum required to enable one to live comfortably;
assistance in time of sickness, infirmity, and involuntary idle-
ness; a pension for old age; the right to enjoy wealth lawfully
acquired; the inviolability of the home; the right of habeas
corpus; compensation for damages in case of judicial error or
abuse of power.
9. The state does not recognize ownership as the absolute
dominion of the person over the thing, but it considers it the
most useful of social functions. No property can be reserved
exclusively by a person as if it were a very part of him; nor is
it lawful for a slothful proprietor to allow it to remain idle or
to dispose of it unwisely, to the exclusion of others.
The sole lawful claim to dominion over any means of produc-
tion and exchange is labor. Labor alone is master of the thing
made most advantageous and most profitable to general economy.
10. The port, station, and railroads included in the territory
of Fiume are the perpetual, incontestable, and inalienable prop-
erty of the state. By a statute of the free port, ample and free
carrying of commerce, industry, and navigation is granted to all
strangers as well as inhabitants, with equality of treatment to
all, and the same immunity from exorbitant duties, and safety
of persons and things is guaranteed.
11. A national Bank of Quarnero, under the supervision of
the Regency, is intrusted with the task of issuing paper money
and of carrying out all other credit transactions. A special law
will determine the methods and rules, setting forth at the same
time the rights, obligations, and burdens of the banks already
Oct. 27, 1920]
The Nation
485
operating in the territory, and those about to be established
there.
12. All citizens of both sexes have the full privilege of choos-
ing and carrying on any industry, profession, art, or trade.
Industries undertaken or fostered by foreign money and every
enterprise permitted to strangers will be guided by a liberal law.
13. Three types of spirits and forces contribute to the found-
ing, progress, and growth of the community: citizens, corpora-
tions, communes.
14. Three religious beliefs are exalted above all others in the
united communes:
Life is beautiful and worthy to be lived earnestly and mag-
nificently by the man re-created by liberty;
The re-created man is he who every day discovers some virtue
for his own needs, and who every day has a new gift to offer to
his brothers;
Labor, even the most humble and the most obscure, if it is
well done, tends to beautify and embellish the world.
Citizens
15. The following have the rank and title of citizens in the
Regency: all citizens actually enrolled in the free city of Fiume;
all citizens belonging to other communities who request admit-
tance to the new state and whose request is granted; all those
who by public decree of the people are invested with the rights
of citizenship; all those who, requesting legal citizenship, have
obtained it by decree.
16. The citizens of the Regency are invested with all civil
and political rights upon reaching the age of twenty-one.
Regardless of sex, they become lawful voters and are eligible to
hold any office.
17. The following citizens will be deprived of political rights :
those accused of infamy; those who rebel against military ser-
vice in defense of the territory; those whose taxes are in arrears;
incorrigible parasites who are a burden to the community,
unless physically unable to work owing to illness or old age.
Corporations
18. The state is the common will and the common aim of the
people for an ever higher material and spiritual vigor; only
constant producers of the common wealth and constant creators
of the common power are the real citizens of the republic, and
constitute with it a single operating substance, a single ascend-
ing fullness. Whatever the kind of work contributed, whether
manual or intellectual, in industry or art, in planning or doing,
all are obliged to be enrolled in one of the ten existing Corpora-
tions which reflect in their organization the spirit of the Com-
mune, but are free in the manifestations of their energy and
freely determine the mutual obligations and rewards.
19. In the first Corporation are enrolled the salaried work-
men in industry, agriculture, commerce, and transportation;
and the artisans and small landed proprietors who perform
their own rural tasks or who have a few casual helpers.
The second Corporation comprises the technical and executive
staff of every private industrial and rural establishment, exclud-
ing the proprietors themselves.
In the third are enrolled all those attached to commercial
establishments, who are not strictly workmen; and in this too
joint proprietors are excluded.
The fourth Corporation unites the promoters of industry, agri-
culture, commerce, and transportation, provided they are not
merely proprietors or joint-proprietors, but according to the
spirit of the new laws, wise leaders seeking to further the inter-
ests of their company.
The fifth is composed of all public, communal, and civil em-
ployees of all ranks.
The sixth comprises the intellect of the land: the young stu-
dent body and its instructors ; teachers in the public schools and
students in the higher institutions, sculptors, painters, decora-
tors, architects, musicians, and all those who carry on the fine
arts, scenic arts, and decorative arts.
In the seventh are enrolled all those who practice professions
of their own choice which have not been included in the preced-
ing classifications.
The eighth is composed of cooperative societies in production,
labor, consumption, whether industrial or agricultural; and only
the executives of these same societies can be represented.
The ninth comprises all sea-faring people.
The tenth has neither art, nor number, nor title. Its coming
is expected like that of the Tenth Muse. It is reserved to the
mysterious forces of the people in toil and attainment. It is
almost a votive figure consecrated to the unknown genius, to the
apparition of the new man, to the ideal transfiguration of labor
and time, to the complete liberation of the spirit over pain and
agony, over blood and sweat.
It is represented, in the civic sanctuary, by a burning torch
upon which is inscribed an old Tuscan word of the time of the
Communes, a remarkable allusion to a spiritualized form of
human labor: Fatica Senza Fat\ca (Toil without Toil).
20. Every Corporation is invested with the rights of a com-
petent juridical person duly recognized by the state. It chooses
its own consuls, voices its desires in its meetings, makes its own
conditions, articles, and agreements, rules according to its wis-
dom and experience, provides for its own needs, and adds to its
patrimony by exacting from its members a sum commensurate
with their wages, salary, company profits, or professional gain.
It defends its own class at all times and seeks to increase its
dignity; it strives to perfect the technique of the arts and
trades; it seeks to discipline labor by modeling it after patterns
of modern beauty. It incorporates small workers to encourage
them and to spur them on to greater efforts; it makes mutual
aid a sacred obligation; it determines provisions to be made for
sick or infirm coworkers. It chooses its own standards, its em-
blems, its music, its songs, and its prayers; it introduces its own
ceremonies and rites; it contributes generously to the common
festivities and anniversaries, and to sports on land and sea. It
reveres its dead, respects its elders, and honors its heroes.
21. The relations between the Regency and the Corporations,
and between the various Corporations, are regulated according
to the same plan outlined by the statutes in regulating the
dependency between the central powers of the Regency and
the Communes, and between the various Communes. The mem-
bers of each Corporation constitute a free electoral body eligible
to elect representatives to the Council of Provisors. First place
in public ceremonies is reserved for the Consuls of the Corpora-
tions and their staff.
Communes
22. There is restored to the Communes the ancient "norma-
tive power" which is the right to full autonomy; the special
right to make their own laws within the limits prescribed by
universal right. They exercise in themselves and for them-
selves all the powers which the Constitution does not grant to
the legislative, executive, and judicial departments of the Re-
gency.
23. Every Commune has the privilege of creating for its own
use a body of municipal laws, evolved in various ways from its
own customs and peculiar character, from its energy, and from
the new conscience.
But every Commune must request the approval of the Regency
for the statutes proposed. This will be granted when the statutes
do not contain anything openly or covertly violating the spirit
of the Constitution; or when these statutes are approved,
accepted, and voted upon by the people, and can be revised or
amended at will by a free majority of citizens.
24. The right of the Communes is recognized, in matters of
legislation and administration, to draw up agreements among
themselves, arrange terms, and make treaties. But they are
obliged to submit them to the central executive power for con-
sideration. If the power decides that such agreements, terms,
and treaties violate the spirit of the Constitution, they are
referred to the Court of Reasons for its decision, from which no
486
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2886
appeal can be made. If this court declares them unconstitutional
and invalid, the executive power of the Regency provides for
their nullification.
25. When the internal order of a Commune is disturbed by
factions, counter-factions, plots, or any other form of violence
or intrigue, or when the integrity and dignity of a Commune
are threatened or injured by another prevaricating Commune,
the executive power of the Regency intervenes as mediator or
pacificator, provided either that the communal authorities
mutually agree to the intervention, or the intervention is re-
quested by one-third of the citizens exercising political rights in
that place.
26. To the Communes belong the special duties of establish-
ing a primary system of instruction based on the standards set
forth by the scholastic council of the state; of nominating com-
munal judges; of instituting and maintaining a communal police
system; of levying taxes, and of negotiating loans within the
Regency and even outside the Regency — the latter being sanc-
tioned by the Government only in cases of manifest need.
Legislative Power
27. The legislative power is exercised by two bodies chosen
by election: the Council of the Best, and the Council of the
Provisors.
28. The Council of the Best is elected according to the meth-
ods of universal suffrage, directly and secretly, by all citizens
of the Regency who have attained their twenty-first year, and
who are fully invested with political rights.
Every voting citizen of the Regency is eligible to the Council
of the Best. Members of the Council of the Best hold office for
three years. They are elected on the basis of one for every
thousand electors; but in any case, their number cannot be less
than thirty. All the electors form a single electoral body. The
election is carried out according to the methods of universal suf-
frage and proportional representation.
30. The Council of the Best has executive and legislative
power in dealing with the penal and civil code, the police,
national defense, secondary public instruction, the arts, and
the relationship between the state and the Communes. The
Council of the Best normally assembles once a year, in the
month of October, for a very brief session.
31. The Council of Provisors is composed of sixty electors,
elected by a secret, universal suffrage and governed by the law
of proportional representation.
Ten Provisors are elected by the industrial and inland work-
men, ten by the sea-faring people, ten by the promoters of in-
dustry, five by agricultural and industrial technicians, five by
executive officers of private concerns, five by teachers in the
public schools, students in the higher institutions, and others
belonging to the sixth Corporation, five by the followers of lib-
eral professions, five by public employees, and five by coopera-
tive societies of production, labor, and consumption.
32. The members of the Council of Provisors hold office for
two years. They are not eligible unless they belong to the Cor-
poration which they represent.
33. Normally the Council of Provisors meets twice a year, in
May and November, and employs the Laconian method of debate.
It has executive and legislative power in dealing with the com-
mercial and maritime code, labor laws, transportation, public
improvements, commercial treaties, customs, tariffs, and the
like, technical and professional instruction, industries and banks,
arts and trades.
34. The Council of the Best and the Council of Provisors
meet as one body once a year, at the beginning of December,
forming a great national Council under the title of "Arengo del
Carnaro." The Arengo deals with and passes upon relations
with other states, finance and treasury matters, higher educa-
tion, revision of the Constitution, the extension of freedom.
Executive Power
35. The executive power of the Republic is exercised by seven
directors elected by the National Assembly, the Council of the
Best, and the Council of Provisors. The Director of Foreign
Affairs, the Director of Finance and the Treasury, and the
Director of Public Instruction are elected by the National As-
sembly. The Director of the Interior and Justice and the Direc-
tor of National Defense are elected by the Council of the Best.
The Council of Provisors elects the Director of Public Economy
and the Director of Labor. The Director of Foreign Affairs
assumes the title of Prime Director, and represents the Republic
in dealing with other states primus inter pares.
36. The office of the seven Directors is permanent and con-
tinuous. Its function is to deal with matters which do not come
within the jurisdiction of the present Administration. The
Prime Director is chairman of the debate and has a decisive
vote in case of a tie. The Directors are elected for one year, and
can be reelected only once, but after an interval of one year
they can be renominated.
Judicial Power
37. The following have a voice in the judicial power: the
Good Men, labor judges, civil judges, criminal judges, the Court
of Reasons.
38. The Good Men, elected through popular trust, by all elec-
tors of the various Communes in proportion to their number,
pass judgment in civil and commercial controversies involving
an amount of not more than 5,000 lire, and dispose of those
cases concerning offenses whose maximum penalty is one year.
39. The labor judges pass judgment upon controversies in-
volving salaried employees and employers, and between wage-
workers and employers. They constitute colleges of judges
nominated by the Corporations which elect the Council of Pro-
visors, in the following proportion: two by the industrial and
inland workers, two by the sea-faring people, two by the pro-
motors of industry, one by the industrial and agricultural tech-
nicians, one by the members of the liberal professions, one by
the executive attaches of private organizations, one by public
employees, one by the teachers, students in higher institutions,
and other members of the sixth Corporation, and one by the
societies cooperating in production, labor, and consumption.
The labor judges have the privilege of dividing their colleges
into sections in order to facilitate judgments, and thus expedite
justice. The right of appeals is under the jurisdiction of the
joint sessions.
40. The civil judges try all those civil, commercial, and penal
cases over which the Good Men and the judges of labor have no
jurisdiction; criminal cases are excepted. They constitute the
Tribunal of Appeals for sentences imposed by the Good Men.
They are chosen by the Court of Reasons through contest among
citizens holding the degree of doctor of laws.
41. Seven sworn citizens, assisted by two deputies and pre-
sided over by a civil magistrate, compose the Criminal Tribunal
which tries all cases of political offense and all crimes punish-
able by a term of imprisonment exceeding three years.
42. The Court of Reasons, elected by the National Council, is
composed of five active members and two deputies. At least
three of the active members, and one of the deputies must be
chosen among the doctors of law. The Court of Reasons passes
judgment upon the acts and decrees issued by the legislative
power and by the executive power, and decides upon their con-
stitutionality; all statutory conflicts between the legislative
power and the executive power, between the Regency and the
Communes, between the various Communes, between the Regency
and the Corporations, between the Regency and private indi-
viduals, between the Communes and private individuals; all
cases of high treason against the Regency on the part of those
citizens having legislative and executive power; all attempts
against the rights of the people; civil disputes between the
Regency and the Communes, and between the various Com-
munes; transgressions committed by those in power; questions
involving citizenship and exile; questions pertaining to the
ability of the various judicial magistrates.
Oct. 27, 1920]
The Nation
487
The Court of Reasons is the final judge of all sentences pro-
nounced and nominates the assisting magistrates. Those serv-
ing in the Court of Reasons are not allowed to hold any other
office, whether in the locality where the court is located or in
any other Commune; nor are they allowed to pursue any pro-
fession, industry, or trade during their term of office.
The Chief
43. When the Regency, in time of extreme danger, realizes
that its salvation lies in the devoted will of a single person
capable of uniting, arousing, and rallying the forces of the peo-
ple to struggle and victory, the National Council solemnly assem-
bled in "Arengo" can nominate such a one Chief by verbal vote
and intrust to him supreme unlimited power. The Council
determines the duration of his command, remembering that in
the Roman Republic dictatorship lasted six months.
44. The Chief, during the period of his command, assumes all
political, military, legislative, and executive powers. Those
who share the executive power assume the responsibilities of
secretaries and commissioners under his supervision.
45. When the time of his command has expired, the National
Council meets to consider reinstating the Chief, or substituting
another citizen in his place, or deposing him, or banishing him.
Any citizen invested with political rights, regardless whether
or not he has any power in the Regency, may be elected to this
high office.
National Defense
47. In the Italian Regency of Quarnero all citizens of both
sexes between the ages of seventeen and fifty-five are liable to
military service in defense of their land. After classification
the men who are physically fit are to serve in the land or naval
forces, those who are less fit and women whose health is normal
are to serve in the ambulance corps, in hospitals, in the various
departments, in munition plants, and in any other auxiliary
work according to individual aptitude and skill.
48. The state pledges itself to aid all citizens who may con-
tract an incurable disease while in military service, and promises
help to their needy families. The state pledges itself to adopt
the children of those who have met a glorious death in defense
of their country; it aids their relatives in case of need, and
recommends their names to the memory of future generations.
49. In time of peace and safety the Regency does not main-
tain a standing army; but the whole nation is armed according
to methods prescribed by a law concerning this question, and
with wise efficiency keeps in training its forces on land and sea.
Strict military service is limited to the period of instruction and
to the periods of actual warfare or immediate danger. During
the period of instruction and in time of war, a citizen does not
lose his civil and political rights, and he can exercise these when
they are compatible with the requirements of active discipline.
Public Instruction
50. For all people of noble origin culture is the mightiest and
the most far-reaching of weapons. For the Adriatic people who
for centuries have been engaged in a relentless struggle against
the barbarous usurper, it is more than a weapon ; it is as indom-
itable a power as right or faith. For the people of Fiume in
their very moment of rebirth to freedom, it becomes the most
effective instrument of salvation and success in dealing with the
foreign intrigues which have for centuries pressed heavily upon
it. Culture is the aroma which destroys corruption. Culture is
steadfastness opposed to weakness. In the Quarnero of Dante
the knowledge of the language of Dante results in respect for
and preservation of that which, throughout the ages, has been
considered the most priceless treasure of the people, the highest
testimony to their noble origin, the supreme mark of their sense
of moral domination. Moral domination is a war-like necessity
in the new state. The exaltation of beautiful human ideals
arises from its will to conquer.
In accomplishing its unity, gaining its freedom, and restoring
its justice, the new state must above and beyond all its princi-
ples resolve to defend, preserve, and champion its unity, its free-
dom, and its justice in the kingdom of the spirit. The spirit of
Rome must have a place in its culture. The spirit of Italy must
dominate its culture.
The Roman rhythm, that fatal rhythm of achievement, must
lead anew along healing paths the other troubled race which
deludes itself into thinking that it can efface our glorious foot-
steps and falsify our noble history. In this land of Latin ex-
traction, in this land tilled by the Latin plowshare, the other
race will be fashioned sooner or later according to the creative
spirit of Latinity, which is nothing more than a well-balanced
harmony of those forces which contribute to the formation of the
free man.
Here is fashioned the free man. And here is prepared the
kingdom of the spirit, purified by hard toil and persistent effort.
For this reason the Italian Regency of Quarnero considers as
the apex to its laws the culture of the people; it builds its patri-
mony upon the patrimony of the great Latin culture.
51. There shall be instituted in the city of Fiume a free
university, its site to be chosen with a view to allow ample
increase in the curriculum and in the number of its student
body; it is to be governed by statutes as are the Corporations.
There shall be constituted in the city of Fiume a school of fine
arts, a school of decorative arts, and a school of music, based
upon the abolition of every academic vice and prejudice, guided
by the most sincere and ardent spirit of research after new
truths, inspired by a motive strong enough to purge them of
the encumbrance of the poorly-gifted, to separate good from
better, and to aid the better to a true discovery of themselves
and the new relations between stubborn matter and human sen-
timent.
52. The Council of the Best supervises the work of the ele-
mentary schools; the Council of Provisors that of the technical
and professional schools; and the National Council supervises
the higher branches of learning.
In all schools of all Communes the teaching of the Italian
language has marked preference. In the elementary schools the
teaching of the various dialects spoken in the Italian Regency
of Quarnero is compulsory. Prime importance is attached to the
language spoken by the majority of the inhabitants of each Com-
mune, and parallel courses are given in the language spoken by
the minority. If any Commune attempts to withdraw from the
obligation of instituting such courses, the Regency exercises its
right to provide such instruction, charging the Commune with
the expense involved.
53. A scholastic council determines the plan and method of
primary instruction which is compulsory in all schools of the
Communes.
First place is given to the teaching of choral singing, founded
on themes of the most ingenuous peasant poetry, and to the
teaching of decorative art modeled after the most authentic
rustic art.
The Council is composed of a representative from each Com-
mune, two representatives from the elementary schools, two
from the technical and professional schools, two from the insti-
tutions of higher learning, chosen by the instructors and stu-
dents,,two from the school of music, two from the school of deco-
rative arts.
54. No religious emblems or political posters should be hung
on the light, airy walls of the school-room. The public schools
welcome the followers of all religious creeds, the believers of all
religious faiths, as well as those who can live without an altar
and without a God. Liberty of conscience is strictly respected.
And each one can offer his own silent prayer. But let there be
written on the walls those inscriptions which stir the soul, and
which, like the themes of a heroic symphony, though repeated
over and over again, never lose their power to thrill us. Let
there be hung on the walls the imposing images of those master-
pieces which with their lyrical power interpret the perpetual
aspirations and dreams of men.
488
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2886
Constitutional Reform
55. Every seven years the great National Council meets in
special assembly to consider revision of the Constitution. The
Constitution can be revised at any time when requested by a
third of the citizens who have the right to vote.
The following have the privilege of proposing amendments to
the Constitution: members of the National Council, representa-
tives of the Communes, the Court of Reasons, the Corporations.
The Right of Initiative
56. All citizens belonging to the electoral bodies have the
right to propose laws which pertain to matters coming within
the jurisdiction of the respective Councils. But the motion is
not valid, unless seconded and supported by at least one-fourth
of the electors of either Council.
Popular Referendum
57. All laws sanctioned by the two legislative bodies may be
subjected to popular vote, for public approval or disapproval,
when requested by a number of electors equal to at least one-
fourth of the citizens possessing the right to vote.
Right of Petition
58. All citizens have the right to submit petitions to the legis-
lative bodies duly elected by them.
Incompatibility
59. No citizen can exercise more than one function nor take
part in two legislative bodies at the same time.
Recall
60. Any citizen can be removed from office when he loses his
political rights by sentence, confirmed by the Court of Reasons,
when the removal is indorsed by simple vote of one-half plus
one of those enrolled in the electoral body. »
Responsibility
61. All who enjoy its privileges and all public officials of the
Regency are legally and civilly responsible for the damage done
to the state, the Commune, and the plain citizen through their
transgressions, abuse, carelessness, cowardice, and incapacity.
Compensation
62. To all public officials designated in the statutes and con-
stituting part of the new plan, a fair compensation is granted,
the amount of which shall be determined from year to year by
the National Council.
Edileship
63. There is instituted in the Regency a College of Ediles,
chosen carefully among men of pure taste, perfect skill, and
modern education. More than the Roman edileship the College
recalls those "officials in charge of the decoration of the city"
who in our "Quattrocento" designed a street or a public square
with that same musical sense which guided them in the prepa-
rations for a state celebration or a carnival. It supervises the
daily living of the citizen ; it looks after the welfare, upkeep, and
sanitation of public buildings and individual houses; it prevents
the defilement of city streets with poorly constructed buildings.
It arranges civic festivals on land and sea with sober ele-
gance, having in mind those ancestors of ours for whom, in
order to create miracles of joy/there sufficed a soft light, a few
delicate garlands, and the knowledge of the art of instilling
grace and elegance in human movements and gatherings. It
makes the workman feel that to decorate the most humble dwell-
ing with some sign of popular art is a pious act, and that there
is a religious sentiment of human mystery and profound nature
in the most simple sign that is handed down from generation to
generation, be it carved or painted on the kneading trough, the
cradle, the loom, the distaff, the coffer, or the yoke. It seeks to
revive in the people a love for beautiful lines and colors in the
things used in every-day life, pointing out to them what our
ancestors were able to create with a simple geometric motif, a
star, a flower, a heart, a serpent, or a dove represented on a
pitcher, a jug, a jar, a bench, a basket, or a platter. It seeks to
show the people why and how the spirit of ancient communal
liberty was expressed not only in the lines, reliefs, and connec-
tions of the stones, but even in the human imprint placed upon
the utensil which has been made to live and to have power.
Finally, convinced that architecture expresses the character
and energy of a race, it aims to make architects and construc-
tors understand that the new materials — steel, glass, and cement
— are only waiting to be lifted up to their proper place, and to be
fused in harmonious creations of modern architecture.
Music
64. In the Italian Regency of Quarnero music is a religious
and social institution. Every thousand years or every two thou-
sand years there springs from the depths of humanity a hymn
that lives through the ages. A great race is not only that race
which creates its god in its own image, but that race which
also knows how to create its own hymn for its god. If every
rebirth of a noble race is a lyric effort, if every unanimous and
creative sentiment is a lyric power, if every organization is a
lyric organization in the dynamic and impetuous sense of the
word, music considered as a ritual language is the exalting
motive of any action and of any creation in life.
The advent of every great spiritual awakening always seems
to be announced to the expectant and anxious multitude through
the medium of some overpowering musical masterpiece. The
reign of the human spirit has not yet begun. "When matter
working upon matter shall be able to free men from the clutches
of toil, then the spirit will begin to see the dawn of its liberty,"-
so said a man from the Adriatic shores, a man from Dalmatia ;
the blind prophet of Sebenico. As the crowing of the cock
invokes daybreak, so does music invoke dawn, excitat auroram.
Meanwhile music finds its movement and its utterance in the
instruments of labor, in gain and in play, and in the roaring
machinery which also follows as exact a rhythm as does poetry.
From its pauses is formed the silence of the tenth Corporation.
65. In all Communes of the Regency there will be formed
choral and orchestral groups aided by state contribution. In
the city of Fiume there has been intrusted to the Ediles the
building of a rotunda capable of accommodating an audience
of at least ten thousand, furnished with comfortable seats and
a large pit for the orchestra and for the chorus. The big choral
and orchestral celebrations are "entirely free" — as the Fathers
of the Church say about the grace of God.
Correspondence Course in
APPLIED MARXIAN ECONOMICS
in 15 Lessons, by Mary E. Marcy : $5.00 ; ready Oct. 15th. We supply study
booklets and aid union locals in analyzing their own industries. Special offers
to Clubs. The labor leaders who are beginning to stand out all over the world
ara those who are APPLYING MARX TO INDUSTRY. Join now I Address:
Charles H. Kerr & Co., 347 E. Ohio St., Chicago.
De Maupassant Stories, 25c.
This book by the greatest short story writer contains his twelve master-
pieces. A great opportunity to enjoy De Maupassant.
APPEAL TO REASON, GIRARD, KANSAS.
The Wilson Administration
As viewed by Anatole France, Maynard Keynes, Count
Bernstorff, and William Bayard Hale.
A symposium on the Democratic administration which will
appear exclusively in the November Pearson's. Other features
are a letter from Bernard Shaw concerning his latest (and last)
play ; the adventures of Charlie Chaplin in New York, and
numerous original articles.
Out October 15. All newsstands, 25 cents.
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1920
No. 2887
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 489
EDITORIALS :
The Soul of MacSwiney 491
The Farmers' Distress 492
Reaction and the Jew 493
What to do in Haiti 493
"Murdering Beauty" 494
The Paradox of Literature 495
THE END OF THE ENTENTE. By Robert Dell 496
TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. By Leonora Speyer 497
U. S. STEEL VS. MARGOLIS. By Swinburne Hale 498
THE FAILURE OF THE LEAGUE. By Otto H. Kahn 499
THE IRISH COMMITTEE CHOSEN 500
NATIONAL PLATFORM, SOCIALIST PARTY, 1920 502
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 503
CORRESPONDENCE 504
BOOKS :
Religion Psychologically Justified 506
Reparation 507
General Booth 507
Persian Literature 507
A Psychoanalyst of Poetry 508
Susan Glaspell 509
An Elder America 510
Books in Brief 511
ART: OUR NATIONAL PRINT ROOM 512
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION:
The Doctrine of the Natural Frontiers of France. By James Westfall
Thompson 514
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MACDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER LEWIS S. GANNETT
LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising : Swarthmore Press Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
IN a wholesale slanging match the campaign has ended.
Had it lasted two weeks longer, the chief actors must all
have been calling each other unvarnished liars. As it was,
everybody seemed to be misquoting everybody else. Gov-
ernor Cox failed, however, to draw a retraction from Ex-
Senator Root, who denied after his only campaign speech,
that he had misrepresented the Governor's position. But
Mr. Root reversed himself in that speech as contrasted with
a previous utterance, just as has every other politician in
this campaign, the prize going to Mr. Taft, however, for
boxing the League of Nations compass more times than any-
one else, and cutting quite the most pitiful figure. To his
joy, Governor Cox succeeded in fastening the fateful figure
of 14 upon Senator Harding by proving easily that he has
taken fourteen different positions on the League, and the
Philadelphia Public Ledger printed, side by side on the same
day, a statement by Mr. Taft that Harding would not scrap
the League and one by Senator Johnson that the candidate
would scrap the League. Mr. Harding, to the bitter end,
reversed himself daily in his unsuccessful efforts to tell us
where he really stands. So dissonant a chorus was surely
never heard in a campaign before, and all about an issue
in which the great public was not in the least degree inter-
ested. No stage army ever put up a more valiant or a more
Falstaffian fight. Heaven preserve us from another like it,
at least for four years to come! Let us hope that we have
reached a period when we may breathe a little fresh air
again, unhindered by transcendent political hypocrisies.
THE editor of the New Republic is profoundly distressed
to discover that liberalism has undergone an eclipse
since 1912 when the bulk of the Progressives turned to Wil-
son as their Moses. Mr. Croly attributes this eclipse chiefly
"to the unreality which liberals have allowed to pervade lib-
eralism." Close at hand is a much clearer and better reason.
The temporary knell of American liberalism was sounded
the minute its false leader put it into the war. This fact
naturally does not appeal to the New Republic, because its
editors have boasted that they helped to put the country
into the struggle. Their quarrel with things as they are is
that, having let loose the dogs of war, Mr. Wilson failed to
confine the dogs' attention exclusively to the Germans and
let them wreak havoc at home as well as abroad. But, bless
us, whenever liberalism strikes hands with war it inevitably
goes down. Cobden and Bright are the great figures they
are in history because they denounced and fought against
the Crimean war. Campbell-Bannerman bulks as large as
he does because his British liberalism opposed the Boer war,
formed no coalition government, and came gloriously back
to power, to make retribution in South Africa. British lib-
eralism is in complete eclipse today because, betrayed by
Grey and Lloyd George, it struck hands with its political
enemies and approved" and fought the war. American liber-
alism is deservedly in eclipse today because it, too, went into
the war. For war and liberalism to lie down together any-
where, at any time, with any excuse, means only one thing —
disaster to liberalism. When war is declared on a foreign
foe it is also declared on every forward-looking cause, every
liberal, every reformer at home.
THE Allies seem to be showing a little more energy and
determination in their treatment of Poland in the Vilna
affair than they showed in the case of Italy and Fiume.
Whatever the secret hopes of France may be, it has joined
with Great Britain in a belated demand that Poland disavow
the action of General Zellgouski in occupying Vilna and yield
to the authority of the League of Nations. Poland's reply is
characteristic of a nation that has successfully played the
spoiled child so long that it has every reason to expect a
complaisant acceptance of any excuses it may see fit to offer.
The Franco-British protest it answers by an assertion that
withdrawal from Vilna might result in "uprisings in the
Polish army," by a plaintive hope that the Powers will not
take advantage of Poland's difficulties by advocating such
renunciation, and by a request that the Allies put no difficul-
ties in the way of the reconstruction of Poland. A similar
situation in Klagenfurt, where Jugoslav troops have occu-
pied territory whose inhabitants had voted to remain with
Austria, only brings up more sharply the one important
question involved. What power has the League of Nations?
Each incident is an armed challenge to the League to assert
its authority in behalf of disinterested justice. The Jugo-
slav commanders at Klagenfurt have declared that they do
not recognize the Allied plebiscite commission; Zellgouski
490
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2887
has rejected a suggestion from Lithuania that negotiations
be opened after the Polish troops have been withdrawn and
the city turned over to the League of Nations commission.
The future of the League depends largely on its ability to
deal with these cases, and its ability depends wholly on the
disinterested sincerity of France and Great Britain, and on
their willingness to cooperate. It will be interesting to see
how the League meets its first real test.
THE Franco-British rift grows, for it has its basis in a
real conflict of interests. In the international game
of freeze-out played at Versailles, Britain got the tangible
assets, France the I. 0. U.'s These France is now unable
to convert, but that does not disturb Britain. Living Brit-
ishers will not need to fear Germany, stripped of navy,
merchant marine, and colonies, as a commercial rival, while
as a market for English goods, as a stabilizer of Balkanized
central Europe, as a bulwark for the unknown that may
come out of Russia, Germany appears a prudent object of
British good-will and succor. In so far as it hastens the
international healing process such a policy is desirable, but
not at the expense of reparation to France. Misguided as
has been French policy since the armistice, its Catonian
attitude is based upon a very understandable fear. Apart
from France's dire need of funds, and the obvious justice
of forcing reparation for wanton destruction which in many
cases served no military purpose but was a deliberate effort
to delay French economic rehabilitation, the whole Euro-
pean situation fills the French with gloomy foreboding. If
Germany can so soon flout her treaty obligations, they
argue, is she not unchastened, merely biding her time to
reassault a France, always smaller than she and soon, per-
haps, isolated from her former Allies? It is this fear
which has erected the fire-breathing chauvinist France of
today, rattling her saber from Rhine to Vistula and increas-
ing thereby the very peril that she fears. Her premise is
sound : Germany should pay all that she possibly can ; repa-
ration is one of the first and most fundamental steps toward
peace, stability, and good-will. But Germany can pay only
with the fullest cooperation of the outside world, only if
she receives raw materials, the use of ships and credit.
England has all of these; hers is the duty and opportunity
to enable Germany to meet the obligation to France. A
declaration of such a purpose would go far to revive the
fast vanishing Entente.
THE fifty-seven Oxford professors who have proposed a
resumption of amicable relations with German and
Austrian scholars voice sentiments that must warm the
heart of every generous and fair-minded person, no matter
what his political or national affiliations. "In the field where
our aims are one, our enthusiasm the same, our rivalry and
ambition generous," so runs the letter from Oxford, "we
can surely look to be reconciled, and the fellowship of learn-
ing offers a road which may — and if our spiritual ideals be
alive must — lead to wider sympathy and better understand-
ing between our kindred nations." It cannot be said too
often that the most pitiful and sordid and unnecessary
adjunct of war is the shunning of any science or literature
or music because it belongs to an enemy. The things by
which men live — certain economic and political considera-
tions— may with some amount of logic be said to appertain
to a certain race or group, though nations are steadily if
very slowly blundering on toward complete internationalism.
But about the arts and sciences, which are the things by
which men live well, there should never be any question.
They belong, not to France or England or Germany, but to
the world. And the world has been deprived long enough
of the contribution which Germany and Austria have made
in the past and may make in the future. As for the Oxford
professors, it ought to be a cause for pride in every English-
man that they have led the way toward that spiritual inter-
course which should never have been interrupted. When
will our professorate follow suit?
THE throne of Greece is on the bargain-counter once
more, but it matters little who makes the highest bid
and wins the name of king; Venizelos is king-maker and
dictator, the most powerful potentate in Europe today.
When Constantine was engineered off the throne in 1917,
Venizelos passed over the Crown Prince and made the 23-
year-old Prince Alexander king; and whether Alexander's
younger brother or a western prince succeeds him, Venizelos
will continue to be the real power. Even should Greece be-
come a republic in name, Venizelos's dictatorship would in
fact continue. It is reported that there is a powerful group
in Greece seeking the return of the ex-King Constantine;
but after-war restlessness, discontent with economic con-
ditions which have only been aggravated by the extension of
frontiers and military expeditions into Asia Minor, and
revolt against the iron hand and iron will of Venizelos will
certainly have more to do with any such movement than
personal popularity of the ex-king. A king in exile acquires
a certain romantic charm which a king powerless in the
palace is sure to lack. Both the glamor of dynasties and
the frenzy of national pride fade in the face of pressing
daily difficulties.
TO the average layman unversed in legal technicalities
the verdict of United States District Judge Knox of
New York affirming the deportability of communists ap-
pears less valid than the contrary decision rendered last
June by Federal Judge Anderson of Boston. In both in-
stances mere membership in the party alleged to advocate
"overthrow of the Government by force or violence" was
chiefly at issue. Judge Anderson held that "the only force
. . . . advocated by the party is the general strike."
Now, contrary to the widely prevailing impression, a strike
— even a general strike — is not violence. Indeed the organ-
ized cessation of work — the negation of activity — has come
to be generally accepted in America as the workers' legiti-
mate means of securing redress for grievances when all
other methods of adjustment fail. Strikes may lead to
violence, but the history of labor disputes in which it has
occurred shows that the blame lies in no small proportion of
cases with the employing side. However strongly one may
disapprove or deprecate the general strike with its inevita-
ble harvest of suffering and its undeniable reproach to the
civilization which now permits it, the strike per se is no
more violence than the shutdown of mills by an employer is
violence. But Judge Knox asserts :
if force and violence be not within the contemplation of the
party it would be a simple matter to have the absence of such
thought clearly appear. As it is, the language used would seem
designed to mean all things to all men and to be fairly suscepti-
Nov. 3, 1920]
The Nation
491
ble of meaning, even though it does not unequivocally declare in
favor of force and violence.
Curiously this characterization also applies to the Repub-
lican and Democratic platforms; and one may well wonder
at the validity of a decision which while admitting the
absence of the proscribed verbiage finds in the failure to
call attention to such absence a confession of guilt. What
then becomes of the traditional "presumption of innocence"?
An interpretation admittedly so unrelated to the facts re-
calls the error of our Federalist judges of more than a cen-
tury ago who convicted of intent, if in their opinion ten-
dency to incite disaffection was found.
ORGANIZED labor can only benefit by the thorough
exposure of the scandal in the building trade in New
York, for organized labor has suffered too long from the
flag-waving and super-patriotic yet grafting type of labor
leader. There has been no labor group in New York more
solidly hostile to innovation, more bitterly anti-Socialist,
anti-bolshevist, pro-Gompers, and pro-Tammany than the
very men who have now been discovered in cahoots with
their own employers, calling strikes and calling off strikes
for blackmail, robbing their own workers as well as the
public. Mr. Samuel Untermyer, counsel for the Lockwood
investigating committee, and the New York World, which
made the preliminary investigation, are to be congratulated
upon their service to the public. Mr. Palmer's agents had
investigated the alleged building combine before, but with-
out result; now Mr. Untermyer uncovers an amazing card
index system which has effectively eliminated competitive
bidding among building contractors, kept prices artificially
high, and seriously discouraged building; and he finds lead-
ers of organized labor working hand in hand with these con-
tractors, sharing the profits of conscienceless profiteering..
The investigation cannot go too far; such housecleaning is
a healthy thing; it will do labor good.
NEWSPAPER editors are showing small appreciation of
the significance of the deportation order issued by the
British authorities against Mr. E. J. Costello, managing
editor of the Federated Press, and the seizure of his papers
in London. Mr. Costello was accused of no crime, nor even
of propaganda; he had not been to Russia, which seems to
have replaced murder as a punishable offense in these
gallant days ; he had merely conferred, in a neutral country,
with Russians, regarding American rights to the service of
a Russian news agency with which, it is reliably reported,
the Associated Press was also bargaining, and he had
strengthened the connection between the Federated Press
and the London Herald, the daily organ of the British Labor
Party, with a circulation of more than 350,000. Mr. Cos-
tello represented a chain of labor papers; but if labor edi-
tors can be dealt with in such summary and high-handed
fashion, other editors can too; and in these days no editor
whose paper has any editorial policy whatever can be sure
that he or his correspondents will not find themselves in pos-
session of evidence which the authorities do not care to see
printed. The action is a flagrant violation of the most
elementary freedom of the press; and the refusal of our
State Department to protest is in accord with Mr. Colby's
policy of secrecy and manipulating of news. The evil heritage
of the war is still with us; and the worst of it is that we
have become too dulled to resent the robbing of our liberties.
The Soul of MacSwiney
"Terence MacSwiney dies in Brixton prison on the
seventy- fourth day of his fast." — News Item.
Thou wilt be dead tomorrow. — Nay, tomorrow
The land will be awake. What recks it then
Who will be dead, or I or anyone
Amongst us who must fall? The land will live.
'Twere sweet to sink in Death for Truth and Freedom !
Yes, who could hesitate, for who could bear
The living degradation we must know
If we do dread death for a sacred cause?
THESE are the words of the martyr himself. While yet
a boy Terence MacSwiney penned them and, rare mor-
tal that he was, lived up in maturity to the sentiments he
professed in immaturity. He has sunk in Death for Truth
and Freedom, but his soul, too, now goes marching on.
With marvelous fortitude and superhuman endurance, he
has lived an incredible seventy-four days, suffering tortures
beyond purgatory, giving his life for his country more truly,
more nobly, with rarer devotion than any soldier that ever
wore His Majesty's uniform. For there is no blood guilt
upon him ; no stain upon his hands. Once more passive re-
sistance, most deadly of weapons, has triumphed. Once
more the whole world is quickened and inspired and glori-
fied, by the example of one who placed his cause above his
existence, yea, above the happiness of life with wife and
child, which could have been his had he yielded but one inch.
From Frongoch Prison he wrote in July, 1916: "Indeed,
in all truth I feel that when my body is laid to rest at night
my spirit for the time, not charged with its keeping, must
often take a flight over the fair hills of holy Ireland." And
over the fair hills of holy Ireland will his spirit keep watch
for time eternal.
Selfish some may call him; plain suicide others; madman
he will be termed by those who sit in palaces, in the seats of
the mighty — but who today is more certain of immortality?
He will live on by the side of Robert Emmet, in ballad, in
epic, in saga, in the hearts of generations yet unborn, who
will need to know nothing more than that his soul triumphed
over the flesh that a free, independent, and happy Ireland
might at last come to pass. "His eyes," writes one who
knows him well, "seemed fixed on the distance of his dreams
. . . an expression of spiritual brooding and trouble
seemed native there. The lips were gentle and sensitive —
he often smiled, though not for long. The voice was low and
pleading, its more urbane quality kept for 'foreign' sub-
jects. The black hair was a revolutionary mass."
And Ireland? When John Brown died, Wendell Phillips
said: "Men walked Boston streets when night fell on Bun-
ker's Hill, and pitied Warren, saying, 'Foolish man! Thrown
away his life! Why didn't he measure his means better?'
Now we see him standing colossal on that blood-stained sod,
and severing that day the tie which bound Boston to Great
Britain. That night George III ceased to rule in New Eng-
land. History will date Virginia emancipation from Har-
per's Ferry." The roots of British government in Ireland
are loosened. May not some future Wendell Phillips saj
of that government that it only breathed and did not live ik
Ireland from the hour that Terence MacSwiney's soul sped
on its way?
492
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2887
The Farmers' Distress
"rpHERE is a revolution on among the farmers of this
L country," writes one of the best-posted Washington
correspondents. He then describes the excitement of the
delegations of farmers now reaching Washington in order
to beseech the Federal Reserve Board for aid. They are
not a bit interested in whether Cox or Harding is to be
elected ; they have forgotten what they ever knew about the
League of Nations; they are concerned only whether they
are to be ruined by the drop in prices. A traveling sales-
man who has just traversed Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska
reports a veritable panic in the smaller towns. The banks
are being compelled by the bigger city banks and the Fed-
eral Reserve Board to call in loans, and the farmers, being
unable to sell their crops at anything save a heavy loss, are
in despair, and cannot pay their loans. In some regions
they have been unable to market their crops because the
elevators were still full of 1919 wheat and cars were almost
impossible to obtain. In other sections the fault is squarely
the farmer's ; he has been holding back his crop in the hope
of three-dollar wheat, and the deserved fate of the would-be
profiteer is his. But whether he is or is not at fault, the
truth is that the farmer is in a blue funk. The weekly
news-letter of the Department of Agriculture for October
20 declares that comparatively few farmers have been mak-
ing large profits during the recent years of high prices.
While the average return on their investment increased only
from four per cent in 1913 to seven per cent in 1918, most
of them are still making less than $500 cash over and above
the products of the farm used by the family for its living.
They have no margin of safety for so gcave a crisis as
this.
Now what is true of the farmers is also true in consider-
able degree of the cotton planters and cattle raisers. To
save the cotton situation in the South where the familiar
Southern lawlessness has begun to show itself in Ku-Klux
riding, cotton-gin burning, threats of personal violence, etc.,
the Southern bankers at the meeting of the American Bank-
ers' Association in Washington last week agreed upon the
formation of a twelve million dollar corporation to aid in
exporting cotton, particularly to those countries like Ger-
many, which cannot pay spot cash for cotton. This shows a
commendable spirit of self-help, but it still leaves a doubt
as to many things which the public would like to have
explained. Why, it asks, should there be a credit famine
and such high rates of interest when we are told by the
Comptroller of the Currency that the banking resources of
the United States amount to $53,079,108,000; that these
resources "break all records anywhere, exceeding the com-
bined bank assets of all other leading nations of the world."
We know that America is the credit reservoir of the globe ;
we have more than one-third of all the gold in the world,
and we have ten times the credit resources we had twenty
years ago. Yet, besides the cotton situation and the wheat
crisis, there is no credit for the wool grower or for the
cattle man. The value of our farm products is not far from
$24,000,000,000 a year, and it is upon these products that
most of us live. Yet the producers allege that they are
being sabotaged by the banks which will not give them
credit with which to hold their produce- until they can
realize a price at least sufficient to cover the cost of pro-
duction.
So the public is beginning to ask the banking world if it
is true that the banking resources are largely "frozen in
speculation." It grants that there are certain specific causes
of trouble beyond the control of the banks, as for instance
the export trade. But for two years past every conceivable
commodity has been speculated in at home by brokers, com-
mission merchants, and bankers, and these speculators have
been aided by the banks of our great cities in the process
of hoarding for further rises. More than a billion dollars,
according to the Comptroller of the Currency, was being
loaned on Wall Street as call money at the very moment
when the farmers of the West were vainly seeking funds
with which to move their produce. Billions of dollars have
been taken from useful pursuits, such as the building of
homes and the handling of crops in order to maintain this
speculative structure now endangered by the break in prices,
due, among other causes, to the boycott of the buying public.
The bank loans which are at the bottom of this speculation
cannot today be called even though orders to this effect
come from on high; the interests of borrowers and those
who loan are too closely intertwined. The banks themselves
might go down if they forced a liquidation on a declining
market. In consequence, the credit resources of this coun-
try seem tied up in what appears for the moment an untie-
able knot. In addition, the country is wasting its enormous
resources for army and navy and expenditures due to the
present and previous wars — ninety-three per cent of our
huge expenditure going for these purposes during the fiscal
year ending June 30th last. We are daily lending more
money to Europe ; the recent French loan aggregated $800,-
000,000 and it was subscribed while our Western farmers
were in great distress.
The Federal Reserve banking system is the one achieve-
ment upon which all Democrats pride themselves. They
dare not disclose any weaknesses thereof, and the Repub-
lican Party is too closely identified with the banking inter-
ests to grapple vigorously with the banking problem. So
the public for the present is asking what has happened to
the record-breaking credit resources of this country: Are
they being used for speculation when they are needed for
production, and is an undue proportion being loaned abroad?
Or is the prevailing phenomenon merely due to the decrease
of inflation and the necessary checking of over-expansion?
Are our farmers merely paying the price of the stringent
readjustment, such as has fallen to the lot of the silk manu-
facturers, who are down practically to pre-war prices, and
the leather producers, who are actually back to the 1914
rates ?
We shall all probably have to pay a price for the wicked
waste and extravagance of the war, and perhaps those are
to be congratulated who are having their reaction now. But
none the less, the plight of our producers of.the great crops
is such that we are persuaded the new Congress will have
to inquire into the situation at once and to establish the
truth with genuine zeal if the revolutionary farmer out-
bursts at Washington are not to become of grave political
significance and, for instance, make the Nonpartisan League
the dominating political factor in the West. The progres-
sive element in the new Congress can do no greater service
than to take up this economic issue which the two major
party candidates have studiously ignored.
Nov. 3, 1920]
The Nation
493
Reaction and the Jew
A WAVE of anti-Semitism is once more sweeping the
world. The Poles in their nationalistic frenzy are
trying to exterminate the three million Jews within their
boundaries ; the Pan-Germans in the festering powerlessness
of their defeat are furbishing the old weapons of reaction;
a virulent British pamphlet, "The Jewish Peril," has been
insinuatingly presented in what passes for the mind of
Henry Ford, his paper, the Dearborn Independent, which
has diluted it in a series of articles ; open letters of an anti-
Semitic tinge are beginning to appear in our conservative
press; public anti-Jewish meetings have been held in the
streets of Brooklyn, and clergymen of the hectic and sensa-
tional type are at their" old game of finding an Anti-Christ,
and are loudly identifying the godless Bolshevik with the
Jew.
The chief responsibility for the revival of this hoary
shame among us in America attaches to Henry Ford. His
name, like his car, reaches the common man who reasons
that the multimillionaire mechanic cannot be wholly wrong.
Yet it is this latest exploit that, once and for all, confirms
and stamps the ethical and intellectual character of the
Detroit manufacturer. He pretended to be a pacifist; he
fitted out and set sail in a "peace ship." Today he betrays
the very spirit of peace and flings another torch into an
already blazing world. For beneath every accidental and
temporary cause of human discord lurks the most lasting
and malignant of all — the blind and bloody hatred of tribe
for tribe, race for race, the denial of that universal and
purely human solidarity which is the one ultimate hope of
peace and civilization among men. Whoever stirs up these
ancient and barbarous hatreds of race or creed or color,
whoever sets Gentile against Jew, white against black, the
races of the West against those of the East, approaches
mankind with the kiss of the betrayer and the dagger of
the assassin. There can be no compromise, no shadow of
wavering on this supreme issue. We are imprisoned upon
this little earth ; the universal forces are careless of our wel-
fare; earthquakes and storms tumble down our frail shel-
ters and disease gnaws at our perishable bodies. How shall
we fight our way out of the darkness if not as brothers?
How shall we build a humane civilization if, in the maze of
ghastly figments and cruel superstitions, we persecute and
wound and darken each other's souls?
The common source of Mr. Ford's propaganda, of the
pamphlet "The Jewish Peril," and of "The Cause of World
Unrest," published with sinister anonymity by G. P. Put-
nam's Sons, is an old and absurd forgery that is sufficiently
and, we hope, finally exposed by Mr. Lucien Wolf in the Lon-
don Spectator. At every great revolution in human affairs
since the days of the Protestant Reformation, this fable of
a world-wide Jewish conspiracy against the safety of civil-
ization and the vested interests of the age has been an easy
weapon in the hands of the reactionaries. The Puritan
Revolution in England was attributed to "Quakers, free-
thinkers, and godless Jews," and numerous French writers
from 1797 to 1883 sought to father the French Revolution
itself on Masonic and Jewish conspiracies. The old forgery
known as "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion"
was revamped by a Prussian postal clerk who was himself
discharged from the service for forgery in 1868. But a
Russian edition of his work, attributed to a "Professor
Sergyei Nilus," was used as a pogrom weapon during the
Russian Revolution of 1905 and a French version of the
latter was published in 1911. It is the work of this entirely
mythical Nilus which forms the immediate basis for "The
Jewish Peril," the articles in Mr. Ford's paper, and the
more recent "The Cause of World Unrest."
The motive for the emergence of these old forgeries and
slanders at this moment in history is clear enough. The
industrial revolution of today is attributed to Jewish con-
spirators precisely as was the Puritan Revolution in Eng-
land, the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution of
1905. The technique of reaction, whether economic or politi-
cal, has not changed with the ages. Its essence has always
been to divert the attention of the masses from real to
fancied dangers, and to blind them to their true interests
by playing upon their superstitious fears and their tribal
prejudices. The Czars veiled their iniquities by staging
pogroms ; the Polish imperialists seek to stifle the conscious-
ness of typhus, hunger, and needless warfare by setting
the people against their Jewish compatriots; international
finance having sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind,
finds it easy and useful to point to Eisner, Trotzky, and
even to Morris Hillquit, not as to thinkers and revolution-
aries, but as to members of a conspiracy undertaken by an
alien, dangerous, and mysterious folk.
X
What to do in Haiti
AFFAIRS in Haiti and Santo Domingo have at last been
brought publicly to the attention of the American
people; the question now is, what is the American people
going to do about it? It is not enough to send half a dozen
admirals and major generals investigating, with the in-
evitable result of more or less white-washing reports. The
important question is, what shall be American policy to-
ward these Carribbean republics whose independence we
have taken from them and whose government is now in
the hands of the United States Marine Corps?
Investigation there must be, and consequent punishment,
but the investigation should be made by Congress and not
by interested parties, and the punishment must not be con-
fined to isolated cases of boys who, taking from their su-
periors the current attitude of contempt for the natives,
were guilty of excesses such as have in all time character-
ized all armies of occupation lording it over a suppressed
people. Nor should penalties stop even with a few brutal
lieutenants with possibly a captain or two or a major to
give an appearance of thorough expiation. The fundamen-
tal atrocity of American rule in Haiti and Santo Domingo
is the very fact of unwarranted military interference, rather
than the shooting of unarmed prisoners or brutal torture.
It will take a broad-minded committee of the ablest men
in Congress — men without color prejudice — to study the
question in its largest aspects. There must be no such
hasty generalizations as characterized that bold Congres-
sional committee which reported on conditions in the Virgin
Islands after spending thirty hours there! If such a com-
mittee is not appointed by Congress in its coming session
the Republicans will convict themselves of having exploited
the agony of a subject people merely for campaign material.
Haitians have indeed rejoiced that their case has at last
come before the American people and the world. The Nation
V
494
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2887
is proud of its share in bringing this about. But publicity
is of value to the Haitians only as a first step toward their
independence which it is now America's solemn duty to
guarantee effectively and for all time as a pledge of our
good faith and as partial atonement for our dastardly as-
sault upon it. The United States must retire from Haiti
at the earliest possible moment. Meanwhile it is our clear
duty to repair the damage done, to indemnify the innocent
victims of wanton brutality, to aid in restoring the govern-
ment we have demolished and to reestablish the economic
and financial structure of the country. While never solid,
the economic status of Haiti has in no wise been
strengthened and in many respects it has been weakened
by the exploiting interests which have sought to entrench
themselves under cover of our occupation. Our first step
should be the withdrawal of our military and naval forces.
It is a question, of course, whether such withdrawal can be
made suddenly. The curse of military rule, as has been
shown all over the world, is that it leaves anarchy and
upheaval in its wake. If the United States withdraws its
troops suddenly from a country whose self-governing func-
tions have been atrophied for five years and whose people
have been made resentful by cruel oppression, grave dis-
orders might conceivably follow. In fact there are ugly
rumors that those desirous of maintaining our illegitimate
hold upon Haiti permanently, plan some such course in
order to justify prompt reoccupation. But no such con-
sideration should for a moment obscure the necessity of
declaring in unmistakable terms our purpose of withdraw-
ing within a definite and comparatively short period of
time — three to five years at the utmost — and of utilizing
the interval for intelligent reconstruction. We did it in
Cuba; we can do it again. It should be our pride to do so.
The task of reestablishing civil government should be
entrusted to joint commissions of Americans and Haitians
or Dominicans; and after the years in which we have sent
"deserving Democrats" and parish politicians to the un-
happy island, the naming of the American members would
give opportunity to restore our reputation in Latin-America.
There should be both white and colored Americans among
them. Such a joint commission could proceed to the task
of holding local or municipal elections, then provincial,
where such are in order, and finally to the election of new
national assemblies which could replace the caprice of mar-
tial law and "executive order" with republican administra-
tion. Meanwhile the commission, calling on the best talent
available, should make a thorough survey of Haiti's re-
sources and potentialities, and base the reconstruction pro-
gram on facts, scientifically established by competent and
careful experts.
There is more than this. The Haitian-American treaty,
forced on an unwilling Haitian Assembly, must be de-
nounced; the new Constitution, passed under the aegis of
American military rule, with its special provisions designed
to facilitate American business, should give way to the old
rule of Haiti for the Haitians. We have killed one in
every four hundred Haitians, two hundred and fifty Hai-
tians to every American killed, and that such ratios are not
those of decent warfare. We owe Haiti more than to get
out; we owe positive amends for the past. It is not easy
for a proud people to confess that it has erred; but the
facts in this case are so flagrant and so sure that not other-
wise can a proud honor be satisfied.
"Murdering Beauty
i *
AT the Butirki prison in Moscow, say certain Frenchmen
who were formerly there as involuntary guests of the
Bolsheviki, there is a beautiful Lettish girl, at about the
remorseless age of fifteen, who acts as official executioner,
shooting her victims expertly in the back when they have
been chosen by lot and led before her. The brawny Jack
Ketch of the old tradition has yielded to a mere "flapper,"
"with unerring aim and a lust for blood."
The French will be French ! Our minds go back to some
thousands of fine poems and of gallant speeches which have
been made by this fine and gallant race upon the theme of
"murdering beauty." What after all is so deadly as a lovely
eye? It stabs deep with a glint, slays with a glance, and
utterly consumes with a level gaze. There is no armor proof
against it. Whenever beauty walks abroad it leaves its path
strewn with the wrecks of foolish men who have encoun-
tered it. It rises in the morning, like the sun for glory, and
kills off a few swains who are outside its casement when
first it looks out at the new day. It lisps its dutiful orisons,
tastes matutinal nectar, and comes forth to begin its proper
business. Walking beside some clear brook it topples one
venturer after another into the sympathetic flood. On the
smooth enameled green, where daisies pie the meadow,
beauty does its fatal work no less ruthlessly than in secluded
arbors or umbrageous grottoes. Then mounted on its favor-
ite courser it takes to the hunt, leaving to others the lighter
task of bringing down the boar or catching up with the fox,
but itself more deadly among the human quarry who, though
hunters, are at last the hunted. Finally twilight, the end
of the day, candles, spinet and dulcimer and the soft record-
ers, witching sounds, and more bewitching silences ; but still
beauty goes on its conquering course. Not even midnight
dims it. When beauty has retired from mortal sight, the
lover who had not the luck to come within its range and so
be slaughtered, lies disconsolate upon his couch waiting for
another day and another chance to dare the killing eyes of
beauty.
The French will be French! Even in the dungeon, say
the old gallants, they longed for the most murderous gleam
of beauty. Better that and annihilation than the long night
of safety. Leaning out of his desperate window this or that
prisoner, if he beheld some lady walking in the courtyard,
would fix his admiration upon her and bend every effort to
draw in his direction that killing look. Is there not a story
by Kenneth Graham about a headswoman in some Ruri-
tanian region who became so popular that the whole world
masculine swarmed to her begging to be slain as a tender
personal favor? And did they not swarm so numerously
that it embarrassed the land and almost stripped it of its
finest heroes because they chose death by the delicate heads-
woman rather than life at any less exquisite hands what-
ever?
We do not know whether it was in this fashion that the
prisoners of the Bolsheviki behaved, but we suspect that
something of the sort might have happened, so true to form
does their ancient gallantry seem to have run. It might
have happened; it must have happened. For this is not,
after all, history we are talking about. It is romance, the
latest child of propaganda — romance joyfully conscripted in
the war against the enemies of the old order and naturally
using the old, old tricks.
Nov. 3, 1920]
The Nation
495
The Paradox of Literature
WHEN his dark hours are upon him the man of letters
will often envy the practitioners of other arts. Their
medium is so fresh and plastic, his own so stained and
rigid. Theirs is free and self-existent, his is entangled
in all the base uses of the world. He listens to the third
Etude of Chopin, to the Andante of Beethoven's twenty-
third sonata, and he despairs. Such divine freedom and
purity of utterance is not for him. The dust of all trodden
ways blows on his lips ; the sound of all harsh and meaning-
less voices is in his ears. There are glossy shadows on the
broad, bright stream; a shiver runs rustling through the
innumerable leaves of a tree. So long as he contemplates
these objects — identifies himself with them or absorbs them
into himself — he is safe. The moment he speaks his agony
begins. For the names he uses are the names neither of
these things nor of his vision of them, but of a thousand
blunted perceptions and half-obliterated memories. He can-
not, like the musician, invent an expression never heard
before. He must take the shabby old names of things and,
by a trickery that threatens always to make an artifice of
his art, seek to lend them some freshness and immediacy
and sting. And even while he labors thus, he loses bit
by bit the uniqueness of his relation to the things contem-
plated, which alone made his moment worth recording.
He is in far worse case when he comes to deal with the
operations of the mind and, above all, when he deals with
moral qualities and moral facts. The names by which
these go are of a Byzantine conventionalism — remote and
bloodless and inflexible. He may mean to bless and succeed
in cursing. For his words bristle with alien angers and
false judgments and with all the moral rancor of the dead.
Let him speak of a noble selfishness, and he will be accused
of vain singularity ; or of a spiritual use of sensual experi-
ence, and he will be held to blaspheme. For these words
have so lost touch with the facts of life, and have become
so merged in a militant conceptualism, that men no longer
use them to name things, but rather do violence to all
things in order to crush them into what is considered the
appropriate mould. But since men are willing to suffer
hunger and disease, to fight and to die for mere names,
it is clear that the artist in literature will often him-
self be snared by words. So that, in order to speak
beautifully and truly, he must struggle not only against the
dead weight of nearly all his fellows, but often against the
confusions of his own mind. Let him love liberty and praise
it, some one will discover that he has counseled license.
The ugly word may startle him and even keep him from
seeing that no such thing exists, but that it is a name
men use for stigmatizing the liberties which they them-
selves do not want to exercise.
It is, when one reflects, as though from the beginning
man had been haunted by a great fear, and in that fear had
sought deliberately to darken and to simplify the beautiful
and various world as well as his own subtle and divided
heart. Thus he took all sharp perceptions and unborrowed
passions and far-ranging thoughts, and gave to these in-
finitely multiform things a few quite bleak and rigid names.
And the power of these names in keeping out freedom and
fear was such that he came to believe that they exhausted
the varieties of his experience, and grew angry if anyone
offered to extend his narrow world a little farther toward
the wide boundaries of reality. The proof of this uncon-
scious process is marvelously revealed when one compares
different languages and the people who speak them. There
are languages that contain names for moods and for moral
perceptions and distinctions, as well as for qualities in the
external world, that are blankly absent from our own. Are
we then incapable of these moods and perceptions? No;
for we acquire them when we perfectly acquire that other
tongue. But so long as we are confined to one language
we are imprisoned within the moral twists and self-imposed
limitations of those dead speakers of it who checked the
growth of certain moods and perceptions and distinctions
by giving them either deprecating names or the names of
other things. Thus men have named things out of existence,
and actually impoverished human life by forcing upon deli-
cate and subtle phenomena both of the world and of the
mind the harsh names of what all knew and approved. This
universal nominalism is far more dangerous than is com-
monly thought; it can drain life and kill things and cripple
the soul.
This, then, is the paradox of literature. The artist de-
sires to reveal and interpret reality. But he must use a
medium built from the beginning to darken and conceal it.
Not until he is himself liberated from the medium of his
art can he begin to practice it truly; not until he has died
to all words can the world be born again in his own soul.
He must return to the eternally concrete and name no thing
until he has grasped it in its real nature, nor compare it
to another until he has known it to be essentially incom-
parable. To know human thoughts and actions he must
have learned to see them as unique and without name; he
must recover a complete innocence of vision and let no
words betray him into violating it. And when he has done
all that and has at last made himself worthy of his art —
then comes his hardest hour. He cannot, after all, invent
new symbols; he is bound to the use of speech. Now that
he knows the full treachery of words, he must use them to
reveal that very treachery and to lead men back to all the
things these words have stunted or defamed or left un-
spoken. He has substituted realities for myths in his own
mind, but myths are all he has with which to body forth
realities in art. He shifts the meaning of a symbol here
and alters a connotation there. For all that, he has the fore-
knowledge of ultimate failure. All that he says will still
hide his direct vision of reality and leave his agonies and
exaltations blurred and dim.
Yet his career of failure is not without its luminous
moments. His aim is so high that a fleeting success recon-
ciles him to his fate. For such success is, in the truest
sense, creative. It gives men not only beauty but vision,
not only delight but life. It increases the number of living
realities, extends the possibilities of experience, and creates
both things and thoughts that would else be lost to the con-
sciousness of man. This is what the ten thousand scrib-
blers do not understand. They heap words upon words and
tribal formularies on tribal formularies. The true artist in
letters gives life and creates freedom. In the paradox of
literature he finds both his pain and his reward. His suc-
cess is difficult and rare. But, when it comes, it breaks the
fetters of the world and adds to the sum of our unalterable
good.
496
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2887
The End of the Entente
By ROBERT DELL
London, Oct. 8
TO understand the French and British foreign policies
of today and their increasing divergence, which has
led to the practical dissolution of the Entente Cordiale, one
must go back to the Peace Conference. It is the general
belief in England that M. Clemenceau had it all his own
way at the Conference, but that is not the fact, although,
as Mr. Maynard Keynes has said: "So far as the main
economic lines of the Treaty represent an intellectual idea,
it is the idea of France and Clemenceau." Lloyd George
has encouraged this belief for his own purposes. Now that
the Treaty of Versailles is becoming more and more un-
popular in England, and its impossibilities and disastrous
results more and more generally recognized, it suits Lloyd
George to represent himself as an innocent victim, who has
no responsibility for what is worst in the Treaty. Perhaps
one of Lloyd George's most useful qualities is his remark-
able power of detachment. During the general election cam-
paign of 1918, he asked an astonished company in a pri-
vate house after dinner whether they did not agree with
him that the "stunt" about hanging the Kaiser that "those
people" were running was very absurd. Although it got
him his majority, he is quite capable of saying during the
next general election campaign that that "stunt" never had
his approval. He always manages to lay the blame for
everything that goes wrong on one or more of his colleagues
while he, personally, takes the credit for everything that
goes right. He never commits himself definitely to any
policy ; somehow or other he manages to leave himself a way
of escape, so that he can turn out to have been right in any
event. I shall never forget the speech in the House of Com-
mons about a year ago when, with Winston Churchill writh-
ing in agony on the bench beside him, he calmly repeated
and made his own all the arguments against intervention
in Russia, informed the House that he had always said that
it would be a failure, and took credit for deep foresight.
Not one of his followers rose and asked him why he had
spent an hundred million pounds on an enterprise that he
knew to be futile. Lloyd George has acquired a reputation
for statesmanship by the simple method of frankly declar-
ing, when his policy has proved a failure, that he always
knew it would fail. Nine out of ten Englishmen know him
to be a charlatan and a trickster, but they flatter them-
selves that he cannot humbug them, and believe that his
wiles are as useful to the country as to himself. It is a
fond illusion.
Had Mr. Lloyd George gone to Paris with the intention
of making a peace on the basis of the Fourteen Points and
backing Mr. Wilson, he and Mr. Wilson could have done
what they liked. But he was handicapped in the first place
by his own election pledges about hanging the Kaiser and
making Germany pay for the war; and hampered in the
second place by the necessity of satisfying the appetites
of the group of capitalists that surround him and upon
whom he is dependent for election and propaganda funds,
since he has no political organization behind him. He soon
got on the weak side both of Wilson and of Clemenceau.
Mr. Keynes has given an amusing description of the suc-
cessful humbugging of poor Mr. Wilson, who seems to
have been an easy victim. Clemenceau was a more difficult
nut to crack, but Lloyd George cracked it. Clemenceau
had one idea : the political and economic destruction of Ger-
many. On that point he was intractable. It was useless
to point out to him that the economic restoration of Ger-
many was a necessary condition of an indemnity to France.
He preferred to go without an indemnity rather than allow
Germany to recover. Lloyd George saw at once how this
crazy fanaticism could be exploited. He gave M. Clemen-
ceau his "Carthaginian Peace," well knowing that it would
land France in such insoluble difficulties that she would
sooner or later be obliged to make concessions, and fully
intending to get round it on the first opportunity. And,
having thus squared Clemenceau, he carried off all the ma-
terial advantages. This was made the easier by Clemen-
ceau's ignorance of and indifference to economic questions,
which led him gaily to surrender even the oil of Mosul,
which had been secured to France by a secret agreement
during the war. Thus Lloyd George satisfied his capitalist
friends ; got rid of the German navy and mercantile marine ;
secured the greater part of the German colonies; and in
fact carried off the substance while Clemenceau gloated over
the shadow. France got Alsace-Lorraine and an indemnity
that Germany, as Lloyd George well knew, could never pay.
It was not long before the French people began to realize
the true state of affairs. Of course the French people had
themselves to blame, for they should never have thrown
themselves into the arms of Clemenceau. The grotesque adu-
lation of that old gentleman illustrated a weakness of the
French character, which is always looking for traitors on
the one hand and saviors on the other. One of the results
of the discovery that Clemenceau had been humbugged was
a wave of Anglophobia accompanied by the revival of the
ridiculous legend that Clemenceau was an English agent.
The Anglophobia has now become almost as violent and
quite as silly as in the days of the Fashoda trouble and the
feeling against America is only less bitter, although Mr.
Wilson won unexpected praise by his support of French
policy in Poland. One of the chief grievances against the
English and the Americans is the depreciation of the franc,
which is attributed to deliberate and Machiavellian intrigues
on their part. Another quite legitimate grievance against
England is the high export price of English coal, which
enables it to be sold to the home consumer below its market
value. This exploitation of our late Allies, from which Italy
suffers still more than France, is disgraceful. Unfortu-
nately, instead of recognizing that their discomfiture at the
Peace Conference was due to a deficient sense of the realities
and acting accordingly, the French are now seeking to
satisfy their amour-propre by an ambitious foreign policy
aiming at the political hegemony of Europe. And they are
still trying to make German economic restoration impos-
sible, although the economic restoration of Continental
Europe as a whole, including France herself, depends upon
it. It must be said that the French people are still terrified
of Germany. They have been persuaded by the govern-
mental press that Germany is still an imminent danger and
that France will never be safe until Germany is dismem-
bered and politically annihilated. This feeling is intensified
Nov. 3, 1920]
The Nation
497
by the fact that the guaranties given to France by the
Peace treaties have disappeared. The alliance with Amer-
ica and England has fallen through — happily for America
and England — and the League of Nations is an impotent
sham. The French forget that the latter fact is the fault
of their own Government more than any other, for it is the
French Government that obstinately opposes the admission
of the late enemy countries into the League, without which
it can never be of any value.
All these causes have led to the present restless and mis-
chievous activity of French foreign policy. It is trying to
separate Bavaria from Germany and unite it to Austria
under a Wittelsbach sovereign. It is trying to restore the
monarchy in Hungary and perhaps also to link it up with
Austria and Bavaria. It is trying to use Poland as a cats-
paw against Communist Russia. It wants to set up a num-
ber of reactionary states under French influence to be used
as buffers against Germany on the one hand and Russia
on the other, failing the restoration of Czarism in the latter
country, which is the aim of the French protege, Wrangel,
one of whose generals is well known as a relative of the
late Czar. The secret treaty with Belgium, which the
French and Belgian Governments have refused to com-
municate to the League of Nations in defiance of the terms
of the Covenant of the League, probably has as its ulterior
object the separation from Germany of the territory on the
left bank of the Rhine now occupied by the Allied forces,
and its establishment as a vassal state. Outside Europe
there is the senseless Syrian expedition which will bring
France nothing but expensive glory.
This policy is likely to be disastrous to France. One of
its consequences is an increase of four billion francs in the
army estimates for the coming year. At least the same
amount has been diverted from the sums voted by Parlia-
ment for the restoration of the devastated region to be
spent on equipping the Polish army and that of Wrangel.
The country is rushing headlong on the road to ruin. The
policy is equally disastrous to Europe. Czecho-Slovakia,
Jugo-Slavia, and Rumania have already formed a defensive
alliance against Hungary, and the Continent is being di-
vided into hostile armed camps. Austria is starving to
death and cannot survive unless she is allowed to unite
with Germany or Hungary. The great majority of Aus-
trians desire union with Germany, but that is forbidden
by the Treaty of St. Germain, and France will not hear of it.
At any moment there may be an explosion.
If England and Italy acted together on the right lines
they could probably bring France to reason. But, unfortu-
nately, Lloyd George has no consistent policy. The British
Foreign Office, true to its old tradition of the balance of
power, is naturally hostile to the French policy. It is not
to the interest of England that Germany should be destroyed
or that France should secure the hegemony of Europe.
Instinctively England throws her weight in the balance on
the side of Germany. Lloyd George is working in an under-
hand way for the revision of the treaties, in favor of Ger-
many and Austria, but he dares not openly avow his aim,
since he has no intention of revising the treaties in any
points affecting British interests. His policy in regard to
Russia varies according to the military successes or failures
of the Russian army, and the negotiations for the resump-
tion of trade relations are now being delayed in the hope,
probably vain, that the present Russian Government is
about to fall. The result is that he has hopelessly estranged
French feeling without any corresponding advantage. Eng-
land would be less disliked in France had he adopted a
frank and consistent policy opposed to that of the French
Government. One cannot open a French comic paper with-
out finding Lloyd George caricatured as the incarnation
of British hypocrisy and the personification of "perfide
Albion."
It was possible to maintain Anglo-French friendship only
on one condition — that of making a just and democratic
peace. From the moment that Lloyd George and Clemen-
ceau decided to make an imperialist and Carthaginian peace,
a quarrel over the division of the spoils was inevitable.
The only way to save Europe now is to scrap the imperialist
and Carthaginian peace and make a new one on different
lines. That involves the sacrifice of the spoils that Eng-
land, or rather Lloyd George's capitalist friends, have ap-
propriated. England camiot ask France to revise the
treaties until she, herself, has clean hands. Nor can France
be asked to consent to a revision of arrangements touching
her interests, or supposed interests, unless England con-
sent to a revision of the arrangements that touch England,
such as those concerning the German colonies. I see little
hope so long as England is governed by a charlatan whose
sole concern is to stick in office. The one ray of hope is
the apparent disposition of the French Government to dis-
cuss the question of reparations directly with Germany.
A satisfactory understanding between France and Germany
would go far to make European peace at last possible. But
if it led, as the Vossische Zeitung desires, to a Continental
alliance against England, all the mischief would begin over
again. The remedy is the United States of Europe with
Free Trade and disarmament. We must come to that or
perish. •
Twilight of the Gods
By LEONORA SPEYER
Tonight
Dusk shuddered away from the autumn sky
Too cruel-bright:
Into the comfort of the West
She slipped, a wound in her shadowy breast,
Glowing and deep and red,
Out of the day — to grieve and die,
Hanging her head.
But I
Will wear my one-time bliss of you
More valiantly!
Pinned to my gown like a meadow-flower
Or the proud, red gem of my woman's dower,
And never its wound revealed —
The aching, eloquent kiss of you,
Unhealed !
Contributors to This Issue
James Westfall Thompson is Professor of History at
the University of Chicago.
Otto H. Kahn is a leading figure in the financial world.
498
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2887
U. S. Steel vs. Margolis
By SWINBURNE HALE
TO any one who has read the Interchurch World Report
on the Steel Strike, or the Twelve Lawyers' Report on
the Department of Justice, the disbarment of Jacob Mar-
golis comes as no surprise. Mr. Margolis has been deported
from the legal profession; that is all. He has been de-
ported exactly as union organizers have been deported from
steel towns. He has been deported exactly as alien radicals
have been deported from the country. He has been put out,
ejected, by "force and violence" one might almost say, from
the means of earning a living, because he holds views
widely divergent from the accepted views of the people who
run Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
The Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, which
has acted, sits in the very heart of the Pittsburgh Steel
district. Judges Shafer and Ford are the same two judges
who, upon being prayed to enjoin Mayor Babcock and the
police from interfering with a local union holding its busi-
ness meetings (not even mass meetings, but business meet-
ings), denied the writ, saying that "it must be left to the
reasonable discretion of the officers charged with keeping
the peace, when such intervention is made." This is the
same Allegheny County whose Sheriff proclaimed that any
assembling and loitering of three people in the streets of
Pittsburgh constituted an unlawful assembly. This is the
county upon which centered the influences that the Inter-
church World Commission reported as follows:
The maintenance of the non-unionism alternative, therefore,
entailed for the steel companies activities running from spies
in church offices in New York to sealed carloads of Negroes
shipped into the Pittsburgh plant yards at night. For com-
munities and for States the alternative contained activities of
greater import and greater menace. These affected civil lib-
erties in whole communities, local legislative bodies, police au-
thorities, judges, State police troops, Federal Government de-
partments, and the United States Army.
Specifically, Jacob Margolis was charged before this hon-
orable court "with conduct totally destructive of the Gov-
ernment which he took an oath to support." Specifically
it was held by this honorable court that Margolis "has
done his utmost to breed unrest among the lawless and
vicious and to incite them to acts of violence and disloyalty."
Specifically the evidence shows merely and absolutely that
Jacob Margolis, being a fluent and profound student of
radical philosophies, had come to believe primarily in the
Tolstoyan doctrine of pacifist non-resistance, and secon-
darily in a combination of the Tolstoyan doctrine of the
unnecessariness of government as such, and the syndicalist
doctrine of producers' control of industrial process; and
further, that Mr. Margolis, having accepted these doc-
trines, proceeded to impart them to other persons either
individually or in general meetings. No act of any kind in
derogation of the actual existing authority of Government
by Mr. Margolis was shown or indicated. No credible sugges-
tion of any advocacy of resistance to law is to be found in
the record beyond the usual kind of evidence familiar to
the point of nausea in deportation cases and in the Senate
investigation of the steel strike — namely, that Mr. Margolis
had defended members of the I. W. W. in court; that
I. W. W.'s held syndicalist views; that one W. Z. Foster
had once written a "little red book" about syndicalism, in
which he said that the syndicalist allows no considerations
of legality or patriotism to stand in the way of effective
tactics; and that, therefore, Mr. Margolis must be taken to
be a lawyer who allowed no consideration of legality to
stand in the way of a forcible eviction of the government at
Washington.
The court found that Mr. Margolis is an Anarchist, a
Syndicalist, a Bolshevik, an I. W. W., and an active sup-
porter of an organization called the Union of Russian
Workers, "whose principal publication is Nova Misky."
Now, a man may at the same time, in the view of the
Pittsburgh judges, be an anarchist who believes in no gov-
ernment and be a Bolshevik who believes in about the most
strongly centralized government ever devised. But it is
quite, quite true that no such "publication" as Nova
Misky has ever been issued by anybody anywhere, as a
principal publication or otherwise. There is a pamphlet
entitled "Two Dictatorships" by Novomirsky, which was
published in Odessa in 1905 for the purposes of the Russian
revolution of that year, and there is a "Manifesto" of the
same Novomirsky, published in Odessa in 1907 after the
failure of the previous Russian revolution. These Odessa
editions have been in the New York Public Library for
years, familiar to students of radical literature. They
were taken out of the New York Public Library by a mem-
ber of the Union of Russian Workers to be reprinted for
Russian readers, together with books on botany, philosophy,
arithmetic, and other subjects, and they have been used by
Mr. Palmer and his Department of Justice agents to scare
people with ever since.
It is worth noting that the evidence did show that private
letters addressed to Mr. Margolis, and in the custody of the
Post Office Department, were somehow or other copied or
photostated before they got to him; that private telephone
conversations between Mr. Margolis and his acquaintances
were somehow or other tapped and written down; and that
somehow or other private telegrams sent by radicals found
their way into the possession of the Department of Justice
— an interesting sidelight on the criminal espionage which
has come to be a part of modern American institutions.
The essence of Mr. Margolis's testimony was as follows:
I have such faith in our common humanity that I believe if
we got rid of the central question, which is the question of
owners versus producers, and if we could get the new ideological
basis, upon creation rather than possession, and every individ-
ual in our society would contribute his work, there would be no
need for any government.
The difficulty of the court's mental process lay in the
impossibility of its conceiving that any lawyer could have
such faith in a possible reconstruction of society, and at
the same time support the Constitution and live according
to the laws. With equal logic could Mr. Morris Hillquit
be disbarred for believing in and urging "a system of
social production for collective use" in direct disagreement
with the Constitution. That either Mr. Margolis or Mr.
Hillquit intends to recognize and to act under the Consti-
tution while it remains the Constitution, is a fact incapable
of lodgment in the judicial mind of Allegheny County.
Nov. 3, 1920]
The Nation
499
The Failure of the League
By OTTO H. KAHN
FOR the troublous state and the continuing dispeace of
the world, the wrongs and faults of the Peace Treaty
of Versailles (and that of St. Germain) are more responsi-
ble, in my opinion, than any other factor, next, of course,
to the war itself. A strongly contributory element has been
the unpreparedness and painlessness of our Government for
those economic tasks which, with the cessation of the war,
became incumbent upon us.
The Peace Treaty is not reconcilable with either good
faith or good sense. The Treaty falls grievously short of
realizing the high hopes of the world for a peace worthy of
the spirit which animated the Allies and America during the
war. The ill-omened instrument has come to plague its very
beneficiaries and to cause discord and ill-feeling among
those who had been comrades in arms. Liberal opinion in
the allied and neutral countries is unanimous in condemning
it. Among the many people whom I had occasion to see dur-
ing my recent journey in Europe, there were very few in-
deed outside of the immediate circle of its responsible
authors, who would deny its faultiness.
The representatives of the United States should never
have yielded to that Treaty, not only because their more de-
tached view ought to have shown them the harmful conse-
quences which were bound to flow from it, but because in
spirit and in letter it failed to carry out pledges made by us
— pledges to our own people, to the enemy people, and to the
world at large.
Given the commanding prestige which, at the time, ad-
hered to America and her spokesman, and given the need
and expectation of the Allied governments of America's
financial and economic aid, there can be little doubt that it
was in our power to secure a treaty which would have com-
plied with declarations solemnly made, which would have
befitted the spirit in which the war was fought to victory
and which would have brought to the world, real peace.
The League of Nations Covenant was inserted in the
Treaty upon President Wilson's insistence and against the
opposition, originally, of his fellow treaty makers. They
finally consented to the insertion of such a Covenant, mainly
as a means to obtain his acquiescence in the conditions of
the Treaty, and to assuage his scruples. They became more
and more reconciled to it as they succeeded in shaping the
Covenant according to their intent and making out of it,
largely, an instrument of political dominion, containing,
moreover, no effective provision either as to disarmament
or as to the much-vaunted "freedom of the seas." They
became wholly for it when Article X guaranteed the coopera-
tion of the United States in preserving the world forever as
the treaty makers had arbitrarily carved up and apportioned
it, and when another provision of the Covenant sought to
make their handiwork trebly ironclad by stipulating that no
essential modification could be effected, except by unanimous
consent of the principal Powers concerned and advantaged.
In what instance in the record of European diplomacy was
there ever unanimity when selfish interests were at stake,
except unanimity purchased by equally selfish compromises
and bargainings? Does the present state of Europe under
the dispensation, for the past eighteen months, of the Su-
preme Council, composed of representatives of the leading
nations, encourage faith in the effective and beneficent
workings of international unanimity?
It has been well said by a distinguished English Liberal,
a former member of the Cabinet:
"If you are to ask the world to guarantee the world's
peace, it is essential to begin by establishing a foundation
on which peace can stand. This treaty has done the exact
opposite. It has established conditions full of menace for
the future and it asks the League of Nations to guarantee
that they shall continue. It is asking too much."
In the shape in which it emerged from the deliberations of
the treaty makers, I consider the League of Nations Cove-
nant insincere, ineffective, unsuited to the aim of preserving
peace and promoting international justice, and involving the
United States in commitments which are uncalled for and
irreconcilable with our traditions, institutions, aims, and
ideals.
Nothing that America fought for in the late war, or prom-
ised, makes it incumbent upon us to entangle ourselves in
the age-long racial squabbles and intrigues of Europe and
Asia, or to become the guardians and guarantors of an arbi-
trarily and artificially remodeled world, put together accord-
ing to the perceptions, predilections and compromises of a
few men assembled in secret conclave, far removed from the
informing and vitalizing currents of public opinion, and not
sufficiently removed always from considerations of domestic
political expediency.
Nothing that we fought for, or promised, makes it incum-
bent upon us to relinquish our fundamental national policies
and traditions.
We helped mightily to win the war. Alone among the
victors, we asked for none of the spoils. We sought no gain
in return for what we freely gave in men, in money and in
effort. We obtained no material advantage. Surely, we are
not justly called upon to set America's signature to an in-
strument that would leave us poorer in those intangible
national assets which we have jealously guarded heretofore
and which we rightly prize.
I believe that our participation in the League as now con-
stituted, with its cumbersome machinery, complexity and
rigid formulae, instead of promoting harmony and good-
will, would be apt rather to breed misunderstandings, irrita-
tion and ill-feeling between European nations and ourselves.
Many of those who advocate our "going in" admit that the
Covenant (as well as the Treaty) is faulty, but urge that the
necessary corrections can and will be made after we have
joined. I consider that the time to correct admitted faults,
in the charter and by-laws of an association you propose to
join, is before you have joined and not afterwards, especially
when it is provided that after you have joined, modifications
cannot be effected except by unanimous consent.
The argument is often heard that, inasmuch as some forty
nations have joined the League, we cannot expect so large an
aggregation of nations to abide by our views as to the con-
ception and working methods of an association of peoples.
The argument has a plausible sound, but is, I believe, devoid
of substance. I have personally no doubt whatever that any
500
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2887
readjustment or modification of the Covenant which is
agreed upon between England, France, and America, before
we "go in," will meet with the ready acquiescence of all
other nations concerned.
I deplore the fact that this subject has become a matter of
political controversy. My own views are in no way colored
by political, personal, or any other preconceptions, by any
spirit of undue leniency toward Germany, or by any inclina-
tion to condone her fearful wrong.
I am in favor of any wise and fitting pact to preserve the
peace of the world. I am in favor of America's taking her
full share in the burden of that responsibility which right-
fully goes with power. But after mature consideration I
am bound to agree wholly with Senator Harding's position
as outlined in his speech of August 28, and further elabo-
rated in his Des Moines speech on October 7.
The truly great service which we can and ought to render
to a world sorely in need, and which it is our duty and our
self-interest to render without delay and without stint, is
not political, but humanitarian and economic.
The Irish Committee Chosen
JUST as we go to press the acceptances of the five mem-
bers of the Commission of Inquiry, elected by members
of The Committee of One Hundred on Ireland, have been
received. The balloting was completed Monday, and ac-
ceptances were received within twenty-four hours. The
Nation takes great pleasure in announcing the names, as
follows: Jane Addams, former Governor Joseph W. Folk,
Frederic C. Howe, James H. Maurer, United States Senator
David I. Walsh. Miss Addams received more than twice as
many votes as any other nominee, and the others were
closely bunched.
A brief biography of each of the members of the Com-
mission follows:
JANE ADDAMS: As a worker, lecturer, and writer for
social betterment she has won a reputation that makes her
one of the most distinguished women in the world, one who
has never refused a call to high public service. For over
thirty years Miss Addams has been head of Hull House,
Chicago. She is Chairman of the Woman's Peace Party
and of the International Committee of Women for Perma-
nent Peace, and in 1919 served as President of the Inter-
national Congress of Women held in Switzerland.
JOSEPH WINGATE FOLK: A native of Tennessee, his
public career has been largely identified with the State of
Missouri. He won his spurs as circuit attorney in St. Louis
by fearlessly exposing political corruption. He was subse-
quently elected Governor of the State on the Democratic
ticket by a large majority in a Republican year. His record
as Governor stands as one of the particularly bright spots
in American political life. During the Wilson administra-
tion he served for a time as solicitor for the State Depart-
ment, and since 1914 has been chief counsel for the Inter-
state Commerce Commission. He is also general counsel
for the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce.
FREDERIC CLEMSON HOWE: He is one of the
foremost American authorities on economic and social sub-
jects, particularly on taxation and municipal government.
He has been Professor of Law at the Cleveland College of
Law, lecturer on Taxation at Western Reserve University,
and lecturer on Municipal Administration and Politics at
the University of Wisconsin. He has held several public
offices, including that of Commissioner of Immigration at
the Port of New York, from 1914 to 1919. He rtndered
conspicuous service as an expert on international affairs
attached to the American delegation at the Peace Con-
ference.
JAMES H. MAURER: For many years he has been Pres-
ident of the Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor. He is
known as an authority on labor conditions and problems, and
is a power in the progressive wing of the American Fed-
eration of Labor. Mr. Maurer has served several terms as
a member of the Pennsylvania State Legislature from
the Reading district.
DAVID I. WALSH: He has had a notable public career
in his native state. Admitted to the bar in 1897, he began
his public service as moderator at town meetings, was
elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and
served subsequently as Lieutenant Governor and Governor.
He was chosen as delegate at large to the Massachusetts
Constitutional Convention of 1917. His term in the United
States Senate began last year, and as a new member his
vigorous personality immediately made itself felt. "If I
considered my personal desires I would decline the service
offered," he wired The Nation, "but the patriotic and human-
itarian aspects of this service compel me to forget self. I'
will serve with other members who will undertake this work
with open mind and without prejudice of any kind."
The Nation congratulates the members of the Committee
of One Hundred on securing the services of Americans of
such conspicuous ability to make this earnest attempt to
find a way toward peace in Ireland. The Commission will
meet to organize at the earliest possible moment, and at that
point The Nation's direct connection with the matter will
end. It is expected that the taking of testimony will begin
at Washington within a fortnight.
The need for making a beginning without delay is empha-
sized day by day in the news from Ireland. The alarming
increase of legalized lawlessness and terrorism in that hap-
less land, following the overwhelming vote in the British
Parliament against Arthur Henderson's motion for an Irish
investigation, makes a competent, non-political American
inquiry all the more necessary and urgent.
The realization of the urgency of this matter has been
reflected in letters we are receiving from all parts of
the country, alike from friends of Irish welfare and friends
of British honor, and from impartial Americans who never
hesitate to respond when they hear of people suffering and
dying. Not a few of these letters are accompanied by sub-
stantial evidence of support. Since Mr. John E. Milholland
opened the nation-wide fund for the inquiry with a contribu-
tion of five hundred dollars, contributions large and small
have been coming in from persons of every shade of opinion,
including a Jewish workingman born in Poland, who sent
in his mite to assist an alien race toward justice and peace.
English, Scotch, and Irish societies in this country have
been requested to "adopt" witnesses and bring .them over
from Ireland for the inquiry, and several have responded
with pledges for $1,000, which sum will cover the cost of
bringing over a single person. The organization of the
Nov. 3, 1920]
The Nation
501
Irish County Societies here has taken up the matter of
raising funds for the inquiry, and several of these organiza-
tions are actively at work. In short, a start has been made
toward providing for the work of the Commission. Neces-
sarily the inquiry will be costly, but if the Commission can
contribute toward bringing to an end the horrible plight of
the Irish people, the amount is insignificant.
His Eminence Cardinal Logue has cabled from Ireland
that "every assistance shall be given to the Committee," and
messages of sympathy and support have come from many
persons in Canada.
Following a formal assurance received from the British
Embassy that "no one will be refused a passport on the
ground that he or she desires to give evidence on either
side," the Secretary of the Committee of One Hundred has
received the following letter from Sir Auckland Geddes :
British Embassy, Washington,
23rd October, 1920
Sir:
I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 8th
instant respecting your proposal to form an unofficial Commit-
tee of Inquiry with reference to recent occurrences in Ireland.
To this I have given careful consideration.
I venture to say that no one who realizes what the present
position in Ireland involves in the sorrow and suffering of
men, women, and children can fail to be anxious that a way
should be found to bring tranquillity to that country. The
British Government has more to gain than anyone in insuring
that the truth is made known to the whole world. I am, how-
ever, unable to bring myself to believe that the truth can be
established until there has been a period of quiet in Ireland.
Any inquiry undertaken just now, more especially any inquiry
undertaken by persons of less than the greatest experience of
the laws of evidence and without power to compel the produc-
tion of books, papers, records, etc., would, in my opinion, lead
to a mass of statements, unsupported by verifiable facts, being
made for propaganda purposes.
Sincere friends of Ireland should, it appears to me, do every-
thing in their power to persuade all desirous of obtaining a
solution of the age-long Irish problem that the first and deep-
est interest of Ireland is to secure that period of quiet which
will alone make settlement possible by providing the oppor-
tunity for voices now inaudible to make themselves heard
above the din.
As you were informed in the letter from this Embassy of
October 11th, the British Government will refuse no one a
passport to the United States on the ground that he or she
desires to give evidence on either side before your committee.
It was added that, while His Majesty's Government would take
no steps against any British subject who might elect to give
evidence before the committee, they could not guarantee that
no reprisals would be enforced by Sinn Fein extremists in
Ireland against persons who have given evidence against cer-
tain elements in that movement, should such persons return to
Ireland. I may add that nothing will be done by the British
Government to encourage the holding of this inquiry or to
assist witnesses to appear before the committee.
Yours truly,
(Signed) A. Geddes
William MacDonald, Esq.
"The Nation,"
20 Vesey Street,
New York.
We trust that the work of the Commission, as it develops,
will enlist the support of Sir Auckland, at least to the extent
of furthering the presentation of the British side of the
situation. We believe that he underrates the seriousness
of the feeling aroused throughout our citizenship by the
tragic case of Ireland. The action of Parliament on October
19 in rejecting by a great majority the motion for an official
Irish inquiry makes it plain that in that body there is little
realization of the feeling here. The Parliament's prompt
support of the frank appeal to brutality made by Sir Hamar
Greenwood can not but fill every lover of Ireland and every
lover of England in this country with amazement and dis-
may. "Yes, they were murders; call them murders," de-
clared Sir Hamar, in defiant response to an outcry against
his defense of the British policy of repraisals in Ireland.
While he stated in a formal and perfunctory manner that the
Government deplored the lawless terrorism of its armed
forces in Ireland, he proceeded most vigorously to defend the
outrages and laud the perpetrators.
Both Sir Hamar Greenwood and Andrew Bonar Law
assured the House that reprisals and disorders in Ireland
had been "greatly reduced" by the Government's policy.
Dispatches from Ireland on the day this statement was made
and on the two preceding days, printed in the New York
Times, scarcely bear out this statement. A summary of the
dispatches follows:
Oct. 18.
Two civilians fatally shot in military raid on public hall
in Dublin, said to be a reprisal for the wounding of two officers
in a "commandeered" launch.
Bombs thrown at several shops in Tipperary by uniformed
men.
Police barracks at Ruan, County Clare, raided by civilians.
Oct. 19.
Two farmers at Ballydavid in Tipperary roused from bed at
midnight and shot dead by a party of men in military uniform.
A man named Doyle at Ballygar, County Galway, called to
the door of his home at night and shot through the heart by
policemen. In a series of domiciliary visits, on the same even-
ing, shots were fired through windows and four men were ar-
rested by the police.
Three creameries and a public hall burned as reprisal by
British forces near Traloe, where Sinn Feiners recently seized
military stores.
The population terrified, windows smashed, and one civilian
wounded in raids by "Black and Tans" in military cars at
Drogheda.
Oct. 20.
Raids by crown officers in force on Sackville Street, Dublin.
One civilian wounded.
Michael Walsh, "an Urban Councillor and a well-known Sinn
Feiner," taken from his shop by armed men. His body, with
bullet wounds in the head, "was subsequently found in the river.
Recently his house had been twice raided and bombed."
There is every reason to hope that the forthcoming in-
quiry under the auspices of an American Committee of dis-
tinguished membership will suggest to the governing group
in Great Britain a way out of the maze of horrors in which
they are wandering in Ireland. It is of vital importance,
before any measure of improvement can come in Ireland,
that the facts in the case be impartially established. This
necessary groundwork the Commission of Inquiry will per-
form. Its high mission will be to assist toward opening a
way to peace in Ireland. In this it will render to Great
Britain, to Ireland and to the world, a service beyond price.
502
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2887
National Platform, Socialist
Party 1920
[Pursuant to the request of many of The Nation's readers, we
print herewith the platform of the Socialist Party, 1920.]
IN the national campaign of 1920 the Socialist Party calls
upon all American workers of hand and brain, and upon all
citizens who believe in political liberty and social justice, to
free the country from the oppressive misrule of the old political
parties, and to take the government into their own hands under
the banner and upon the program of the Socialist Party.
The outgoing administration, like Democratic and Republican
administrations of the past, leaves behind it a disgraceful record
of solemn pledges unscrupulously broken and public confidence
ruthlessly betrayed.
It obtained the suffrage of the people on a platform of peace,
liberalism, and social betterment, but drew the country into a
devastating war, and inaugurated a regime of despotism, reac-
tion, and oppression unsurpassed in the annals of the republic.
It promised to the American people a treaty which would
assure to the world a reign of international right and true
democracy. It gave its sanction and support to an infamous
pact formulated behind closed doors by predatory elder states-
men of European and Asiatic Imperialism. Under this pact
territories have been annexed against the will of their popula-
tions and cut off from their source of sustenance; nations seek-
ing their freedom in the exercise of the much-heralded right of
self-determination have been brutally fought with armed force,
intrigue, and starvation blockades.
To the millions of young men who staked their lives on the
field of battle, to the people of the country who gave unstintingly
of their toil and property to support the war, the Democratic
administration held out the sublime ideal of a union of the
peoples of the world organized to maintain perpetual peace
among nations on the basis of justice and freedom. It helped
create a reactionary alliance of imperialistic governments,
banded together to bully weak nations, crush working-class gov-
ernments, and perpetuate strife and warfare.
While thus furthering the ends of reaction, violence, and op-
pression abroad, our administration suppressed the cherished
and fundamental rights and civil liberties at home.
Upon the pretext of war-time necessity, the Chief Executive
of the republic and the appointed heads of his administration
were clothed with dictatorial powers (which were often exer-
cised arbitrarily), and Congress enacted laws in open and direct
violation of the constitutional safeguards of freedom of expres-
sion.
Hundreds of citizens who raised their voices for the mainte-
nance of political and industrial rights during the war were
indicted under the Espionage Law, tried in an atmosphere of
prejudice and hysteria, and many of them are now serving in-
humanly long jail sentences for daring to uphold the traditions
of liberty which once were sacred in this country.
Agents of the Federal Government unlawfully raided homes
and meeting places and prevented or broke up peaceable gather-
ings of citizens.
The Postmaster-General established a censorship of the press
more autocratic than ever tolerated in a regime of absolutism,
and has harassed and destroyed publications on account of their
advanced political and economic views, by excluding them from
the mails.
And after the war was in fact long over, the administration
has not scrupled to continue a policy of repression and terrorism
under the shadow and hypocritical guise of war-time measures.
It has practically imposed involuntary servitude and peonage
on a large class of American workers by denying them the
right to quit work and coercing them into acceptance of inade-
quate wages and onerous conditions of labor. It has dealt a foul
blow to the traditional American right of asylum by deporting
hundreds of foreign-born workers by administrative order, on
the mere suspicion of harboring radical views, and often for the
sinister purpose of breaking labor strikes.
In the short span of three years our self-styled liberal admin-
istration has succeeded in undermining the very foundation of
political liberty and economic rights, which this republic has
built up in more than a century of struggle and progress.
Under the cloak of a false and hypocritical patriotism and
under the protection of governmental terror the Democratic
administration has given the ruling classes unrestrained license
to plunder the people by intensive exploitation of labor, by the
extortion of enormous profits, and by increasing the cost of all
necessities of life. Profiteering has become reckless and ram-
pant, billions have been coined by the capitalists out of the
suffering and misery of their fellow men. The American finan-
cial oligarchy has become a dominant factor in the world, while
the condition of the American workers has grown more pre-
carious.
The responsibility does not rest upon the Democratic Party
alone. The Republican Party through its representatives in
Congress and otherwise has not only openly condoned the politi-
cal misdeeds of the last three years, but has sought to outdo
its Democratic rival in the orgy of political reaction and repres-
sion. Its criticism of the Democratic administrative policy is
that it is not reactionary and drastic enough.
America is now at the parting of the roads. If the outraging
of political liberty, and concentration of economic power into
the hands of the few is permitted to go on, it can have only one
consequence, the reduction of the country to a state of absolute
capitalist despotism.
We particularly denounce the militaristic policy of both old
parties of investing countless hundreds of millions of dollars
in armaments after the victorious completion of what was to
have been the "last war." We call attention to the fatal results
of such a program in Europe, carried on prior to 1914, and cul-
minating in the Great War; we declare that such a policy,
adding unbearable burdens to the working class and to all the
people, can lead only to the complete Prussianization of the
nation, and ultimately to war; and we demand immediate and
complete abandonment of this fatal program.
The Socialist Party sounds the warning. It calls upon the
people to defeat both parties at the polls, and to elect the can-
didates of the Socialist Party to the end of restoring political
democracy and bringing about complete industrial freedom.
The Socialist Party of the United States therefore summons
all who believe in this fundamental doctrine to prepare for a
complete reorganization of our social system, based upon public
ownership of public necessities; upon government by represen-
tatives chosen from occupational as well as from geographical
groups, in harmony with our industrial development; and with
citizenship based on service; that we may end forever the exploi-
tation of class by class.
To achieve this end the Socialist Party pledges itself to the
following program:
1. SOCIAL
1. All business vitally essential for the existence and welfare
of the people, such as railroads, express service, steamship lines,
telegraphs, mines, oil wells, power plants, elevators, packing
houses, cold storage plants, and all industries operating on a
national scale should be taken over by the nation.
2. All publicly owned industries should be administered
jointly by the government and representatives of the workers,
not for revenue of profit, but with the sole object of securing
just compensation and humane conditions of employment to the
workers and efficient and reasonable service to the public.
3. All banks should be acquired by the government, and in-
corporated in a unified public banking system.
4. The business of insurance should be taken over by the
government, and should be extended to include insurance against
accident, sickness, invalidity, old age, and unemployment, with-
out contribution on the part of the worker.
Nov. 3, 1920]
The Nation
503
5. Congress should enforce the provisions of the Thirteenth,
Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments with reference to the
Negroes, and effective federal legislation should be enacted to
secure to the Negroes full civil, political, industrial, and educa-
tional rights.
2. INDUSTRIAL
1. Congress should enact effective laws to abolish child labor,
to fix minimum wages, based on an ascertained cost of a decent
standard of life, to protect migratory and unemployed workers
from oppression, to abolish' detective and strike-breaking
agencies, and to establish a shorter work-day in keeping with
increased industrial productivity.
3. POLITICAL
1. The constitutional freedom of speech, press, and assembly
should be restored by repealing the Espionage Law and all other
repressive legislation, and by prohibiting the executive usurpa-
tion of authority.
2. All prosecutions under the Espionage Law should be dis-
continued, and all persons serving prison sentences for alleged
offenses growing out of religious beliefs, political views, or in-
dustrial activities should be fully pardoned and immediately
released.
3. No alien should be deported from the United States on
account of his political views or participation in labor struggles,
nor in any event without proper trial on specific charges. The
arbitrary power to deport aliens by administrative order should
be repealed.
4. The power of the courts to restrain workers in their
struggles against employers by the Writ of Injunction or other-
wise, and their power to nullify congressional legislation, should
be abrogated.
5. Federal judges should be elected by the people and be
subject to recall.
6. The President and the Vice-President of the United
States should be elected by direct popular election, and be sub-
ject to recall. All members of the Cabinet should be elected
by Congress and be responsible at all times to the vote thereof.
7. Suffrage should be equal and unrestricted in fact as well
as in law for all men and women throughout the nation.
8. Because of the strict residential qualification of suffrage
in this country, millions of citizens are disfranchised in every
election; adequate provision should be made for the registration
and voting of migratory voters.
9. The Constitution of the United States should be amended
to strengthen the safeguards of civil and political liberty, and
to remove all obstacles to industrial and social reform, and re-
construction, including the changes enumerated in this program,
in keeping with the will and interest of the people. It should
be made amendable by a majority of the voters of the nation
upon their own initiative, or upon the initiative of Congress.
4. FOREIGN RELATIONS
1. All claims of the United States against allied countries
for loans made during the war should be canceled upon the
understanding that all war debts among such countries shall
likewise be canceled. The largest possible credit in food, raw
material, and machinery should be extended to the stricken
nations of Europe in order to help them rebuild the ruined
world.
2. The Government of the United States should initiate a
movement to dissolve the mischievous organization called the
"League of Nations" and to create an international parliament,
composed of democratically elected representatives of all nations
of the world, based upon the recognition of their equal rights,
the principles of self-determination, the right to national ex-
istence of colonies and other dependencies, freedom of interna-
tional trade and trade routes by land and sea, and universal
disarmament, and be charged with revising the Treaty of Peace
on the principles of justice and conciliation.
3. The United States should immediately make peace with
the Central Powers and open commercial and diplomatic rela-
tions with Russia under the Soviet Government. It should
promptly recognize the independence of the Irish Republic.
4. The United States should make and proclaim it a fixed
principle in its foreign policy that American capitalists, who
acquire concessions or make investments in foreign countries,
do so at their own risk, and under no circumstances should our
government enter into diplomatic negotiations or controversies
or resort to armed conflicts on account of foreign property-
claims of American capitalists.
5. FISCAL
1. All war debts and other debts of the Federal Government
should immediately be paid in full, the funds for such payment
to be raised by means of a progressive property tax, whose
burdens should fall upon the rich and particularly upon great
fortunes made during the war.
2. A standing progressive income tax and a graduated in-
heritance tax should be levied to provide for all needs of the
government, including the cost of its increasing social and in-
dustrial functions.
3. The unearned increment of land should be taxed, all land
held out of use should be taxed at full rental value.
In the Driftway
OBERON, impenitent poet, was so wroth at the destruc-
tion of the Madison Square Church that he threatened
to leave for Paris — and the Drifter recorded and sympa-
thized with his woes. Now comes a venturesome spirit
from Montreal, who not only suggests the substitution of
Montreal for Paris, but declares thus that beauty is not
after all without honor even in the purlieus of Wall Street:
Suppose you advise Oberon to come to Montreal? It is nearer
than Paris, and here, too, they treat venerable objects with con-
sideration. There is that little romanesque church building on
the east side of Beaver Hall Hill, with its neatly proportioned
campanile. When trade's unfeeling train usurped the district
and dispossessed the parishioners, did they tear it down? No,
sirree! Read the large sign in bold gilt letters on the facade:
Rapid Electrotype Company. Beaver Hall Hill leads up to
Beaver Hall Square, with the smoked and streaked sandstone
fronts of its sober mansions, its patch of green, and, obscuring
all in somber shadow, its rows of veteran elms — as Irving called
them, the distinction of ancient families and the despair of a
modern aristocracy. I used to marvel how it had withstood the
industrial and commercial siege. Yet it had not: commerce and
industry had long since taken possession, but in a spirit of
reverence. One side of the square is occupied by a pulp and
paper company. There is a sign informing you of the fact,
but it does not obtrude. It is there merely for the benefit of
those who seek. In Montreal the declining number of Episco-
palians south of Phillips Square is not enough to scrap a thing
of beauty. Let Oberon come here.
Yet, come to think of it, was not that Madison Square church
an intruder? Did it not deliberately trespass upon territory
long since ceded to commerce and industry? True, most Ameri-
cans did not know it was there, but what mercy had it a right
to expect once its presence was felt and discovered? How
different the treatment accorded another building which found
itself obstructing the progress of the Metropolitan! Some of
us still remember the black and white marble structure which
once occupied the northwest corner of Fourth Avenue and
Twenty-third Street — a bank building or something. Its walls
were taken down stone by stone with religious care, then put
up again in the same order, stone by stone, and now inclose
the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes on West 142d Street. A
church house becomes an electrotype foundry; a bank building
becomes a church house: thus is the supremacy of beauty
vindicated.
That bank building was no interloper, so could claim consid-
eration. Witness also old St. Paul's and Trinity. It dizzies me
504
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2887
to try to compute the gold value of the ground they occupy.
Yet there they stand, not merely tolerated but treated with
propitiatory courtesy. They even determine the style of archi-
tecture of neighboring edifices. Who shall say that beauty
does not count in America?
*****
THE Drifter has never attended the noon services in old
Trinity, so he does not know whether the brokers flock
to hear the word of God in a house of beauty, nor do his Sun-
day mornings find him near enough to investigate whether
any but reporters hear the Rev. William T. Manning's well-
reported weekly diatribes, but he does cherish the warm
brown stone that smiles benignly upon the cold rushing
canyon of Wall Street, and his visits to the office of The
Nation would lose half their adventure did they not offer
occasion for new discoveries in the church-yard of St. Paul's.
But though his undiscerning eye neglected the Madison
Square Church dear to the heart of Oberon, the Drifter
still holds it against civilization and the subway, against
New York and America, that St. John's Church, which used,
in his reporter days, to grace his nightly return through
Varick Street, has gone the way of all good things that
stand in the way of straight wide streets and rapid motor-
ways. The peaceful Varick Street of those days, troubled
only by an occasional horse-car, has become a horror of
mighty power trucks, peaceful only in the wee small hours,
one side still the quaint relic of a more restful city but the
other the scarred victim of the subway and new traffic de-
mands. And the Drifter, who sometimes rather enjoys a fit
of passing melancholy, insists upon the privilege of mild
protest.
The Drifter
Correspondence
A British View of Ireland
To the Editor op The Nation:
Sir : The need for an impartial committee to investigate Irish
atrocities was never so urgent as now. The following quotation
from the leading editorial in the London Nation of October 2nd
gives a British point of view. How many people in America
realize the true state of affairs?
" 'Formerly in Ireland if a police officer were murdered there
was no thought of direct reprisals in the minds of the R.I.C.;
they thought only' of bringing the murderer to justice, confident
that he would be dealt with quickly and adequately by the courts.
But now the machinery of the law having broken down, they feel
there is no certain means of redress and punishment, and it is
only human that they should act on their own initiative. Pun-
ishment FOR SUCH ACTS IS A DELICATE MATTER, FOR IT MIGHT BE
INTERPRETED AS SETTING AT NAUGHT THE HOPED-FOR EFFECT OF
THE TRAINING THE OFFICERS HAVE GIVEN THEIR MEN.' — General
Macready to a representative of the Associated Press of Amer-
ica, September 10, 1920.
"Is the British Government to lose its place among the civilized
governments of the world, and to sink under their odium and
contempt? That and nothing less is the question on which the
British people have to make up their minds. Few who read the
report of General Macready's comments on Balbriggan to an
American interviewer could have believed that they were in
truth reading the language of a British general; few could
have believed that if a British general had so spoken, any
British Government would have left 'him for twenty-four hours
in his command. The interview was published in the evening
papers of Saturday. Tuesday's papers, instead of announcing
the general's recall, reported another episode of the kind that
he finds it a "delicate" matter to punish, forty houses having
been burnt to the ground in the town of Trim in the early hours
of Monday morning. Next day another town — Mallow — suf-
fered the same fate.
"For every hour this barbarian force remains in existence,
the British Government remains outside the civilized order.
It can say nothing about Lenin's Chinese executioners. It can
call in the famous report on the Belgian atrocities, and ask
Lord Bryce to make a public apology to Germany for the rude
things he said about her soldiers. For it has come to this, that
we have raised a mercenary force in England — it being no
longer possible to recruit for the R.I.C. in Ireland — among de-
mobilized officers out of a job, that we give these men a sov-
ereign a day with their keep, and let them understand, by one
kind of sous-entendu or another, that as soon as they find them-
selves on the other side of the Irish Sea they may kill, wound,
burn, and loot as they please. Even so determined an opponent
of Nationalist Ireland as Mr. Garvin calls this force by the
name of "Bashi-Bazouks," and it needs no special insight to tell
us that men recruited under these circumstances for such a
job are the last men in the world to be trusted with this hor-
rible discretion over the lives of men and women. Among
the millions who went through the war there are left idle at
this moment a number of reckless and desperate men, ac-
customed to its excitement and barbarism, who find settled life
forbidding, and for such men paid lawlessness in Ireland has
greater attractions than any prospects of adventure that offer
themselves at home. The Government have deliberately re-
cruited for service in Ireland a body of men to whom Ireland
means nothing more than the opportunity for violence pre-
sented in any occupied enemy country and, having recruited
such a body, they allow it or encourage it to become what such
a force became in Russia. They are called the "Black and
Tans." But their real name is the "Black Hundreds."
"This is nothing less than the deliberate overthrow of the
civilized order and the proclamation of Anarchy as God and
Law. It is a return to primitive times and primitive habits.
It looks as if we were bent on bringing on ourselves a worse
reproach than Germany earned in 1914 when she went into a
great crime almost without a protest. The German politicians
had at least the excuse that their country was at war. That is
a bad excuse, but it is better than any that Englishmen will
find for their silence today."
New York, October 21 John T. Wentworth
The American Legion's Indorsements
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: In your issue of October 13 there is a paragraph re-
ferring to the American Legion Convention at Cleveland, and
criticizing several of the things done there; namely, indorse-
ment of bonus legislation, compulsory military training, pro-
hibition of immigration from Japan.
The first of these certainly represents not only the opinion of
the Legion, but the opinion of 90 per cent of the ex-service
men of the country, whatever may be your opinion of the
wisdom of the action. The last of these was indorsed after con-
siderable discussion, the viewpoint of most of the delegates
being that the ex-service men of the Pacific Coast, who were on
the ground and in close touch with the facts of the case, were a
unit on the proposition, and that it was up to the ex-service
men of the rest of the country to help them out.
On the matter of conscription, however, the action was taken
in such a way that no discussion of it was possible. It came up
in the report of the Committee for Military Affairs. While
this report was being read, the Convention was presided over
by one of the vice-presidents — a gentleman who knew nothing
about parliamentary procedure, and who also was so deaf that
he could scarcely hear the motions which were made. Conse-
quently, between his efforts to hear and his efforts to find out
what he should do next, he failed to call for any discussion of
Nov. 3, 1920]
The Nation
505
the report and, before most of the delegates knew what he was
doing, took a vote on the adoption of the report. Immediately
thereafter a delegation of women was received and, about an
hour afterwards, when their part of the program was com-
pleted, it was announced that the report of the Military Affairs
Committee had been adopted.
After these proceedings, I asked about twenty of the dele-
gates if in their opinion the report had indorsed universal com-
pulsory military training in time of peace. Most of them
were so confused about the proceedings that they did not know
what had happened, but none of them believed that the Legion
had put itself on record as favoring conscription. Further-
more, only one of them stated that he was in favor of con-
scription; the other nineteen being opposed to it.
From the above you can judge just what the Legion indorse-
ment of conscription amounts to. It is, indeed, unfortunate
that such things as this are possible, and it is the hope of all
friends of the Legion that its organization will become so demo-
cratic that action on important questions such as this shall
originate with the local posts, instead of with the national
organization.
The resolution of the National Executive Committee calling
for the dismissal of Louis F. Post is another example of un-
democratic control which the Legion must do away with before
it can ever expect to become the One Big Union of ex-service
men to which it aspires.
Wallace S. Thomas,
Delegate from Ohio to the Nat'l Convention at Cleveland.
Springfield, Ohio, October 15
Misuse of America's Power
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: A public service of unusual value was performed by you
in exposing the conditions of the American occupation in Haiti
and Santo Domingo. Few people were aware of the extent to
which this country had been committed by the Secretaries of
State and the Navy, and the pains which had been taken to
keep them in ignorance of the facts are evidenced by the many
"statements," "explanations," and "reports," now being issued
— none of which goes to the heart of the issues raised by Mr.
Johnson's articles and your editorials. In exposing the misuse
of America's power The Nation has lived up to its best tradi-
tions, and deserves the thanks of all citizens, irrespective of
party, who believe in justice to little nations as well as to big
ones.
Washington, October 11 S. M. Kendrick
Whom Gompers Supports
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: Press reports quote Samuel Gompers, president of the
American Federation of Labor, as saying in a speech on October
13 at Baltimore before the International Brotherhood of
Bookbinders: "I am urging all, not to cast their votes for
Harding and that police-baiter, Coolidge, but for Cox and Roose-
velt." In his Labor Day speech at Columbus, Mr. Gompers
praised President Wilson and classed him with Washington,
Jefferson, and Lincoln. Yet Mr. Wilson, under date of Wash-
ington, D. C, November 5, 1919, sent this telegram to Governor
Calvin Coolidge:
"I congratulate you upon your election as a victory for law
and order. When that is the issue all Americans stand to-
gether."
Is that message of commendation to the "police-baiter" one
of the acts constituting Wilson a great man in the estimation
of Gompers? Does the candidate of Mr. Gompers indorse the
Wilson telegram? Will Gompers ask Cox to repudiate the
action of Wilson? Wilson has indorsed Cox. Cox has in-
dorsed Wilson.
Cincinnati, October U Alfred Henderson
Wherein the Difference Lies
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: I want to thank you for your keenly analytical editorial,
"Don't Throw Away Your Vote," which should be in the hands
of every voter before Election Day.
When the newspapers of the country are, whether malevolently
or maliciously, withholding not only the purposes and plans of
"the Farmer-Labor Party," but even the fact that there, is such
a party, it is important that such reliable opinion-makers as is
your Nation should bring the fact before the people — and it is
proportionately appreciated.
In reply to the letter in your issue of the sixth, from Mr.
Hutchins of Baltimore, I would like to say that while I have no
grievance with any one who wants to vote the Socialist ticket
and for Mr. Debs, and while I most heartily commend his spirit
of protest against those who are seeking to destroy the very
spirit of Americanism, I object very seriously to calling the
Farmer-Labor Party a "replica of the two main parties."
To mention a few particulars in which the Farmer-Labor
Party differs from the two main parties: It stands for the
"restoration of civil liberties . . . including free speech,
free press, free assemblage, right of asylum, equal opportunity,
and trial by jury; return of the Department of Justice to the
functions for which it was created." It stands for a plebiscite
before the declaration of war, except in case of actual military
invasion; for a refusal to permit our troops to aid in the ex-
ploitation of weaker people, as they are now doing in Haiti
and Santo Domingo, under one of the "two main parties"; it
stands for a recognition of the elected governments of Ireland
and Russia; it stands for the democratic control of industry
"in accordance with the experience of actual operation"; for
public ownership and operation of public utilities, including rail-
roads, mines, stockyards, grain elevators and storage plants.
To quote all the differences between the Farmer-Labor Party
and the "two main parties" would be to waste costly paper, but
that a comparison of the platforms of each of the three parties
concerned would be convincing. The one big, outstanding dif-
ference is the spirit of the Farmer-Labor Party, which is that
of service: the spirit of the "two main parties" is that of the
divine right of kings.
Denver, October 7 H. E. Kahn
The Single Tax
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: Just what is the matter with the Single Tax? Pray
tell us in a near issue. You so-called liberals all seem to dodge
it. In a way, you are worse than the reactionaries — you're
trying to make the worn-out, rickety, wobbly-wheeled old social
machine work — an impossibility. It can't be diddled. You
occupy the exact position of Henry Clay, in the 50's. Patch it
up — compromise — put a hitch here and a stitch there — do this —
do that — do anything except the right thing. Why are you so
afraid of realities? I don't see how anyone who stands for the
institution of private monopoly of land can object to the late
war, the failure at Paris, or Article X; they're all of the same
breed of crawling things — all about a trumpery title and a
patch of ground. Your railing doesn't hurt Wilson or Palmer
or Burleson, at all; they are not afraid of you in your present
position. But just say Single Tax to them, and see them coil
up for a strike!
Avoid it as you will, gentlemen, dodge it as you may, the
land question is the one that will be fought out, sooner or later,
just as the slavery question finally had to be recognized in the
60's. That, and that alone, is the chancre from which emanates
all this poison ; it must be cured first. It is not the only remedy
necessary, but it IS THE FIRST. Not more machinery, but a
new machine!
East St. Louis, October 17 Ed. Carsey
506
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2887
Books
Religion Psychologically Justified
The Religious Consciousness. A Psychological Study. By James
Bissett Pratt. The Macmillan Company.
IN religion, as in other matters, the testimony of an impartial
witness is desirable and that of an "unwilling witness" has
always been considered peculiarly precious. "The incomparable
Boyle observes," wrote Cotton Mather, "that as to religious
books, in general those which have been written by laymen and
especially by gentlemen have (caeteris paribus) been better re-
ceived and more effectual than those published by clergymen."
So in the next age Lord Chesterfield, commending the habit of
religious observances to his son, clinches his argument by ref-
erence to the belief in the justice and mercy of God avowed
by that arch-freethinker Voltaire. In our own time likewise
we find many people who are eager for some form of religious
assurances turning away from the professional and accredited
exponents of religious truth to accept the unwilling testimony
of laconic ouija-boards, agitated table-legs, and photographic
plates, which, with no conceivable prejudice or predisposition,
are thought, by certain men of scientific reputation, to have
testified to the reality of the spiritual world.
The spirits who think it worth their while to keep up a tittle-
tattle with this world through table-legs and such devices are
obviously beings of no consequence in time or eternity, the
riffraff of Elysium to whom immortality has become a burden.
"I never heard of anybody," said the elder Henry James, "whose
wits were improved by conversation with these gentry." Any
one desirous of conversing with the dead who yet live may
decently do so by opening the Bible of any of the religions of
the earth, where on any page he will find more evidence of the
reality of the spiritual world than will ever be accumulated by
those who "listen in" on the wireless telephones employed by
Sir Oliver Lodge and the rest. And yet there is a certain
struggling, misguided Tightness in our contemporary passion
for consulting table-legs! In a rather gross and comical and
pathetic fashion it represents our rejection of the faiths that
have not a leg to stand on. It grotesquely symbolizes our
search for a witness that will rap out the hard facts uncolored
by emotion.
Professor Pratt's point of view in the present volume is
avowedly scientific. He aims to describe the religious con-
sciousness as it presents itself for observation to the modern
psychologist, that is to say, without any attempt to press be-
hind phenomena into the realm of the Unknown or the Un-
knowable. An interesting feature of his treatment is a con-
stant use of the results of recent questionnaires sent out to
ascertain the present state of the religious consciousness among
various classes of Americans. Not quite incidentally, he in-
forms us that "among physical scientists 50.7 per cent believe
in immortality; biologists 37 per cent; historians 51.5 per cent;
psychologists 19.8 per cent. It is especially significant that the
percentage of believers among the more eminent psychologists
was only 8.8 per cent." The predisposition, therefore, of a
modern psychologist to corroborate the testimony of the talka-
tive table-leg is almost nil.
With the impartial curiosity of a psychologist, then, Profes-
sor Pratt enters the field of "comparative religion." His ac-
count of phenomena is remarkably fresh and instructive; and
it differs commendably from some of its predecessors in em-
phasizing rather normal than exceptional types of expprience.
He has supplemented his acquaintance with religious literature
by wide first-hand observation. He has studied the forms of
Protestantism in America, especially among the better edu-
cated classes, enriching his collections of individual experience
by extensive use of the questionnaire and by conferences with
a generation of students. Roman Catholicism he has studied in
Europe and at home under conditions which have enabled him
to describe its power over the simple-hearted and over the
mystic with sympathy and insight altogether unusual in one
of Protestant upbringing. Finally, as those who have read his
book on the faiths of India are aware, he has made his pil-
grimage through India, Burma, and Ceylon, seeking initiation
into the ktter and the spirit of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Mo-
hammedanism in mosque and shrine and temple, from peasants,
teachers, priests, and holy men.
The first effect of the comparative study of religions upon an
unsophisticated mind is probably unsettling — is, at any rate, to
shake pretty thoroughly its faith in the unique virtues of the
cult in which it was reared. But the second effect, the effect
following reflection and criticism upon such data as Professor
Pratt has amassed, is to persuade one that religion is rooted
where it cannot be eradicated, in our "whole psycho-physical
organism." Most of us are "incurably religious" because the
natural and instinctive response of our bodies and minds to
our total environment and to our racial and social inheritance
produces in us an attitude towards the Determiner of Destiny,
however we may conceive it; and produces also, inevitably,
expression of that attitude, individual or collective. Thus pri-
vate belief and public worship are to be regarded as functions
of the constant constitution of man.
A scientific investigator who has reached a conclusion so
important cannot be expected to sustain his air of impartiality
after he has reached his conclusion. And from casual comment
and criticism, scattered here and there through the volume,
emerges Professor Pratt's own idea of the religion of an edu-
cated man. It does not differ by the world's breadth from that
of the cultivated Brahmin. It has much in common with the
religion of Pater's Marius. It is rational up to the limits of
reason. "What is highest," he declares, "in the religious genius
is to be sought in his conscious states rather than in some form
of insensibility."
What psychology and the study of various religions suggests
of especial interest is the genuine value of much of the "tech-
nique" of the religious life, which many have taught themselves
to despise and discard. "Objective worship of the sort that
aims to please the Deity" is for the man of our age "a thing
of the past." Yet prayer and praise and social worship are
still "psychologically justified" as means of self-culture, as
methods of obtaining a vital feeling of the "reality" of those
truths and aspirations which the intellect approves. It is sig-
nificant that the last five chapters of the book deal with mysti-
cism, the milder forms of which Professor Pratt finds not in-
compatible with his belief that in vigorous intelligence divinity
is most likely to be found resident. As things are going now,
he declares very truly, there is little danger of an overemphasis
upon the value of that "clear dream and solemn vision," ex-
perienced, for example, by men like Milton — a kind of luminous
ecstasy in which the enriched mind becomes delightedly aware
of its relations with the mind of the world.
Stuart P. Sherman
Reparation
v
The Making of the Reparation and Economic Sections of the
Treaty. By Bernard M. Baruch. Harper and Brothers.
OTRIPPED of a certain veneer of diplomatic courtesy, Mr.
^ Baruch's argument is that the treaty is a poor treaty, but the
best that could be obtained in view of the impossible election
pledges of the British and of the war psychosis of the French.
That is, after all, the only honest justification of the treaty pos-
sible, and the political situation in America might have been quite
different had Woodrow Wilson had the intellectual honesty to
adopt it.
Mr. Baruch was economic adviser to the American Commis-
sion at the Peace Conference, and American member of the
Economic Drafting Committee, the Reparation Commission, the
Economic Commission, and of the Supreme Economic Council;
Nov. 3, 1920]
The Nation
507
no one is better qualified to tell the story of the drafting of the
economic sections of the treaty. Mr. Keynes, who took an
almost equally active part in the discussions, said that "there
can have been few negotiations in history so contorted, so miser-
able, so utterly unsatisfactory to all parties." Mr. Baruch
speaks with more caution and charity, although his conclu-
sions are not as different from Mr. Keynes's as they seem.
"Public opinion in the various Allied and Associated countries,"
he says, "had been aroused to a white heat of fear, hatred, and
distrust. Facing these facts, one can easily realize the impos-
sibility of arriving at a treaty free from passion and a sense
of wrong." "From a superficial survey of the conditions that
prevailed at the Peace Conference, one would have been quite
justified in assuming that many of the participants preferred
war with all its horrors to any peace short of that which they
demanded." Insistence upon an "ideal peace" would have meant
"the overthrow of at least three of the major governments" and
the return of more violent rather than more moderate suc-
cessors. And he concludes that the treaty under these circum-
stances "embodies all that could have been obtained." But he is
far from concluding that it was a good treaty; though he lacks
Mr. Keynes's moral indignation he is just as insistent that the
apparent stringency of the treaty will have to be modified to
meet economic inevitabilities; he differs chiefly in that he sees
in the Reparations Commission an elastic agency capable of
securing such modifications. So that he refuses to judge the
treaty finally as it stands: "the measure of its worth lies in
the processes of its execution and the spirit in which it is car-
ried out by all the parties to the contract." As to that spirit
he expresses a restrained hope but no judgment.
His book is less an argument than an exposition. Its
authoritative story of the brave fight made by the American
delegates at Paris for an honest interpretation of the pre-
armistice negotiations as the contractual basis for the peace
terms, is its most interesting section. Mr. Lloyd George had
just waged a dishonest election campaign in large part upon
the issue, "Make the Germans pay the whole cost of the war."
The French Finance Minister, facing a budget impossible to
balance, dared not admit how little could be retrieved from
Germany. Financial experts of both France and England ad-
mitted the impossibility of retrieving the total costs from Ger-
many, but wished, for political reasons, to assert the principle
of full indebtedness and postpone discussion of actual payment
to an indefinite future. The American delegates insisted, vir-
tually alone, that the acceptance of the Fourteen Points as a
basis for the terms of peace, with a reservation regarding
reparations, bound the Entente powers to the terms of that
reservation. The matter finally went from the Commission on
Reparations to the Council of Four. Mr. Wilson was on the ocean,
but he sent a message to the American delegation to dissent,
"if necessary publicly," from the proposed procedure. The
result was the acceptance of the American principle. It was
the brave and honorable course for the President to take; its
success confirms the belief that he might have had other suc-
cesses had he appealed more frequently and boldly to public
opinion instead of agreeing at the outset to a veil of secrecy
which mildewed the entire conference. But the result upon
the American delegation appears to have been to lead them to
fear public conflict in which they might have been maneuvered
into an attitude of apparent pro-Germanism. The position was
difficult enough; Mr. Baruch calls the American attitude
"charity," but the rapid verdict of history is hardly confirming
that judgment.
There were other conflicts of opinion, and in the most im-
portant the American delegation was defeated. Mr. Baruch
tells little of the discussion regarding the obviously unjustified
inclusion of military pensions and separation allowances under
the heading "damage done to the civilian population"; but he
attributes the final decision to the influence of General Smuts.
This is a charge of which more is likely to be heard. The re-
fusal to fix the final amount which Germany would be called
upon to pay was perhaps the most disastrous of the failures
of the American delegation, although the issue was one of
those which it fought hardest. Mr. Baruch gives us the Ameri-
can argument; it would be good reading had he given us some
of the debate on the subject, as he does on the cost of the war
question. The American argument for an honest facing of the
situation seems irrefutable, but political considerations pre-
dominated, and the Americans were solaced with provisions
which gave the Reparations Commission power to modify and
interpret the treaty. This is, of course, being done, by con-
ferences of the prime ministers; it is not being done, as Mr.
Baruch hints, by the Reparations Commission, which is ham-
strung by the severe necessity of unanimous decision. Mr.
Baruch trusts that time will bring a more liberal view to the
Entente statesmen and that the treaty is sufficiently elastic
to admit of its own rewriting without a new peace conference.
It is not, as a matter of fact, the potentially elastic terms of
the treaty which are so modifying its terms; sections of the
treaty are being scrapped by virtually forced agreement of the
major Powers at conferences of the prime ministers which are
in effect new peace conferences.
There will be no such storm of discussion aroused by Mr.
Baruch's book as by Mr. Keynes's. Mr. Baruch has too much
of that impractical optimism which was so characteristic of
the American delegation throughout the Peace Conference and
so fatal to its endeavors. It is a very slight book in size; half
its bulk is a reprint, with marginal comments, of the repara-
tions and economic sections of the treaty. But, though Mr.
Baruch is still somewhat under the influence of the pall of
Paris, he lifts something of the veil of secrecy, and when he
does he speaks with authority, and not as the journalists. It is
an invaluable contribution.
Mr. Baruch leaves the reader very proud of the series of
positions taken by the American delegation. Whether or not
the verdict of history be that it might have fought still more
vigorously, or more publicly, against the stagnating atmos-
phere of the Conference, history must justify close to every
position it took. On two points only is it likely to be con-
demned: on its refusal to continue the inter- Allied economic
controls after the war, and on its refusal to share in the after-
war financial burdens of our Allies. Mr. Baruch, like Mr.
Keynes, suggests that this might have led to a mitigation of
the vindictiveness of the terms of reparation; it might also
have led to a profound change in the baffled sense of despera-
tion which has undoubtedly been responsible for much of the
French post-war diplomacy. But on both of these points Ameri-
can public opinion then and now has been in accord with the
course of our representatives at Paris. It will take time for
us too to see the light. L. S. G.
General Booth
The Life of General William Booth, the Founder of the Salva-
tion Army. By Harold Begbie. The Macmillan Company.
2 vols.
WILLIAM BOOTH was born in a dilapidated family which
took little interest in religion. Circumstances snatched
him from a private academy and put him behind the counter of
a pawnbroker. Inner experience — in which the renunciation of
a silver pencil, dishonestly acquired, played an important part —
there transformed his heart. For a considerable period he
divided his activities between being a pawnbroker by day and
being a preacher by night. Through the help of a friend, rather
than through any sense of the incompatibility of his pursuits, he
became a clergyman. But his sincerity and strenuousness found
the limitations of ecclesiasticism more unbearable than those of
the pawnshop, and he left the churches to set up an independent
mission for the submerged of London. "We are moral scaven-
gers, netting the very sewers," he wrote. Of this mission he was
"General Superintendent." The masterfulness of his nature
508
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2887
made his fellow workers drop the noun rather than the adjective,
and he was "General" before there was an army. Gradually
metaphor was metamorphosed into reality and an army arose
to match the General. The chief officers sprang from his own
household, multiplied his personality, and confirmed his autoc-
racy. His rise from persecution to popularity was rapid. Only
a few years separate virulent attacks upon him by mobs and
bishops from interviews with all the rulers of the world and
throngs hanging upon his words in vast halls. This most
characteristic portion of his career the brave General thus sums
up: "My arms are not long enough. I find that when I am in
touch with the poor, I lose my hold upon the rich, and when I
reach up to the rich, I let go of the poor. I very much doubt
whether God Almighty's arms are long enough for this." The
period of popularity was broken into by anxieties, disappoint-
ments, family misunderstandings, and sore bereavements. The
Army's offensive was complicated by problems of the commis-
sariat. The General discovered that salvation reaches into the
outer as well as into the inner world. The great evangelist
became, of dire necessity, agricultural overseer, colonizer, and
diplomat. He was compelled to keep men saving in order to keep
them saved. Then he became a world-ambassador and fought
old age with immense journeyings, a restricted diet, and never-
failing summonses of crowds to penitent benches. Blindness fell
upon him. "I have done what I could for God and the people
with my eyes," he at once told his son. "Now I shall do what
I can for God and the people without my eyes." On dying, he
exacted a promise from his son for the homeless and for China,
and, smiling over the "bonnie handful" left to do, he fell asleep.
When we finish these volumes, we hang his picture on the line —
where Paul and Hildebrand and Francis and Luther hang.
He loved the masses — not as pathetic objects but as lost and
blameworthy children of God. He did not wish to feed but to
restore them. "Kindness without an effort at conversion," he
thought, "will do more harm than good." He always heard "the
tramp of the multitudes as they march down to the gates of
hell." "All you chaps who belong to Nobody, follow me," he
always seemed calling. Toward the end of his own journey, his
diary records: "Poor night. Turning and twisting for hours
with a strange weight at my heart. It is strange how the
world's sin and miseries are allowed to pile themselves up in the
chambers of the soul."
He had an incomparable intensity of nature. Almost every
page of the book seems an illustration of his assertion: "You
can only keep company with God by running at full speed."
And he had to run on a narrow track. As Mr. Begbie puts it:
"For the sake of Christ, he denied his period." On one of his
rare trips toward scholarship he wrote in his diary: "Visited
the British Museum. Walked up and down there praying that
God would enable me to acquire knowledge to increase my use-
fulness." Indolence was hateful to him. His daughter ex-
tracted a promise from him in his old age to lie still until she
brought tea. Soon she heard him bustling about. In answer to
her reproof he said: "I've been thinking of all the sufferings of
little children in the cities and I can't sleep." We even dis-
cover him kneeling with Cecil Rhodes in a railway compartment,
praying for Rhodes's soul.
Booth was an autocrat, conscious of power and achievement.
He boasted that he was general to his own children before he
was father. He dared address his missioners thus: "Confidence
in God and me are absolutely indispensable now and ever."
Again: "I am determined that evangelists must hold my views
and work on my lines." He wished this question uppermost
among his officers: "What does the General believe and what
does the General do?" Even Gladstone was amazed at the auto-
cratic regulations of the Army. He was decidedly self-aware.
"The whole human family," he wrote his wife, "are being laid
under obligation to us more and more day by day." He even
rejoiced that though saved by grace he was to be judged by
works.
There can be no doubt that Mr. Begbie has laid us all under
immense obligation through the unusual blend of candor, in-
sight, and reverence with which he has limned the picture of
this noble soul. And yet we must confess to a feeling of disap-
pointment. At important places the story lacks clarity. The
process of Booth's conversion, the details of his break with
Methodism, the transition of the mission into the army, the
most significant attitude of the General to the Sacraments, are
all too insufficiently treated. That the book cannot be regarded
as the definitive account of the General is clear because Mr.
Begbie has felt it unwise and declares it unnecessary to con-
sider Booth's serious disagreements with his children. How far
his undeniable English patriotism and his love of arbitrary
authority may have got the better of his concern for the Army
cannot be known apart from that controversy. Occasionally his
concern for the Army seems to transcend his sympathy for the
humanity it was organized to serve. Perhaps the most serious
disappointment of all is the paucity of reference to General
Booth's immediate touch with the outcast. We miss the bugles
and the tears of the Army too much. For them we could have
forfeited details of royal audiences and some of the "fine writ-
ing" of the first volume. Perhaps Mr. Begbie did not wish to
trench on the material covered in "Twice-Born Men," that mar-
velous work of his which captivated William James.
A. W. Vernon
Persian Literature
A History of Persian Literature under Tartar Dominion (A. D.
1265-1502). By Edward G. Browne. Cambridge University
Press.
HP HE literature of Persia has found a most able and enthusi-
*■ astic interpreter in Professor Edward G. Browne, of the
University of Cambridge, who has already published two. ex-
haustive volumes entitled "A Literary History of Persia," bring-
ing the subject down to the middle of the thirteenth century.
Now comes a third, covering the period from 1265 to 1502. It
is practically a continuation, if not so in name and form, of the
other two standard volumes, and takes its place by the side of
them as a masterpiece of sound scholarship and critical judg-
ment.
The present book, of nearly six hundred pages, keeps the his-
toric background ever in view and treats with great detail the
literary epochs that marked the long period between the re-
nowned Sa'di and the great mystic and lyric poet Jami. The
well-known monuments in prose and verse which belong to the
different eras, are fully discussed; not only that, but the scope
of the work is so far-reaching that some of the out-of-the-way
authors presented are not wholly familiar even to the more
special student of Persian literature. In fact, in a number of
instances they are now made available for the first time through
translations directly from manuscripts that are not ordinarily
accessible. In these and in other cases the reproduction of the
Persian text itself adds materially to the value of the volume.
Persia's famous lyrist, Hafiz, comes in for elaborate consid-
eration in fifty pages, extremely useful information being given
also regarding the many translations of this anacreontic poet
of Shiraz. Hafiz, it may be noted, lamented in more than one
verse when the wine-shops in his native city were closed by an
austere ruler of the Province of Fars, but broke forth in a song
of rejoicing when strict prohibition was relaxed by that ruler's
more lenient successor. It could be wished that so skilled a
translator as Professor Browne had added more of his own
renderings of the celebrated singer of the nightingale and the
rose, but he refrained from so doing, in order to give space to
some of the noteworthy versions by others.
Everyone will agree that the author's enthusiastic praise of
Jami as "at once a great poet, a great scholar, and a great
mystic" is not overdone; the selections given in the last forty
pages of the book will abundantly prove the truth of this.
Nov. 3, 1920]
The Nation
509
Added value is lent to the work by a dozen photographic repro-
ductions from rare Persian manuscripts as illustrations of the
text.
It may interest after-dinner speakers to find, on page 242,
that the story of the mouse who accidentally tasted a few drops
from a wine-jar and then boldly began to inquire where the
accursed cat was, is as old in substance as a Persian poem by
Ubayd-i Zakani, who died in 1371! But the English translator
has not heard the tale in the form in which it went the rounds
of late. Certainly our modern toastmasters could not have
imagined that their story had been anticipated in Persia more
than five hundred years ago; so, after all, there is something
new in the Land of the Lion and the Sun.
A. V. Williams Jackson
A Psychoanalyst of Poetry
Skepticisms. By Conrad Aiken. Alfred A. Knopf.
MR. AIKEN welcomes the decay of judicial criticism as the
poet-critic's opportunity. When there is no judge to con-
trol the verdict of public opinion, the way lies open for the
special pleader; and all creative artists, he tells us in the
Apologia Pro Specie Sua prefixed to his collected reviews, are
competitors for a favorable verdict, all are consciously or un-
consciously engaged in glorifying their own predilections. They
must not only create works of art, but secure the acceptance of
standards adapted to the nature of their output. Hence when
a poet sets out to review the work of his rivals we may watch
for the knife under the cloak.
The papers which follow this confession of malice prepense
do not disappoint the reader's expectation of pungent comment.
As his title implies, Mr. Aiken has his doubts of the widely
heralded merits of contemporary poetry. The British product
seems to him in the mass thin in substance, the American
undistinguished in form. "For the present," he remarks of his
lyric countrymen, "the majority of our poets are not so much
poets as symptoms." To determine the poetic malaise of the
moment, accordingly, he listens to each successive volume of
verse as the psychoanalyst listens to the soliloquies of the pa-
tient. His conclusions are brilliant and keenly reasoned disclo-
sures of the temperamental limitations and mistakes of his poetic
colleagues, sometimes tempered at the end with a handsome com-
pliment to the victim's well-known professional ability. In so far
as Mr. Aiken's lucid and discriminating opinions may offset the
mawkish and meaningless eulogy of "poeteering" journalists,
we may be unqualifiedly grateful to him.
He does, however, invite disagreement with his critical prin-
ciples by announcing them with excessive candor. One might
quarrel with Mr. Aiken's view that criticism is a "branch of
psychology" on the ground of the age of the one and the youth
of the other, but it is more important to note that his psycho-
logical bent frequently tempts him to pursue ignoble game. It
lures him away from the poetry of Miss Amy Lowell to dash
after her prose; it impels him to tree Mr. Braithwaite on two
several occasions, and to bring to earth with arrowy sarcasm
many a "dawn-twitterer" of sentimental lyrics. His attitude of
diagnostician, moreover, leads him to take an abnormal interest
in abnormality, so that his book tends to become a catalogue of
the weaker qualities of the worst poets. This emphasis on the
faulty, perhaps more than the accidents of reviewing, may
explain the omission of any extended consideration of Robert
Frost and the purely descriptive treatment accorded to John
Masefield in Mr. Aiken's pages. With healthy men the physi-
cian can do no business. And finally, Mr. Aiken's aesthetic
perceptions gain as much and as little by being translated into
the semi-scientific jargon of Freud, Pavlov, and Kostylev as
Hamlet's soliloquies might if translated into Eskimo.
It is when he forgets to play the amateur psychologist and
speaks as a skilful craftsman of his art that Mr. Aiken con-
tributes passages of notable subtlety and depth to contempo-
rary criticism. At his best he is capable of flawless interpre-
tation, even of poetry antithetical to his personal tastes.
Nothing in its way could be better than his appreciation of
John Gould Fletcher's color symphonies. He calls them ". . .
a sort of absolute poetry, a poetry of detached waver and
brilliance, a beautiful flowering of language alone, a partheno-
genesis, as if language were fertilized by itself rather than by
thought or feeling. Remove the magic of phrase and sound,
and there is nothing left: no thread of continuity, no relation
between one page and the next, no thought, no story, no
emotion. But the magic of phrase and sound is powerful, and
it takes one into a fantastic world where one is etherialized,
where one has deep emotions indeed, but emotions star-pow-
dered, and blown to flame by speed and intensity rather than
by thought or human warmth." Though himself tempera-
mentally inclined toward realistic and narrative poetry, poetry
of which the appeal is "not merely aesthetic, but intellectual and
emotional also — in the richest sense, human," Mr. Aiken is
liberal and catholic in his appreciation of poems in the deco-
rative and lyric tradition. Except when he leans violently
toward the absolute in art to counterbalance Mr. Untermeyer's
inclination toward the sociological, he rarely sways from the
true critical perpendicular. And this momentary loss of poise
is a matter of practice rather than of theory: all that the
robust Mr. Untermeyer urges us to admire in poetry might be
included in Mr. Aiken's definition (given in a calmer moment) :
". poetry to be poetry must after all rise above a
mere efficiency of charmingness, or efficiency of accuracy, to
this sort of piercing perfection of beauty or truth, phrased in
piercing perfection of music."
George F. Whicher
Susan Glaspell
Plays. By Susan Glaspell. Small, Maynard and Company.
¥ N the rude little auditorium of the Provincetown Players on
* MacDougall Street there is an iron ring in the wall, and a
legend informs you that the ring was designed for the tethering
of Pegasus. But the winged horse has never been seen. An
occasional play might have allured him; the acting of it would
invariably have driven him to indignant flight. For, contrary
to what one would expect, the acting of the Players has been
not only crude and unequal; it has been without energy, without
freshness, without the natural stir and eloquence that come
from within. This is the circumstance which has tended to
obscure the notable talent of Susan Glaspell. The Washington
Square Players produced "Trifles" and thus gave a wide repute
to what is by no means her best work. "Bernice," not only her
masterpiece but one of the indisputably important dramas of
the modern English or American theater, was again played by
the Provincetown Players with more than their accustomed
feebleness and lack of artistic lucidity. The publication of Miss
Glaspell's collected plays at last lifts them out of the tawdriness
of their original production and lets them live by their own
inherent life.
That life is strong, though it is never rich. In truth, it is
thin. Only it is thin not like a wisp of straw, but like a tongue
of flame. Miss Glaspell is morbidly frugal in expression, but
nakedly candid in substance. There are no terrors for her in
the world of thought; she thinks her way clearly and hardily
through a problem and always thinks in strictly dramatic terms.
But her form and, more specifically, her dialogue, have something
of the helplessness and the numb pathos of the "twisted things
that grow in unfavoring places" which employ her imagination.
She is a dramatist, but a dramatist who is a little afraid of
speech. Her dialogue is so spare that it often becomes arid;
at times, as in "The Outside," her attempt to lend a stunted
utterance to her silenced creatures makes for a hopeless ob-
scurity. The bleak farmsteads of Iowa, the stagnant villages
510
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2887
of New England, have touched her work with penury and chill.
She wants to speak out and to let her people speak out. But
neither she nor they can conquer a sense that free and intimate
and vigorous expression is a little shameless. To uncover one's
soul seems almost like uncovering one's body. Behind Miss
Glaspell's hardihood of thought hover the fear and self-torment
of the Puritan. She is a modern radical and a New England
school teacher; she is a woman of intrepid thought and also
the cramped and aproned wife on some Iowa farm. She is a
composite, and that composite is intensely American. She is
never quite spontaneous and unconscious and free, never the
unquestioning servant of her art. She broods and tortures her-
self and weighs the issues of expression.
If this view of Miss Glaspell's literary character is correct,
it may seem strange upon superficial consideration that four
of her seven one-act plays are comedies. But two of them, the
rather trivial "Suppressed Desires" and the quite brilliant
"Tickless Time," were written in collaboration with George
Cram Cook, a far less scrupulous and more ungirdled mind.
Her comedy, furthermore, is never hearty. It is not the comedy
of character but of ideas, or, rather, of the confusion or false-
ness or absurdity of ideas. "Woman's Honor" is the best ex-
ample of her art in this mood. By a sound and strictly dramatic
if somewhat too geometrical device, Miss Glaspell dramatizes
a very searching ironic idea: a man who refuses to establish
an alibi in order to save a woman's honor dies to prove her
possessed of what he himself has taken and risks everything to
demonstrate the existence of what has ceased to be. The one-
act tragedies are more characteristic of her; they cleave deep,
but they also illustrate what one might almost call her taci-
turnity. That is the fault of her best-known piece, "Trifles."
The theme is magnificent; it is inherently and intensely dra-
matic, since its very nature is culmination and crisis. But the
actual speech of the plan is neither sufficient nor sufficiently
direct. Somewhere in every drama words must ring out. They
need not ring like trumpets. The ring need not be loud, but it
must be clear. Suppose in "Trifles" you do not, on the stage,
catch the precise significance of the glances which the neighbor
women exchange. There need have been no set speech, no false
eloquence, no heightening of what these very women might
easily have said in their own persons. But one aches for a
word to release the dumbness, complete the crisis, and drive
the tragic situation home.
The same criticism may be made, though in a lesser degree,
of Miss Glaspell's single full-length play, "Bernice." No pro-
duction would be just to the very high merits of that piece
which did not add several speeches to the first and third acts
and give these the spiritual and dramatic clearness which the
second already has. Crude people will call the play "talky."
But indeed there is not quite talk enough. Nor does Miss
Glaspell deal here with simple and stifled souls. That objection
is the only one to be made. The modern American drama has
nothing better to show than Miss Glaspell's portrait of the
"glib and empty" writer whose skill was "a mask for his lack
of power" and whose wife sought, even as she died, to lend him
that power through the sudden impact of a supremely tragic
reality. The surface of the play is delicate and hushed. But
beneath the surface is the intense struggle of rending forces.
Bernice is dead. The soft radiance of her spirit is still upon
the house. It is still reflected in her father's ways and words.
Her husband and her friend hasten to that house. And now
the drama sets in, the drama that grows from Bernice's last
words to her old servant. It is a dramatic action that moves
and stirs and transforms. There is hardly the waving of a
curtain in those quiet rooms. Yet the dying woman's words
are seen to have been a creative and dramatic act. Through
a bright, hard window one watches people in a house of mourn-
ing. They stand or sit and talk haltingly as people do at such
times. Nothing is done. Yet everything happens — death and
life and a new birth. What more can drama give?
Ludwig Lewtsohn
An Elder America
The Age of Innocence. By Edith Wharton. D. Appleton and
Company.
The Vacation of the Kelwyns. By William Dean Howells. Har-
per and Brothers.
\\J E can no more do without some notion or other of an
* » age more golden than our own than we can do without
bread. There must be, we assure ourselves, a more delectable
day yet to come, or there must have been one once. The evi-
dence of prophecy, however, is stronger than that of history,
which, somehow, fails to find the perfect age. Mrs. Wharton
has never ranged herself with the prophets, contented, ap-
parently, with being the most intellectual of our novelists and
surveying with level, satirical eyes the very visible world. By
the "Age of Innocence" she means the seventies in New York
during the past century; and the innocence she finds there is
"the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and
the heart against experience." To the hotter attacks which
angrier critics have recently been making upon that age she
does not lend herself. Her language is cool and suave. And
yet the effect of her picture is an unsparing accusation of that
genteel decade when the van der Luydens of Skuytercliff were
the ultimate arbiters of "form" in Manhattan, and "form" was
occupation and religion for the little aristocracy which still
held its tight fortress in the shaggy city so soon about
to overwhelm it. The imminence of the rising tide is never
quite indicated. How could it be, when the characters of the
action themselves do not see it, bound up as they are with
walking their wintry paths and hugging their iron taboos?
Newland Archer suspects a change, but that is because he is
a victim of the tribal order which sentences him to a life with- -
out passion, without expression, without satisfaction. The
Countess Olenska suspects it, but she too is a victim, too fine
for the rougher give-and-take of her husband's careless Euro-
pean society and yet not conventional enough for the dull
routine which in her native New York covers the fineness to
which also she is native. The peculiar tragedy of their sacri-
fice is that it is for the sake of a person, Archer's wife, who
is virtuous because she is incapable of temptation, competent
because she is incapable of any deep perturbation, and willing
to suit herself to the least decorum of their world because she
is incapable of understanding that there is anywhere anything
larger or freer. The unimaginative not only miss the flower
of life themselves but they shut others from it as well.
Mrs. Wharton's structure and methods show no influence of
the impressionism now broadening the channel of fiction; she
does not avoid one or two touches of the florid in her impas-
sioned scenes; she rounds out her story with a reminiscent
chapter which forces in the note of elegy where it only par-
tially belongs. But "The Age of Innocence" is a masterly
achievement. In lonely contrast to almost all the novelists who
write about fashionable New York, she knows her world. In
lonely contrast to the many who write about what they know
without understanding it or interpreting it, she brings a su-
perbly critical disposition to arrange her knowledge in signifi-
cant forms. These characters who move with such precision
and veracity through the ritual of a frozen caste are here as
real as their actual lives would ever have let them be. They
are stiff with ceremonial garments and heavy with the weight
of imagined responsibilities. Mrs. Wharton's triumph is that
she has described these rites and surfaces and burdens as
familiarly as if she loved them and as lucidly as if she hated
them.
"The Vacation of the Kelwyns," a novel written by William
Dean Howells about 1910 but for unannounced reasons not
then published, also turns back to the idyllic seventies, when
Professor Kelwyn and his family went from a New England
college to spend the summer in a house rented by them from a
Shaker community and run for them by a pair of rustics so
Nov. 3, 1920]
The Nation
511
impossible in customs and manners that they have to be dis-
charged. To the task of discharging them the Kelwyns's entire
vacation is devoted. About this trivial theme play all the
warmth and grace and gentleness which marked the later
Howells. But here is more than farce and timid hesitancy:
here is a document upon that pastoral age. Genteel New Eng-
land, no less than genteel New York, stood on precarious foun-
dations. Democracy menaced it. In a thoroughly aristocratic
society the impossible Kites could have been discharged in a
sentence; in a thoroughly democratic society there could have
been some meeting of the different minds, and a mutual adjust-
ment. In the half-and-half society of the seventies there was
nothing to do but twist and turn and hint and hope.
C. V. D.
Books in Brief
H DENNIS BRADLEY'S "Not For Fools" (London: Grant
Richards) began as a series of newspaper articles
written during the war. Mr. Bradley is a business man in
London whose business was decided to be essential, and so he was
not called upon for military service. Instead of greeting this im-
munity with grateful silence he made it an opportunity to attack
the government with great vigor, and particularly those depart-
ments having to do with expenditures and propaganda. At first
no newspaper would print his denunciations, and he had to
insert them as paid advertisements, but after awhile he became
a welcome contributor to many journals and gathered a large
following. Of course it is not news today that money was wasted
idiotically during the war, and that free speech was abrogated,
and that the old men who could not fight were a great deal more
eager for the slaughter than the young men who could and had
to. But when Mr. Bradley first enunciated these propositions
they were less obvious and a good deal more shocking. Un-
luckily, his genuine success as a critic of official stupidity and
dishonesty filled him with a considerable admiration for himself
as a brilliant and unfettered thinker, and so he embellishes his
war papers with specimens of his ratiocination in other fields.
A specimen epigram: "My only objection to business is that it
interferes with pleasure." Another: "The average musical
comedy is an unmusical tragedy of stupidity and cupidity." The
book, rather oddly, is illustrated with excellent designs in color
by Rilette and Jacques D'Or.
AMASS of useful data for the student of Italian literature
or the lover of the drama is collected between the covers of
"Goldoni and the Venice of his Time" (Macmillan), by Joseph
Spencer Kennard. After briefly sketching the history of Italian
comedy before Goldoni and tracing to their probable origins the
characters and masks of his plays, the author takes up the life
of the playwright; then, in the final half of the study, the
comedies are discussed and the evolution of plots and characters
set forth; until the reader comes to realize how Goldoni gathered
the threads of the past, the golden thread of classical comedy
and the coarser homespun of the commedia dell' arte, in order to
mingle them and prepare the woof for modern comedy. It is a
painstaking, if somewhat loosely discursive production, docu-
mented with footnotes and a bibliography which is the best evi-
dence of the attraction scholars everywhere have felt toward the
amiable Carlo; grouped around his portrait the author has
placed the portraits of all his friends and foes. Of course, some
of this discursiveness was needed to correct the Memoirs, written,
like Goldoni's letters and prefaces, with all the actor's regard to
his audience, and present to us the real Goldoni in his prosaic
but lovable simplicity. Certainly, to know the playwright
through his biography and his comedies is to know Goldoni's
Venice, for rarely if ever has an author so clearly mirrored in
deeds and works the thought, the atmosphere, the very soul of
his environment.
BRENTANOS
Retail Book Department
Fifth Avenue and 27th Street, New York City
BOOKS ON PRESENT DAY TOPICS
Problems of Today
By Moorfield Storey $1.50
In this timely book, Mr. Storey brings his long ex-
perience with affairs and keen analytic mind to the
study of such pressing topics as the Use of Parties,
Lawlessness, Racial Prejudices, the Labor Question,
and Our Foreign Relations. He writes always with
penetration, lucidity, and a wealth of illustration, and
from a point of view at once progressive and well
balanced.
Chaos and Order in Industry
By G. D. H. Cole $2.75
Mr. Cole does not pretend that industry is a problem
that can be isolated from the whole question of social
structure. In so far as he has so treated it it has been
purely for the purpose of stimulating discussion. The
book as a whole is constructive and points the way
to what the author considers a far better and more
efficient social and industrial system.
Labor's Crisis: An Employer's View of
Labor Problems
By Sigmund Mendelsohn $1.50
The question of labor reform is taken up by this em-
ployer from the employer's point of view. He ana-
lyzes labor's propositions to remedy the existing
unrest, argues that the labor scarcity is not entirely
due to decrease in the number of laborers, and sug-
gests many effects of the unrest itself on production
and on labor. It is a thoughtful study by a keen,
open-minded employer, contributing to one of the
most important discussions of the day.
A Constitution for the Socialist Common-
wealth of Great Britain
By Sidney and Beatrice Webb $4.25
What is here presented is more than a Constitution
(though as a practicable and characteristically Brit-
ish scheme for Parliamentary and Local Government
reform it may receive the attention of statesmen and
students). It is more even than a fully worked-out
plan for Nationalization and Municipalization, with
"workers' control." With its proposals for the de-
velopment of the Cooperative Movement, for the re-
organization of the Vocational World, and for the
coordination of all factors, from the Crown to the
Works Committee, it sets forth a complete Socialist
Commonwealth.
The New World
By Frank Comerford $2.00
Frank Comerford made a searching study of unrest
in Europe from Ireland to the Bolshevik Front. Upon
his return he was special prosecutor for the State of
Illinois in the celebrated Red cases in which twenty
men were found guilty of conspiring to overthrow
the Government and sentenced to the penitentiary.
Mr. Comerford trailed unrest in Europe and America
and literally interviewed the specter which is menac-
ingly hanging over the world. He has given voice
to the mass mind of a brooding world. It is a great
human document, in which the truth thrills the reader.
Postage Additional
BRENTANOS
Retail Book Department
Fifth Avenue and 27th Street
New York City
512
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2887
LEAVING the radicals to Mr. Palmer, the steel workers to
Judge Gary, and the Negroes to the lynching parties, Henry
Seidel Canby studies the virtues and shortcomings of "Every-
day Americans" (Century). This group comprises the com-
fortable middle-class "old" Americans, of at least high-school
education, who would certainly agree with Mr. Canby that "the
hope of the founders to establish a stable and prosperous re-
publican government where life, property, conscience, and opin-
ion were safe has been realized." So it has, for them. Every-
day Americans are not so addicted to the free exercise of their
minds as to run any risk of arrest for heretical opinions. They
are too busy reading the great national advertising weekly.
"Conservative liberals" in their thinking, they are often radical
in business and philanthropic enterprise. Physical and moral
radicals Mr. Canby calls the great business organizers who
ruthlessly scrap old machinery and the philanthropists who
uplift millions by destroying the hook-worm or the saloon. But
intellectual radicals are rare. Our liberalism — an admirable
eighteenth century product — is cherished largely as a tradition.
Our education provides us with a set of ideals "like a row of
preserved vegetables canned and hermetically sealed for future
contingencies." We rather fear to take off the lids; the con-
tents may have "worked." Our political and economic thinking
is a museum of what John Stuart Mill called dead beliefs —
beliefs we profess but do not practice. And the stagnation
and inertia of our traditional liberalism: "its blindness to the
new waves of freedom sweeping upward from the masses and
on in broken and muddy torrents through the world are poignant
dangers."
HARVARD plans no second Memorial Hall to commemorate
the death of her sons in the Great War. But as endur-
ing, as valuable, and more telling are the "Memoirs of the
Harvard Dead in the War Against Germany" (Harvard Uni-
versity Press) by M. A. DeWolfe Howe. These volumes leave
to unknowing posterity no mere names chiseled in stone, but a
complete picture of each of the young men who gave their
lives. The first volume, "The Vanguard," includes thirty biog-
raphies of those who died before April, 1917, "who held with
their blood the pledge of the overwhelming sentiment in favor
of the Allies which in time was to make our country an active
participant in the fight." The stories are simply told. Their
fullness varies with the material supplied by friends and family.
Each has its appeal, each its rich emotional chord, that of
Harry Gustav Byng striking a shade deeper than the rest.
But the book amply fulfills the hope of an offering that is
worthy and that will carry its message to the sons of sons.
Art
Our National Print Room
rpHE Print Room at the Library of Congress has never yet
*■ been appreciated as it deserves. In spaciousness, propor-
tions, lighting, arrangements for exhibition and for students,
few can compete with it. Berlin and Vienna have nothing so
fine, nor has Paris in the Cabinet des Estampes at the Biblio-
theque Nationale. Even the new Print Room in the British
Museum is far from being so well planned and equipped for
practical use. It is true that, on the other hand, older Print
Rooms contain treasures that Washington cannot boast, and
that their collections are apt to be more complete in the work
of certain artists and certain periods. But Washington has
not had their chances; it is still too young in comparison; and
this is the very reason why more should be known of what it
has done and what it is doing. Generous American collectors
hitherto have preferred to lavish their generosity on local
museums and galleries. If they realized the great beginning
at Washington and the opportunities offered, they might make
it their ambition and pride to fill up the gaps left by inade-
quate government appropriations and to see that our National
Print Room, in its possessions as in its architecture, becomes as
important as any of the much older collections of Europe.
The exhibition now on display at Washington is particularly
helpful in showing what is being done, for it is devoted to
recent accessions. It does not pretend to share the historical
or technical aim of those exhibitions arranged of late by Mr.
Weitenkampf in the New York Public Library which have
proved of so much interest to artists, students, and collectors.
The Washington Print Room is a national institution and has
a national duty to perform. It must let the people of the coun-
try, who are its real owners, see from time to time what it has
acquired for them by purchase or gift or by the tax imposed
by the law of copyright upon the publisher. Unless this fact
is remembered, the first impression might be a trifle discon-
certing. One passes with something of a shock from a six-
teenth century wood block to a contemporary colored aquatint,
or from an eighteenth century line engraving to a Cubist litho-
graph, or from the big war lithographs to proofs of the little
drawings on wood made by Whistler in the sixties. There is no
attempt at definite sequence or chronological order in the
arrangement, no division of prints into classes according to
mediums, though such an arrangement would have been more
suggestive technically. The endeavor has been rather to place
the prints to the best advantage in the cases and to space and
balance them so that they can be seen with the greatest degree
of comfort and pleasure. In this the exhibition is altogether
successful. Again, had the object been to show only the finest
prints, more than one now included would have been omitted.
But others besides the finest prints have their use in a national
collection, and a glance at the last catalogue of the Print Room
compiled before these recent acquisitions might explain the
presence of many of the less important. The main interest,
however, is not so much in the prints considered individually
as in the policy that evidently guided their selection.
There is hardly a Print Room that is not the poorer because
it failed to acquire certain prints when the artist produced
them and they could be had for a sum within the reach of the
thriftiest government — and most governments have a way of
growing thrifty when it is a question of art. Of course, some
prints whose price is today prohibitive, if they can be had at
all, were made in years when there were no Print Rooms to
store them in. But some, sold today for fabulous figures,
could have been obtained no longer ago than yesterday for the
proverbial song. Curators and directors, however, are some-
times timid, distrustful of their own judgment, and fearful of
criticism, and they miss their chance. In this connection the
names of Whistler and the now overesteemed Meryon will at
once leap to the mind of all who know anything about prints.
It is another thing with those etchers of our own times whose
fantastic fame and extravagant prices have been manufac-
tured deliberately by dealers and in the auction room, their
etchings floated like so much oil or mining stock. It is just
because the price their work fetches gives them an artificial
prominence that their contemporaries are fought shy of by the
average private or public collector who has neither knowledge
of art nor genuine feeling for it, but who makes cost his cri-
terion. In the Library of Congress Print Room, fortunately,
the effort is to avoid all such artificial values and distinctions.
Even though the wise tendency is to acquire modern work,
the older work is by no means neglected, and it is likely that,
if there are gaps, it is because the prices of much-needed exam-
ples soared too far above the Print Room's purse. .But it is
clear that great attention is given to the work of men still
living or who died only yesterday — men like the French Buhot,
Bracquemond, Jacquemart, the British Spencer-Pryse, Shannon,
McBey, the American Piatt, Pennell, MacLaughlan. Mistakes
may have been made and, here and there, a print chosen might
better be dispensed with now and forevermore. But the ten-
dency to acquire modern work is in the right direction.
N. N.
International Relations Section
The Doctrine of the Natural
Frontiers of France
By JAMES WESTFALL THOMPSON
" A/T AN'" once wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, "shall not
1VA live by bread alone, but principally by catch-words."
Every great nation has some traditional and unwritten law
which it has continually invoked, and which has profoundly
influenced its history. With Great Britain it is the "sov-
ereignty of the sea" ; with the United States it is the Mon-
roe Doctrine; in the history of France for centuries the
cry has been "natural frontiers," i.e., the Rhine, the Alps,
and the Pyrenees.
This doctrine has had profound influence upon the politi-
cal policy and the territorial expansion of France, both in
medieval and in modern times, especially during the reign
of Louis XIV, the period of the Directory, the Napoleonic
era, and under the Second Empire. It is the root of the
Alsace-Lorraine question. French publicists have long
recognized and clearly formulated the nature and princi-
ples of this doctrine although the import and influence of it
have been curiously ignored or misunderstood outside of
France. The declaration of the French Government on
September 18, 1917, concerning the French recovery of
Alsace-Lorraine asserted: "No enemy maneuver, no indi-
vidual weakness, can turn France from her unshakable
determination. That determination she draws from the
purest traditions of our race." Since the armistice of
November 11, 1918, French imperialists have stretched this
"pure tradition" to the old dimensions of the ambition of
Louis XIV and Napoleon, and have boldly claimed for
France the whole left bank of the Rhine. On December 9,
1918, one of the imperialist deputies announced: "The
Rhine is the true frontier of Gaul — Caesar said so." That
this imperialist program is advocated by the French mili-
tary party and by Marshal Foch admits of no doubt.
In the light of recent history it seems worth while to
trace the origin, genesis, development, and application of
this doctrine of natural frontiers.
Three men of destiny, who lived almost equidistant from
one another, have profoundly influenced the history of
France — Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon. But the na-
tional tradition of France was not influenced by these three
great leaders in the chronological order in which each ap-
peared in history. The order of their influence is Charle-
magne, Caesar, and Napoleon.
From the time of Philip Augustus to Napoleon, Charle-
magne has haunted the imagination of France. "It is in
the deeds of the great emperor," says Sorel, "that one must
find the earliest origin of a political tradition which, by a
strange atavism, was destined in the nineteenth century,
before the frightened eyes of Europe, to realize that pro-
digious western empire which the medieval poets had
represented as a marvelous legend to popular imagination."
When Napoleon was crowned French emperor it was not
an act of vainglory on his part, but one in harmony with
the whole drift of French political thought and French
political aspirations for centuries past.
Tinder Philip the Fair the Charlemagnic tradition ac-
quired new force and new extension. Pierre Du Bois, a
French legist whose mind was saturated with the popular
poetry of the crusading epoch, and who accepted the deeds
of Charlemagne related in the chansons as actual history,
wrote a famous tract in which he passionately advocated
French territorial aggrandizement. The Rhinelands and
Italy, in his mind, ought to be provinces of a Greater
France, such as Charlemagne's empire had once been.
Charlemagne had held sway over those lands. Why not the
king of France? The kings of France were the lawful
heirs of the imperial Frankish dynasty; the Hapsburgs
were usurpers and pretenders. Anticipating by five hun-
dred years the secularizations of the Treaty of Westphalia
and of Napoleon in Germany in 1801, Du Bois argued that
those German nobles who would be dispossessed by the
establishment of French domination on the left bank of the
Rhine might be compensated by secularization of the lands
of the church in Germany.
No fact is more significant of French designs upon Ger-
man and imperial territory at this time than the history of
the apocryphal treaty of Vaucouleurs, reputed to have been
signed in 1299 between Philip IV and Albert of Hapsburg,
in which the German sovereign is alleged to have admitted
the legitimacy of French claims to the Rhine. In the fif-
teenth and sixteenth century the legend was still current
that a bronze marking-post might be seen in the Rhine at
low-water, which was a monument of that delimitation.
After the days of Jeanne d'Arc and the French national
recovery there was a renascence of the long-eclipsed tradi-
tion of national aspiration and territorial aggrandizement
of which Philip the Fair had been the founder. The guerre
des limites began again. In 1444, at the inception of his
expedition to conquer Lorraine, Charles VII summoned the
cities of Metz, Toul, and Verdun to recognize French rule
"qui d'enciennete souloient estre et appartenir d noz prede-
cesseurs roys de France." In the same year he unsuccess-
fully attempted to conquer Alsace.
It matters little that this expedition failed of achieve-
ment. The French monarchy is an admirable example of
the principle of line upon line, precept upon precept. Time,
a king of France once said, ripened events like peaches in
the sun.
In the "Debate between the Heralds of France and Eng-
land," written between 1453 and 1461, we have even more
striking evidence as to the influence of the Charlemagnic
legend and the conquering aspirations of France. The
French herald says:
Charlemagne was a noble king and performed great acts of
valor, especially against the Saracens; and he brought over
all the Spains to the Catholic faith, and conquered many lord-
ships, both in Germany and Lombardy. . . . The same
Charlemagne was afterwards emperor, and you yourselves in
England were subject to him. For his great acts of valor he
is placed in the number of the Nine Worthies. Roland and
Oliver, who performed so many valiant and memorable feats
against the Saracens, were Frenchmen. Godfrey de Bouillon,
who conquered Jerusalem and is one of the Nine Worthies,
was a native of France, and count of Boulogne. These are
what I call wars of great magnificence and honor, which well
deserve to be related, and to form the subject of chronicles.
They are not wars compelled by necessity. I pass lightly over
the common wars which the French have made against the
Germans and their other neighbors, and which it would be
514
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2887
tedious to relate; since in the romances and chronicles there
are wonderful accounts of them, and such common wars are not
to be mentioned or chronicled with wars of magnificence.
The dream of Charles VII became the reality of Henry II
in 1552, when the Three Bishoprics were wrested from the
hand of Charles V. This famous acquisition was regarded
by France in the sixteenth century as a just step in the
realization of her natural frontiers.
For in this century we find the first definite formulation
of this political doctrine. Even in the Middle Ages, though
the influence of the Charlemagnic legend had been of far
greater weight in motivating the territorial aspirations of
the kings of France, the idea of natural frontiers had not
been without force. Honorius of Autun, who lived in the
twelfth century, in the "Imago Mundi" had bounded Ger-
many by the Rhine, the Alps, and the Elbe, and France by
the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees.
The classical renaissance out of Italy added new signifi-
cance to this doctrine of natural frontiers. Had not Caesar
written that all Gaul was divided into three parts, between
the Celts, the Aquitani, and the Belgae, the last of whom
were nearest the Germans who dwelt beyond the Rhine?
Strabo's Geography was made to buttress Caesar's Commen-
taries. The argument for the natural frontiers of France
was justified by imperial Roman history as well as by Caro-
lingian imperial history. "The Commentaries," says Sorel,
"which were the admiration of the literati became the bre-
viary of the politicians. The kings and their legists took
from the Romans the ideas of the frontier of Gaul as they
had taken the precepts of public law from them. ... It
was a war of citations and of syllogisms, in which the
subtleties of the Digest were combined with the quibbles of
scholasticism, geography and astrology, history and legend,
Caesar's Commentaries and the deeds of Charlemagne, the
Theodosian Code and the laws of the barbarians, the pre-
cedents of the Roman Empire and the charters of the Middle
Ages."
Henry II was urged to seize the whole left bank of the
Rhine and not alone the Three Bishoprics. It was plausibly
argued that France might exact "recompenses" and "satis-
factions" for her intervention. The Marshal Vieilleville,
arguing for the French conquest even of German Lorraine,
said to the king: "By so doing your Majesty will win about
forty leagues of territory without losing a man, and have
an impregnable rampart for the protection of Champagne
and Picardy, besides a good road always open for the
acquisition of Luxemburg and the countries below it down
to Brussels." The French chauvinists in 1552 were bitterly
disappointed that the king had not seized the whole left
bank of the Rhine when he might have done so.
Fifty years later, when Henry IV seized Bresse and
Bugey, i.e., both banks of the upper Rhone as far as the
Lake of Geneva, his minister, the Duke de Sully, remon-
strated with him when the king declared that identity of
language was the most just and almost the only ground of
territorial annexation. In an age when dynastic claims were
given all weight, and. when the rights of the people were
lightly regarded by the cabinets of Europe, this utterance
of Henry of Navarre shines like generous recognition of a
just social principle in a world of military force and diplo-
matic intrigue. Sully was an ardent advocate of the idea of
natural frontiers, and counted off upon his fingers, to his
sovereign, a magnificent list of possible territorial acquisi-
tions France might make, enumerating Alsace, Lorraine,
Savoy, Franche Comte, Artois, Hainaut, the Spanish Neth-
erlands, Luxemburg, and even Cleves and Julich as rightful
"spheres" of French influence.
Richelieu had not the scruples of Henry. IV, and the doc-
trine of natural frontiers in his time became a prolific
source of French aggrandizement. In 1627 Malherbe wrote
a memoir which attracted the cardinal's attention, in which
he said: "The region between the Rhine and the Pyrenees
is none too large for the fleur de lys." In 1633 Richelieu
addressed a memoir to Louis XIII of his own writing, in
which he advocated French intervention in Germany in
favor of the protestants, because "it would extend his king-
dom as far as the Rhine without striking a blow," and
argued that the German princes could be made to put "every-
thing which they possess on this side of the Rhine into the
king's hands as the recompense of his services." Further,
the cardinal ordered one of his counsellors to prepare a
memoir in which the French doctrine of natural frontiers
was elaborately set forth with all the weight behind it of
Roman and Carolingian history, dynastic claims, and legal-
istic arguments. By 1640 Richelieu had routed the ancient
enemy of the house of Hapsburg on every frontier, Alsace
and Lorraine were occupied by French troops, even part of
the bend of the Rhine was in France's possession. The
natural frontiers of France had been expanded.
In the very last year of his life Richelieu caused another
memoir to be published embodying the same familiar argu-
ments of natural frontiers, and invoking the legend of
Charlemagne and the authority of Julius Caesar. It was
followed in 1643 by "An Inquiry into the Rights of the King
and Crown of France over the Kingdoms, Duchies, Counties,
Towns, and Countries Occupied by Foreign Princes." One
has but to read the arguments in these pamphlets to realize
how intensely popular and national the guerre des limites
had become by the middle of the seventeenth century. The
wars of Louis XIV have here their raison d'etre. Although
the pretexts or the claims of those wars were dynastic or
based on technical legalities, as wars they harmonized with
the territorial aspirations of the French people.
Mazarin, like Richelieu, was imbued with the idea of
France's natural frontiers. Conde's victory at Rocroy in
1643 fixed French hold firmly on Lorraine, while Turenne
overran Alsace. The two captains together then captured
Philipsburg, Mannheim, Speyer, Worms, Oppenheim, and
Landau. Turenne boasted that he had "returned the Rhine
to its former masters."
Louis XIV was more fertile in discovering pretexts, more
ingenious in finding pretensions for territorial aggrandize-
ment than Richelieu and Mazarin had been. But if the
means somewhat changed, the purpose remained constant.
The persistency of French determination, the constancy of
French design had its sanction in the deeply rooted deter-
minism of the traditional doctrine of France's frontiers.
Louis XIV justified the seizure of Alsace on the ground that
it was "good to unite to the body of the monarchy an
ancient patrimony of our forefathers which had long been
separated," although the theory was untenable except upon
the hypothesis that Caesar's Gaul and Charlemagne's empire
had been a "greater France." When he acquired Franche
Comte in 1678 the king wrote in his Memoirs: "It is a
grand province, fertile, important, which by language and
law now, as in former times, ought to form a part of the
realm of France."
No man ever more adroitly manipulated the public law
Nov. 3, 1920]
The Nation
515
of Europe for territorial aggrandizement than did Louis
XIV. Voltaire said of the territorial seizures practiced
under the euphemism of "reunion," that Louis XIV made
peace a time of conquest. In theory France's seizure of
Saarburg, Saarlouis, Pont-a-Mousson, Germersheim, Falken-
berg, Zweibriicken, Blamont, Montbeliard, Colmar Schlett-
stadt, Landau, and Strasbourg were just "revindications" in
order to restore "greater France." The same theory was
used to justify Louis XIV's seizure of the Palatinate and
the whole bend of the Rhine, in spite of the fact that the
population there was wholly German in blood and language.
When an outraged Europe finally combined against the
territorial aggressions of France and defeated the French
armies, nevertheless Louis XIV was able still to retain much
of the left bank of the Rhine, though half beaten. "France
is not always modest in the hour of victory," a living Eng-
lish historian has written, "but however crushing her de-
feat, she professes an imprescriptible claim to territory
which she has once possessed."
Even the gulf of the French Revolution could not break
the continuity of the Bourbon doctrine of France's natural
frontiers. As the Reformation and the chambers of reunion
had earlier been used to further the ends of French terri-
torial aggrandizement, so in the Revolution the doctrine of
the Rights of Man performed the same function. In 1791
the Legislative Assembly renounced wars of conquest. But
after Valmy France grew hungry for the Austrian Nether-
lands, Savoy, and the bend of the Rhine. Rousseau's fortu-
nate allusion to the Rhine and the Alps as "limits traced
by nature" justified the change of heart. Gregoire and
Danton urged a guerre des limites. A decree of the Legis-
lative Assembly in 1792 declared that "the French armies
will not lay down their arms until the enemies of the repub-
lic have been driven across the Rhine." One of the republi-
can orators affirmed the imprescriptible right of France to
annex territories of all peoples whom the "rights of man"
ought to redeem. Robespierre, with astonishing inconsist-
ency with the tenets of the revolutionary propaganda, justi-
fied French territorial aggrandizement on the same grounds
that Frederick the Great had annexed Silesia. The French
Revolution, as Sorel has said, manifested itself as a sort of
"fierce rejuvenescence of the classic ambition of France."
The conquests of Custine and Hoche in the bend of the
Rhine in 1792 were of a piece with those of Conde and
Turenne.
Never was the war for natural frontiers waged more
ardently than in the years 1792-1802. On October 21, 1792,
the French under Custine entered Mainz. Two days later
"La societe des amis allemands de la liberte et de l'egalite"
was formed, whom Georges Forster on November 15 ad-
dressed in these words: "The Rhine, that great navigable^
river, is the natural frontier of a great republic which de-
sires no conquest but accepts nations which agree to join
it." On March 30, 1793, the Convention proclaimed the new
"increase by assimilation."
The military reverses of the summer of 1793, however,
overturned things. Again the Rive Gauche was conquered
in 1794, after Jourdan's victory of Fleurus; but the Pala-
tinate was not entirely in French power until October, 1795,
and the fortress of Mainz was not occupied until December
30, 1797.
The history of the wars of Louis XIV repeated itself too
sharply in 1794 for the inhabitants of the Rhineland to
indulge in any illusions about "liberty, equality, fraternity"
and the blessings of "democracy."1 The arbitrary contribu-
tions imposed by the victorious French armies upon the
conquered region, the pillage of homes, farmsteads, vine-
yards, the wantonness and atrocities of the French soldiery4
first created dismay and then wrath and terror among the
peaceful dwellers of the Palatinate. Goethe has immortal-
ized this mixture of despair and fury of a frightened and
outraged German peasantry in "Hermann und Dorothea."
France was little changed at heart by the sentimental
catch-phrases of the Revolution. Even Camille Desmoulins
advocated a second burning of the Palatinate as punish-
ment for German refusal to receive the principles of the
Revolution. Merlin de Thionville, in whom the spirit of
Louvois had rebirth, not only approved the ravages of
Pichegru's army, but also advocated another destruction of
the Palatinate as a means of terrorizing Mainz into sur-
render. The principle was actually laid down, which Louis
XIV had espoused, that France ought to girdle herself with
deserts, and "commissioners of evacuation" were even ap-
pointed for this purpose.
The fall of the Terror Government on July 27, 1794, and
the establishment of the Directory involved no change of
military or foreign policy. Sieyes, the maker of the new
constitution, had formulated plans of conquest which ap-
pealed most subtly to the warlike ardor of the French nation.
The left bank of the Rhine was to be annexed; Germany
was to be forcibly "reconstructed." It was the dream of
which Napoleon was to become the executor.
The war party had clever lawyers to support its views
with plausible arguments. They were no whit inferior to
the legists of Philip the Fair and the publicists of Louis
XIV. Their argument was an ingenious adaptation of the
ancient theories of natural frontiers and reunion to the new
conditions and the new doctrines of the "rights of man" and
popular sovereignty promulgated by the Revolution. They
distinguished between territorial annexation by aggran-
dizement (accroissement par agglomeration) and territorial
annexation by assimilation (accroissement par assimila-
tion). The former policy was stigmatized as the infamous
policy of monarchical and autocratic despoilers like Fred-
erick the Great in the case of Silesia (they forgot that
Robespierre had justified Frederick), and the trinity of
despotism which had partitioned Poland. But "assimila-
tion" was in entire harmony with the principles of the
Revolution; it was an extension of liberty and popular sov-
ereignty to peoples living unwillingly under the abuses of
absolutism.
The policy of the Directory was aggressively to push
the theory of natural frontiers. Victorious warfare was the
only method which the decrepit and corrupt Directory could
use to keep itself in power, and the cry of the natural fron-
tiers for France became a slogan to cover a war for terri-
torial aggrandizement, with the prostitution of the real
principles of the Revolution, under the guise of making a
"crusade for democracy." With this purpose was joined
the purpose of rehabilitating the dilapidated finances of
France by exacting exorbitant terms of peace, and imposing
1 ". . . The imported 'fraternity' turned into brutal arrogance, 'equality'
into oppression, 'liberty' into unwilling annexation." — Herbst, Heinrich Vosa,
Leipzig, 1872, II, 109.
2 In five years these impositions amounted to 150,000,000 francs. — Fisher,
Napoleonic Statesmanship in Germany, 352. Rose, Nationality in mod. Europe,
37. For a frank admission of this by a French commander, see Memoires of
Dumouriez, ed. Barriere, II, 1 f., 113-15. Friedrich Leopold, Graf zu Stol-
berg, the poet, wrote a poem in condemnation of the French atrocities, called
"Die West-Hunnen." See his Oden, Lieder, und Balladen, II, 119-22.
516
The Nation'
[Vol. Ill, No. 2887
enormous indemnities upon the conquered in event of vic-
torious war. The generals of the armies of France were
capitalized. Pichegru was valued at 100 millions, Tour-
dain and Moreau at 72 millions, Bonaparte at 25 millions
in August, 1795.
Among the first acts of the Directory was approval of a
decree of the Convention made on October 1, 1795, based
upon a long report which had been presented the day pre-
vious, which affirmed that the Rhine was the natural frontier
of France. Like all governments the Directory invoked the
ancient tradition. "We must consummate the salutary work
begun at Westphalia," it said, "which remains unfinished."
It was just and necessary that a nation like France should
be at least as great as Prussia, Austria, and Russia, who
"in the system of Europe had anticipated the equivalents
which France should have." Cambaceres, Dubois-Crance,
Merlin de Douai, Boissy d' Anglais, and Sieyes were ardent
partisans of the doctrine of natural frontiers.
The history of the Directory is one of the most notable
chapters in French history, both for formulation of political
theory and for action in the matter of France's alleged
natural frontiers. At the Congress of Rastadt, "after pro-
claiming for six years that the Rhine was the natural boun-
dary of France, the French Government discovered that a
river cannot be made a military frontier at all. Of what
service, urged the French plenipotentiaries, were Strasbourg
and Mainz so long as they were commanded by the guns on
the opposite bank? If the Rhine was to be of any use to
France, France must be put in possession of Kehl and Castel
upon the German side."
Of a piece with its handling of the Rhinelands was the
Directory's treatment of Switzerland. In 1797 France an-
nexed Mulhausen and Basel as part of the Rhinelands, and
Geneva, because the Lake of Geneva was the source of a
French river. Invasion of the interior of Switzerland soon
followed. Berne was entered by French troops on March 6,
1798. "The treasure of Berne, amounting to about £800,000,
accumulated by ages of thrift and good management, was
seized in order to provide for Bonaparte's next campaign,
and for a host of voracious soldiers and contractors."
The achievements of Napoleon, in germ, are almost all
to be found in the idea of natural frontiers for France.
Napoleon's famous rejoinder to the Allies in the spring of
1814, when he stood at bay in Champagne, "Not an inch
of territory," had its root in France's ancient tradition.
The sting to France in the alliance formed by the Powers
on March 1, 1814, at Chaumont, pledging themselves not to
make peace with Napoleon until France was again reduced
to the boundaries of 1791, was that it pricked the pride of
France in its tenderest spot — namely, France's natural
frontiers.
In 1840 the Eastern question was precipitated anew, and
the recoil from that issue revived all the ancient aspirations
of France for the Rhine. The storm passed, but while it
lasted it had fanned into flame again the ancient fires of the
Revolutionary and Napoleonic era. The thought of "revenge
for 1815" inspired France, and the cry of public speakers and
balladists was "On to the Rhine." One knows how mala-
droitly Napoleon III made war while he professed to be an
advocate of peace and how Nice and Savoy were annexed by
France by right of natural frontiers. Napoleon Ill's aspira-
tion to acquire Luxemburg was in alignment with the tradi-
tional policy of France since the days of Louis XIV and
before. Sully had told Henry IV that the territory was a
"natural" part of France, but Napoleon III tried to acquire
by intrigue what Louis XIV had seized by force of arms.
It was a typical intrigue of the Second Empire. The
French invasion of Belgium was actually considered. The
emperor suspected an entente between Belgium and Prussia.
It was toward England, however, and not Prussia, that
Belgium looked. The Belgian Prime Minister, Frere-Orban,
went to Paris in order to pacify the emperor, but resolved
not to compromise the neutrality of his country. In order
to give the impression that France had not been completely
rebuffed, the creation of a mixed commission was proposed.
The real purpose of the French Government, as the docu-
ments published by M. Hymans show, was to profit by the
occasion to compel Belgium to sign a treaty of alliance with
France. It was, in fact, a part of Napoleon Ill's plan for a
system of general alliances against Prussia. But Frere-
Orban avoided the trap by asserting that the alliance would
be a violation of Belgian neutrality, which was guaranteed
by the five great Powers.
Napoleon III attributed his discomfiture to Bismarck,
whereas, as a matter of fact, it was the attitude of England
which was the governing factor. This resentment was
aggravated by the question of the Spanish succession in the
same year, in which Prussia was pitted against France, and
which was the immediate occasion of the Franco-Prussian
War. The French emperor's purpose in that conflict was
not merely to rehabilitate his injured prestige, and to humili-
ate Prussia. It was also to get the Rhine frontier.
History never repeats itself. But history is largely a
business of endeavoring to put new wine into old bottles ; the
record of old aspirations, strivings, and victory under a new
name; of changing the coin, but not the coinage. If Lord
Morley's Recollections have been translated into French it
would be well for that school of French imperialists who
still clamor for la rive gauche du Rhin to reflect upon those
eloquent words on the last page of the second volume, in
which he deplores the disastrous influence of "grand abstract
catch-words veiling obscure and inexplicable purposes, and
turning the whole world over with blood and tears to a
strange Witches' Sabbath."
The following documents will be
published in coming issues of the
International Relations Section of
The Nation:
Secret Documents from the Hungarian
Legation at Vienna.
Documents on the British Coal Crisis.
The South-African Native Affairs Bill —
Labor in East Africa.
Housing Conditions in Europe.
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1920
No. 2888
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 517
EDITORIALS :
The Defeat of Wilsonism 520
British Industry in a Deadlock 521
The Rush to the Colleges 521
"More Thrilling Than Fiction" 522
Those Declining Prices 523
The New England Fisherman 523
A QUESTION TO DEMOCRACY. By Faith Adams 524
A LETTER TO MR. J. C. SQUIRE. By Samuel Roth 526
CHILDREN OF THE SUN. By James Rorty 527
THE SPREAD EAGLE VS. ALIEN PROPERTY RIGHTS. By A. E.
Hinrichs 528
THE IRISH COMMITTEE AT WORK 530
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 532
CORRESPONDENCE 532
CRITICISM. By Maxwell Bodenheim 533
BOOKS:
A Panorama of Labor. By George Soule 533
The American Frontier. By Carl Becker 536
The Epic of Dulness 536
Alaska. By Frederick O'Brien 537
Notes and News 538
DRAMA :
Ripeness and Youth. By Ludwig Lewisohn 539
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION:
The British Coal Strike 540
British Trade with Soviet Russia 542
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
WILLIAM MACDONALD FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER LEWIS S. GANNETT
LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising : Swarthmore Press Ltd.. 72 Oxford St., London.
MR. HARDING'S ancestry does not interest us in the
least. It may be true, as cynics say, that Harding's
election proves the truth of the old American adage that
"any boy born in America may become President," but
whatever the unpleasant truth of politics, the only test of
a Presidential candidate ought to be his fitness for the office
as proved by his own record. The scandalous underhanded-
ness of the whispering campaign of the Democrats, and the
indignation of the Republicans at the suggestion that their
candidate might have Negro blood in his veins, only prove
the spuriousness of all their protestations of belief in equal
rights for black and white. It is to the credit of the World
that alone among the New York newspapers it spoke out in
this matter declaring that there was in the story "nothing
that reflects in the slightest degree upon his [Harding's]
character or his capacity." It is a reproach to the intelligence
of the American people that a trace of black blood should
be a bar to any job, office, or position for which the capacity
of a man fits him, and it is moreover, a crime against the
very soul of our institutions and our democracy to talk of
the suggestion of Negro blood in anyone's veins as an "un-
speakable disgrace."
IF you call a sheep's tail a leg, the answer to the old
conundrum runs, a sheep still has only four legs. And
if you call black white, and say that all is and has been
well in Haiti, black is still black and conditions in Haiti
are unchanged by the statement. All is harmonious at the
sessions of Mr. Daniels's committee of admirals investigat-
ing Haiti, and black is painstakingly labelled white, or gray
at most; General Barnett has reduced the Haitian casualty
list from 3,250 to 2,250 (which is still 183 Haitians to every
American killed) and, after first reporting that 1,763
Haitians were killed in the attack on Port-au-Prince on
January 15, 1920, and in the operations immediately fol-
lowing, he now gives ninety as the total number of Hai-
tians killed in all the first six months of 1920. The "in-
discriminate killing" is being reduced to two cases; in fact
it is perfectly plain that this investigation is no investiga-
tion, but a mere deprecation. Senator McCormick promises
a Congressional committee which will really investigate. If
it investigates fearlessly and fully, on the spot and in the
United States, and calls before it, not the commanding offi-
cers, but privates in the Marine Corps and Haitians, it will
learn that but a small fraction of the truth has yet been
told, and that the story of torture, coercion, and murder in
Haiti and Santo Domingo is one to bring a hot blush of
shame to every decent American cheek. The present offi-
cial whitewashing only adds to the heat of it.
UNCHANGING is the imperialist mind and unaffected by
differences in climate or by the experiences of others.
The legal murder of Edith Cavell was worth at least two
army corps in recruits to the British forces ; no other single
event on land did so much to consolidate the public opinion
of the world against Germany. It is, and will always be, a
classic example of German militarist stupidity. But that the
English imperialists have learned nothing from it is per-
fectly apparent from the readiness with which they have sac-
rificed Terence MacSwiney. Doubtless Lloyd George, Car-
son, Balfour and Bonar Law are quite satisfied that the law
has been thus "vindicated" — poor short-sighted imperialists
that they are, they can look no further than Von Bissing.
If they could, they would realize that the power of that man's
self-sacrifice has thrilled the world. Even our jingo news-
papers have spoken respectfully of him. The New York
Herald, ultra-conservative, declares, that in starving himself
MacSwiney richly fed the Sinn Fein cause. From Ireland
comes the word that, long delayed as it was, the death of the
Lord Mayor of Cork "firmly united all the Republicans and
their sympathizers. Terence MacSwiney has accomplished
his purpose." "The French press," reads a cable to the New
York Tribune, "is unanimous in expressing sympathy with
the Sinn Feiners. Some give expression to strong anti-
British sentiments." Had the English Government let him out
after twenty days, his self-starvation would have been for-
gotten in a week. As it is, a whole world grieves.
WHILE thousands of men and women watched the
body of Terence MacSwiney laid tc rest in the "Re-
publican plot" of the cemetery at Cork, while hundreds of
thousands in Ireland mourned and hundreds of thousands
in America gathered in great meetings to pledge their faith
to the nation that Terence MacSwiney died to save, while
518
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2888
the world seemed hushed in momentary realization of the
value of human heroism, the Irish town of Templemore was
still quivering after a night of terror at the hands of a band
of drunken British regulars. That British troops should
avenge the killing of three soldiers by an armed attack with
petrol and hatchets and guns on the innocent inhabitants of
an undefended town would be bad at any time. But that
the moment when Ireland seemed sobered and softened
rather than inflamed by the death of her martyrs should be
chosen for this exhibition of military terror vividly il-
luminates the grave danger of the situation. We wonder if
the British fully realize the effect of such methods on the
American people as well as the Irish. Not only the hun-
dreds of thousands of Americans that filled halls and
stadiums in New York and Boston and Philadelphia to
honor Terence MacSwiney, but the great mass of decent
men and women everywhere are being filled with a dangerous
resentment. Each hour renders clearer the need of a rapid
solution of the present crisis if the peace of the world is
not to be endangered.
THE renunciation last week by Great Britain, two years
after the cessation of hostilities, of the right of confis-
cation of German property is a notable act of conciliation
and good faith. It marks a long step toward peace and a
return to the fair and honorable dealing which war makes
anathema. Elsewhere in this issue The Nation prints an
article on our alien property custody — or rather confiscation
— which makes clear our duty to follow promptly Great
Britain's example and to erase as far as possible a discred-
itable and wholly unnecessary chapter of our war making,
one whose continuance brings needless suffering and fear of
total loss of income and property to thousands of women and
children, widows and orphans, aged and infirm whose sole
support was derived from funds invested on this side.
ABIT of comedy and a heavy dose of tragedy, thrice-told
fish-tales, a little sinister intrigue and a little unlimited
ignorance — stir them up with a pinch of red ink, and the
recipe still holds for Russian news, good, bad, or indifferent.
The proportions vary, but the ingredients are the same.
Now we have it on the word of Chicherin that Mr. Washing-
ton D. Vanderlip and a group of Pacific Coast "magnates"
have taken from the Soviet Government a concession for
Kamchatka. The magnates do not deny it, and Mr. Bain-
bridge Colby, our ineffable Secretary of State, even adds to
the story a morsel of his own usual authoritative informa-
tion. He says that an American official in the Baltic told
him that somebody said that H. G. Wells said that Lenin
said that Vanderlip said that he in some way represented
Mr. Harding. Well, it may be so, and then again it may not ;
the fact that Mr. Colby says it is sheds little light on the
matter. But the Kamchatka peninsula is a bleak and barren
region, where a really warm summer day sends the tempera-
ture up to 54 ; it is very far from Soviet Russia, and if it is
under anyone's control today, it is under Japanese control.
So the news that the owner of that bitter anti-union sheet,
the Los Angeles Times, and Mr. E. L. Doheny, of Mexican
oil fame, were interested with Mr. Vanderlip in opening up
Soviet Russia, via Kamchatka, to foreign trade, becomes
more curious still, arid the fact that all these magnates come
from a Japanese-hating section may shed even more light on
the proportions of the ingredients of the present recipe.
CUBA'S moratorium, like the Japanese panic of April and
May, is but an acute local symptom of the world process
of deflation through which all nations will have to pass in
the coming decade. When the bottom dropped out of the silk
and cotton markets, and the price of raw materials was cut
in half, Japanese merchants who had speculated on the basis
of the inflated war and armistice prices were caught, and
banks and stock exchanges were closed while temporary
adjustments were being made. Cuba's difficulties are simi-
larly caused by the sensational drop in the price of sugar
and rice. Sugar alone accounts for three-quarters of Cuba's
total exports, and when the artificially high prices in the
United States broke, Cuban banks, which had been lending on
the basis of prices one hundred and fifty per cent in excess of
those now prevailing, were inevitably short. American
bankers can tide Cuba over her present crisis, but the adjust-
ment must be disastrous for many who had speculated upon
the high prices. A similar process is inevitable elsewhere;
and just as the burden of war prices was borne by the work-
ingmen and middle classes, so the onus of deflation is dis-
charged upon the workmen in the form of lowered wages
and jobs abolished, while retail prices drag far behind raw
materials in the promised price drop.
/
FROM Berlin we have received a cablegram begging for
American aid because the Allies are now demanding
810,000 cows in four yearly instalments in addition to the
140,000 required within three months of the signature of the
Treaty of Versailles as part of the restitution to France and
to Belgium. If Germany obeys this order, so the cablegram
reads, it means the death of thousands upon thousands of
children — most of them born since the Armistice — and a
grave blow at the vitality of the aged and the sick. We
heartily wish that the Allies might have played the part of
good Samaritans, particularly as there is now far less dis-
tress for lack of milk in Belgium or France than in the
countries of their recent enemies. Berlin now has only
190,000 liters of milk per day as against 1,000,000 before the
war. But if the Allies insist upon their pound of flesh, the
Germans must do their share — their rulers had no thought
of the French and Belgian children during the war. As the
Germans promptly yielded the ships and docks demanded of
them, are giving up their arms and are lately delivering the
coal pledged in larger than specified quantities, so will they
doubtless yield the cattle asked. But this means that The
Friends' Relief Committee in Germany will have to work
harder than ever and that American generosity will have to
make still greater sacrifices for the innocent victims of the
Versailles Treaty. It is a great opportunity for our German-
Americans and we hope that they will live up to it. They
have by.no means gone deeply into their pockets — not even
in response to Mr. Hoover's appeals. There are ships in
plenty to be had, and there has been such a marked falling off
in the export of condensed milk from this country that it
would be a godsend to the industry if it should now receive
large orders for shipment abroad.
CIVIL war continues in the West Virginia mine region,
and civil war is likely to break out at any time in the
Alabama mines. Shootings, such as that of October 31, are
more or less chronic in the company-owned towns of Mingo
County, West Virginia, where the miners are unorganized,
and until the conditions described by Mr. Arthur Gleason
Nov. 10, 1920]
The Nation
519
in The Nation last May are remedied murder is likely to
continue. The mines of Alabama have been under martial
law for a month, and the State Federation of Labor has
just demanded the impeachment of Governor Kilby for defy-
ing the State Constitution in suppressing the civil rights of
free speech and free assembly. The Alabama mines are
non-union mines; they defied the Federal government dur-
ing the war and refused to carry out many of the Garfield
awards; today they are surrounded by barbed wire fences,
and workers are allowed to enter only upon showing a pass.
American Federation of Labor organizers on occasion have
been tarred and feathered and driven out of the mine towns ;
today, by order of Brigadier General Steiner, commanding
the State troops in the region, mass meetings and proces-
sions are forbidden, and the unions cannot hold even pri-
vate business meetings except upon giving notice to the
troops, who sit in at these meetings and occasionally stop
them to arrest a speaker who, they think, goes "too far."
Such repression inevitably breeds revolt ; but it has achieved
unintended good in that it has given rise to a new sense of
comradeship between colored and white miners.
IS the general public for militarism? Delaware County,
New York, answered that question with a decided and
unmistakable No! in this year's primaries. John D. Clarke,
candidate for Congress on the Republican ticket, came out
squarely against peace-time conscription. His opponent de-
clined to take a stand on the matter. The largest number
of voters turned out that the county has ever seen, double
the number of last year, and gave 3,543 votes to Clarke out
of something over 4,700. The vote for the Republican
candidate for Governor was several hundred less than for
Congressman, so that there can be no question where the
interests and sympathies of the people lay. Some day there
may be a national referendum on the same question, and
there is little doubt that the answer, if not perhaps so
overwhelming, would be the same. Meanwhile, we pay
our warmest respects to the editor of the Walton Reporter,
a Democratic journal in a Republican county, who by his
brave pen has sent this Congressman to Washington — nomi-
nation is equivalent to election. No wonder this gallant
editor, Mr. John P. White, has won for his paper the largest
circulation of any rural weekly in New York State. A
Democrat who can control a Republican primary is a wonder
anywhere. Fortunately his cause was of the best.
IN the "Clansman," that epic of one hundred per cent
American race hatred, the hooded knights of the Ku
Klux find guilty and "execute" a Negro because the Klan
physicians (all leading citizens, these clansmen!) when peer-
ing into the terrified victim's eye discovered upon the retina
an image of the "slain girl's face." Retinal photography is,
of course, a myth, as impossible a feat as recovering the
sound of an explosion by listening at the blast victim's ear.
The night-riders of 1920 hand out the same brand of "rough
justice" but their sphere of activity is much enlarged. Take
it from the words of their own "Imperial Wizard," Colonel
William J. Simmons. "It is designed," he says, "to memori-
alize the clan of the reconstruction period and to perpetuate
the principles for which it stood." (That means you,
Negroes!) "Its membership is composed of native-born
white American citizens who owe no allegiance to any
foreign power or organization, religious or political." (No
Catholics need apply.) "It stands for the preservation of
American ideals and institutions, the protection of the home
and the chastity of womanhood, the maintenance of the
blood-bought rights and liberties of the Anglo-Saxon Race."
And that, of course, includes labor leaders who are against
the "blood-bought right" of exploiting workers, cotton gin-
ners who will not cooperate in the "American ideal" of keep-
ing the price of cotton up, and persons in general toward
whom an imperial, royal or ducal wizard may happen to feel
feudishly inclined. Yes, it is wholly natural that the renas-
cent knights have enlarged their scope and, in addition to
"the principles for which it stood," are carrying a side-line
of anti-Catholic, anti-labor, anti-liberal propaganda.
IN discussing, in our issue of September 25, the Root plan
for an international court we pointed out that the court
could not rise higher than its source, which was the Cove-
nant of the League of Nations, and that the Covenant ham-
strung the court by specifying that a party to a dispute
could not be brought into court save by his consent. The
Root draft undertook to overrule this by providing obliga-
tory jurisdiction. Last week it was submitted to the Council
of the League of Nations at Brussels, which promptly
declared that it could not recommend the obligatory juris-
diction for the precise reason that the plan "went further
than the Covenant." If our forecast was correct, we take
only a melancholy satisfaction in it. For any world court to
succeed, obligatory jurisdiction over all parties to a dispute
is essential. The most discouraging feature of it all is that
Norway and Denmark, two small nations, were the ones that
protested at Brussels — the very type of nation that ought to
cherish the idea of a court that could compel the attendance
of any great bully of a country as well as the smallest mem-
ber of the family of nations. Discouraging as this is, it
simply means that there is more educational work to be done.
THE war and its aftermath have numbed the power of
quick and sensitive sympathy. What can the indi-
vidual do against a world in ruins? But the intellectual
workers of America must let no fatalism or sluggishness
overcome them in the matter of the distress of the creative
spirits of Europe. This distress is by no means confined
to Central or Eastern Europe. A recent letter from M.
Paul Fort, assuredly one of the glories of contemporary
France, depicts his pitiful case. With his aged parents, his
wife and three small children, he is living in a single un-
heated attic room. The Mercure de France will not publish
his new volume. Paper is too high. In the name of his
war services he applied for government relief. But France
has no funds today for the men and the interests on which
her true fame rests. Last summer Hugo von Hofmannsthal,
once heir to a considerable estate, always an internationalist
in the noblest sense, begged for nourishing food for his
adolescent children. If such is the condition of men of the
stature and reputation of Fort and Hofmannsthal, it is not
difficult to picture to oneself the dire misery of lesser men —
especially of those younger creative spirits in all the arts
on whom, quite literally, rests not only the hope of their
own country but of the world. Here is a task for our faculty
and authors' clubs, our poetry societies and drama leagues,
which will be far more productive of fine scholarship, of
poetry and of drama than many of the activities in which
they are now engaged. Bread cast upon these waters will
come back in the form of permanent spiritual values.
520
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2888
The Defeat of Wilsonism
TO the fable of Phaethon must one turn for any analogy
to the fate which has overtaken Woodrow Wilson — the
one fell from the heavens after his wild ride in the chariot
of the Sun-God; the other has fallen from the highest
pinnacle of human hopes and aspirations which any modern
has attained. Rejected now by millions of his countrymen
and countrywomen, he is at once the most tragic and the
most guilty figure on the globe. Less than two years ago he
sailed for Paris bearing with him a charter of liberty for
the race; upon him were centered the faith and all the hopes
of the plain people of the whole world. Alas, no one could
measure the disappointment and the heartbreak with which
those who had knelt before him, actually and spiritually,
witnessed the revelation that the new Moses was of such
common clay as to abandon the tablets upon which he had
himself inscribed another Messianic code for the government
of tribes and nations, that he had stooped to scramble in the
market-place of the victors. At once the hero fell from his
pedestal; months ago Europe lost the last vestige of interest
in Woodrow Wilson. Today we have the final touch in the
crushing repudiation of the man and his works by his own
people, and the tragedy becomes the grimmer, the more
pitiful, when one considers the physical suffering of the
man, for whom every humane heart can hold only pity.
History may yet judge that there was a pathological reason
for the disaster of Paris.
For the philosopher and moralist there is material in this
overwhelming tragedy for themes without end in the cen-
turies to come. Terrible as it is, it is also profoundly stimu-
lating, for, paradoxically, it is both disheartening and full of
encouragement to struggling humanity. If Woodrow Wilson
fell as fell the angels, let us rejoice that his true measure
was so quickly taken, that so correct a judgment has been
passed upon him. There is no room here for lasting discour-
agement and no time for vain regrets. The unerring instinct
of the plain American people has, in a situation of extraor-
dinary complexity, administered a rebuke so stunning as to
carry its warning for generations to those who espouse lib-
eralism and then betray it; to that most dangerous of poli-
ticians, the pseudo-liberal, who stops at no compromise, who
in the supreme hour when liberalism is put to the test takes
on the manner and thought of the reactionary; to the poli-
tician who, voicing the loftiest of ideals, finds himself unable
to give these ideals reality and substance when the final
opportunity is at hand. That in order to administer this
rebuke the American people felt itself compelled to the choice
of the candidate of a group who mean still less well for the
Republic is the dark side to the shield. The Nation would
have had the people destroy both the old parties ; but one at
a time has been the popular decision in the absence of a real
and vigorous liberal party and liberal leadership. There are
times when the fire seems entirely preferable to the frying
pan — if one does not dare to try for the hearth beyond. In
this instance it was perhaps inevitable to set the unequivocal
seal of disapproval upon the man who has betrayed liberalism
in its own home ; who was too proud to fight and then fought
unnecessarily ; who was for peace without victory and then,
five months later, was for complete and crushing defeat of
the enemy; who by faithlessness to the ideals he helped to
•et up has done inestimable harm by destroying men's faith
in the attainment of the supreme objectives he outlined, and
in the possibility of those ideals themselves. We are fortu-
nate, indeed, that the verdict leaves no room for a Burleson
or a Palmer to claim that their baseness has met with pop-
ular approval.
In place of moral instability and moral insincerity, reac-
tion in all its stark nakedness is eminently preferable. The
prime need is to doff sheep's clothing, to have men show
clearly under which flag they fight. One can deal frankly
with a Leonard Wood or a Harding because with them there
is no danger of any illusions, or misunderstandings, or
deceptions. One knows where they are to be found, how-
ever skilfully balanced their phrases, however apt their
opportunism. At least they do not use the language of ideal-
ism to conceal their thoughts; they do not address their
appeals to the stars when they are bent only upon things
earthy, when they are frankly materialistic and frankly for
the old order of special privilege and profit. The enemy will
be in front and not in the rear ranks. Discouragement?
Not for any real liberal. The horizon has cleared. Crass
reaction we shall indubitably have to face, and repression
and suppression as well. We shall see greater materialism,
more control of the processes of government and of our
social life by that invisible government which Woodrow Wil-
son entered office in 1912 to destroy and has left more firmly
in the saddle than ever. But if the "New Freedom" is still
in the offing, the louder the call to liberals to gird on their
spiritual armor. The bigger and the clearer the fight, the
better the struggle, the sooner will ideals be clarified and the
lines be drawn.
As for Mr. Harding, nothing that he or his party or his
campaign speeches have done has affected the result. His
election is the gift of Mr. Wilson, and of no one else. The
League of Nations debate has appealed only to the intellec-
tuals, and so Mr. Harding's choice was fore-ordained months
ago. He receives the greatest office in the world with the
slightest record of achievement. Upon his lap has been
placed this prize through no effort of his own, first by act of
a small group of professional politicians at Chicago, and sec-
ondly, by the vote of the people given with no enthusiasm
and often with the profoundest shame that such a choice
should be laid before the American electorate. His negative
campaign, his unimpressive personality, his inability to
arouse popular interest in himself or his cause — all these
bode ill for the success of his administration. For him we
have few congratulations and much pity. The great eco-
nomic forces which are shaping the destinies of the world
are likely to have no mercy for him, since he neither under-
stands them nor apprehends their existence. The champion
of an outworn order, he can no more oppose the slow sweep
of peaceable economic revolt than could King Canute the tide.
Moreover, Mr. Harding has not been able to make it clear
what position he will take toward the one great achievement
of his party, which is the defeat of the Treaty. But of this
we may be sure : He will labor in a fiercer light of publicity
than has beaten upon any man of late years, and against the
system that he represents will stand united the battalions of
all the liberals and the progressives and the reformers and
those supporters of the League of Nations who have really
believed that it promises a better international order.
Nov. 10, 1920]
The Nation
521
British Industry in a Deadlock
THE British coal crisis seems at this writing likely to
terminate in a compromise granting the miners an im-
mediate increase but making future wages partially depend-
ent upon output. The fundamental questions of nationaliza-
tion and control are left untouched. Such peace can only be an
armistice while the opposing forces measure their strength
for future combat. The miners know that they were worsted
in the preliminary negotiations and maneuvered into letting
the issue center no longer round a question of principle that
clearly concerned every consumer, but round a mere wages
issue on which a considerable part of that amorphous mass
called the "public" must be against them. From the moment
when the miners allowed their original demand for a reduc-
tion in the price of coal to fall into the background, it was
evident that, if they fought, they would fight at a serious
disadvantage. The leaders of the trade unions in other
industries clearly did not want a general industrial crisis.
Had it come they would sooner or later have thrown in their
lot with the miners; but in some cases it would have been
done grudgingly or partially.
Something like a deadlock has been reached in the world
of labor in Great Britain, and this because the trade unions
lost their opportunity immediately after the Armistice. The
acute industrial unrest of February, 1919, was a turning-
point; the miners were threatening immediate industrial
action for public ownership and democratic control of the
mines, and in almost every industry, great or small, acute
industrial troubles seemed imminent. The Government
bought off the miners by what seemed the very big conces-
sion of the Royal Commission on the Coal Industry, with a
pledge that its recommendations would be carried into effect.
It quieted discontent elsewhere by summoning the National
Industrial Conference, on which the attitude of the employ-
ers clearly showed that they were prepared to make consid-
erable concessions. But by the time these two bodies reported
the psychological moment had passed.
The Government refused to carry out the recommenda-
tions either of the Coal Industry Commission or of the Indus-
trial Conference, although in the latter case the proposals
were put forward unanimously by employers and workers
alike. Repeated efforts have been made peacefully to per-
suade the Government to alter its attitude; but it has come
more completely under the domination of the big industrial
and financial interests; and these interests, having consoli-
dated their forces and, as they believe, taken their oppo-
nents' measure, are less ready to abate any of their powers.
This increased confidence of the British ruling classes is
founded partly on the rapid collapse of the artificial indus-
trial prosperity caused by the war, and the rapid return of
the unemployment which temporarily ceased during the war
years. But when unemployment passes a certain intensity,
which it seems likely soon to reach, it changes its effect,
especially under present psychological conditions. Men are
not prepared to tolerate the perpetual insecurity which has
been characteristic of British industrial conditions with the
old acquiescence and fatalism; they will now be moved far
more easily to positive resentment. The employers, how-
ever, have come to believe that the British workers' bark is
far worse than their bite, and that there is after all not the
substance which they had supposed behind their new policies
and their demands for control. One salutary lesson, a good
many employers may be heard to say, will serve to prick the
bubble of labor extremism.
The outcome, so far, of the miners' dispute may seem to
justify this view. It is undoubtedly the case that many of
the hopes and fears which have been built on British labor
are out of all proportion to the reality, and that labor is still
unprepared for any great or decisive step. Still conscious of
its weakness even more than of its strength, British labor
hesitates, and will for some time hesitate, to fling out to the
Government or to the employers a final challenge. It will
again, as it has done several times already, march almost up
to the ramparts of British capitalism only to beat at the last
moment a strategic retreat. But the game of maneuver at
which all three parties — employers, Government, and labor —
are at present playing is an intricate game. A false move
by any of the parties may precipitate a conflict more decisive
and widespread than any of them intends, and it would be a
very hard-fought and protracted struggle, on the outcome of
which neither side could reckon with confidence. Such a
situation almost arose on the occasion of the national rail-
way strike of 1919. But both sides accepted a compromise
as soon as they realized whither the conflict was tending;
and this time again the settlement seems likely to be mean-
ingless and temporary.
Such compromises, however, settle nothing. The root
problems which are impeding efficiency and causing a slow
disintegration of the economic system are left untouched.
At present neither party has the intensity of will necessary
for a definite reaction or a clean-cut advance. Great Britain
drifts. Drifting steadily worsens the position, and makes
the material task of reorganization more difficult. The
change of system might still be accomplished peaceably and
without a quite chaotic period if the working-class organiza-
tions possessed a definitely realized and imagined policy of
economic reorganization. They are, indeed, gradually devel-
oping that policy; but it is doubtful whether it can reach
maturity in time to avert much trouble.
The Rush to the Colleges
THE early reports of college and university enrolment
indicate that 1920-21 is to see an even larger number
of students than 1919-20 and that the remarkable increase
in attendance which has been going on for the past five or
six years is still unchecked. Columbia University reports
over 16,000 actual candidates for degrees, and probably as
many more will receive some sort of instruction from one
department or other of the University during the year.
The College of the City of New York reports over 15,000;
the University of California over 11,000; New York Uni-
versity over 9,000; Boston University and the University
of Illinois over 8,000 each; the University of Wisconsin
over 7,000; Northwestern University over 6,000; and Chi-
cago, Cornell, and Harvard over 5,000 each. In the smaller
institutions there is much the same rise in attendance, in
several cases an advance of more than 300 per cent over
1917. The Institute for Public Service has issued an inter-
esting bulletin on the increases from 1914 to 1917, and
from 1917 to 1920. The 210 colleges and universities cov-
ered by this survey had in 1914 a total enrolment of 187,000;
in 1920 the total was 294,000. If they increase by the same
522
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2888
number of students annually they will have, the Institute
for Public Service calculates, 471,000 in 1930 and 831,000
in 1950. If they increase by the same percentage annually,
they will have 659,000 in 1930, and 1,138,000 in 1950.
Even though it is highly improbable that the present
rate of increase will be maintained for a generation, the
certain increases are sufficient to tax the powers of all the
higher institutions now in existence. The burden is al-
ready great. As every college student in America has
ordinarily cost far more than he paid for his education, the
effect of the multiplication of students has naturally been
a multiplication of annual deficits. Where additional funds
were forthcoming from an increase of fees or from gifts
the burden has not been altogether unendurable. But in
certain of the State universities, where the rise in atten-
dance has been especially marked, the situation is pre-
carious. Many of the States are in the convulsions of
economy which regularly follow wars. Needed building
cannot be undertaken to house the swarms of students, or
to provide them with class-rooms and laboratories. Libra-
ries are suffering. Lecture groups and quiz sections have
to be larger than before, and too large for the best re-
sults. The heaviest burden falls, as usual, upon the pro-
fessor, who with only a slight increase of his salary — in
spite of much talk of "drives" in the newspapers — has to
do more work than ever before, without even recourse to
the sort of assistants who could once be hired to do
part of the drudgery of teaching, but who now cannot be
obtained because there is no money to pay them. Lucky
the professor in a State university who has received as
much as fifteen per cent increase in his salary since 1914,
and who has to teach only thirty per cent more students
than he then taught!
Emphasis cannot be laid too often upon the fact that the
status of the American university professor has under-
gone, in various respects, a steady deterioration in the past
hundred years. This is particularly true as regards money
payment. In 1876 the salary of a professor at Columbia
was fixed at $7,500 and that of a tutor as $2,000; in 1919
the salary of a professor in the same university was fixed
at from $6,000 to $8,000 and that of an instructor at $2,000.
At other universities much the same set of facts might
be cited. Yet when the new salary schedules for various
universities were announced last year the general opinion
seemed to be that something handsome had been done for
the professors. As a matter of fact, merely a new step had
been taken in the exploitation of the American scholar.
Ever since the Civil War his academic duties have grown
heavier. As students have become more numerous in the
different departments and tutors or instructors have had
to be added, the professors in charge have allowed the per
capita payment for the teachers of the department to fall
lower and lower. Less and less competent instructors have
been added, and when in turn they have become professors
by the operation of seniority they have seemed worth less
than the full stipend and so have dragged the salary level
down. The plea that these were scholars making sacrifices
for the sake of poor and deserving young men is largely
nonsense. The majority of college students are able to pay
the full cost of what they receive, and many of them have
larger sums for spending money than their teachers have
for salaries. What earthly excuse is there for charging a
rich man's son half what he ought to pay and then paying
a professor half what he ought to get? There is none.
"More Thrilling than Fiction*
LITTLE by little the truth about the war prevails. One
of its mightiest warriors — of the stay-at-home variety
— John R. Rathom, editor of the Providence Journal, late
in 1917 wrote a series of articles, "Germany's Plots Ex-
posed," for the World's Work, widely advertised as follows :
How the devilishly cunning plots to kill our people, sink our
ships, dynamite our factories, and disrupt our national life were
run down and thwarted. More thrilling than fiction, and, withal,
the most patriotic service to America since the war began. It
is the modestly told story of a brave editor and resourceful re-
porters who beat the Germans at their own game.
But after one issue, "The Great Rathom Series," sched-
uled to appear for one year, which the World's Work pre-
dicted would make it the "most talked of, the most quoted,
the most eagerly sought for magazine in America" was
suddenly withdrawn. Rathom, who in frequent public ad-
dresses was modestly admitting his exploits, explained that
the cessation of the articles was decided upon from "mo-
tives of patriotism." Now it appears that on February 12,
1918, Rathom, at the instance of the United States Govern-
ment and by advice of counsel, signed a confession admit-
ting the falsity, or such exaggeration that it equaled fal-
sity, of almost all of these revelations and exposures.
No one who is in any doubt about the shameful decep-
tion that was practiced in this country throughout the war
— and indeed in every country, for it is an inevitable by-
product of war — should fail to study the amazing confession
of John Revelstoke Rathom, British-born and bred, arch-
patrioteer and super-spy-hunter, editor and moulder of
public opinion, director and member of the executive com-
mittee of the Associated Press. While "patriotism" was
smeared thick over all his utterances and works, Rathom's
role was wholly un-American. The vaunted exploits of his
editors and reporters he has now admitted were myths, and
what little information he did have as the basis for his
sensations was supplied by British secret agents whose tool
he was, and who used him for their own purposes. And
this dime-novel clap-trap was the sort of propaganda with
which the country was drugged, as The Nation has repeat-
edly shown. As for Mr. Rathom, he is aptly characterized
by the New York World, which declares in an editorial en-
titled "Confessions of a Faker," that his confession is "one
which for comprehensive avowals of downright falsehood
has few parallels in the annals of mendacity."
On the other hand, the incident sheds no enviable radiance
on Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mr. Francis G. Caffey, and
other officials behind the scenes, on the opposite side of the
controversy. Mr. Rathom recently made charges deroga-
tory to the naval administration of Roosevelt; a United
States District Attorney owing his appointment to Roose-
velt's political party makes public facts long possessed by
the Government; facts which should instantly have been
given to the American people, but are only now divulged
for the sole purpose of discrediting personally a political
opponent of the Administration. That they do this suc-
cessfully does not for one moment lessen the indecency of
the procedure. The Government which suppressed this
important information, contributing in that way — among
others — to the war hysteria and terrorism, and publishes it
only to aid the political ends of one of its henchmen, is an
accessory after the fact to Mr. Rathom's malfeasance.
Nov. 10, 1920]
The Nation
523
Those Declining Prices
PRICES are coming down; the newspapers say so, and
the banks say it, so it must be true; but the poor con-
sumer, sadly totaling up his weekly milk and egg and potato
and meat bill, learns little of the bruited drop except what
he reads in the papers. The New York truckmen heard a lot
about it when they were told that they must work ten hours
for the old nine hours' wage because "labor costs must be
reduced in proportion to the lower costs of commodities."
About the only commodity which has markedly reduced in
cost to the consumer is sugar; the other reductions have
been stopped on the way. But raw material prices have
fallen generally: Japan silk has fallen to but a trifle more
than a third of its January peak price ; wool has dropped off
forty per cent, and the world is so overstocked with wool
that the poor consumer surely ought to be able to reckon
on a substantially cheaper suit a year hence — if he can wait
that long; rubber is at less than a third of its wartime peak
and even below the pre-war price; wheat, which sold over
three dollars last spring, is hovering about the two dollar
mark today — far enough though that be from the pre-war
dollar rate; hides cost less than half what they did a year
and a half ago, and shoes should soon be cheaper for those
who can make their present shoes hold out; cotton prices
have been cut in half since May, and are only 60 per cent
over the 1913 level. Iron and oil — monopoly-controlled prod-
ucts— hold their own, petroleum higher than during the war.*
Factories are stilled; the textile mills of New England
have laid off most of their employees, and labor everywhere
is solemnly warned that it must consent to wage reductions.
As a matter of fact price reductions have begun, and will
soon reach the consumer, particularly in clothes; and the
consumer can fairly claim a large share of the credit for it.
While the newspapers were still heralding Mr. Palmer's
footless anti-profiteering crusades, and printing abstruse
explanations of the economic basis of higher costs when
they were not denouncing labor as their cause, the public
quietly stopped buying. The overalls parades were but the
foam on a wave that ran deep and strong. Ordinary citi-
zens did not don overalls and their trousers were too worn
to be turned, but they had patches put in the seat, rein-
forced the elbows of their coats, stitched down the cuffs,
and managed to get along without new. Under the profits
system which dominates our industrial life the result was
not an immediate reduction of prices to a reasonable level;
instead manufacturers chose to close their factories in the
hope that by thus creating an artificial shortage of goods
they might hold prices up. But the spontaneous public boy-
cott has continued, and retail prices are slowly creeping
down. Some manufacturers are suffering in this process of
deflation ; retailers who were caught overstocked with goods
purchased at the old price levels are naturally reluctant to
order new goods at prices which will spell a dead loss on
their present stocks; and both, the former through closing
the factories, the latter through delaying the reductions,
attempt to throw the burden on the hapless consumer. One
thing which the deflation process makes undeniable, if proof
were needed, is that there has been unconscionable .profit-
eering somewhere, and that the blame for high prices was
not justly cast on labor.
* The Standard Oil Company of Indiana has just cut one of the largest
"'melons" of recent years, declaring a stock dividend of 150 per cent.
The New England Fisherman
WE have been celebrating this year the three hundredth
anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims, and dis-
cussing variously the human product that English heritage
and New England environment gave to America and the
world. But some of the Pilgrims never landed; or, if they
did, they hardly waited for their feet to touch firm founda-
tion before they turned again to the sea, which they have
been following ever since. Their descendants today are the
New England fishermen, who have won a brief moment of
fame by virtue of the contest between the Gloucester
schooner Esperanto and her Canadian rival the Delawanna.
It is characteristic, of course, that this moment of fame
should come to the fishermen out of their play rather than
out of their work; that it should be won by a brief relaxa-
tion from the toil and danger that constitute their real lives.
The New England fisherman is the perpetuation into the
present century of the old-time American sailor. He is the
link between the glorious days when our clipper ships, with
their towering sails, were the queens of the seas and this
newer day when American steamships are making our mer-
chant fleet once more an inspiration for song and story. It
is true that the New England fisherman has latterly become
somewhat internationalized. The Gloucester fleet, especially,
is now manned by more "blue noses" from Novia Scotia than
Down Easters; but, after all, the maritime provinces of
Canada are only an annex of the State of Maine, and the
product is all one breed. The same juice flows in the veins
of all, and there is as much salt in the blood and tar in the
hair of the fisherman who is sailing today out of Gloucester
or Boston, Portland, or Provincetown, as was true of the
men who a century ago put out from New Bedford to chase
the sperm whale over the Seven Seas, or returned from the
East Indies with cargoes of silks and spices for the original
John Jacob Astor in the days when royal and skys'l yards
rose above South Street like a forest rimming the edge of
Manhattan Island.
Yes, today's New England fisherman is the true and un-
sullied successor of the old American tar. He is more; he is
the legitimate scion of all the bold sea rovers of history from
Noah to Captain Kidd. His is no idyllic life of angling, no
quiet Izaak Walton existence. He faces fog and storm and
ice to harpoon the swordfish on Georges Banks: to seine
mackerel off the Cape Shore ; to trawl the halibut on Quereau,
the Funks, and the bleak coast of "the Labrador"; or to be
gone all summer "salt fishing" on the Grand Banks. As he
says of himself in his own doggerel :
I've seen all kinds of fishing
From Western Banks to Grand;
I've been after frozen herring
Way down on Newf ndland.
And the boats in which he sails are real boats, built to
last fifty years and stand the pounding of the fiercest seas.
Hard a-lee! Make sea room for the New England fisher-
man, that perpetual Pilgrim, who asks for the security of no
Plymouth Rock and is never so happy— though he would
stoutly deny it — as when he hears the last moaning of the
whistling buoy off the granite-bound shores of Cape Ann and
points his schooner toward the open sea with the magic
words: "Drive 'er!"
524
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2888
A Question to Democracy
By FAITH ADAMS
THE Gold Star has disappeared from my neighbor's win-
dow, for two years have elapsed since the Armistice.
The boy who went out from the house next door was the
eldest of the family. I know that he died for Democracy.
Yet I never saw the gold emblem that marked his sacrifice
without being conscious of a vague uneasiness because I
know that my neighbor's son died for something he had
never known and would not have known had he lived.
When the L s first moved into our street in B they
caused no small commotion. They were the only middle
class colored people in our small suburban community. There
are, of course, plenty of colored people beyond the railroad
in Shantytown, plenty, that is to supply our needs in regard
to laundresses, scrubwomen, and children's nurses, but the
idea of a colored physician and his family moving into one
of the best houses on Elm Street was preposterous. As the
nearest prospective neighbors of the invaders, we were
objects of sympathy. Our friends expected us to become
the leaders of an opposition and I do not know exactly why
we failed to live up to their expectations. In some ways it
would have been easier, but something in me — perhaps a
strain of Abolition ancestry — asserted itself in a sudden
burning shame at the thought. We declined to lead a move-
ment to make it impossible for the L s to enter the
home they had bought. But in spite of our defection they
did not succeed in entering their house until a lawsuit bit-
terly contested at every point had been won by them in
several courts. In coming, they brought with them a prob-
lem which has never been solved and which has maintained
its rigid outline, through all the patriotic enthusiasm that
swept away a dozen hyphens and consolidated every other
element in our community during the war, a problem which
persisted in spite of the Gold Star that used to hang in my
neighbor's window.
The trouble encountered by the L s was not an isolated
phenomenon. It was a characteristic and attendant circum-
stance of every act of their lives. I wonder if any reader,
whatever his or her views on the Race question, has ever
paused to consider, not so much its profound and significant
aspects but the comparatively simple one which finds its
origin in the mere inconvenience of being a Negro in a
hostile white community, especially the daily and hourly in-
convenience of being that complex, highly sensitized crea-
ture, an intellectual Negro in a hostile white community.
"But why do they come here?" lamented my white neigh-
bors. "Why don't they stay with their own people?" ask
those who feel that the troubles are of their own making.
I believe that the answer is simple. They want the same
advantages for their children that we want for ours. They
moved to Elm Street to obtain those advantages in the face
of our antagonism, rather than live in Shantytown, or in
the South from which they came, or in the crowded insani-
tary districts which are usually the only ones accessible to
urban negroes. So far as possible in our Christian Demo-
cratic community, we have made it impossible for them to
achieve this. Of course we have not been entirely successful.
We are a Northern community and there are still traces of
respect for the individual's civil rights written into our
laws and upheld by our courts. We have so far succeeded,
however, that I, who gave no sons to my country, cannot
remember the Gold Star that used to hang in my neighbor's
window without a feeling of humiliation.
Primarily, the problem of my neighbors concerns their
children. If America means anything to us, it means the
future of our children, a future presumably freer, happier,
surer than that of any children in the world. It does not
mean this to the L s. They have three children since
their elder boy was killed, two daughters of sixteen and ten,
respectively, and a boy of eight. The second daughter,
Katherine, is the one I know best. She and my ten-year-old
daughter are classmates. They walk to and from school
together and are friends after a fashion, and yet I know
that there is not an aspect of their environment that is the
same to both. The very feeling of the sun and wind on
her face is a different thing to my colored neighbor's little
daughter than it is to mine because she is colored. My ten-
year-old is a tomboy. In her short vigorous life she has
never stopped to think whether she was "nice" or as good as
anyone else. Her speech and manners are free, emphatic,
and quite devoid of grace. She tears her clothes, falls into
the pond, climbs trees, walls, roofs, and anything else which
can be climbed, hitches her sled on to passing teams despite
emphatic warnings and stands cheerfully somewhere be-
tween the foot and the middle of her class. She goes forth
unconcernedly on errands, or pursues adventurous ends of
her own. She is a perfectly ordinary, very healthy and
really nice child, far less talented than sensitive little Kath-
erine, but she has never in her life been afraid or unwel-
come or very unhappy. Her world has boundless horizons
and endless possibilities of adventure. It may seem a small
thing to you but, remembering my own childhood, there is
nothing for which I am more thankful than that my chil-
dren can have adventures. Our town and the world are
decently safe for Elizabeth or relatively so. She may break
an arm or a leg one of these days, but I know that her heart
and her spirit will not be broken. I realize that Katherine's
mother does not share this security, that there is no aspect
of life in our charming village that is not haunted for her
by shapes of shame and terror. Each day she wakes to a
dread of things unbelievably ugly from which she cannot
shield her child. I know that she awaits Katherine's return
from school each day in fear of seeing in the child's face
that some irreparably cruel thing has happened to her.
Meanwhile Katherine's clothes are always immaculate,
her ways are gentle, her speech is soft and punctiliously
correct. She stands well in school and is particularly gifted
in music and drawing. If the color line does not hem them
in too closely, by the time she graduates my neighbors hope
to send her to an art school for a year and then, perhaps, to
Europe. It will take money, of course, and their means are
slender, but where else, they ask passionately, can she pos-
sibly fulfill the promise that is in her.
Barbara, the older daughter, will enter college this fall.
She was to have had the R College scholarship, awarded
every year to a member of the graduating class of the High
School, but as the L s say quietly, "something hap-
pened." Something usually does happen in such cases it
seems, so they were not much surprised. Whether or not
Nov. 10, 1920]
The Nation
525
they are right, I cannot say, but they and hundreds of
colored people like them, people of sober judgment and in-
tegrity believe that in such contests they are habitually
cheated by white people. Barbara was admittedly the best
student in her class. If the scholarship had been awarded
according to precedent it would have gone to her as the
holder of the highest general average for the entire four
years, but this year the Faculty Committee departed from
precedent and awarded it to Ruth H , our minister's
daughter and holder of the second highest average. Ruth's
work, they said, showed more originality. Is this happy
result merely a departure from hide-bound academicism and
as such to be applauded or just what the L s think it,
the cheating of a sixteen-year-old child out of the fruits of
four years' work? In any case, everyone was glad for Ruth,
a general favorite, and her father has allowed her to accept.
Barbara will enter college, of course, but she will have to
work a little harder to make both ends meet. Already she
is a little older, a little quieter.
And so it goes! The only one of my neighbor's children
who still seems quite merry is Archie, the youngest. He
is delicate and does not go to school, but studies at home
with his mother. I like to see him laughing and tumbling
about the lawn like any other boy of eight, but I know that
if he were to venture outside the gate and a block or so
down the street, he would find the hereditary enemy lying
in wait for him. He did venture once, and his mother had
to explain to him when he came back bruised and troubled
why the white boys called him names and threw things at
him. They weren't "tough" boys either, nor members of
the white gangs that the L s moved from the city to
avoid, but the nice little sons of some of our leading citi-
zens. When they discussed the invasion of the L s at
home and abroad in loud and angry tones, those same citi-
zens did not intend to suggest to their sons that it was a
good game to hunt down Archie, but somehow the boys have
learned that he is an intruder and so in the good old tribal
fashion transmitted by their parents, they threw stones
and shouted "nigger." Archie never goes out alone now and
Katherine usually goes to school with Elizabeth. "It's a
little safer for a girl!" Mrs. L s says wistfully. Just
how safe it is, I know from what Elizabeth has told me of
the jeers that Katherine daily endures. It is Elizabeth, and
not Katherine, who resents those jeers and who, on occa-
sions, puts Katherine's tormentors to flight, while Kath-
erine walks on quietly, "just as if she didn't care !"
You see, Katherine is not only a little ten-year-old girl;
she is a representative of her race, and so are all the L s.
The freedom and unconsciousness of normal, happy child-
hood are not for her, as they were not for Barbara and as
they will not long be for Archie. Compared with her, how
robust and spontaneous my Elizabeth seems. Elizabeth can
forget herself. This is just what Katherine can not do.
Her shrinking self-consciousness is a distressing thing. But
even if she could lose herself in work or play, how quickly
she would be forced to remember. Alone, Katherine might
perhaps forget for a moment that she is colored, but the
world about her never forgets. To that world she is colored
first, and a child with a child's needs afterwards.
As it is with the children, it is with their elders in a far
greater degree. They, too, are the representatives of their
race first, human beings only secondarily. Just what this
means in actual nervous strain, if in no other way, is a diffi-
cult thing for any of those who belong to the dominant race
to estimate. It means eternal vigilance and eternal self-
consciousness. It means doubt, hesitation and never-ending
complications in the most commonplace incidents of daily
living. It means, even under such favorable conditions as
obtain in B , a constant uncertainty of life, health and
happiness. How great a gift my own careless certainty of
a very few elementary things now seems to me! In par-
ticular the certainty I have of meeting in the ordinary walka
of life with ordinary courtesy, decency and fair play; of
always meeting in an emergency with deep kindliness, dor-
mant before perhaps, but called into being by nothing more
than my need of it; my certainty of fellowship, of equality,
of respect if it is due me; my certainty of getting pretty
generally anything which I honestly work or pay for and
sometimes more than this, and of foretelling the morrow
with some accuracy and laying my plans accordingly for my-
self and my children. Can you imagine being able to take
none of these things for granted? If you can, your imagi-
nation serves you better than most in trying to realize what
daily life means to the L s.
In one of our "high-brow" monthlies, an American woman
wrote recently of her readiness to kill in defense of what
"middle class America" meant to her. It meant just such
a safe, sure, happy freedom from dependence on the irra-
tional and violent in human nature as it does to me. It
does not mean this to the L s, and yet they, too, are of
"middle class America." They give it their passionate
loyalty and hold it to be good, except in so far as it ex-
cludes them or others because of race, creed or color — a
loyalty which is constantly and tragically betrayed by the
reality, while the weakness of my own weaker faith in its
institutions is constantly being justified. Do you think I
am exaggerating? Then consider for a moment these
parallels in the lives of two middle-class Americans, Mrs.
L. and myself.
If I want to go away for the hot weather, all I have to
do is to look up some jolly mountain or seashore spot within
my means, pack my bags and go. Mrs. L. cannot do this.
Of all the wealth and loveliness of our natural resources,
the greater part is closed to her. Hotels, boarding houses,
and camps are almost entirely in the hands of white people
who exclude colored ones. There are a few, a very few,
resorts for colored people but they are generally crowded
and not always desirable. To rent or buy a summer cottage,
however simple, is difficult and expensive. Too many white
people refuse to have colored neighbors! Long trips are
not to be thought of because it is necessary to depend on
hotel and sleeping-car accommodations. Just once, in the
flush of youth, Dr. and Mrs. L. did attempt a trip. They
took their oldest children to see Niagara and the Great
Lakes. The experience was one they have never cared to
repeat. So the L s spend the summer in sunbaked B.
There are worse hardships, of course, and yet why should
the desirable thing which for me is so simple, that is, to
give Elizabeth the wild freedom of the woods or an outing
at the beach for two months each year, be impossible for
them? They do spend a few days sometimes in a small
colored hotel at a glittering resort on the Jersey coast, but
they do not call it "taking their children to the country,"
and neither, I think, would you.
Again, let us say that a member of my family is stricken
suddenly with a serious illness, or requires an immediate
operation. It is a hard time and an anxious one, but how
comparatively smooth and simple my course will be. I
526
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2888
speak as a representative of middle-class America who ran
pay more or less for what she needs, and leave aside for
the moment all question of economic injustice. My family
physician will make all arrangements. I have my choice
of the best doctors, the best private accommodation, the
best nurses I can afford, and I will be pretty sure of sym-
pathetic interest and helpfulness from all with whom I
come in contact. When Barbara L s was suddenly
stricken with appendicitis, there was not a hospital, public
or private in B , or in the nearest big town, where she
could get a room. They finally rushed her to the nearest
big hospital and took their chances in the ward, already
overcrowded, knowing that for the urgent care she needed,
they had to depend upon overworked, indifferent nurses, and
doctors in an institution which excluded colored people
as doctors, nurses, or private patients. "It's when you're in
a hurry that being colored really matters" was Mrs. L's
comment on this occasion. These serious discriminations
have their more trivial counterparts in almost every inci-
dent in our daily lives. If I wish to go down town to shop
or for any other purpose, it is a simple matter. I can be
served with reasonable promptness and civility in any store
I see fit to enter, while Mrs. L. may be obliged to wait in-
definitely or be ignored altogether by saleswomen who do
not like her complexion. If I cannot get home to luncheon
I eat downtown at the first tea-room or dairy lunch that
comes to hand. Once when Mrs. L. was delayed beyond
the noon hour, she tried to get food in three or four such
places and, failing to obtain service in any of them, finally
lunched on a bar of chocolate in the public square. It is
possible that she would eventually have been served had
she persisted. There is a law on the statute books cover-
ing such cases, but she preferred an unsatisfactory luncheon
and her subsequent headache to further rebuffs. Again,
if a good concert or a good play comes to town, I take
Elizabeth as a matter of course. She has not so far evi-
denced any great enthusiasm for the concerts. Mrs. L.
does not take Katherine, who is really musical and would
love to go, because she can never be sure that the tickets
she buys, or perhaps reserves by telephone, will really be
honored. If they are for the gallery, the chances are that
they will be, but even this is not a certainty. Besides she
does not always want to sit in the gallery. You and I could
do this with no feeling of discomfort. It is a part of our
white freedom that we can, but then we have never been
segregated into galleries or winced under the phrase
"nigger heaven."
For our freedom is far more than the freedom from
unpleasant occurrences. It is freedom from the expecta-
tion of such occurrences; from the constant apprehension
of unfairness and of hostility or condescension in those we
meet. It is freedom from the constant necessity of being
on the defensive, of living forever isolated in a lonely little
hell of self-consciousness. It is the priceless freedom of
the mind and it contains the possibility of a fellowship as
wide as the world. I cannot believe that even the close
bond of suffering which unites those we exclude from it
compensates them for its loss. That there are some com-
pensations cannot be denied. Their lives gain in intensity.
They know race loyalty and kinship and pride such as few
of us even dream, and also sometimes practice detachment
and irony to a degree few of us suspect, but surely these
are shadowy substitutes for the whole of life. To live
warped and ingrowing, however intensely, however sus-
tained by pride, or irony, or the sense of having a cause, is
not a substitute, it seems to me, for living fully and freely
and to the limit of our powers.
The war which cut so sharply across our lives, obliterat-
ing race and class lines, once seemed about to wipe out
even the barriers which separated the L s from the rest
of us. We were all Americans with a common cause —
Democracy. In the name of Democracy we drafted black
and white Americans impartially and sent them out to
die. We taught them both to make sacrifices, to work and
fight and save. We sold them both Liberty Bonds and
Thrift Stamps and urged on both alike the need of war
time effort and economy. But there Democracy ended.
It drafted Robert L s. It has since taken his life. But
it excluded his mother from the workrooms of the Red
Cross organization in B just as it has excluded and
separated colored people the country over in every kind of
war and war relief work. Democracy does not mean social
equality, I may be told at this point, and there are many
whose chosen work it seems to be to popularize this mis-
conception. But if it does not mean equality, it means
nothing. We did not knowingly go out to fight for "De-
mocracy-within-caste-limits." It is not an inspiring slogan.
Certainly it was not for such a qualified Democracy that
Robert L s and other young colored Americans died.
What they really died for, I do not know. Neither do I
know what of faith or despair or necessity drove them to
their death in the American Forces. But I do see in the
memory of my colored neighbor's Gold Star the most in-
sistent question that has yet been put to our Democracy.
A Letter to Mr. J. C. Squire
Editor of the London Mercury
DEAR MR. SQUIRE : Since the appearance of the first
number of your huge monthly I have searched eagerly
through each succeeding issue for some trace of a curiosity
there is said to be in England concerning contemporary
American poetry. That such an interest does exist I have
only on the word of Robert Nichols, one of your infant
prodigies and lately an honored guest in the United States,
who, however, when I asked him how it happens that Amer-
ican poetry does not sell in England, replied : "But, you see,
we've such a bally lot of our own stuff to buy and read."
In the absence of any sincere criticism in the Mercury of
the work of the younger American poets I am grateful that
you have not shamed silence by publishing the opinions of
the terrible children whom your foreign office lately granted
passports to America as the representatives of literary Eng-
land. They came here, their pockets bulging with manu-
script poems in praise of Nature, expecting to see the
disheveled children of Punch's Uncle Sam, and not a little
disappointed to find us fairly critical if always exuberant
hosts. Before they could obtain anything like an insight
into the true poetry and people of America their lecture
tours were finished, their shekels collected; they were once
more feasted and toasted, and then they scuttled back to
London and a more fitting obscurity.
Tell me, please, who sends those children here? Can noth-
ing be done to regulate the problem of who is to come and
whom we are to receive as the representatives of literary
Nov. 10, 1920]
The Nation
527
England? We love and understand English poetry, and al-
though very much of what you now write is not worth read-
ing, we gobble up pretty nearly everything you publish. Your
own Mercury, I dare say, is read with rather more enthusi-
asm in New York than in London. There is no limit to our
gratitude. And when we hear that an English poet is com-
ing to visit us we do not even inquire into his poetry. We
throw aside all consideration of taste and caution and hasten
to make holiday.
Witness for yourself the bitterness of our lot: Thomas
Hardy, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, and Ralph Hodgson re-
main in England, while Robert Nichols and Cecil Roberts
come here to receive from us the homage we are eager to
pay to English genius. I am not trying to put in a bill of
complaint against their poetry, though, as a matter of
national pride, some better English poet should make it his
business to go through their baggage and edit some of it.
Their very behavior, even, has become a matter of grievance
to us. We wonder, if this continues, how long we shall con-
tinue our attitude of friendliness and geniality. We have
only the solace that for our Robert Frost you have sent us
your William Butler Yeats, and for our T. S. Eliot you have
graced us with John Masefield: and that for your Robert
Nichols and Cecil Roberts you have had for several years
our Gertrude Stein.
There is Vachel Lindsay, who is said to be on his way to
you. In The Potato Dance, The Chinese Nightingale, Gen-
eral William Booth Enters Heaven, Mr. Lindsay has writ-
ten such beautiful poetry that he is entitled to a high place
in our affections. But it is in the less authentic Vachel
Lindsay that your poetasters have found — and will continue
to find — the representative American poet. Your prompt
acceptance of Vachel Lindsay at first mystified us. Why
should you have seized upon his louder jingles when you
might read Edwin Arlington Robinson and Robert Frost
and Carl Sandburg — or the finer work of Mr. Lindsay him-
self? Even were Robinson or Frost or Sandburg out of
your reach, you had on your very doorstep the works of Ezra
Pound and T. S. Eliot. But we are not any longer mystified.
You have determined that our arts must be savage; so you
applaud wildly the uproarious ballads of the later Vachel
Lindsay and continue to maintain for our poet-exiles in
London eyes which do not see and ears which do not hear.
You have, of course, an answer ready made if you care to
make it. Why do we take your little countrymen so seri-
ously? Well, we acknowledge that the blame in the long run
must fall on us, or rather, on certain of our hero-hunting
ladies to whom the sound of English speech is sweet on very
English tongues and in whom the illusion of distance is as
strong, almost, as an instinct. It is they who pay the rich-
est honors to your adventurous countrymen. Indeed, they
might even honor Thomas Hardy or some great man if they
had a chance. But they do the best they can with what they
get; and what they get is in a way, I suppose, as much the
fault of the English who send such very minor poets over as
of the Americans who rave about them when they come.
At least, however, though we absurdly accept these visi-
tors so nearly on their own terms that we may seem quite
uncritical, it is pleasant to be able to say that not all of us
suffer from this confusion of judgment. We know what
certain of our recent poetical visitors think of us in their
hearts. Why may we not through you indicate something
of what we think of them? Samuel Roth
New York, October 15
Children of the Sun
By JAMES RORTY
At length after many days and much folly, after eating
the sour crusts of obedience, and drinking deep draughts
of bitter virtue guttered from the roofs of the hovels
men live in because they are afraid to face the sun —
At length after many days of strutting in the tall
hat of piety and the shiny broadcloth of goodness and
the white gloves of service and the stiff shirt of denial,
until the piteous gods, perplexed, moaned and were faint
at the sight of so much solemn-frantic miming on the
earth —
At length I went to live with Lilith, the witch, and to-
gether we put away childish things.
(Her hair is darker than the sweet night that bloomed
after the Seventh Day when the Lord rested and the
scent of the honeysuckle went up over the earth, and her
breasts are swelling and fragrant like apples of the Sep-
tember harvest, and from the red bow of her lips my
soul is loosed, a shaft flying forever, and by her strong
clasp I am anchored deep in the earth where the feet of
the joyous God are planted.)
Yes, Lilith and I sat together on the curbstone of the
world and admired our bodies that were warm where the
sun shone on them, and we laughed because Eden had
blossomed for us out of the hard pavements of the earth,
and we were clean again like the happy beasts that roll
where the grass is thick in the sunshine.
And I said to Lilith: "The church bells are ringing,
whom shall we worship ? The terrified people go darkly
to worship a Fear they have fashioned." Said Lilith,
"We worship the sun."
So we worshiped the sun that is careless and kind to the
cow in the pasture, the bird in the tree: Lilith and I,
sitting on the curbstone of the spinning world, laughing
and kissing, without respect, impudent in the wide smile
of the Lord.
Contributors to This Issue
Faith Adams is a graduate of a New England college
who has settled in a small town not far from the north
. Atlantic seaboard.
A. E. Hinrichs is a member of the New York bar, espe-
cially versed in international law.
James Rorty is a young American poet and writer of
short stories.
Samuel Roth is a poet and essayist, and the editor of
The Lyric.
b2S
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2888
The Spread Eagle vs. Alien Property Rights
By A. E. HINRICHS
A GERMAN woman taught her native language for
twenty-five years in the schools of New York and
saved a few thousand dollars which she invested in Ameri-
can securities and put into the hands of an American
banker. Just before the war, she retired upon her savings
and returned to her German home to end her days. When
war threatened she was troubled about her American prop-
erty and consulted her banker. He advised her that it
would be safe here, and she left it in his hands. Her
securities have been seized and sold by the Alien Property
Custodian, and the proceeds are in the United States
Treasury.
The American agent of a German house collected $40,000
for his principal. War had been declared, but there was
as yet no Trading with the Enemy Act. By advice of
counsel, the money was invested in bonds of the First
Liberty Loan. Counsel said that by international law gov-
ernment bonds are valid obligations, war or no war, in the
hands of friend or foe; though, of course, payment of inter-
est to an enemy would be suspended during war. These
bonds have been seized by the Alien Property Custodian.
A manufacturer in Saxony had for years maintained a
sales branch in this country. The American branch, bear-
ing the same name as the German house, was incorporated
under the laws of New York, the capital stock being held
in trust by an American. The business was a small one;
it was in no way connected with the German Government
or the German imperialists. In 1916 when intercourse
with Germany became difficult and uncertain, imports
stopped and no money was sent abroad. Counsel advised
that the company here be not liquidated, because it could
not be supposed that in case of entering the war, the United
States would confiscate private enemy property. This legal
advice was followed. When America declared war, every
effort to communicate directly or indirectly with the Ger-
man owner ceased. It was a fact and the American branch
company was ready to prove, that a continuance of its
ownership in trust for the German proprietor would neither
help the German Govarnment nor hinder the United States
Government in the war; and the company would have been
glad to submit to such supervision as would have assured
our Government against any attempt to hold intercourse
with the enemy. But the business was seized and sold as
a going concern by the Alien Property Custodian, at "bar-
gain rates." The proceeds are in the United States Treas-
ury. The purchaser carries on the business under the old
name, incidentally selling goods of American manufacture
under the old trade-marks which used to be a guaranty of
German origin and quality.
Did the banker and the lawyers give unsound advice?
It was based on international law. Our President and his
spokesmen repeatedly assured us that we had no quarrel
with the German people; that we were waging war to vindi-
cate international law and justice; that we were seeking no
material advantage. All legal writers agree that bonds
of a belligerent in the hands of an enemy must not be
annulled; and that whatever may have been the earlier
custom, private enemy property in a belligerent state has
long been secure against confiscation. During the wars of
the nineteenth century, only one case of confiscation oc-
curred. Denmark in 1807 tried by ordinance to confiscate
debts owed by its nationals to citizens of Great Britain.-
Denmark's attempt, however, was abortive. After the war,
a British creditor caught his Danish debtor in England
and sued him before Lord Ellenborough. The Dane pleaded
the war ordinance as a defense. His Lordship brqshed
aside the plea, asserting that the ordinance was not con-
formable to the usage of nations, and not binding either
on the parties or on the court. This legal decision has never
been controverted.
The advice given to their clients by the American banker
and the American lawyers was therefore sound. It was
based upon international law; it expressed a sense of our
national honor and a far-reaching sense of our moral
obligations. While the Act was pending in Congress, Secre-
tary Redfield, Secretary Lansing, Assistant Attorney-Gen-
eral Warren, and Congressman Adamson of Georgia, chair-
man of the Committee in charge of the Bill, asserted that
the Act was designed solely to cut off commercial inter-
course with the enemy during the war; that nothing like
confiscation was contemplated; that the Act would cause
no permanent injury to anybody. Secretary Redfield said:
No person not trading with the enemy is affected by this bill.
Anybody who is trading with the enemy in such a way as to do
the United States no harm, and can show it, or the enemy no
good, and can show it, will be permitted under this bill, or may
be permitted under this bill, to continue operating, and the
whole effort has been to make the thing as little onerous as'
necessary. The creation of an Alien Property Custodian is a
novelty and is in line with that same effort toward equity which
impels us to indicate an earnest desire to show to the people
with whom, unfortunately, we are engaged in war, that here is
the opposite of confiscation and here is the opposite of requisi-
tion. ... I do not know who was the originator of the idea,
but whoever was has created something as fine in its way as the
return of the Boxer indemnity, because the enemy property is
all in our hands to bear its share of the expense in fighting the
enemy, and all of it is safeguarded, so that if it be the will of
Congress, under proper conditions, it may be returned to him
intact and safeguarded by ourselves during the whole period
of the war.
Branches of enemy-owned business operating here were
to be licensed; business that was not helping Germany or
hurting us in the conduct of the war was not to be inter-
fered with; American corporations doing a business other-
wise lawful were not to be affected by the enemy-ownership
of stock, although, of course, no dividends could be sent
to enemies during the war. In short, we had enemy prop-
erty here, which we were entitled to sequester, in order to
render it incapable of giving aid to the enemy, but we
were supposed to return it after the war and virtually
promised to do so.
The Act as passed was entirely consistent with the gen-
erous professions of the Administration. It gave power to
the War Trade Board to investigate, supervise, license, or
sequester. It provided that if no license were granted to
the contrary, enemy-property must be delivered to the Cus-
todian. He was given the powers of a common law trustee
over such property, but not power to sell except "if and
Nov. 10, 1920]
The Nation
529
when necessary to prevent waste and to protect such prop-
erty."
The immediate result of the passage of the Act was a
prompt compliance with its terms by such persons and cor-
porations as held property of an alien enemy, or were con-
ducting a business owned or controlled by an alien enemy,
and who had a reasonable hope of obtaining licenses. These
were the concerns that were not engaged in any way in
assisting the German Government to wage war, but were
prepared to prove to our Government that a continued hold-
ing of the enemy property, or a continuance of the enemy-
owned business, would neither harm the United States nor
help the enemy during the war. But it is only necessary
to turn to the Report of the Alien Property Custodian for
proof that in every single case of which the War Trade
Board or the Custodian had notice, general licenses were
refused, and demands for turning over the property were
made. In fact, no inquiry was made, beyond establishing
the fact of enemy ownership. If stock of a corporation was
owned in Germany, no other fact mattered, and the stock
had to be transferred to the Custodian. If a business had
a German partner, no other fact mattered, and the firm
must be liquidated. Reasons for refusing licenses were not
stated. The uniform formula was a refusal "with regrets"
from the War Trade Board, followed by a demand from the
Custodian that the property be turned over to him.
The War Trade Board and the Custodian had formulated
a theory of their own, and acted upon it. That theory was
that we were waging an economic war, that enemy property
ought to be confiscated, and that enemy business ought to
become American business.
Here, however, the powers of the Custodian fell short of
his desires, because he had no right to sell enemy property
save "when necessary to prevent waste and to protect such
property." But on March 28, 1918, by a rider to an Appro-
priation Bill, and at the suggestion of the Custodian, Con-
gress amended the Act so as to give him a general power
of sale of all the properties which had been reported and
transferred to him. This amendment was passed with little
discussion or debate. The Custodian then entered upon a
selling campaign, which continued unabated after the Armis-
tice, and according to his report of February, 1919, was to
continue indefinitely. As late as last summer, his advertise-
ments of sales, under the familiar spread eagle, continued
to appear in the New York papers.
So the matter stands at this writing. The Administra-
tion said that there would be no confiscation, but every
forced sale of property involves confiscation. The forced
sale of a going business, even if the assets bring a fair
price, involves the confiscation of all those intangible but
valuable properties that go to make up "good-will," and con-
stitute the difference between the worth of a going concern
and that of a concern in liquidation. Every forced sale also
involves confiscation to the extent that it prevents, or ren-
ders extremely difficult, reestablishment of the old business
by its former owners, and thus cuts off future profit.
The American people were promised that there would be
no confiscation, but there has been confiscation. The Custo-
dian admits this by his report, but attempts to justify his
policy on three grounds: First, that it was retaliation for
German sales of American property; second, that enemy
business in the United States furnished headquarters for
propaganda; third, that it was good for American business
to put the Germans out of our markets by selling property
of German concerns to any American citizens interested.
The first reason now appears to have been advanced by
mistake. Germany sequestered, but neither liquidated nor
confiscated American properties.
The second reason may have been true to some extent.
But that is likely to have been the case in other wars be-
tween nations, and yet the world had established the doc-
trine that war should not serve as an excuse for the con-
fiscation of private property. Moreover, whether the Cus-
todian sold a German-owned business did not at all depend
upon whether that business was giving aid to the enemy.
The Act as originally passed was intended to control all
such cases by a system of licenses. What actually happened
was that no general licenses to continue enemy-owned con-
cerns were issued ; and all private property that came to the
knowledge of the Custodian was seized by him and sold.
The third reason may be satisfactory to those Americans
who have profited by it. Doubtless it is a great advantage
to certain American business men to have acquired at bar-
gain rates the assets, the good-will, and the future profits
of German concerns. Something for nothing is usually con-
sidered good business.
But the question remains, what shall be done with the
proceeds now held in the Treasury of the United States
which have resulted from the sale of enemy-owned property,
and from the collection of debts owing to enemies?
So far as confiscation has gone, probably no amends can
be made. Even if it were desirable, it would hardly be
practicable to unscramble the countless transfers that have
been completed. The Act states that these proceeds shall
be dealt with after the war as Congress may direct. But
the Treaty of Versailles provides that neither the German
Government nor any German citizen may ever question
anything that has been done by the United States with
with reference to enemy property. Such property, or the
proceeds thereof, may be applied towards the payment of
claims the United States may have against the German
Government and its nationals, and Germany undertakes to
compensate its nationals for the sale or retention of their
property in allied or associated states. If the Treaty is
ever ratified by us, this last clause gives to Germans who
have lost their American property their only chance of
recovering it.
There is a certain glib plausibility about the provision
for keeping in the United States the proceeds of German
property, and using them for the satisfaction of claims of
individual Americans against the German Government or
German citizens, leaving the latter to loek to their Govern-
ment for reimbursement. But the prevision is unjust, and
therefore un-American. It is unjust to use the property
of A for the payment of a debt owing B.
We have killed off German competition in this country.
We have made it difficult for Germans to reestablish them-
selves here. Whether the apparent profit to American busi-
ness will be permanent remains to be seen when in some
later war American precedent is cited against American
business in foreign lands. What has been done in regard
to the spread eagle sales has been done and is irretrievable.
But we have not yet irrevocably confiscated the hundreds
of millions of dollars resulting from those sales which have
been turned into the U. S. Treasury by the Alien Property
Custodian. It is a large sum, but not a staggering one as
international finance goes, nowadays. We could afford to
give it back. Can we afford to keep it?
530
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2888
The Irish Committee at Work
THE preliminaries of organization for the Irish inquiry
are ended and the time for action has arrived. The
American Commission on Ireland, chosen by the Committee
of One Hundred on Ireland, held its first meeting in Wash-
ington last Friday and Saturday and issued the following
preliminary statement:
The American Commission on Ireland has accepted the task
intrusted to it with the sincerest desire to improve the rela-
tions between the United States, Great Britain, and Ireland, to
obtain facts as to what is actually happening on Irish soil, and
to discover ways and means of offering continuing mediation,
if such ways exist. Firmly believing that the present situation,
if long continued, will menace the peace of the world, and realiz-
ing that it is already becoming a domestic political issue in
America, the Commission seeks to shed light upon what is hap-
pening, in order to present an actual picture of the crisis to
the American people, so that, with this background, construc-
tive suggestions may arise as to a way out.
The members of the Commission are unanimously of the belief
that the friendship of the English-speaking peoples for one
another is of such priceless value to the welfare of the entire
world, that for Americans to leave a single stone unturned to
preserve that friendship would constitute grave culpability. The
Commission is, moreover, profoundly stirred by the long-con-
tinued reports of lawlessness and the wholesale shedding of
blood in Ireland on both sides. Its members cannot sit by un-
moved at the possibility of an outcome so terrible that it might
easily mean the destruction of the bulk of the sorely harassed
Irish people, a people so gifted as to be able to make a unique
contribution to the culture and progress of the world, a people
whose voluntary martyrs have begun to make the whole globe
realize that the situation of Ireland has reached a pass where
brave men prefer death to its continuance.
If in such an hour the constitution of an unofficial commission
of citizens of a friendly nation seems unusual, it is to be ex-
plained by the unprecedented circumstances in Ireland, by the
fact that millions of Americans of Irish blood can know neither
contentment nor happiness until peace is restored to their kin
across the Atlantic, and by the historic American devotion to
those peaceful ideals which but recently animated its troops in
the World War. An America inactive in the face of the tragic
events in Ireland would be an America recreant to its tradi-
tions and to its faith.
The Commission expects to effect its organization this
week and to make arrangements for beginning its public
inquiry on November 17. It seems also probable that, in
order to facilitate its work, the Committee, consisting of
Miss Jane Addams, ex-Governor Joseph W. Folk of Mis-
souri, Frederic C. Howe, James H. Maurer, and Senator
David I. Walsh, will increase its membership.
One of the first acts of the Commission was the draft-
ing of a cable to Cardinal Logue, who occupies a position in
Ireland similar to that of Cardinal Mercier in Belgium, re-
questing that a deputation of Irish Bishops be sent to this
country to place before the Commission first-hand testimony
on conditions in Ireland. The invitation was the result of
several suggestions that have come from Ireland to the
Committee of One Hundred. The Commission further an-
nounced that a number of the mayors of Irish cities will im-
mediately be invited to hasten to this country to give their
testimony. These officers will include both English and
Irish partisans. A select list of American witnesses, com-
posed of citizens who have recently returned from visits to
Ireland, is also being compiled by the Commission.
The editors of The Nation, having fulfilled their function
in gathering together the Committee of One Hundred on
Ireland, acting as a secretarial medium for that body during
the period when it was electing an executive commission to
conduct the proposed investigation, and having initiated the
appeal for funds to defray the expenses, have now with-
drawn from direct connection with the matter. The Ameri-
can Commission on Ireland is in full charge and every mem-
ber of the staff of The Nation wishes the Commission God-
speed in its task of high service. The full Committee, sup-
porting the Commission, numbers 144 members. This body
is representative of all that is best in American opinion and
aspiration. Its complete membership is printed for the first
time below:
Jane Addams, Hull House, Chicago, 111.
Hon. Charles F. Amidon, U. S. District Judge, Fargo, N. D.
U. S. Senator Henry F. Ashurst, Prescott, Arizona.
Bishop James Atkins, M. E. Church South, Nashville, Tenn.
Mary Austin, writer and lecturer, New York City.
Abby Scott Baker, Washington, D. C.
Governor Simon Bamberger, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Abraham Baroff, International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union,
New York City.
Rt. Rev. Troy Beatty, P. E. Bishop of Tennessee.
Mayor C. F. Beck, Akron, Ohio.
Mayor Martin Behrman, New Orleans, La.
Fred G. Biedenkapp, Brotherhood of Metal Workers, New York.
William Harman Black, former member National War Labor
Board, New York City.
Alice Stone Blackwell, Boston, Mass.
Harriot Stanton Blatch, New York City.
Lucy Branham, New York City.
J. M. Budish, United Cloth, Hat, and Cap Makers of America,
New York City.
Rt. Rev. Hugh L. Burleson, P. E. Bishop of South Dakota.
Rt. Rev. C. E. Byrne, Bishop of Galveston, Texas.
Governor Thomas E. Campbell, Phoenix, Arizona.
Rt. Rev. John J. Cantwell, Bishop of Monterey and Los Angeles.
U. S. Senator Arthur Capper, Topeka, Kansas.
Governor Robert D. Carey, Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Frank E. Carstarphen, Special Counsel for the Federal Govern-
ment, New York City.
J. J. Castellini, merchant, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Parley P. Christensen, Presidential candidate, Farmer-Labor
Party, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Professor Arthur C. Cole, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
George W. Coleman, President of the Open Forum National
Council, Boston, Mass.
Martin Conboy, former Director of the Draft, New York City.
Henry W. L. Dana, Cambridge, Mass.
Rev. William Horace Day, former Moderator of the National
Council of Congregational Churches of U. S., Bridgeport, Conn.
Rt. Rev. E. T. Demby, P. E. Suffragan Bishop of the Colored
Race, Province of the Southwest, Little Rock, Ark.
Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, editor of the Crisis, New York City.
Professor Horace A. Eaton, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y.
Governor Edward I. Edwards, Trenton, New Jersey.
Hon. Maurice F. Egan, former Minister to Denmark, New York.
John Lovejoy Elliott, Hudson Guild, New York City.
Hon. J. W. Folk, former Governor of Missouri, Washington, D. C.
Mrs. Andre Fouilhoux, Short Hills, N. J.
Clemens J. France, former Collector of the Port of Seattle, Wash.
Royal W. France, lawyer, New York City.
Governor Lynn J. Frazier, Bismarck, N. D.
Zona Gale, writer, Portage, Wis.
John F. Galvin, former Chairman, Board of Water Supply, N. Y
Nov. 10, 1920]
The Nation
531
Gilson Gardner, Washington correspondent, Newspaper Enter-
prise Ass'n.
His Eminence James Cardinal Gibbons, Baltimore, Md.
Mayor C. P. Gillen, Newark, N. J.
Arthur Gleason, writer, New York City.
Hon. James H. Graham, former Congressman, Springfield, 111.
Mayor Frank J. Hague, Jersey City, New Jersey.
William Hard, writer, Washington, D. C.
Rt. Rev. Robert Le Roy Harris, P. E. Bishop of Marquette, Mich.
Dr. Gillette Hayden, Columbus, Ohio.
Professor Carlton J. H. Hayes, Columbia University, New York.
Mayor J. J. Hayes, Vicksburg, Miss.
William Randolph Hearst, newspaper publisher, New York City.
U. S. Senator Charles B. Henderson, Elko, Nevada.
Mayor Joseph Herman, Newport, Ky.
Morris Hillquit, lawyer, New York City.
Rabbi E. E. Hirsch, Professor of Rabbinical Literature and
Philosophy, University of Chicago.
Mayor Daniel W. Hoan, Milwaukee, Wis.
Judge George Holmes, Omaha, Neb.
Rev. John Haynes Holmes, President Free Religious Association,
New York City.
Rt. Rev. J. M. Horner, P. E. Bishop of Asheville, N. C.
Frederic C. Howe, former Commissioner of Immigration of the
Port of New York.
Bishop John Hurst, Methodist Episcopal Church, Baltimore, Md.
Mayor John F. Hylan, New York City.
Dr. Edmund J. James, President Emeritus, University of Illinois.
U. S. Senator Hiram W. Johnson, San Francisco, California.
James Weldon Johnson, Secretary of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People, New York City.
William H. Johnston, International Machinists Union, Washing-
ton, D. C.
Rev. Paul Jones, formerly P. E. Bishop of Utah, New York City.
Dr. David Starr Jordan, Chancellor Emeritus, Leland Stanford
Jr. University, California.
Most Rev. James J. Keane, Archbishop of Dubuque, Iowa.
Mayor H. W. Kiel, St. Louis, Mo.
Edwin P. Kilroe, Assistant District Attorney, New York City.
Richard R. Kilroy, editor, Anaconda Standard, Butte, Mont.
Dr. George W. Kirchwey, Head of Department of Criminology,
New York School of Social Work, New York City.
Rev. G. S. Lackland, Denver, Col.
U. S. Senator Robert M. La Follete, Wisconsin.
Hon. F. H. La Guardia, President of the Board of Aldermen,
New York City.
John S. Leahy, St. Louis, Mo.
Owen R. Lovejoy, General Secretary, National Child Labor Com-
mittee, New York City.
Professor Robert Morss Lovett, Dean of the Junior Colleges,
University of Chicago.
Hazel MacKaye, Director of the Bureau of Pageantry and the
Drama, Y. W. C. A., New York City.
Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, Chairman of the Executive Committee,
Jewish Community (Kehillah) of New York City.
Mayor James B. McCavitt, Anaconda, Mont.
Allen McCurdy, Secretary of the National Executive Committee,
Committee of 48, New York City.
U. S. Senator Charles L. McNary, Salem, Oregon.
Bertha H. Mailly, Executive Secretary, Rand School of Social
Science, New York City.
Hon. Dudley Field Malone, former Assistant Secretary of the
U. S. Treasury, New York City.
Basil M. Manly, Director of the Scripps Economic Bureau, Wash-
ington, D. C.
Mayor Elliott Marshall, St. Joseph, Mo.
Anne Martin, publicist, Reno, Nev.
Congressman William E. Mason, Chicago, 111.
James H. Maurer, President Pennsylvania State Federation of
Labor, Harrisburg, Pa.
Miss Katherine M. Meserole, Bellport, Long Island, N. Y.
John E. Milholland, business man and writer, New York City.
A. P. Moore, editor of the Pittsburgh Leader, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Mrs. Agnes H. Morey, Brookline, Mass.
Bishop H. C. Morrison, M. E. Church South, Leesburg, Fla.
William J. Mulligan, Supreme Director of the Knights of Colum-
bus, Thompsonville, Conn.
Mrs. William Spencer Murray, Catskill, N. Y.
President William A. Neilson, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
Professor William A. Nitze, head of the Department of Romance
Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago.
Albert J. Nock, editor of the Freeman, New York City.
Edward N. Nockels, associate editor the New Majority, Chicago,
111.
Rt. Rev. John J. O'Connor, Bishop of Newark, New Jersey.
Daniel C. O'Flaherty, Richmond, Va.
Rt. Rev. Charles T. Olmsted, P. E. Bishop of Central New York.
M. O'Neill, Akron, Ohio.
Rt. Rev. Edward L. Parsons, P. E. Bishop Coadjutor of Califor-
nia, San Francisco.
Captain Julius C. Peyser, Washington, D. C.
U. S. Senator James D. Phelan, San Francisco, California.
Rev. Watson L. Phillips, Shelton, Conn.
Amos R. E. Pinchot, lawyer and publicist, New York City.
Mayor Willis H. Plunkett, Phoenix, Ariz.
Rev. Levi M. Powers, Washington, D. C.
Mayor George A. Quigley, New Britain, Conn.
Mayor Edward W. Quinn, Cambridge, Mass.
Congressman Charles E. Randall, Kenosha, Wis.
U. S. Senator Joseph E. Ransdell, Louisiana.
Mrs. James Rector, Columbus, Ohio.
Raymond Robins, formerly Commissioner in command of the
American Red Cross Mission to Russia, Chicago, 111.
Gilbert E. Roe, lawyer, New York City.
Mrs. John Rogers, Jr., New York City.
Rev. John A. Ryan, Professor of Theology, Catholic University
of America, Washington, D. C.
Professor Ferdinand Schevill, Professor of Modern History, Uni-
versity of Chicago.
Rose Schneidermann, Woman's Trade Union League, New York.
Mayor Cornell Schrieber, Toledo, Ohio.
Hon. R. 0. Sharon, Peoria, 111.
Congressman Isaac R. Sherwood, Toledo, Ohio.
Dr. John S. Simon, St. Louis, Mo.
J. C. Skemp, International Union of Painters and Decorators,
Lafayette, Ind.
Mayor E. P. Smith, Omaha, Neb.
Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer, minister, educator, White Plains, N. Y.
U. S. Senator Selden P. Spencer, St. Louis, Missouri.
Emma Steghagen, Woman's Trade Union League, Chicago, 111.
Doris Stevens, New York City.
Mayor Peter F. Sullivan, Worcester, Mass.
Rev. Norman M. Thomas, editor of The World Tomorrow, New
York City.
Richard C. Tolman, Associate Director Fixed Nitrogen Research
Laboratory, War Department, Washington, D. C.
Albert B. Unger, Assistant District Attorney, New York City.
Hon. James K. Vardaman, former U. S. Senator, Jackson, Miss.
Mrs. Henry Villard, Dobbs Ferry, N. Y.
Congressman Edward Voight, Sheboygan, Wis.
John H. Walker, Illinois State Federation of Labor, Springfield,
111.
U. S. Senator David I. Walsh, Boston, Mass.
J. Barnard Walton, General Secretary, Advancement Committee,
General Conference of the Religious Society of Friends, Phil-
adelphia, Pa.
Dr. James P. Warbasse, President of the Cooperative League of
America, New York City.
William Allen White, editor of the Emporia Gazette, Emporia,
Kan.
Rt. Rev. Cortlandt Whitehead, P. E. Bishop of Pittsburgh, Pa.
L. Hollingsworth Wood, lawyer, New York City.
532
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2888
In the Driftway
THE Drifter cannot understand why intellectuals should
be so maligned as negligible butterflies fluttering idly
over the clover-fields of present-day society. What would the
Peace Conference have been without the bushy head of
Poland's piano president, the parchment visage of author
Clemenceau, and the resplendent verbiage of Professor
Wilson? Or Czecho-Slovakia without its President Pro-
fessor Masaryk? And as to the revolutionists, what are
Lenin and Trotzky if not intellectuals? The Drifter recalls
reading of the arrest of the actor Alexander Moissi, the
finest Hamlet he ever saw, for Communist propaganda in
Vienna; he has beguiled many hours with the cinemato-
graphic exploits of the poet-pirate-novelist-hero-constitu-
tion-maker d'Annunzio; and now he reads that the composer
Mascagni is inflaming the shipyard workers of Leghorn
with his bolshevist orations. Defame the intellectuals if you
will, but you cannot call them negligible.
NO such storm of anti-war poetry and prose disturbs the
Drifter's peace of mind in America as would be his
lot were he reading his paper on the quai d'Inconnu, with
Mme. Lecomte's blue jay peering over his shoulder, instead
of in the Mercantile Lunch on Park Row. He hears that
Henri Barbusse's "Le Feu" has passed the three hundred
thousand mark; and his mail tells him daily of the work of
Duhamel, Vildrac, Romains, Leon Werth, Marcel Martinet,
Roland Dorgeles, Henri-Jacques, and others less known or
unknown to him. The name of Noel Gamier has long in-
trigued him — the poet of "Le Don de ma Mere." And now he
learns that it has intrigued the French Minister of War as
well — and that, for j;his thin booklet of pacifist poems, the
name of Noel Gamier has been stricken from the list of
Legion of Honor by order of the Minister, and that he has
been deprived of the right to wear the croix de guerre. The
Drifter little dreamt that a book of poems could so stir a
Minister of War. During the war it was otherwise: Noel
Gamier wrote poems on permission and on repos, but he
kept them to himself, and it was the poetry of action which
intrigued Marshal Petain into writing:
Order No. 15352-D.
M. Gamier, Noel, second lieutenant in the 11th regiment
of hussars, attached to the 15th battalion of chasseurs, is
named to the order of the Legion of Honor, with the rank
of knight:
A young second lieutenant transferred at his own request
from the cavalry to a battalion of chasseurs. Volunteered
to establish communication between two companies placed,
on September 14, in a very delicate position; struck by
three bullets in the thigh and one in the arm, very seriously
wounded, he succeeded in dragging himself across the
ground to fulfil his mission. Had himself carried on a
stretcher to his chef de corps and before mentioning his
wounds gave a detailed report on his reconnaissance. Proved
a heroism which will never be surpassed. Two citations.
Petain
It is not required of patriotism that it be always and ever
patriotic, but poetry, it seems, must be patriotic, or else
past action is forgotten. Fortunately there are others be-
sides Ministers of War to judge of both.
The Drifter
Correspondence
Mr. Wilson's Limited Democracy
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: In a recent article you say, referring to President Wil-
son, "who had battled for that democracy at Princeton," etc.
A friend, one of the ablest of the younger generation of col-
ored men, said to me recently — he is from New Jersey — "In se-
lecting a college, I thought of Princeton, but, because of the
race prejudice there, under Wilson, was advised to go else-
where." He went to Harvard. Another friend, a teacher in the
colored public schools in Washington City, -said, when I told
her this, "Yes, Princeton is now about like the University of
Virginia."
If Wilson "battled for democracy" at Princeton, it must have
been white democracy, the only part of which he has the re-
motest conception. How the intelligent colored people of this
country must love him!
Bird-in-Hand, Pa., June 28 Marianna G. Brubaker
[Our correspondent is correct. Mr. Wilson's democracy has
always stopped at the color line as it .did at the sex line until
it was to his political advantage to become converted. Prince-
ton's doors are closed to colored Americans. — Editor.]
What Europe Thinks of Us
To the Editor op The Nation:
Sir: Shortly before he died in Switzerland, Dr. George
Nasmyth, organizer for the World Alliance for International
Friendship through the Churches, addressed a letter to Newton"
D. Baker which I feel sure would interest your readers:
"My Dear Mr. Secretary:
"In my travels through Europe it has been impressed upon
me of late, how greatly the influence of American ideals and
America's international policies is being weakened by the con-
tinuous imprisonment of political prisoners and conscientious
objectors.
"During the past eight months I have traveled through Eng-
land, France, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, the Scandinavian
countries, Greece, and most of the countries of Eastern Europe.
I have been surprised to find how widespread is the knowledge
of American conditions in this regard and how long we have
delayed in proclaiming amnesty — a measure of social reconcilia-
tion which has long been adopted in all the belligerent countries
of Europe.
"I find this discussion and a growing protest against America's
policy which is charged with being liberal abroad while tyran-
nical and Czarist at home, not only in the Labor and Radical
press, but also in the Conservative and Nationalist papers. For
example, in Italy, the country from which I have just returned,
I find long articles on the subject in the Idea Internazionale,
the most jingoistic newspaper, as well as in the Avanti, the
organ of the radical Socialist Party. This anomalous situation
in our political life at home constitutes the chief obstacle which
prevents the democratic forces of Italy from rallying their full
strength in support of President Wilson's Fiume policy and the
League of Nations convenant.
"George W. Nasmyth."
When will Americans awaken to the menace of our growing
isolation, and to the ill reputation which is replacing our past
popularity in Europe?
Ellis Ogle, M.D.
Boston, Mass., October 27
Nov. 10, 1920]
The Nation
533
Criticism
By MAXWELL BODENHEIM
Dead men sit down beside the telephones
Within your brain and carefully relate
Decisions and discretions of the past,
Convinced that they will not deteriorate.
But you have not their certainty : you try
A question now and then that cautiously
Assaults their whispered indolence until
Their sharp words once more force you to agree.
Then you insist that certain living men
Whose tones are half -discreet may be allowed
To greet their masters through the telephones,
Provided that their words are not too loud.
The new men imperceptibly entice
Their elders, and a compromise is made,
Both sides discovering that three or four
Excluded men must be correctly flayed.
And so the matter ends: conservative
And radical revise their family-tree,
While you report this happening, with relief,
To liberals and victorious cups of tea.
Books
A Panorama of Labor
What's on the Worker's Mind? By Whiting Williams. Charles
Scribner's Sons.
Why Men Strike. By Samuel Crowther. Doubleday Page and
Company.
The New Industrial Unrest. By Ray Stannard Baker. Double-
day Page and Company.
The Workers at War. By Frank Julian Warne. The Century
Company.
The Position of Labor in a System of Nationalism. By Edgar
S. Furniss. Houghton Mifflin Company.
Life and Labor in the Nineteenth Century. By C. R. Fay. Cam-
bridge University Press.
Humanizing Industry. By R. C. Feld. E. P. Dutton and Com-
pany.
The Human Factor in Industry. By Lee K. Frankel and Alex-
ander Fleischer. The Macmillan Company.
Personnel Administration, Its Principles and Practice. By Ord-
way Tead and Henry C. Metcalf. The McGraw-Hill Book
Company.
Labor's Challenge to the Social Order. By John Graham
Brooks. The Macmillan Company.
The Church and Industrial Reconstruction. By the Committee
on the War and the Religious Outlook. Association Press.
LET us start with the simple assumptions of those who write
ordinary newspaper editorials and address employers' asso-
ciations. Lefc us suppose that there is nothing in particular the
matter with our industrial system or our economic order. Its
obvious failure to function satisfactorily is due not to any struc-
tural defect, but to original sin on the part of wayward indi-
viduals. The first thing to do is to deport, imprison, and
silence agitators. The next thing is to instil into the workers,
by persuasion if possible, but by economic and political force if
necessary, a proper respect for the employer. Why is the cost
of living high? Because millions of laborers throughout the
world are lazy and will not work hard enough ; because they are
avaricious and use their organized power to extract wages
higher than those they deserve. The remedy for this is an open-
shop campaign to break up their unions, lengthen their hours,
and put the fear of starvation and the boss into their hearts.
With a long pull, all together, we shall be able to defeat labor,
and then we can live at our ease.
A man with a mind so uncritical as to accept these assump-
tions without question is probably not given to reading books.
But if at any moment a tiny doubt should open a crevice in the
smooth surface of his complacency, Mr. Whiting Williams's book
may profitably be inserted. Mr. Williams is not a revolutionary.
He was a prominent official in a large steel fabricating concern.
He wished to fit himself for the position of employment manager,
and thought it a part of his preparation to find out what it was
like to be a workman. Therefore he left home with a few
dollars in his pocket and looked for a job. This is the story of
his adventures in a basic steel plant, a rolling mill, a coal mine,
an oil refinery, a shipyard, and other resorts of toil.
If Mr. Williams can be trusted, the life of the worker is not
entirely an affair of leisure and silk shirts. Neither is the man
on the job a dull individual who will respond to no stimulus but
hard driving, when he is not listening to the wild words of an
incendiary. He is much like anybody else, with his small and
great annoyances, his ambitions, prides, and fears. If he is
dissatisfied, and dissatisfied along with many others, his dissat-
isfaction is just as likely to have a reasonable basis as that of
editors, directors, or presidents. Although Mr. Williams does
not omit to relieve his picture with authentic colors of humor
and pleasure, it leaves no doubt of certain devastating influences
in the worker's life. One is his insecurity, his fear of unem-
ployment, his utter dependence on the will of the boss. Another
is his frequent lack of any feeling of participation in the whole
process of production; his pride in doing a good job and his
creative instinct are usually allowed to lie dormant or are
positively rebuffed by poor management and alien control. No
one after reading this book can hold any illusions as to the
inhumanity, the unpopularity, and the inefficiency of the twelve-
hour shift in the steel industry. Nor will he be deceived by rosy
pictures of high wages or living conditions in the steel and coal
towns. He will see why the miners are in a continual turmoil
about wages and insufficient employment. He will understand
the physical and nervous difficulty of much of the work in most
of the occupations Mr. Williams tried.
Mr. Williams does not put forward any solution of the "labor
problem" with much assurance. He sees the matter chiefly as
one of personal relations and understanding. It is easy to point
out a hundred places in which better management would smooth
over difficulties and increase efficiency. But how is this better
management to be achieved? Why has industrial development
gone on so long without approaching it? Is there much chance
of introducing it now, except in scattered and ineffective
instances where there happens to be a manager with more than
average intelligence? These are questions which Mr. Williams
does not raise.
"Why Men Strike," the confident title of Mr. Crowther's book,
might lead us to expect a somewhat more authoritative treat-
ment of these matters than Mr. Williams's. On the contrary,
however, it is a genial and smoothly written but ill-informed
piece of work. It starts with the assumption that workmen on
the average have been making extravagant expenditures, and
comes to the conclusion that if they would only invest their sur-
plus, the increased capital would at the same time bring about
increased production to satisfy their material wants and also
give them a sense of ownership which would make them work
better. It is germane to such an argument, however, that yearly
incomes of more than half the wage-earners probably have not
kept pace with the cost of living, that never has such a super-
abundance of capital been stored up as in America during the
war, and that the result has not increased but has decreased
production. It is furthermore doubtful whether the investment
of a few hundred dollars, even if the average worker could ever
make it, would render him immune to the other disturbing
features of his life.
534
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2888
Mr. Baker's analysis is that of a competent and fair-minded
journalist. He found out what any good investigator could have
found out concerning the labor policy of the steel corporation
and the objections of the steel workers to the twelve-hour day
and other expressions of that policy. He tells us about the new
aspirations of the labor movement, about the founding of the
national Labor Party, about the hopeful experiments with shop
committees and industrial councils, about the highly developed
form of conciliation in the clothing industry. If we had had a
liberal press or a "liberal group of employers with any power at
all, this attitude would have found expression during the recent
industrial conflicts, and it would now have some influence in
shaping the labor policy of the nation. Instead of this we see
the old prejudices expressed daily in the pages of the great
journals, and the open shop offensive in full career. There is
nothing the matter with Mr. Baker's observation, as far as it
penetrates, but it does not penetrate to the causes which main-
tain the struggle in spite of anyone's reasonableness or good
intentions.
So far, our elementary student of labor troubles would have
received little intimation that they ever arose before the armis-
tice, or that the labor movement has a history, and an economic
background outside the shop. "The Workers at War," by Frank
Julian Warne, formerly manager of industrial relations for the
United States Housing Corporation, would open the nearest of
these vistas. He shows how the war for democracy abroad
interrupted the workers' struggle for industrial democracy at
home, and how they abandoned the latter for the time being in
return for certain guaranties from the Government. The rapid
extension of collective bargaining during the war was in one
sense an extension of the unions' power, but in another sense it
prevented them from extracting anywhere near the benefit they
might otherwise have gained from the immense demand for new
products and the shortage of labor. The rise in prices following
the war naturally stimulated industrial unrest, but the Govern-
ment made an about-face in its labor policy. It refused to
encourage wage advances to meet increased living costs, and
instead held back the railwaymen and took legal action against
the miners while it made an ineffective attempt to reduce prices.
Mr. Warne reminds us how the large employers deliberately set
their faces against industrial peace at the President's Industrial
Conference, regardless of the workers and of the public. He
recognizes that the welfare of the public necessitates a diminu-
tion of strikes and lockouts, but he is not so foolish as to suppose
that this end can be attained by a complete surrender of all
other interests to those of the employers. Rather he seeks a
way out of the vicious circle by an increased control over pro-
duction and prices by workers and consumers. He suggests that
consumers organize themselves. "One of the functions of the
organization of the consumer is to join hands with the organized
wage worker and together demand and enforce the return to the
people of the benefits of social values to which industrial autoc-
racy lays unjust claim and of which it is in possession." This
sentence, if our pupil could understand its implications, would be
pretty strong doctrine for him. Coming at the end of the book's
argument, it would mark a far removal from his original
assumption that our economic machinery would hum if only a
little grit were removed from the bearings.
Let us now take a bold leap through the vista opened and
alight in the eighteenth century. Mr. Edgar S. Furniss, in his
scholarly study, "The Position of Labor in a System of Nation-
alism," furnishes a guide to the labor policy of the English
Mercantilist school of economists. Their ideas are germane,
because in their time, as during the recent war, the national
welfare was assessed in terms of broad national purposes rather
than in terms of individual happiness. They spoke of "national
wealth," meaning by it the amount of money in the country,
rather than capital goods or individual standard of living. They
introduced our long-lived friend, "favorable balance of trade."
To them, labor was important as one of the chief sources of
national wealth. It seemed desirable to buy as little as possible
abroad and to sell as much as possible; domestic raw materials
should undergo manufacture before being exported, because the
domestic labor expended upon them "increased their value";
imports should consist as largely as possible of raw materials
rather than of finished goods so that domestic labor might manu-
facture them for export in turn. The consequences of this
theory were disastrous to labor. It discouraged the consump-
tion of goods by the home population. Labor, it taught, should
not be paid more than the barest minimum of subsistence; as a
matter of fact much of the labor of the period was below the
poverty level. As large a laboring population as possible was
necessary. Furthermore, there was an obligation on every
laborer to work as much as possible. Unemployment was a sin,
not against the unemployed, but against the state. Attempts
were made to guard against it by rigorous laws. In spite of the
fact that the Mercantilist theories were long ago discarded by
economists in favor of the laissez-faire interpretation, it would
seem as if the Republican Party and its substantial business
men had received much of their economic education in 1750.
As Mr. Furniss points out, however, the manifestations of any
particular system of nationalism will vary according to the
nature of the national goal. The Mercantilist practice was the
result of political dominance by the rising class of traders and
capitalists. Our abandonment of laissez-faire doctrine — such
parts of it as we had really clung to — during the recent war,
and our inauguration of various national controls of trade and
labor supply, were due to the predominant demands of the war-
making machine. When the machine vanished, these particular
controls vanished as a matter of course. "Mercantilism teaches
us that in working out a system of public policy based upon
nationalistic purposes the dominant class will attempt to bind
the burdens upon the shoulders of those groups whose political
power is too slight to defend them from exploitation and will
find justification for its policies in the plea of national neces-
sity." What is now the dominant class in American politics?
Is it not the traders and capitalists? Then we may know what
to expect. If the great majority of wage-earners and small,
consumers should ever become the dominant class, and individual
welfare should become the national goal — but to speculate on
that is perilously close to sedition.
Mr. C. R. Fay of Cambridge University carries on the tale in
his economic lectures, printed under the title "Life and Labor in
the Nineteenth Century." The novice will here make the dis-
covery that the labor movement itself is over a century old. He
will learn that there were unrest and strikes before Bolshevists
were ever heard of, and that there was a strange Englishman
named Robert Owen who preached socialism before Karl Marx,
with his vicious German- Jewish theories, had written his first
German word. Mr. Fay passes on in a most entertaining man-
ner from Chartism to Cobdenism, Capitalism, Socialism, and the
Cooperative movement.
After this excursion we may return again to the subject of
management in the modern plant. "Humanizing Industry" is
an attempt to present in story form the case for welfare meas-
ures of the sort approved by many employers, and it seems
unimportant against the wider background. "The Human Fac-
tor in Industry" is a more technical, but still a superficial text
book on employment management. "Personnel Administration"
gives many evidences that its authors are aware of the historical
labor movement and of the deeper social currents of the present.
Technical and competent in detail, it is also sound in a larger
sense, because it endeavors to relate the science of personnel
management with the labor movement as it exists, and with the
evolution of industry. The authors probably do not believe that
good management alone would solve the "labor problem," but
they point out truly that any advance in administrative methods
is a positive advance, no matter what the nature of industrial
control. As a matter of fact, their technique requires collective
bargaining, shop committees with a large measure of control,
and industrial councils. There is no question that if any con-
siderably group of employers should put into intelligent practice
Nov. 10, 1920]
The Nation
535
such a technique as is elaborated in this book, the unrest of the
worker would be appreciably diminished. There is a question,
however, whether any large group of employers would or could
put such a technique into practice under the existing regime of
credit and production. There lies the rub in all attempts to
introduce gradual amelioration of the industrial system. The
attempt is a worthy one, and those who denounce it because they
believe it impracticable are guilty of illogic. But we should be
rash to build too much on its success.
The first of this long series of writers frankly to envisage the
probability of a new social order is the ripest, the best informed,
and the most temperate among all these students of the labor
movement. John Graham Brooks begins by asserting that
"power has so far gone to labor that it cannot be turned back."
And this statement is made with a full knowledge of labor's
obstacles. "Capitalism will fight long and it will fight with
cunning and with desperate weapons. In the open, it will wel-
come the more popular 'remedies.' Whether socialist, syndicalist,
or anarchist, few labor agitators have ever learned the defensive
power of private property." The book is not an organized whole,
but rather a series of notes — reminiscences, bits of information,
observations — not one of which fails to be suggestive. All
together, they furnish a picture rich in detail. What is the
labor movement actually up to? What is it learning about the
science of government and administration within its own ranks?
How strong are the various factions within it, and what do they
promise? How about government ownership, cooperation, or
communism where they are or have been in practice? What are
well-intentioned employers doing, and what will be the upshot
of their activities? Here is one of the few really informed books
about economic and social evolution as it is manifested in events.
The sense one chiefly gets from it is of the operation of a vast
and chaotic educative process, from which somehow a new order
will emerge. Like many persons intimate with the labor move-
ment, Mr. Brooks inclines to the opinion that the most fruitful
of the formal theories of the new order is that developed by the
national guildsmen.
The attitude of most of these writers is passive. They do
not themselves take any position regarding the desirability of
the present or any other system ; they observe that the worker is
dissatisfied, and in so far as they register any displeasure of
their own, it is secondary to that of someone else. We are, in
the main, left with a sense of something impending, of a doom
over which we have little control, which may be good or ill.
This sense may be the only one which accurately corresponds
with the facts, but in spite of all the rigor of the realist, most
human beings like to luxuriate in moral motives. After all,
what ought to happen? What do we, as moral beings, desire?
So prevalent is this attitude among people at large that even
the most scientific of observers cannot disregard it as one of the
strong social motives which have to be reckoned with.
It has remained for a group of prominent clergymen to make
a thorough analysis of the social order as it affects moral values.
Boldly assuming that the teachings of Jesus are the only ulti-
mate reality, and that the human race gets into trouble by dis-
regarding them, "The Church and Industrial Reconstruction"
attempts to apply Christian principles to the industrial problem.
The book is supremely concerned, not so much with questions of
physical prosperity as with questions of motive and spiritual
values — and in this it is probably nearer to the heart of the
matter psychologically than are most of the economists. The
supreme worth of individual personality, the ideal of universal
brotherhood, the law of service — such principles do not allow us
to disregard the distribution of wealth and the organization of
production. The ideal society according to the Christian doc-
trine "would be a cooperative social order in which the sacred-
ness of every life was recognized and everyone found oppor-
tunity for the fullest self-expression of which he was capable; in
which each individual gave himself gladly and whole-heartedly
for ends that are socially valuable; in which the impulses to
service and to creative action would be stronger than the acquisi-
tive impulses, and all work be seen in terms of its spiritual
significance as making possible fulness of life for all men; in
which differences of talents and capacity meant proportional
responsibilities and ministry to the common good; in which all
lesser differences of race, of nation, and of class served to min-
ister to the richness of an all-inclusive brotherhood; in which
there hovered over all a sense of the reality of the Christ-like
God, so that worship inspired service, as service expressed
brotherhood." Is this merely a beautiful Utopia? "To this
question the Christian answer is definite and unmistakable.
This ideal can, indeed, be realized." Here is a refreshing wind
of hope and confidence.
The present order is therefore unchristian in its impersonal
view of labor, leading to lack of continuous opportunity to work,
inadequate income, inadequate leisure, dwarfing of the person-
ality, child labor, and improper protection of women workers.
It is unchristian because it denies the spirit of brotherhood by
a selfish and competitive motive in production and by extreme
inequalities in the distribution of wealth. It is inconsistent with
the duty of service, for it emphasizes the acquisitive motive and
the unsocial use of economic power. In all these matters the
authors of the book see that their protest is substantially iden-
tical with the protest of the labor movement itself.
The book goes on to a more careful inquiry into these objec-
tions, and to examination of immediately practicable steps
toward its ideal. It avoids one frequent pitfall in the way of
those who adopt the moral approach, by acknowledging that
many improvements cannot be made for labor by others, but
must be won by labor fighting for its own rights. In its view
of the longer future it is unsure concerning such questions as
the abolition of private property in capital goods, but it insists
firmly that any change must be accompanied by a development
of Christian character in order to be effective, and that what is
most necessary is education in cooperation.
And so we confute our writer of newspaper editorials. He is
beset by the conclusions of one who has actually experienced
the life of the workman, by a candid journalist, by an experi-
enced industrial administrator, by economists and historians,
by personnel managers, by a life-long student of the labor move-
ment, and by a group of seventeen of the most respected Protest-
ant clergymen in the country — not one of these authors having
the slightest personal stake in unionism, or having a reputation
to sustain as an "agitator." Will he budge? Not an inch. He
will accept only the accomplished fact. He listens only to prac-
tical men — that is, those now in control of industry. Is there
not even the slightest chance that those for whom he speaks will
disprove the theory of economic determinism by giving way,
against their temporary interests, to the power of ideas? It does
not seem likely, as we look about the world today. Yet we should
be cautious enough to admit the possibility. Those who are
trying to educate and persuade the people whom socialists call
the "bourgeoisie" deserve every encouragement.
George Soule
R. H. Macy <§ Co.
Herald Square Inc. New Yorl
Herald Square
Maintains the
largest and
most complete
Book Depart-
ment in New
York City.
536
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2888
The American Frontier
The Frontier in American History. By Frederick Jackson
Turner. Henry Holt Company.
TWENTY-SEVEN years ago Professor Turner, then of the
University of Wisconsin, read before the American Historical
Association a paper on "The Significance of the Frontier in
American History." The paper opened with a quotation taken
from a Bulletin of the Superintendent of the Census of 1890,
to the effect that the progress of settlement had proceeded so
far that now "there can hardly be said to be a frontier line," and
that, accordingly, the "discussion of its extent, its westward
movement, etc. . . . cannot . . . any longer have a place
in the census reports." This brief official statement, said Mr.
Turner, "marks the closing of a great historic movement. Up
to our own day American history has been in large degree the
history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence
of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the ad-
vance of American settlement westward, explain American de-
velopment."
To suggest in a general way how the existence of the frontier
might explain American development was the object of Mr.
Turner's paper. "In the case of most nations," he said, "the
development has occurred in a limited area; and if the nation
has expanded, it has met other growing peoples whom it has
conquered. But in the case of the United States we have a
different phenomenon. Limiting our attention to the Atlantic
coast, we have the familiar phenomenon of the evolution of
institutions in a limited area, such as the rise of representative
government; the differentiation of simple colonial governments
into complex organs; the progress of primitive industrial so-
ciety, without division of labor, up to manufacturing civiliza-
tion. But we have in addition to this a recurrence of the
process of evolution in each western area reached in the process
of expansion. Thus American development has exhibited not
merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive
conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new
development for that area. American social development has
been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This
perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion
westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with
the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominant
in American character."
Not only did this westward expansion profoundly influence
the outstanding issues in American history — the rise of national-
ism, the growing detachment from Europe, the slavery struggle ;
it was above all the persistence of a primitive society on the
frontier, above all this "perennial rebirth," that preserved for
us our earlier ideals of democracy and gave to us in large share
our characteristic intellectual qualities. "To the frontier the
American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That
coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisi-
tiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find
expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in
the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless,
nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good
and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which
comes with freedom — these are traits of the frontier, or traits
called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier."
In 1893 this was novel doctrine. Time has not diminished the
validity of it, although it has perhaps brought into stronger
relief certain traits of American character which we owe in
large part to the frontier also. In American mentality a strong
sense of freedom is not incompatible with a strong instinct
towards conformity, a spirit of intolerance which, under stress,
easily rises to the level of fanaticism. The frontier placed a
premium upon individual initiative and the quick finding of
expedients; but on the whole the initiative required was an
initiative working within a rather narrow field, the expedients
that needed to be found were expedients that everyone was
seeking and ready to use when found. Generally speaking, the
initiative which Americans admire is initiative within the sphere
of the practical, the material world, the initiative that brings
material gain to the individual or practical advantage to the
community. Confronted with initiative or originality of another
sort, with conduct which the provincial standard regards as
"bad," or thinking which that standard regards aS "wrong," the
first instinct of the American is "to do something about it"; and
so it may often happen that his genius for finding expedients
is directed to the suppression of those who are sufficiently in-
dividual to be in a conspicuous minority.
If we can now see that such traits as these are due to our
peculiar environment quite as much as to our English or Euro-
pean inheritance, it is in part because Mr. Turner's original
paper on the frontier was to prove an epoch-making event in
the investigation of American history. The field which he then
sketched he has himself assiduously cultivated for a quarter
of a century. The present volume, a collection of monographic
studies, articles in periodicals, and addresses before learned
societies and at various universities, gives us in convenient
form a part of his published work. The high significance of
this work has long been recognized by writers on American
history; but if the influence of Mr. Turner were to be estimated
on the basis of his published work alone, it would be accounted
far less than it has in fact been. For a quarter of a century
he has been training an army of students ; and there are now in
our colleges and universities, among the teachers and students
of American history, very many men who have been profoundly
influenced by his ideas and inspired to fruitful publication by
the magic spell of his personality. One who has been long under
that spell may not be the best judge; but I think it is safe to
say, at least I will venture to say it, that in giving direction to
the methods of investigating American history and in furnish-
ing new light for its interpretation, the share of Mr. Turner has
been the most profound and abiding of this generation.
More than this cannot reasonably be expected of any man.
Yet students of American history, well pleased as they are sure
to be to have these now familiar studies in one convenient
volume, may be pardoned for still looking forward to some more
comprehensive and systematic exposition of our history, or a
portion of it, from the point of view which they are so well
prepared to understand. Carl Becker
The Epic of Dulness
Main Street. By Sinclair Lewis. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Poor White. By Sherwood Anderson. B. W. Huebsch, Inc.
HHHE Middle West gives birth to prophets but also to destroy-
*■ ers. Let it take what brief comfort it can in its Meredith
Nicholsons and Booth Tarkingtons. Garnett, Kansas, produced
Edgar Lee Masters; Warsaw, Indiana, nurtured Theodore Drei-
ser; out of Camden, Ohio, came Sherwood Anderson, and out
of Sauk Center, Minnesota, Sinclair Lewis. No doubt these
towns are careless today of their wild sons. Main Street is
bent more closely than ever on its immediate business. But the
imaginative record of that business with all its implications is
already the most massive in American literature. Suffering and
rebellion have wrung from these men of the Middle West an
iron authenticity. They bring us — these lovers of beauty once
caged in insupportable hideousness — the acute vision of their
oppressed and distorted youth. They needed not to observe in
order to write; memory and a kind of despair stung them to
embody in expression the civilization from which they came.
They know it. "It is negation canonized as the one positive
virtue. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is slavery self-
taught and self-defended. It is dulness made God."
Dreiser alone and at his best remains superior to Sinclair
Lewis. He has hours of a more rapt absorption, of a more
visionary identification of himself with the objects he renders.
Mr. Lewis, on the other hand, has a clearer and more orderly
Nov. 10, 1920]
The Nation
537
intelligence and a precise and cultivated style. Dreiser has the
more brooding eye, Mr. Lewis the acuter and more sensitive
ear. Thus while his narrative masses are less impressive, his
dialogue, which he uses very freely, is brilliant. The exactness
of this dialogue is a literary achievement of a very high order.
Novelists and playwrights put us off with symbols and adum-
brations. Mr. Lewis has given literary permanence to the
speech of his time and section. But the dialogue in "Main
Street" is anything but literature in the sense of Verlaine; it
is living talk. When Dr. Kennicott declares (to take an in-
ferior but brief and quotable example) that "Miss Sherwin in
the high school is a regular wonder — reads Latin like I do
English," we know where we are. We know that we have
heard that very remark in Springfield or Peoria and have heard
it from a physician. To produce such authenticity of speech
once or twice would be merely clever; never to miss it in four
hundred and fifty pages is magnificent.
In building his book Mr. Lewis has not permitted his larger
purpose to crowd or distort the things that were actually to be
communicated. His thesis is the standardization of the innume-
rable Main Streets of our small towns, the savorless flatness of
that life, the complete substitution of the mechanical for the
vital, the tawdry spiritual poverty of a people that "has lost
the power of play as well as the power of impersonal thought,"
and the menacing extension, like a creeping paralysis, of this
form of existence, so that the Minnesota Swedes exchange "their
spiced puddings and red jackets for fried pork-chops and con-
gealed white blouses," and trade "the ancient Christmas hymns
of the fjords for 'She's my Jazzland Cutie.' " He has a stern
enough sense of the danger of what Alice Meynell once called
"decivilization" and of the incredible arrogance of the actors in
that process. He has notes toward an "American Credo"
(pp. 152-3 and 244-5) that should be inscribed on tables of brass
as both record and warning. But he is never tempted into the
didactic or prophetic. His business is with Gopher Prairie,
Minn. He makes nothing symbolical; he lets it be so. He
neither strays nor preaches. His method is undeviatingly crea-
tive; he is secure in the knowledge that to show things truly is
to show them up.
His people are many and they have not only mobility, the
appearance of gesture and speech that come from an inner
impulse; they have the rarer quality of solidity; they detach
themselves from the page and are in space, smelling of flesh and
hair, cloth and leather. Carol Kennicott, through whose sensi-
tive and feebly rebellious soul we see Gopher Prairie, is not the
most exact or convincing. But Dr. Will and Sam Clark, Mrs.
Bogart and her son Cy, Vida Sherwin and the "Red Swede,"
Professor Mott and the Rev. Zitterel — these are all triumphs.
There are no minor characters. Some are more involved in poor
Carol's adventures and some less. But we know the Harry Hay-
docks and the Jack Elders and even the Nels Erdstroms as well
as we do Guy or Erik. It is a richly peopled world — a world
that may become some day like the worlds of Fielding or Haupt-
mann. Mr. Lewis, unlike the masters with whose beginnings his
present work may justly be compared, has done a good deal of
shoddy work in his time. Was he not even responsible for a
certain play called "Hobohemia"? He is making a full atone-
ment. "Main Street" would add to the power and distinction
of the contemporary literature of any country. He must not
again forget the responsibility which his talent involves, nor his
own sure knowledge that our literature and our civilization
need just such books as this.
The appearance of "Main Street" at almost the same moment
as "Poor White" tends, somewhat unjustly no doubt, to dull the
impression of Mr. Anderson's book. His period is a slightly
earlier one; his scene Ohio instead of Minnesota. But his theme
is the same; a civilization in which the clutter of cheap and ugly
things has crippled and drained dry the souls of men. But
where Mr. Lewis shows, Mr. Anderson only tells. And neither
his description nor his narrative cling or bite. He shifts his
narrative method and changes his point of attack and convinces
us of both his earnestness and his knowledge. But neither
Columbus nor Bidwell nor the farm are creatively there. The
best scenes are the early, Southern ones. Later the sensory
perceptions, and hence the vividness of the things to be rendered,
seem to become dulled. Hugh McVey, moreover, is romantically
and symbolically conceived. Clara is concreter. But the defi-
niteness of both characters and events is blunted by structural
looseness and a diction that alternates between the pretentious
and the mean. In veracity and intellectual honesty Mr. Ander-
son's book is incomparably superior to most of our novels. But
compared to "Main Street" it lacks fire and edge, lucidity and
fulness.
Alaska
A Winter Circuit of Our Arctic Coast. By Hudson Stuck.
Charles Scribner's Sons.
The Land of Tomorrow. By William B. Stephenson, Jr. George
H. Doran Company.
IT UDSON STUCK, Archdeacon of the Yukon and the
■* *■ Arctic, was of the tribe that leavens our era, an explorer
for souls to save, for bodies to cleanse; a fighting priest who
hearkened to the whisper of the weakest of the whites of the
tundra and the beach, but who would face the polar bear on the
hummocked floe to help one of his charges. Any long-time resi-
dent of Alaska realizes the real impossibility of covering in one
book a land which from strange frozen seas sweeps south many
leagues to warm westward isles where the breath of the Japan
current fills the air. But Stuck, in his fourth book on Alaskan
travel, wrote an absorbing narrative of a six months' journey
by dog-sled round the entire Arctic coast, that bleak top of the
world where the ink freezes as it issues from the fountain pen
and the winter lights play above vast plains of sterile white.
There is a quiet and peculiar charm, distinctly of the North,
in this narrative of what would have been, to many riien, monot-
onous day-to-day travel. To the Archdeacon, whose mind was
a storehouse of remembrances, even the grimmest and dreariest
incident of the trail was enough to set him off on brief but
delightful excursion into the unexpected. When his party
comes upon the frozen body of a dog which had been set up on
its feet in the snow by the trail, the author records the sniffing
of each malamute in his own teams at this grisly Eskimo joke,
and then, presto, he is off on the modus operandi of the sense of
smell; there comes a tantalizing glimpse of Fabre's insect lore
and a whiff of musk from the days of Marie Antoinette, before
the Archdeacon again "hits the trail." Despite the introduction
of much history and some philosophy born of the silent places
of the North, the writer was nothing if not practical, and his
book, though written primarily to set forth the general condi-
tion and needs of the Eskimo, might be used as a handbook on
Arctic travel.
He pays tribute to the malamute, without which travel in the
Arctic would be impossible, notwithstanding the growing use of
reindeer for this purpose in some localities; and there are some
sidelights on the sport of dog-racing in the North — notably at
Nome. Alaskans, adventurers and gamblers all, must bet on
something, and ordinary gambling is denied them by law. The
Archdeacon writes with sorrow that the pure-bred malamute is
becoming a thing of the past, owing to the crossing with bird-
dogs, hounds, and others, in the effort to secure speed. "The
malamute dog has been virtually bred out of existence to make
a Nome holiday," and the resultant breed, though noted for
speed, cannot stand up under the hardships of the long trail.
Archdeacon Stuck in his long, earnest work among the natives
of the North did more, perhaps, than any other man to redeem
the Eskimo from the debauching influence of the renegade whites
of the old whaling days, when there was "neither law of God
nor man north of Fifty-three." Of the Eskimos he says they
are the "truest, the cheeriest, the most industrious, the most
hospitable, and altogether the most winning native people" he
538
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2888
has any knowledge of. He relates much of interest about their
manner of life, their whaling, otter-, seal- and polar bear-hunt-
ing, their igloos, education, marriage customs, and dancing.
One is rather surprised to learn that the Archdeacon, unlike
most of the clergy, was pleased with the native dancing and
believed it should be encouraged. Another surprise is that
along with the gospel has come the thermos bottle and solidified
alcohol, both now considered necessities by the up-to-date
Eskimo, and both a great comfort in that frigid country.
Another interesting though quite different book on Alaska
is "The Land of Tomorrow," by William B. Stephenson, Jr. Mr.
Stephenson was formerly United States Commissioner at St.
Michael, an important post near the mouth of the Yukon River.
He has written an excellent book of general information about
those portions of Alaska where the white man has settled, and
with considerable artistry he has managed to put into his book
some of the lure, the freedom, and the thrill of life in that land
of the last fronti-er, that country of the will-o'-the-wisp and the
blood-red midnight sun that doubles back on its trail when the
year is at its full. Along with much valuable information of
interest to one intending to settle in the North, Mr. Stephenson
gives us Alaska in the summer, with the woods and tundra
athrill with flowers and sunshine; the great volcanoes and the
vast coal and oil deposits; the fox-ranches and canneries; the
copper ledges and gold mines. He tells of the "iron trails"
through the wilderness, the result of some of the most brilliant
feats of engineering the world has known. He gives us Alaska
of the totem-pole and the basket, of old carved ivory and quaint
Indian villages hidden in crescent coves. In short, he has writ-
ten a book which even the Alaskan "sour-dough," who has long
ceased to expect that anything true shall be written of his coun-
try, would not only read with interest and approval, but would
actually go out and buy for himself.
Frederick O'Brien
Notes and News
1/
THE reference in a Nation editorial of the issue of October 6
to certain neglected American books has brought numerous
inquiries regarding these books, which it appears are so much
neglected that a large number of Nation readers have never
heard of them. Americans cannot be said to deserve a litera-
ture if they overlook what is good in what they have. And yet
our critics and guides have been remiss, certainly as remiss as
the publishers, who are anxious to give their readers what they
want if they want it. John Woolman's Journal is included in
Everyman's Library (Dutton), but Samuel Sewall's Diary re-
mains buried in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical
Society, from which at least a small volume ought by all means
to be extracted for popular amusement. The Scribners have
recently published in "Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Ed-
wards" a selection of the writings of those worthies edited by
the Literary Editor of The Nation. Frank Cushing's "Zuni Folk
Tales" was published by the Bureau of American Ethnology.
Davy Crockett's Autobiography is out of print except in various
incomplete versions intended for boys, but a new and sound
text will be issued about the beginning of the new year. Uncle
Remus appears at his best in "Uncle Remus and His Friends"
(Houghton Mifflin). The vivid lyrics of Emily Dickinson are
published by Little Brown, and those of Father Tabb, who ap-
pears from various publishers, may perhaps best be read in a
volume of selections issued by Small Maynard. "Typee" and
"Omoo" and "Moby Dick" are of course all by that remarkable
genius Herman Melville, and are all in the Everyman Library —
an English series, Melville having always been neglected by his
countrymen. His "Mardi" has never been reprinted since its
first appearance in 1849, for all its elaborate quaintness and
fantastic energy. Charles Warren Stoddard's "Idyls of the
ALFRED ' A ' KNOPF
{^♦!PM^*^ll^*5MI^*3Hll^*5MI^*3^ll^*3BllB5i31IW>31lll5tS,l
2,2,0 W. 42 Street, NEW YORK'
l5t:SU^^II^*2BSI,i^*^BllB5*5B||«5*2B||B?:*5"Hg?*5all«5*2ai||B?*3ai
SAN CRISTOBAL de la HABANA by Joseph Hergesh
eimer
WHILE "San Cristobal de la Habana" is undoubtedly written about the city of Havana, it would be vain to
search its pages for the details of government, history, or statistics. It surrenders at the outset all pretence
of useful information and improving facts. Here a daiqueri cocktail is more important than the bones of
Christopher Columbus — a cigar, perhaps, is the principal monument. A charming figure on a balcony, a tiled patio
with myrtles, the insistent music of the danzon, are the bright threads from which it is spun. . . . The record
of a happy impression of a city elusively lovely, an affair of marble whiteness under the formal greenery of royal
($3.50 net)
palms on a sea reaching fantastically blue from its promenade wall and parks.
HUNGER by Knut Hamsun
Translated from the Norwegian by George Egerton with an introduction
by Edwin Bjorknian
Hamsun, who has just been awarded the
Nobel Prize for 1920, is unquestionably the
greatest Scandinavian writer since Ibsen. His
books have been translated into twenty-three
languages. "Hunger" is his first novel to be
published in America. It should bring him the
reputation here which he deserves. ($2.00)
THE FOUNDATIONS o/SOCIAL SCIENCE
by James Mickel Williams
PREJUDICES : Second Series
by H. L. Mencken
Here are discourses on journalism in the
United States, on Theodore Roosevelt, on the
curious aesthetic moratorium prevailing in the
South, on the fundamental psychology of
Prohibition, and on the mental processes of
the American professor. There is also a very
Menckenesque essay on death, and a short sec-
tion on women— a sort of appendix to the author's In Defense of
Women. ($2.50 net)
THE FORZOI 1920
is a unique and interesting little
book, a record of five years' pub-
lishing. It contains original con-
tributions (never before ' pub-
lished) by Joseph Hergesheimer,
Willa Cather, H. L. Mencken,
Carl Van Vechten, and others ; a
Who's Who of Borzoi authors; a
catalog of all Borzoi books; and
much other valuable matter. Pro-
fusely illustrated and attractively
printed and bound — and the price
is only one dollar.
Altogether neglected and yet of greatest im-
portance is the psychological basis of the social
sciences — the "human aspect" of modern in-
dustrial and political problems; and this is
what Professor Williams attacks in a revolu-
tionary yet thoroughly scientific book. Charles
A. Beard, comparing it to James Madison's
tenth number of The Federalist, says: "No-
body can read the book without learning
something important. Those who will dis-
agree most violently can learn the most, if
they will." ($6.00 net)
^]J The first reviews, which have just corn-
el menced to come in, are unusually su-
perlative and point to the importance and
distinction of three new publications —
YOUTH AND THE BRIGHT MEDUSA, by
Willa Cather, author of "My Antonia"($2.50) ;
MOONCALF, Floyd Dell's first novel ($2.50); and SEVEN
MEN, by Max Bcerbohm (first edition 2,000 numbered copies,
with six hitherto unpublished illustrations by Max). ($4.00)
j .... . . „,,,,,, ,^„^„ ' U,U1C11U unpuDiisnca illustrations by Max). ($4.00)
A thirty-two page illustrated booklet on JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER has been brinted hv Mr V»n*t „~a l z. j /
pamed by ten cents in stamps to cover postage, or free from any bookseller. * Pf * m°y be h°d °H """"* aCCOm~
Nov. 10, 1920]
The Nation
539
South Seas" may be read in a Scribner edition with a charming
introduction by William Dean Howells. Certain of Thoreau's
essays on public affairs are being collected for mid-winter pub-
lication. E. W. Howe's "Story of a Country Town" has re-
cently been reissued by the Harpers. Emerson's essay on
Illusions is in the volume called "The Conduct of Life"; Haw-
thorne's Seven Vagabonds may be found in his "Twice Told
Tales" and his Ethan Brand in "The Snow-Image." Henry
James's remarkable short stories — The Lesson of the Master,
The Next Time, The Altar of the Dead — are all in the New
New York edition (Scribner). "The Leatherwood God" (Cen-
tury) is by William Dean Howells; "The Mysterious Stranger"
(Harper) by Mark Twain; "Winesburg, Ohio" (Huebsch)
by Sherwood Anderson; "North of Boston" (Holt) and "Moun-
tain Interval" (Holt) by Robert Frost; "Mont St. Michel and
Chartres" (Houghton Mifflin) by Henry Adams; "Xingu and
Other Stories" (Scribner) by Edith Wharton; "Twelve Men"
(Boni and Liveright) by Theodore Dreiser; "The Fugitive
Blacksmith" (Century) by Charles D. Stewart.
AN ambitious piece of social portraiture is "The Influence
of Oversea Expansion on England to 1700," by James
E. Gillespie, Ph.D. (Columbia University Studies in History,
Economics, and Public Law: Longmans, Green). The au-
thor's interesting ambition is to describe both by generaliza-
tion and in detail the effect on English manners, morals, in-
dustry, philosophy, and art of foreign food, drink, clothing,
jewelry, metals, moneys, and ideas during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. He handles large quantities of fascinat-
ing material with dexterity and good sense.
Drama
Ripeness and Youth
HP HE firm but intricate dramaturgic pattern of John Gals-
*■ worthy's "The Skin Game" shows up clearly and beautifully
in the production at the Bijou Theater. He has written more
resonantly for the stage; he has never written more delicately
or precisely. He has never, assuredly, merged the symbolic
so completely with the plainly human or an allegory with a
plot. That the allegory was there one suspected from the pub-
lished version of the play; the representation removes all doubt.
We shall not say that the Hillcrists are England or the Horn-
blowers Germany or their conflict the World War. Galsworthy's
intention was neither quite so crude nor quite so ambitious.
What his imagination saw was a small and transitory quarrel
in a backwater of life which was carried on on the same terms,
had its origin in the same human traits and circumstances,
and led to a similar and undividedly tragic end. The Hill-
crists are fine and true, but not fine and true enough to assume
the office of arbiters and enemies of change. Hornblower is
rude and pushing and swaggeringly ambitious. But his quali-
ties are rooted in profound human needs. He is, after all, but
a Hillcrist of several generations ago. Not being glutted, he
is hungry. Thus his defeat lends him a tragic quality. To
be sure, he fought from the beginning as best he could, and
Hillcrist sincerely desired to fight like a gentleman. But it is
not long before he and his are likewise hitting below the belt.
Neither gentility nor rusticity can stand the fire of conflict.
Bitterness and humiliation are its end.
The production is one of the most harmonious that our stage
has known. It has, what is so rare, the rhythm of life quickened
and abbreviated by art and not the vicious noise of the theater.
Thus the figure of Chloe, played by Miss Josephine Victor, is
a scarlet splash on the steady and subdued gray of the play's
texture. But it is not isolated or heightened to a false promi-
nence. It rises from the life of the action and melts back into
that life which goes on briefly but with no loss of significance
after the girl's tragic act. No attempt is made, on the other
hand, to obliterate the full human presence of characters who,
from the point of view of ordinary stage-management, are
secondary. Thus it is fruitful to watch here Mr. A. Bowyer's
excellent portrayal of Dawker. The man, too, has his intense
moment — of a very earthy intensity, no doubt. But that mo-
ment is given its full value within the human economy of the
play. Mr. Marsh Allen's Hillcrist is a little febrile, but whole-
hearted and not without charm; Mr. Herbert Lomas's Horn-
blower has the right impulsiveness and rudeness and exhibits
impressively in the last scene the inner hurt from which he
suffers. Miss Joan Maclean as Jill is like an arrow — strong
and slim and vibrant. She is both sharp and sweet, boyishly
virginal yet warmly human. Jill is one of Galsworthy's hap-
piest creations; Miss Maclean's acting of the part is one of the
happiest experiences of recent seasons.
It is not a little depressing to turn to the production of Max
Halbe's "Youth" at the Greenwich Village Theater. One has
difficulty in believing that Mr. Reicher was indeed, as the play
bill asserts, responsible for it. The stage-setting and the light-
ing are good. Everything else is irremediably wrong. As a
result the influential critics of the daily press jeered. Why
should they not? Their knowledge of the modern drama is
unfortunately imperfect; they betray the possession of small
French and less German. Mr. Heywood Broun, who is a man
of wit and sense, thinks that a good production might have
revealed in "Youth" qualities akin to those in "Fruhlings
Erwachen." As if there could be anything in common between
the acrid, neurotic, self-tormenting passion of Wedekind and
the elegiac lyricism of Halbe! "Jugend," as a matter of fact,
is a play with a touch of immortal beauty. It employs homely
devices; it ends absurdly. No one has ever questioned that
since its appearance in 1898. But nowhere else in all litera-
ture has the sting of adolescence, the pang of youth, its yearn-
ing and its pathos, been expressed with a note more clear or
piercing. The scenes between Annchen and Hans are in the
original magical and haunting. To have been young and then
to have heard or read those scenes and have remembered one's
own youth — that, too, is a major experience in one's contact
with the modern literature of the theater. Perhaps, indeed,
it is an experience that goes deeper than one's admiration for
the balance, the just perfection, the noble but intellectualized
workmanship of "The Skin Game."
But in this production whatever is not blundering is per-
verse. The atmosphere of the play is as sweet but also as
sharp and pure as an early spring wind in a northern land.
Father Hoppe is impassioned but self-governed, kindly and
sardonic by turns, aglow with virility despite his sixty-two
years. That is why he speaks of crushing the Polish priest
with his peasant fists. Mr. Adolph Link makes him a senti-
mental dotard and thus hopelessly wrenches the moral equili-
brium of the action from the first. Similarly Halbe's Father
Schigorski is a cold and gloomy zealot. But he is honest and
sincere. Mr. Reese makes him another sentimentalist and at-
tributes to him a furtive eroticism of which Halbe never
dreamed. Thus instead of two men we have two wretched
Broadway puppets, blurred, sweetish, and unclean. What
chance have the need and bitter purity of youth's instincts in
an atmosphere created by a senile sentimentalist and an erotic
semi-villain? Miss Lois Churchill as Annchen has moments
that are almost girlish; Mr. Sheffield as Hans has a few that
recall the pathos of youth's ignorant idealism. But all these
moments are brief. Instead of a Gretchen and a young dreamer
and lover we have — ugly but unavoidable words — a flapper and
a half-back. It is like translating Homer into the fashion of
Forty-Second Street. It is Briseis in a "harem skirt," and the
young Telemachus with a frat-pin. The spectacle is heart-
rending and ignoble. Mr. Reicher remains a wise and gifted
director and "Youth" one of the most beautiful and moving
plays in the world. But to stain and cheaply to sophisticate
simple and eternal things is like tricking out violets in spangles
or substituting near-beer for dew.
Ludwig Lewisohn
International Relations Section
The British Coal Strike
THE demand made of the Government by the Miners'
Federation on July 7, 1920, was for an immediate re-
duction of 14s. 2d. per ton in the price of household coal,
and an advance in wages of 2s. per day flat rate for adults
over eighteen years old, Is. between eighteen and sixteen,
and 9d. below sixteen. On July 26 Sir Robert Home an-
nounced for the Government that these terms could not be
met, and one month later, August 25-26, the result of the
first strike ballot was announced as 606,782 for a strike and
238,865 against. September 25 was decided on by the con-
ference of miners' delegates as the date when the strike was
to begin. Meanwhile conferences were being held between
the miners' representatives, the owners, and the Govern-
ment, and on September 17, at the Board of Trade Confer-
ence, the Government made a tentative offer of a wage ad-
vance based strictly on output. That offer was developed
more fully by Mr. Lloyd George in a letter to Mr. Robert
Smillie on September 23. This letter, with subsequent
letters from Mr. Smillie and the Prime Minister, were
printed in the Daily Herald (London) for September 24.
The text follows.
Dear Mr. Smillie: On perusing the report of yesterday's
interview I gather the impression that while the Miners' Execu-
tive is not averse in principle from basing an increase of wages
on output, it has some difficulty in presenting to its delegates a
proposal which is at present only in outline.
The Government has great hesitation in attempting to make
a detailed scheme for the reasons so well stated by Mr. Smillie
— that increased production depends not merely on the miners
but on the cooperation of the owners with those who work in
the mines. On this ground the Government was and is of
opinion that the only satisfactory method of procedure is for
representatives of the owners and miners and the Coal Depart-
ment to sit down together and work out the details. At the
same time, I recognize the anxiety of your delegates to know
more than at present has been stated, and I add to what I said
yesterday the following explanations of what is in the mind of
the Government.
There will be fixed certain datum lines on which rates of
wages will be calculated in the following way. If output
reaches :
x tons wages will be increased by Is. per shift
x -\- y tons 2s. per shift
x -\- y -{- z tons 3s. per shift
If after increases have been obtained there are subsequent
diminutions of output the increases will come off. It is im-
possible for us now to say what figures would be represented
by these letters. These must obviously be arranged in confer-
ence between representatives of the owners, miners, and the
Mines Department, but I think it will be apparent, looking to
recent figures of output, that there is so much room for im-
provement that the miners can make a certainty of increased
pay.
To give the scheme a beginning the figures of output for
October will be taken, and any increase in output will be
remunerated according to the arrangements set out above, as
from October 1, payment being made retrospectively.
These, as you will understand, are only the general outlines
of a scheme which might come into effect for the next quarter.
There are many other factors which will require further de-
termination for the purposes of a permanent scheme, but these
can be adjusted by yourselves and the owners in consultation
with the Mines Department.
The results of a coal strike would be so serious, both for the
miners themselves and the whole country, that I am anxious
to make sure that it will not occur on any misunderstanding,
and if there is anything in this communication of which you
desire an explanation, the Government will be glad to give it.
D. Lloyd George.
Dear Mr. Prime Minister: Your letter of even date delivered
by hand was duly placed before our Executive Committee today.
We thank you for the additional information and for the ex-
planatory comment contained therein.
Our Committee fully understood from their interviews with
both yourself and Sir Robert Home the nature of your proposals
for the future regulation of wages in our industry. We must
state, however, that the creation of a scheme for the permanent
regulation of wages is a question of such magnitude as demands
much thought and attention. Many meetings of the interests
concerned would be necessary and the consent of our member-
ship secured before any scheme could be adopted. Our Execu-
tive repeat their assurance to the Government that when the
present wage claim is disposed of they will be prepared to
undertake an inquiry into the whole wage system prevailing in
the industry with the view of putting it upon a modern basis,
and which will have to receive the approval of the men as a
whole.
Robert Smillie,
Frank Hodges.
Dear Mr. Smillie: I have to acknowledge the receipt of
your letter in reply to the communication which I sent you this
morning.
Although a scheme for the permanent regulation of wages in
the coal industry might take a little time to arrange, the pro-
posal of the Government involved a plan which could be made
immediately operative, and would give to the miners an in-
creased rate of wages in return for an enlarged output, which,
as you yourself are confident, can be readily obtained.
The plan proposed would meet your "present wage claim,"
and in our belief would give to the miners great and permanent
advantages, whilst contributing to the prosperity of the com-
munity as a whole. If, however, you still reject this suggestion,
I would remind you that a peaceful method of settling the wage
claim is still open to you by a means similar to that which is
adopted by the railwaymen and the majority of your colleagues
of the Triple Alliance.
D. Lloyd George.
The miners having previously withdrawn their demand
for a decrease in the retail price of coal published their
revised offer in the Manchester Guardian for October 1.
The owners' offer was printed on the same day.
Miners' Offer
1. The Executive Committee of the Miners' Federation agree
that an increase in the output of coal is essential to the well-
being of the country.
They agree that output can be improved by mutual goodwill
between the owners and workmen, and to give practical effect
to this good will agree to the setting up of national and district
committees to obtain an increased output.
2. As a temporary measure and until a permanent scheme
for the national regulation of wages by means of a national
wage board has been agreed upon between owners and work-
men, the workmen's side agrees to the principle of a datum line.
3. For the purposes of the present claim of 2s., Is., and 9d.
per shift respectively the output for the current (September)
quarter shall be accepted as the datum line. This increase to
date as and from July 14, 1920.
If the output during the month of October shows an increase
which yields a tonnage at the rate of 244 million tons per
annum, an additional advance of 6d. per shift, with a propor-
Nov. 10, 1920]
The Nation
541
tionate increase for youths and boys, shall be payable from
November 1.
When the output in any succeeding month has reached a
figure which yields a tonnage at the rate of 248 million tons
per annum, then a further increase of wages of 6d. per day,
with a proportionate increase for youths and boys, respectively,
shall be payable as and from the first day of the month follow-
ing.
4. The number of shifts in respect of which these increases
in wages are paid shall be as in the case of the Sankey wage.
5. These proposals as to the payment of increased wages
are based upon the existing number of men employed at the
collieries.
6. The period from October 1 to December 31 next is to be
regarded as an experimental financial period, and the proposals
now submitted are to be subject to review in the light of the
financial results obtained from the operation of this scheme.
7. The proposed system of relating wages to output to apply
to all members of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain.
Owners' Offer
1. If during the first fortnight in October there is evidence
that the output is in process of materializing at the. rate of 242
million tons per annum, an output bonus of Is., 6d., and 41/£d.
per day, respectively, will be given;
if at the rate of 250 million tons, the output bonus shall be 2s.,
Is., and 9d. per day, respectively, and
if at the rate of 260 million tons, the output bonus shall be
3s., Is. 6d., and Is. %d. per day, respectively — all as from
October 1.
If, however, it is found that at the end of October the respec-
tive outputs before referred to have been forthcoming, the cor-
responding output bonus will be paid as from October 1 in
respect of such output. For the purpose of ascertaining the
annual rate of output a fortnight's output shall be multiplied
by twenty-six.
2. An adjustment having been made in respect of the output
bonus found to be payable as against the rate of output produced
in the period of the first fortnight in October or for the whole
month of October, thereafter periods of four weeks shall be
taken upon which future adjustments of output bonus shall be
based in relation to the corresponding output herein agreed
upon, and the output bonus thereby determined shall be paid
as from the commencement of the first pay following the close
of that period until the output bonus is again revised under the
scale of output and bonus hereby agreed.
Within the principle herein laid down it would be understood
that the output bonus determined in respect of the month of
October would apply during the month of November pending
the ascertainment of figures at the end of the four weeks re-
ferred to. The ascertainment of the figures for November will
determine the output bonus applicable to December.
3. The number of shifts in respect of which this output
bonus payment is paid shall be the same as in the case of the
Sankey wage.
4. These proposals as to the payment of an output bonus are
based upon the existing number of men employed at the col-
lieries.
5. The period from October 1 to December 31 next is to
be regarded as an experimental financial period, and the pro-
posals now submitted are to be subject to review in the light
of the financial results obtained from the operation of the
scheme.
6. The proposed system of output bonus payment is con-
fined to colliery workers.
7. It is suggested that the objects sought to be obtained by
this scheme will be better secured by the application of percent-
age advances in place of flat rate advances.
8. The owners are prepared to cooperate with the men to the
fullest extent in setting up the necessary committees — district
and national — to obtain an increased output.
The strike notices had been suspended for one week, to
October 2, and on October 1 the miners' delegates decided
to suspend them still further, and to take a second ballot on
the owners' offer. Mr. Smillie urged acceptance of the
offer, but on October 11-12, when the second ballot was
taken, the vote stood 181,428 for acceptance and 635,098
against. Every effort at fairness was apparently made, the
owners' offer having been stated in full on the reverse side
of the ballot. When the result of the vote was announced
the miners' delegates decided that October 16 must stand
as the date for the termination of the strike notices. Mr.
Smillie notified the Prime Minister of this decision. His
letter and Mr. Lloyd George's reply, published in the Lon-
don Times for October 15, are reprinted below.
Dear Mr. Prime Minister:
We are instructed by a conference of the above Federation
to inform you of the ballot vote of our membership, which re-
sulted in 181,428 for accepting the owners' offer and 635,098
against the owners' offer; or a majority of 77.78 per cent of
the total vote are against the owners' offer.
In view of this overwhelming majority the conference, which
is in session today, decided that the notices which have been
suspended on two occasions in response to your request, should
expire on Saturday next, 16th instant, and that a cessation of
work should take place after that day with a view to securing
an advance in wages of 2s. per shift for persons of eighteen
years and upwards, Is. per day for persons between sixteen
and eighteen years of age, and 9d. per shift for persons under
sixteen years of age.
On behalf of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain,
Robert Smillie, President.
Frank Hodges, Secretary.
Dear Mr. Smillie:
I have received with the greatest possible regret your intima-
tion that a conference of the Miners' Federation has today
decided that work should cease throughout the coalfields of this
country next Saturday, with a view, as you put it, "to securing
an advance in wages."
It is impossible to conceive of any action more likely to bring
about a serious disaster to the trade of this country, especially
when it is recollected that at the present time industry is con-
fronted with great and increasing difficulties, and the prospect
of unemployment amongst the masses of our people is causing
grave anxiety. Nor is it only in these isles that the injurious
effect of your action will be felt. Many struggling peoples on
the continent of Europe are today dependent upon the supply
of coal which this country is in a position to give to them, and
it is impossible to exaggerate the privations and hardships which
a cessation of their supplies will bring upon them.
The Government has exhausted every effort to prevent this
calamity. We have suggested to your Federation two possible
remedies.
In the first place, we proposed that your claim to an increase
of wages should be referred to a tribunal peculiarly fitted to
deal with the matter with complete impartiality, and experi-
ence and knowledge of similar questions. Such a method of
settlement is now very familiar in this country, and indeed it is
the means of decision which would most readily recommend
itself to civilized communities. Many other of the great trade
unions of this country have their wages questions settled in
this way, and the majority of your brethren of the Triple Alli-
ance resort to such an arrangement for the decision of similar
questions which affect them. It is significant, in connection
with the present difficulty, that some of the most prominent
leaders of your Federation favored this method of settlement
and that their proposals were supported by a very large body
of opinion in your delegates' conference.
In the second place, we put before you a means by which your
members could be assured of the increased wage which they ask
542
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2888
by giving the country once more the measure of output which
the mines yielded in the first quarter of this year. You will
readily understand the position of the Government in this mat-
ter, because you yourself have acknowledged, on behalf of your
Federation, the anxiety which you feel over the declining output
of coal. It is very unfortunate that recent increases in wages
have been followed almost automatically by a reduced produc-
tion. In order to arrest this decline, fraught with so much
danger to our trade and commerce, we were willing to make
what some would regard as a generous arrangement, so that
the miners should have an increased incentive to give the country
the benefit of a larger supply of coal. To the same end, we
obtained a pledge from the coal owners that they would pro-
vide every possible facility in the way of equipment and devel-
opment. If this plan had been approved by your members, it
would at once have benefited them and the great mass of our
people; it would have increased the revenue of the country and
lowered the cost of living; it would have provided cargo for our
outgoing ships and helped to pay for the commodities which,
as an island people, we must import. I cannot express too
strongly my disappointment that this proposal has been rejected
in your recent ballot. . . .
In facing the trials which the decision of your conference
today has imposed upon our people, the country will no doubt
be fortified in its determination to endure, by the fact that the
proposals made by its elected Government have received the
support of the most responsible and experienced minds within
your Federation. . . .
D. Lloyd George.
In the course of a speech to the Welsh National Liberal
Federation on October 8, before the result of the second
ballot was known, Mr. Lloyd George discussed the position
of the Government on the coal situation. The excerpt
printed below is taken from the London Times for Octo-
ber 9.
. If you won't mind me digressing for one moment I
will refer to a controversy which is going on at the present
moment, and I should like to say one word about it. There was
a danger at one time that the three .industries which are more
intimately concerned with the vital necessities of life in this
country than probably any others — the miners, the railwaymen,
and the transport workers — should combine in a great hold-up of
the community. I cannot think of any greater peril that the
community could face. Well, I will tell you quite simply my
view about it. I am all for strict fairness, for justice, for equity
in dealing with every demand which comes from men who con-
tribute to the wealth >f the nation, but I am equally resolved
that, whatever happens, you cannot surrender the rights of the
community to any minority, however powerful. If a minority
can hold up the community by denying to them the necessities
of life, there is an end of democratic government in this coun-
try. . . .
I am very glad to see signs of reason and common-sense pre-
vail. There are two methods of settling the controversy. One
is by the decision of an impartial tribunal — which is the means
which civilization has imposed in all disputes between indi-
viduals and sections of the community, and I hope to see it
imposed upon nations. The other method suggested, and on
which the miners are balloting at the present moment, is that
there should be an increase of wages corresponding to the in-
crease in the output. Unfortunately, the increase in wages up
to the present has resulted in a decrease in the output, and a
very serious decrease, and the community suffered. All we ask
for is that the miners shall produce the same quantity of coal
as they had produced the first quarter this year, which shows
that it can be done. The miners would then get their 2s. each.
If they still increase, they will get their half a crown a day
extra, and if they still increase, they will get an increase of 3s.
But it is in return for something that they give to the com-
munity. . . .
British Trade with Soviet Russia
THE text follows of the draft trade agreement between
Great Britain and Soviet Russia. The agreement was
made public on October 4 and has not yet been ratified by
the British Government.
Whereas it is desirable in the interest both of Russia and of
the United Kingdom that peaceful trade and commerce should
be resumed forthwith between these countries, and whereas for
this purpose it is necessary pending the conclusion of a formal
treaty between the Governments of these countries, by which
their permanent economic and political relations shall be regu-
lated, that a preliminary agreement should be arrived at between
the Government of the United Kingdom and the Russian Soviet
Government,
The aforesaid parties have accordingly entered into the fol-
lowing agreement, without prejudice to the view which either
of them may hold as to the legal status of the other, and subject
always to the fulfilment of the conditions specified in the British
note dated June 30, 1920, and accepted in the telegram from the
Russian Soviet Government, dated July 7, 1920, with regard to
the mutual cessation of hostilities and propaganda directed
against the institutions or interests of the other party, and the
repatriation of prisoners.
1. Both parties agree to remove forthwith all obstacles hith-
erto placed in the way of the resumption of trade between the
United Kingdom and Russia in any commodities (other than
arms and ammunition) which may be legally exported from
or imported into their respective territories to or from any for-
eign country, and not to exercise any discrimination against
such trade as compared with that carried on with any other for-
eign country.
Nothing in this provision shall be construed as overriding the
provisions of any international convention which is binding on .
either party, by which the trade in any particular article is
regulated.
2. British and Russian merchant ships, their masters, crews,
and cargoes shall in ports of Russia and of the United Kingdom
respectively, receive in all respects the treatment, privileges,
facilities, immunities, and protection which are usually accorded
by the established practice of commercial nations to foreign
merchant ships, their masters, crews, and cargoes, visiting their
ports.
Provided that nothing in this Article shall impair the right
of either party to take such precautions as are authorized by
their respective laws with regard to the admission of aliens into
their territories.
3. Each party may nominate such number of its nationals as
may be agreed from time to time as being reasonably necessary
to enable proper effect to be given to this agreement, having
regard to the conditions under which trade is carried on in its
territories, and the other party shall permit such persons to
enter its territories, and to reside and carry on trade there, pro-
vided that either party may restrict the admittance of any such
persons into any specified areas, and may refuse admittance to
or sojourn in its territories to any individual who is persona
non grata to itself, or who does not comply with this agreement,
or with the conditions precedent thereto.
Persons admitted in pursuance of this Article into the terri-
tories of either party shall, while residing therein for purposes
of trade, be exempted from all compulsory service whatsoever,
whether civil, naval, military, or other, and from any contribu-
tions, whether pecuniary or in kind, imposed as an equivalent
for personal service, and shall have right of egress.
Persons admitted into Russia under this arrangement shall be
permitted freely to import commodities destined solely for their
household use or consumption.
4. Either party may appoint one or more official agents to
reside and exercise their functions in the territories of the other,
Nov. 10, 1920]
The Nation
543
who shall enjoy all the rights and the privileges set forth in the
preceding article, and also immunity from arrest, provided that
either party may refuse to admit any individual as an official
agent who is persona non grata to itself, or may require the
other party to withdraw him should it find it necessary to do
so on grounds of public interest or security. Such agents shall
have access to the authorities of the country in which they reside
for the purpose of facilitating the carrying out of this agree-
ment and of protecting the interests of their nationals.
Official agents shall be at liberty to receive and dispatch
couriers with sealed bags subject to a limitation of three kilo-
grams per week, which shall be exempt from examination.
The official agents shall be the competent authorities to visa
the passports of persons seeking admission, in pursuance of the
preceding Article, into the territories of the parties.
5. Each party undertakes to insure generally that persons
admitted into its territories under the last two Articles shall
enjoy all protection, rights, and facilities which are necessary to
enable them to carry on trade.
They shall be at liberty to communicate freely by post, tele-
graph, and wireless telegraphy, and to use telegraph codes and
ciphers, under the conditions and subject to the regulations laid
down in the International Telegraph Convention of St. Peters-
burg 1875 (Lisbon Revision of 1908).
Each party undertakes to account for and to pay all balances
due to the other in respect of terminal and transit telegrams in
accordance with the provisions of the said International Tele-
graph Convention and Regulations.
6. Passports, documents of identity, Powers of Attorney, and
similar documents issued or certified by the competent authori-
ties in either country for the purpose of enabling trade to be
carried on in pursuance of this agreement, shall be treated in
the other country as if they were issued or certified by the
authorities of a recognized foreign government.
7. The preceding Articles shall continue in force until the
expiration of six months from the date on which either party
shall have given notice to the other of its intention to terminate
them. The parties mutually undertake even in the event of such
notice having expired, to continue to afford all the necessary
facilities for the completion or winding-up of any transactions
entered into in pursuance of such Articles.
8. The Russian Soviet Government hereby declares that it
recognizes its liability to pay compensation to British subjects
in respect of goods supplied or services rendered to it or to the
former Government of Russia, or to Russian citizens, for which
payment has not been made owing to the Russian Revolution.
The detailed mode of discharging this liability, together with all
other questions with regard to the liability of each of the parties
towards the other party or its nationals, shall be regulated by
the treaty referred to in the preamble.
The British Government makes a corresponding declaration.
9. In consideration of the declaration in the preceding Article
the British Government hereby declare that they will not take
or encourage any steps with a view to attach or to take posses-
sion of any gold, securities, or commodities (not being articles
identifiable as the property of the British or of any Allied Gov-
ernment) which may be exported by Russia in payment for im-
ports or as security for such payment, on the ground of any
claim against Russian citizens, or against the Russian Soviet
Government, or against the former Government of Russia.
10. The Russian Soviet Government undertakes to make no
claim to dispose in any way of the funds of the late Russian
Government in London. The British Government gives a cor-
responding undertaking as regards British Government funds in
Petrograd.
This Article is not to prejudice the inclusion in the formal
treaty referred to in the preamble of any provision dealing with
the subject matter of this Article.
POTTERISM
is THE NOVEL of the season. Frank Swinner-
ton said:
"POTTERISM
by Rose Macaulay, will be read all over England"
(and it was). N. P. D. writes in The New York
Globe :
"POTTERISM
is as fresh and breezy as if all the windows were
open. Mr. Liveright is a public benefactor in
publishing it." The New York Tribune says:
"POTTERISM
will certainly be read as widely in this country
as It has been in England." And The New York
Sun, in a two column review on its Editorial
page, says:
"POTTERISM
is a novel of superlative cleverness — a modern
tabloid 'Vanity Fair' — it is a delight to see a thing
so well done."
LECTURES by FRANK HARRIS
The brilliant editor of Pearson's will lecture every Wednesday
and Sunday at 8.30 p. m., on famous men of the past forty
years. Mr. Harris knew intimately Browning, Carlyle, Mere-
dith, Wagner, and many other celebrities, and speaks of them
most forcefully and interestingly, giving many intimate per-
sonal details never before told.
57 FIFTH AVENUE
Admission $1.00
ALICE KAUSER
1402 BROADWAY
NEW YORK
DRAMATISTS' AGENT - PLAYS
ESTABLISHED 1895
Motion Picture Department
R. L. GIFFEN, Associate Manager
FRANCIS HACKETT
oi trie
"NEW REPUBLIC"
will speak on
PRESENT CONDITIONS
IN IRELAND
Garrick Theatre
65 West 35th St.
Sunday Eve., Nov. 7tn
8:30 o" clock
Tickets 50c and $1.00
544
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2888
BRENTANOS
Retail Book Department
Fiftn Avenue and 27tn Street, New York City
BOOKS for THE ARTIST and HOME BUILDER
Color in Everyday Life
A Manual for lay students, artisans and artists. By
Louis Weinberg. With many plates. 343 pages. $3.00
The Pleasures of Collecting
By Gardner Teall. Fully illustrated. 328 pages. $4.00
By-Paths in Curio Collecting
By Arthur Hay den. With many plates. 462pages. $6.50
The Housing Book
Containing photographic reproductions, with floor
plans of workingmen's homes. By W. P. Comstock.
With 81 plates. $3.00
Where the Great City Stands
A study in the new civics. By C. R. Ashbee. With
121 plates. $12.50
Old Persian Carpets and Their Artistic
Values
By Carl Hopf. With colored plates. $3.50
The Flemish School.
With 65 full page reproductions. $1.25
The North Italian School
With 48 full page reproductions $1.25
American Painting and Its Tradition
By J. C. Van Dyke. Many reproductions by Inness,
Wyant, Martin, Sargent, Chase and others. $3.00
Wood-Block Printing
A description of the craft of woodcutting and colour
printing based on the Japanese practice. By F. M.
Fletcher. With many plates. $2.00
Engraved Gems, Signets, Talismans and
Ornamental Intaglios, Ancient and
Modern
By D. Osborne,
reproductions.
With 32 plates and hundreds of
$6.00
Old English Mansions
Edited by Charles Holme,
plates.
Illustrated with 60
$5.00
Flats, Urban Houses and Cottage Homes
Edited by W. Shaw Sparrow. Profusely illustrated,
including interiors and some plates in color. $4.00
Postage Additional
BRENTANCTS
Retail Book Department
Fifth Avenue and 27th Street
New York City
"The God Who Cares"
and other Unitarian pamphlets SENT FREE.
Address Mrs. George Hodgdon Ellis, 2 dishing Road, Wellesley Hills, Mass.
Rochefoucauld's Maxims, 25c.
La Rochefoucauld, the wise and witty French philosopher, compressed
a vast amount of good sense into brief, sharply pointed maxims. Brilliant
and profound was this teller of terse truths.
APPEAL TO REASON, GIRARD, KANSAS.
ANTHONY ASTON: Stroller and Adventurer
The only authentic account of the 18th century actor-wag. Based on
a recently discovered autobiographical sketch which, together with
Aston's Brief Supplement to Colley Cibber's Apology, is accurately
transcribed from the original. A strictly limited edition. Large type,
on Dresden Pamphlet. Cloth, $1.25 (postage 10c). Just published by
the author.
WATSON NICHOLSON, SOUTH HAVEN, MICHIGAN
COMMUNISM and CHRISTIANISM
Analyzed and Contrasted from the Viewpoint of Darwinism
By Bishop William Montgomery Brown, D.D.
The author, an Episcopalian ecclesiastic, has squarely renounced all
orthodox theology and unreservedly accepted the Marxian philosophy of
economic determinism. In this book, just out, he approaches the sub-
ject from a new angle and has produced a propaganda work that will
be of intense interest to all students of socialism, especially to those
who are still in close touch with church people. Paper, 184 pages,
25 cents, postpaid.
THE BRADFORD-BROWN EDUCATIONAL COMPANY, INC.,
BROWNELLA BOOK SHOP, GALION, OHIO.
Correspondence Course in
APPLIED MARXIAN ECONOMICS
Conducted by Mary E. Marcy, author of the book entitled "Shop Talks
on Economics," of which more than 200,000 copies have been sold. Of
this book Eugene V. Debs wrote : "Mrs. Marcy has a peculiar faculty
for this kind of work, and in preparing this most excellent primer on
economics for the education of the workers, she has rendered an
invaluable service to the working class."
The course consists of fifteen lessons ; we supply study booklets and
aid local labor unions in analyzing their own industries. Price $5.00 ;
a complete set of Marx's CAPITAL free to any one sending $25.1)0 for
five students. The labor leaders all over the world who stand out are
the ones who are applying Marx to Industry. Join now.
A copy of "Shop Talks" and full particulars regarding the course
will be mailed for 12 cents in stamps. Address
CHARLES H. KERR & CO., 347 E. Ohio Street, CHICAGO
Just Published
No. 68. Illustrated Catalogue of
Rare Books in Beautiful Old Bindings
The DR. R. T. JUPP COLLECTION of
MSS., AUTOGRAPHS, BOOKS, etc, etc., by or relating to
CHARLES DICKENS
The Collection of Relics of the Original Dora of DAVID COPPERFIELD
BOOKS ON THE FINE ARTS, SPORT
and an extensive collection of BOOKS ON SHORTHAND
Pine Sett of First Editions of CHARLES LEVER, GEORGE MEREDITH
and CAPTAIN MARRYAT, GOULD'S BIRDS of AUSTRALIA, etc.
Post free from
HENRY SOTHERAN & CO.
Bookseller* to the King
43, Piccadilly, W. 1,
or. 140 Strand, W. C. 2.
Cable Address: Bookmen, London London, England,
The Nation
FOUNDED 1866
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1920
No. 2889
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 545
EDITORIALS:
The Triumph of Reaction °J*
A Constructive World League Program 549
On Hating the Provinces 550
A Notable Prison Report &50
The Haul of Fame • • • • • 551
THE CENTRAL EUROPEAN CONSPIRACY. By Eugene S. Bagger.. 552
ITALY: HOW THE GOVERNMENT MET THE REVOLUTION. By
Hiram K. Moderwell £o3
NEW MEMBERS FOR THE IRISH COMMITTEE 554
COOPERATION, THE PEOPLE'S BUSINESS. Ky James Peter Warbasse 555
THE CONFESSION OF JOHN R. RATHOM 557
ON THE EARTH AND UNDER IT. By Genevieve Taggard 559
THE BUILDING SCANDAL. By George Soule 560
CHART- THE COURSE OF EUROPEAN EXCHANGE IN RELATION
TO THE AMERICAN DOLLAR 562
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 564
CORRESPONDENCE 564
BOOKS: «
Masters in Search of a Masterpiece *>«> '
Soviet Russia 567
Exposure 568
Books in Brief 569
DRAMA :
A Note on Acting 570
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION:
Hungary's Intrigues :
The Irredentist Plot 571
Hungarian Ambitions and French Support 573
Agents of Propaganda in Austria 574
Hungarian Propaganda in America 575
The French-Hungarian Treaties 575
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
LEWIS S. GANNETT FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising : Swarthmore Press Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
SOME things to rejoice over:
The popular disapproval of Burleson and Palmer;
The defeat of Senator George E. Chamberlain of Ore-
gon, arch-militarist, sponsor of universal military training ;
The failure of Senator James D. Phelan to win reelection
to the Senate despite his bitter anti-Japanese crusade;
The election to the Senate of Congressman J. W. Harreld
of Oklahoma, anti-militarist and one of the handful of Con-
gressmen who voted to seat Victor Berger. He ran 25,000
votes ahead of Harding;
The victory in the Fourteenth Ohio District of C. L.
Knight, publisher of the Akron Beacon Journal, outspoken
anti-militarist, who courted and successfully sustained the
attack of the American Legion, winning by more than 6,000
votes ;
The coming appearance in the House of Representatives
of a second woman Congressman ;
The defeat of Boss Barnes in Albany, his district electing
a Democratic Congressman despite the Republican landslide;
The extraordinary splitting of tickets in New York State,
as a result of which Governor Smith ran one million votes
ahead of his party's candidate for President, very nearly
winning the election, while Senator Wadsworth, rightly
opposed by the women of the State, ran half a million behind
Harding;
The defeat of Mr. Burleson's brother-in-law, Carlos Bee,
in the Fourteenth District of Texas, resulting in the first
Republican Congressman from Texas since Reconstruction
days;
The election of Negro Assemblymen in Missouri and
Washington ;
The breaking up of the Solid South, as shown by the
heavy Republican vote in Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, and
the election of Republican Congressmen.
HUMOR and color are not lacking in the tales of victory.
Congress is not to be without a woman representa-
tive for the next two years, but its one woman will be Alice
M. Robertson of Muskogee, sometime vice-president of the
Anti-Suffrage Association of Oklahoma. Miss Robertson is
no such young crusader as was Representative Rankin of
Montana; she emigrated to the old Indian Territory in an
ox-cart just after the Civil War, and is 66 years of age.
She is a former postmistress, and is now proprietor of a
cafeteria where service men were fed free of charge during
the war. Her entire campaign was waged in cafeteria
advertisements. Then there is "Alf" Taylor, elected Repub-
lican Governor of Tennessee in his first political campaign
since he lost the same office to his Democratic brother "Bob"
thirty-four years ago, in a wild campaign in which the
brothers lambasted each other from one end of the State
to the other. "Alf" then used the Taylor quartet of sons
and nephews to advertise his campaign, while "Bob"
played solos on his home-made Happy Valley fiddle, and
carried off the honors. Finally there is the Kentucky gen-
tleman who from his jail cell waged a campaign against
the judge who sentenced him, won the election, and was
pardoned to take his seat on the bench.
THE Farmer-Labor Party made no very remarkable
showing at the polls, but its showing in the newspapers
was worse still. The New York newspapers boycotted it.
Not a paper gave the figures of Jeremiah O'Leary's re-
markable run in the Eighteenth Congressional District of
New York. In this district where John F. Carew, the
Democratic incumbent, won by 19,000 votes in 1918, O'Leary
polled 10,124, Carew 12,113, O'Connor (Republican) 10,671,
and McDonald (Socialist) 5,438. Had the Farmer-Labor
and Socialists been able to unite, they might have elected
their candidate. Dudley Field Malone's 50,000 votes for
Governor were a disappointing showing. In South Dakota
and Washington, however, the Farmer-Labor tickets ran
well ahead of the Democrats; reports indicate that in Mis-
souri the new party polled 65,000 votes; that it ran ahead
of the Socialist Party in Indiana; and that in southern
Illinois it polled a large vote although in Chicago its vote
was negligible. Minneapolis sends seven Farmer-Labor
members to the State legislature. No figures are yet avail-
able on Christensen's national total, but it is plain that the
Farmer-Labor Party is far from replacing the Socialist
as the third national party. Unless the new party can win
solid trade-union support, which is unlikely until Mr. Gom-
pers is deposed, it cannot become an important factor in
American politics. In the State of Washington, where it
made its best showing, it had that support.
546
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2889
DEBS polled three times the 1916 Socialist vote for
President, and. twice the Socialist high water mark of
1912, but the total, some 1,800,000, is much less than Social-
ists and non-Socialist protestants had hoped for. Nor do lo-
cal election returns give the Socialists great encouragement.
Meyer London regained the Congressional seat in New York
which he lost in 1916; but Victor Berger lost the Milwaukee
seat which he had won in 1918 and held at the special elec-
tion in 1919. For years the Socialists have had just one
Congressman, sometimes from Milwaukee and sometimes
from New York. In other districts of New York, Wiscon-
sin, and California, Socialist candidates made close runs.
It is a curious commentary upon American journalism that
the five Los Angeles newspapers omitted all returns from
the Tenth Congressional District of California on the morn-
ing after election in order to avoid mention of Upton Sin-
clair's run. In New York City the Republican landslide
swept two if not three of the five ousted Assemblymen to
defeat; but a new Socialist Assemblyman will go to Albany
from Brooklyn, and for the first time the Socialists elected
a State Senator. Some industrial districts, including many
of the steel towns of the Pittsburg district, shewed Debs
ahead «f Cox.
IN common with other of the lesser political organizations
the National Nonpartisan League was drenched though
not drowned by the Harding cloudburst. Its hopes were cen-
tered chiefly in North and South Dakota, Montana, Colorado,
Wisconsin, and Washington. The League farmers combined
with organized labor this year in an effort to capture the
State political machinery of Montana and Colorado. Mainly
because the Democratic Party was regarded as dominant in
those States they went into its primaries, and, having
gained control and nominated the candidates, were expectant
of victory in the State elections. But the Harding senti-
ment proved so overwhelming that it carried the Republicans
to victory in State as well as in national contests. In Wis-
consin, where the League combined with the La Follette
Republicans, it fared better. Thompson, who ran independ-
ently against Lenroot for the United States Senate, was
beaten; but J. J. Blaine and J. D. Beck, whom the La Fol-
lette-Nonpartisan forces succeeded in nominating in the
primaries for Governor and the seat in Congress now held
by Representative Esch, respectively, were elected. More-
over, about half the Republicans elected to the Legislature
were La Follette-Nonpartisan men.
GOVERNOR FRAZIER was elected for a third term in
North Dakota, but the Nonpartisan League failed of a
majority in the State Legislature, as had been feared since
it lost the Republican primaries. This will seriously hinder
the development of its industrial program. On the other
hand, Dr. E. F. Ladd, the League's candidate for the United
States Senate, will displace Gronna in Washington. The
election of Dr. Ladd is the signal achievement of the League
in the elections. As president of the North Dakota Agricul-
tural College and author of the State's progressive grain-
grading law, he has the confidence of the farmers of the
Northwest, and, although he may not be able to accomplish
much in a legislative way in Washington, his advent will be
a wholesome influence in a body where an educator and a
scientist is an unknown species. Dr. Ladd is not a member
of the Nonpartisan League; he is not a farmer and there-
fore not eligible. He may fairly be described as a repre-
sentative of the vague body known as "the public."
MORE votes were cast in New York in 1916 than in the
ten States of the Solid South carried by the Demo-
cratic Party in the present presidential election. These
ten States, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana,
Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Vir-
ginia, cast in 1916 a total of 1,598,015 votes. In the Elec-
toral College they cast 114 votes. The total popular vote in
1916 was 18,526,743, and the total electoral vote, then as
now, 521. Therefore, what of the South has remained solid
even for Mr. Cox, while actually casting but eight and six-
tenths per cent of the total vote scores twenty-one and four-
tenths per cent in the Electoral College. Again, New York's
1,706,354 votes, or 108,339 more than those of the above ten
States, are represented by but forty-five electoral votes, or
about two-fifths the number of a region which New York
exceeds in popular voting strength by nearly ten per cent.
When the full figures of the 1920 election are in, the discrep-
ancy will be even more flagrant. For while the Northern
electorate will be greatly augmented by the woman's vote,
it will not materially -swell the South's total. In the new
Congress Republicans will have the power, as well as the
right and duty, to put an end to this injustice based on the
counting of disfranchised voters. If the South insists on
denying the colored American the supposedly inalienable
rights given him under the Constitution, it may not in addi-
tion pocket these votes as its own.
"IT is war. It is rebellion," said Mr. Lloyd George in
A the House of Commons, explaining, as "one of those
unfortunate accidents that always happen in war," the
killing of a woman with a baby in her arms by British sol-
diers in County Galway, Ireland. It is war. There is re-
bellion in Ireland, and the rebels are men of the stripe of
Washington and Kosciuszko and Kossuth. But Mr. Lloyd
George, who defends British terrorism, the burning of vil-
lages and cooperative creameries as fair measures of war,
does not maintain his definition of the situation in Ireland
as "war." The same dispatch which quotes his speech in
Parliament gives an official statement alleging that the
Government's stern policy is drawing a tighter net about
the "criminals" and claiming a diminution of "crime" as
a result. What is the truth? Take the previous day's dis-
patches from Ireland to a New York daily. From Lon-
donderry : five policemen shot, two of them fatally, two Sinn
Fein shops burned to the ground, several more wrecked,
horses burned to death, automobiles smashed. From North
Belfast: fierce rioting stopped by an armored car. From
Cork: a laborer shot dead by the police. From Causeway:
seven Irish volunteers killed. From Dublin: two civilians
shot, and one policeman thrown into the river. A railroad
about to cease operation because of the unsettled condition.
No, the policy of reprisal is not pacifying Ireland ; it is only
alienating the rest of the world from England.
EXIT Baron Wrangel. Enter General Balakovich, Rus-
sia's latest Jack-in-the-box "liberator." True to form,
he is being "hailed" in Paris and given his first appearance
in America in the news columns of the New York Times.
Soon it will require mnemonic wizardry equaling that of Sir
William Gilbert's major-general, who knows "the kings of
England and can quote the fights historical from Marathon
to Waterloo in order categorical," to recall the procession —
Kaledine, Kolchak, Judenich, Denikin, Pilsudski, Mahkno,
Wrangel. Like the mysterious novae of our firmament which
appear suddenly, shine brightly, and then fade into the
!
Nov. 17, 1920]
The Nation
547
night, each of these adventurers in turn has been the pole
star of the Allies' policy toward Russia. Will-o'-the-wisps
they were chasing every time, these recently valiant conten-
ders for democracy, national aspirations, self-determination
and wraiths, owing their semblance of corporeality to the
valiant columns — not of their followers, but of the corre-
spondents on the newspaper front. The Times, by right of
discovery official organ of Russian White Hope-ism, now
hails General Balakovich as "a modern Robin Hood." Come,
strategists of the editorial sanctum, let us have better
liaison work between the Literary Supplement and the Cur-
rent History. Was not the illustrious Robin first to dis-
cover the joys of robbing the rich to endow the poor — the
original Bolshevik, forsooth? And may not his modern
exemplar, General Balakovich, like his predecessor General
Mahkno, be found, ere long, on the Bolshevist side?
THE picked and withered carcass of Turkey is to be
carved and dished out to the western Powers just as
Africa was a few decades ago. It is the same old game,
played by the same old players for the same old stakes in the
same old way. The only difference is that this time Germany
is left out, and England, France, and Italy have all the pick-
ings to themselves. When the official treaty with Turkey
was signed at Sevres in August — and that treaty parceled
out a few spoils itself — these three pious Powers signed
another little treaty among themselves, beginning of course
with an unctious statement of desire to avoid international
friction. This treaty recognizes the "special interests" of
Italy in southern Anatolia, and of France in Cilicia and
western Kurdistan, and by implication, of England in most
of the rest of what was Turkey ; it pledges these benevolent
Powers to "render diplomatic support to each other in main-
taining their respective positions in the areas in which their
special interests are recognized" ; it carefully distributes the
railways among the three Powers and allots the titles in
Constantinople. The presidency of Constantinople — sweet-
smelling title — goes to a British general, the presidency of
the Financial Commission to France, and of the Railroad
Commission to Italy. Armenia, over which so many diplo-
matic tears have been shed, appears not at all ; but the coal
mines of Heraclea on the Black Sea get special mention.
The diplomats of the economic imperialism era still rule us ;
they have forgotten nothing and learned nothing by the war.
WHAT, another threat to federalize the coal industry?
Doubtless, the reader will say, it comes from some
crack-brained Socialist or foolish backer of the Plumb Plan.
Not at all. It was voiced this time by two of the most con-
servative Republican Senators in the country, William M.
Calder of New York and Walter E. Edge of New Jersey,
who are so outraged by the conditions they have discovered
in the course of their investigation of the coal business as
to say that if the operators do not behave themselves and
reduce prices before Congress meets they will introduce a
bill to have the Government take over the whole industry.
We do not take this threat too seriously; it is chiefly bluff.
Messrs. Calder and Edge know that they would not be
allowed to carry out their threat. But it is certainly inter-
esting that two conservatives like these are willing to resort
to such threats and still more so that they have run across
such shocking exploitation of the public as to arouse them
so profoundly. They found "vast confessed profiteering in
coal"; and "crookedness" on a great scale; "the wrongdoing
has been admitted by D. B. Wartz, representing the National
Coal Association; by Commissioner C. B. Aitchison of the
Interstate Commerce Commission, and Daniel Willard,
representing the railroads" ; "there is general confession of
guilt on the part of the industry, even though guilty indi-
viduals have not been identified." As a result of the Sena-
tors' threat the price of coal has begun to come down and
the outlook is that the public will be somewhat protected
by early December. But for how long?
BY a decisive majority California has made it law that
Japanese can own no land, can lease no land, cannot
act as guardians for their American-born children in whose
name land is held, and cannot own any share in American-
controlled land owning companies. That this legislation
constitutes the gravest injustice to the Japanese residents
of California few will deny. In that State America's tra-
ditional sense of fair play has been swept away in a ferment
of lace prejudice and campaign buncombe. The notion that
the Japanese land ownership constitutes a "menace" in the
sense employed by anti-immigrationists is entirely refuted
by the facts. Of the twenty-eight million acres of farming
area which compose one-fourth of the State's total acreage,
only 458,000 acres, or 1.6 per cent, are under cultivation by
Japanese. But this is not all. Of this ridiculously small
proportion not over twenty-seven thousand acres — less than
one-tenth of one per cent — are owned by Japanese, the bal-
ance being made up of lands cultivated by Japanese under
leases, under crop share contracts, under labor contracts,
and finally, of 48,000 acres owned by American corporations
with some Japanese shareholders. The California verdict
serves merely as the basis for wholly justified Japanese
indignation. As such, it is worth the earnest consideration
of all who in time of peace would prepare to avoid war.
For while no differences exist between the two nations that
cannot be settled by amicable arbitration despite the efforts
of racial jingoes on both sides of the Pacific, it is America,
speaking through California, that has committed the first
overt act of unfriendliness. Let us hope that saner counsels
may yet prevail and a way be found to emerge with justice*
HOW like an island set apart from the rest of the world
America is today, is illustrated by the chart printed
elsewhere in this issue of The Nation, showing the spectacu-
lar decline in European exchanges in two years of "peace."
While Europe is still passing through convulsive transfor-
mations that may spell death or new life for the future,
but which spell economic disease today, America stands
apart relatively unchanged. The value of European money
is currently reckoned, as on this chart, in dollars. During
the war the neutral currencies, by virtue of their special
position, were well above the par ratio to American money,
while Allied and Central Power exchange varied with the
flux of the military tide. The bankers whose group judg-
ment determines exchange ratio did not realize that in this
war there would be no victors, but only many vanquished.
The signing of the armistice brought a sharp drop in neu-
tral exchange, and gave Allied exchanges a respite of good
health. But as the unsound nature of the coming peace
became clear, and as that peace began to work its ill effects,
all European exchanges, the neutrals dragged with the
others, began to tumble, and despite temporary recoveries,
they are still falling. European nations are still meeting
their current obligations by the issue of paper money, and
America, receiving interest on their wartime borrowings,
looks to them like a sinister vampire.
548
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2889
The Triumph of Reaction
LET us confess frankly that the Presidential election,
on the face of the returns, brought precious little
cheer to liberals. Any sizable protest vote would have been
lost in such an avalanche, and when New York City cast
only 132,000 votes for Eugene Debs, and the Farmer-Labor
vote did not even appear in the press reports, it is perfectly
clear that the protest vote was negligible. The great army
of dissatisfied protested by sweeping Harding into office
by majorities which may easily stand unsurpassed during
the life-time of men now of middle age. The Nation was
correct in its prophecy on October 27, that the election was
going to be "so nearly unanimous" as to make it impossible
for anybody to attribute the outcome to any one racial
group or to any one grievance. It was not pro-Republican,
and not remotely pro-Harding, but was simply anti-Wilson ;
it was a remarkably unanimous vote for a new deal, an
entire change in government. The country is absolutely
through with Woodrow Wilson and his works, and was so
bent upon cleaning house that it took heed of no programs
and voiced nothing constructive whatever.
So the country is bound and delivered to the Republicans.
They may work their sweet will upon us and interpret the
verdict as they see fit. They may declare it a mandate for
additional protective tariff robbery of the public, or for a
war with Mexico, or for complete withdrawal from Europe,
or for further prosecution of liberals and radicals, or any-
thing else that may suit their convenience. Who can gain-
say them? Only the more experienced among them will
remember that no great Congressional majorities have held
together long and that a reversal of public interest in-
evitably follows quickly upon the creation of so one-sided
an administration. If they would escape a notable reaction
by 1922 they must use their power with wise forbearance.
But today they may certainly look upon the wreck of the
Democratic Party as the Romans gloated over the destruc-
tion of Carthage. The Democratic Party is not only de-
feated; it is discredited, and it is without a single leader
of distinction to guide the reorganization to come. The
curse of Burleson, and of Daniels, and of Palmer is upon
it, the cross of Wilsonism upon its back. It is paying dearly
now for that White House policy which permitted few men
of independence, vigor, and promise to flourish under its
shadow. Well may the Republicans believe that the enemy
is theirs for a long time to come.
But the returns may tell one story and time prove an-
other. Certain things just beneath the surface remain to
encourage liberals, to keep up the faith of all those to whom
the outcome spells sore disappointment. It is a cause for
hope and for rejoicing that party bonds never sat so lightly
as now. When Governor Smith in New York can run more
than a million votes ahead of his ticket in such a year,
and a weak Democratic district attorney be beaten for an
important judgeship; when Democrats in Texas defeat the
brother-in-law of Secretary Burleson and elect a Republi-
can; when William Barnes is defeated in his own bailiwick
of Albany in an unprecedented Republican landslide, there
is sufficient evidence that independent voting has waxed
enormously and that it is no longer treason to split one's
ballot, even in the South. Indeed, there are signs without
number that the electorate is thinking. The New York
World declares that, on its face, the election means that the
electorate has repudiated both the war and the peace. One
does not need to believe this fully in order to see that men
and women chose at the polls the way that seemed to them
the most certain and the surest to scotch what they had be-
gun to abominate — the Wilsonian brand of government.
That there was a tremendous vote of dissatisfaction with
the war and the peace is true. One of the most experienced
Washington correspondents, after two months constant pre-
election traveling in the West, assures us that the defeat of
the Democracy was settled when Mr. Wilson pledged in
Paris the reappearance there of American troops should
another great war arise. The present generation, let it be
said, desires no more warring on Continental soil, however
much some few of our fellow citizens might welcome a
crusade to destroy British imperialism or navalism, and
however much some others would like to have America the
handmaiden of the British Government. Indubitably, large
groups of citizens voted against the Administration for
specific reasons; the Irish in mass deserted the Democratic
Party, and the German-Americans and Scandinavians were
likewise wholly with the Republicans. In so far as this
vote was anti-war or against close foreign ties, it is a cause
for profound gratitude.
As for the women's vote, it proved the falsity of Gov-
ernor Cox's claim that the mothers of the nation were for
the League; precisely the opposite was true. The women
remembered the worth of Mr. Wilson's boast in 1916 that
he had kept us out of the European war, and they were slow
to take his assurance that the League would in perpetuity
perform the same function. For the rest, the effect of the
women's vote was just what every one but its most ardent
opponents and its most fanatical supporters knew it would
be — slight indeed. It neither brought about the defeat in
New York of Senator James W. Wadsworth, Jr., nor of
Senator Brandegee in Connecticut. Yet in both States tre-
mendous efforts were made to line up all women against
these two reactionaries. Victor Berger believes that the
women contributed to his defeat in Milwaukee through
their "natural conservatism." The fact is, of course, that
the women voted much as the men did, not because they
were under the domination of men, but because men and
women are much alike in their opinions and prejudices.
Those persons who hoped that the women's vote would pro-
duce an immediate purification of politics, or a wave of
social reform, will share the disappointment of those who
fought the extension of suffrage lest it spell bolshevism
or abolish the cigarette. Only those are satisfied who be-
lieve that universal suffrage was a necessary element in po-
litical democracy and are willing to trust to the democratic
method of government by all the men and women of the
country, even though it may sometimes result in the elec-
tion of a Harding. The election proves that the gen-
eral political temper of the country will probably be far
less radically affected by women's vote than many people
hoped or feared. And, finally, it makes it clear that for
liberals there is a long road ahead before the United "States
can be ranked as a politically progressive nation. But this,
as we said last week, is merely the greater stimulus to
progressives, and places the greater burden upon them of
fighting more than ever wisely and effectively, for with
them lies the spiritual future of our beloved land.
Nov. 17, 1920]
The Nation
549
A Constructive World League Program
SPEAKING for the first time after his election as Presi-
dent, Senator Harding declared at Marion that the
Versailles League of Nations is "now deceased" and reite-
rated his statement that when President he intends to "ask
for nations associated together in justice, but it will be an
association which surrenders nothing of American free-
dom." He has also reasserted his intention to invite, as soon
as he returns to Marion, a group of prominent Amer-
icans to advise him as to the best plan. This is excellent
policy provided that his visitors are not a narrow partisan
body but represent all the points of view of those who will
have none of the Versailles Treaty yet realize full well that
some kind of an international association is urgently de-
manded. There could be no greater honor for the United
States than to take the lead in building a really democratic
peace league, free from all the defects of the present League
— defects whose existence even its most ardent supporters
admit — for no more important service could be rendered to
a world in chaos.
As a contribution to the discussion already raging in the
daily press as to the future world organization, The Nation
submits its own constructive suggestions, hitherto made
from time to time, for a policy to take the place of that
advocated by President Wilson. Our program is as follows :
1. The immediate calling of the Third Hague Conference
by President Harding as soon as he takes office.
2. The inclusion within the call to the Conference of all
nations, large and small, victors and vanquished alike.
3. The reference to the Conference of the task of codifying
existing international law and of creating additional
statutes, which should include:
(a) The outlawing of war by the Conference, as de-
manded by Senator Harding during his campaign,
by the abolition of war as a means of settling inter-
national disputes.
(b) The creation of a genuine world court by empow-
ering the Hague Court to pass upon all disputes
relating to purely international matters, with power
to summon all parties to a suit or controversy into
court (obligatory jurisdiction).
(c) The abolition of the doctrines of military necessity
and retaliation.
(d) Universal and immediate disarmament by all na-
tions as the result of the above steps.
(e) The remaking of the Treaty of Versailles and the
treaties with the minor Central Powers so that
absolute justice may be done.
(f) The nationalization in each country (as promised
by Lloyd George for England during the war) of
every munition and weapon-making industry, in-
cluding the building of warships of every kind.
The first duty of The Hague should be to outlaw
war in accordance with the demand first made by Senator
Knox during the anti-treaty fight in the Senate and by
Senator Harding during the campaign. They are both
absolutely right. The use of war as a means for the settle-
ment of international disputes must be abolished, and this
is the time to do it. Of all the defects which damned the
Versailles League, the worst is the fact that it is based upon
force and that it throughout contemplates the keeping up of
armies and navies. As Senator Knox so well put it in his
public statement of October 23:
The proposed covenant, instead of abolishing war, actually
sanctions, breeds, and commands it. Moreover, it absolutely
requires that every future war shall be a potential world war
and that we shall be an active participant in every such war.
. . . Hold in mind that we are to give up the power to say
when we shall have war, when peace, what shall our army num-
ber, how many vessels of war we shall have, how, when, and
where, and under what conditions shall our army and navy be
used. . . .
Senator Knox is a practical man who has been Secretary of
State. He did not hesitate to demand "a true League of
Nations under which controversies may be judicially deter-
mined and the curse of war outlawed and made an inter-
national crime." When a man of this type takes this posi-
tion, the proposal to outlaw war cannot be set down as a
mere dream of pacifist theorists or of unpractical idealists.
But Senator Knox has had other suggestions to make in
line with the position of The Nation. These are that all
annexations, exactions, or seizures, by force or duress, shall
from now on be null and void. This great step forward is
quite within the power of the Hague Conference, but beyond
all this The Nation urges the establishment of a real world
court. We have recently [September 25] pointed out how
utterly faulty is the organization of the new world court
to be established under the existing League of Nations.
The Hague Tribunal, as at present constituted, similarly
cannot function in a way to preserve the peace of the world.
It should be reconstructed so that it may settle all dis-
putes relating to purely international matters; it should sit
as a judicial body with jurisdiction over all parties to a dis-
pute upon the petition of any party to the dispute or of any
nation which has entered into the agreement to make this
Tribunal the real international court of the world as su-
preme in its field as our Supreme Court within our
boundaries.
The point is, of course, that if war is outlawed such doc-
trines as those of military necessity, retaliation, and reprisal,
now the excuse for many a wanton aggression and the start-
ing-point of many an imperialistic land-grabbing venture,
would be done away with. The Hague Conference would,
therefore, have the vital duty of preparing the codifica-
tion of the existing international law. But there is noth-
ing more important for the Conference to do if it meets
at The Hague than to demand immediate and universal dis-
armament. We have no doubt whatever that that would be
one of the first planks in Senator Knox's platform and fore-
most among proposals which Mr. Harding may make. Un-
less disarmament comes soon, the financial ruin of Europe
is inevitable. The assertion of French imperialists that the
French army shall, League or no League, never be allowed
hereafter to fall below a permanent peace strength of 700,-
000 men — a force larger by nearly 100,000 men than the
Kaiser's army in 1913 — shows what determined efforts must
be made to do away with the whole business. Disarmament
is, moreover, absolutely necessary to the welfare of the
United States, for, according to official figures of the United
States Government, 92.8 per cent of our enormous ex-
penditure of $5,686,005,606 in the fiscal year ending June
550
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2889
30, 1920, or $5,279,621,263, went to payments for past
and future wars— only 7.2 per cent for all the great
creative expenditures of Government and the cost of the
civilian machinery! No one can read these figures and not
realize that disarmament is at once the most practical and
constructive suggestion which can be made at this time.
If President-elect Harding will but take the lead in these
matters in accordance with his pledge, and deliberately call
the nations in association to outlaw war, the Republican
Party will have much to pride itself upon and the country
still greater grounds for thankfulness for the "decease" of
the Versailles League. If the United States takes the lead,
the other nations must follow suit. There is daily proof
that they will be glad to do so.
On Hating the Provinces
EMERSON lived in Concord and took villages for
granted, as natural microcosms in any one of which
a sage might study the world. Whitman lived in Manhat-
tan and sent his imagination on strong flights over the
entire body of his land, and to the remotest regions, neither
denying nor rejecting whatever signs of life he saw. Lin-
coln in Springfield, whitherto by no means all the philoso-
phies had come and little enough of culture in any composi-
tion, mastered not only an incomparable wisdom but an
incomparable style. To no one of these men could it have
been quite understandable that a second or third generation
after them would begin to display among certain of its
intellectual leaders that restless and intense hatred of the
"provinces" which marks, for example, the critics of Paris
and the professors of Berlin. Yet something of precisely
this sort has come to pass. Voice after voice is added to
the regiments of criticism being raised against suburban
Philistia and the villatic bourgeoisie.
That is to say, a reaction is commencing against the
frontier which has had so large a hand in making us. It
is no longer a natural device to put critical sagacity in the
mouth of a rural sage. When Lowell created Hosea Biglow
he did so with the brash originality of a young man who
was taking venturesome shots at his age; no young Ameri-
can of Lowell's scholarship would think a second time of
such a device today. Josh Billings and Artemus Ward to
all but a few have come to seem "old stuff." Even Mr.
Dooley was not a crossroads loafer but a native son of the
city streets. In return for a long course of ridicule from
rustic philosophers a new order of philosophes is striking
back. We need not wonder, perhaps, that the riposte is
often acrimonious ; the weight of all this village ridicule has
often been heavy. We need not feel too much distressed
at the look of snobbishness which some of the critics of
our frontier somewhat too continually wear; nothing ought
to be so easy to forgive as a zeal for enlightenment. It is
important to remember, however, that there is a point of
vantage a little above this particular critical melee from
which the battle appears less crucial than it doubtless ap-
pears to those who wage it.
That point of vantage is the artist's, at least so far as the
artist is concerned with the reproduction of life without the
Puritan's anxiety to make it — or to make it out — the kind of
life he thinks it ought to be. The moralist condemns the
"bad" people and the wit condemns the dull; but these are
phases of argument. With argument the dramatist or
novelist is much less concerned. His task is first of all a
representation of what he finds, and his obligation ends —
though he may decide to do more — when he has represented
it. At his lowest level he yields himself wholly to the
manners of his society and sets them forth with implied
approbation, as if they were the laws of God. At a higher
level, he turns violently against its prejudices and assails
them as if they were the sins of Satan. But there is a level
higher still, from which, as he looks upon his community,
he sees it as men and women involved in the exercises of
life, and he makes his record of them without either un-
critical admiration or vexed recrimination. Those of our
novelists and dramatists who now hate our provinces most
are nearly all dissatisfied men lately escaped from stodgi-
ness and devoted to getting their revenges. In this fashion
the heretic, while his wounds still smart, lashes back at the
doctrines which oppressed him. But the truly emancipated
spirit no longer has time for recrimination or revenge.
He goes, as artist, about his proper business, accepting
stupidity as his material as well as intelligence, vice as well
as virtue, gentleness as well as cruelty. In every com-
munity, he knows, all the types and tendencies of humanity
may be found, and it does not occur to him to be partisan
of one neighborhood — town or country — against another.
He knows, too, that familiarity with mankind comes partly
from affection for it, and that the truth is therefore hot
unrelated to affection. How then shall he tell the truth
about the provinces so long as he feels nothing but ani-
mosity for them? It was not in this temper that Fielding
drew Squire Western, or Scott his Caleb Balderstone, pr
Balzac poor stupid Pere Goriot. After long years in which
this temper has sweetened and softened American fiction
far too much, we do indeed need more iron in it. But, like-
wise, it is well to remember that hatred rarely speaks the
last word.
A Notable Prison Report
IN the midst of the political reaction in which we live it
is both encouraging and necessary to note the steady
progress toward betterment of our social conditions along
various lines, else would the faint-hearted lose all faith. In
the matter of prison reform, for instance, the advance being
made all over the country deserves far more attention than
it has received. We are beginning to learn that prisoners
are an integral part of civilization, that they cannot be
brushed aside and forgotten. The duty of society so far
from having ended has only begun when the doors of the
prison close upon the convicted man. Nowhere else in the
world are so many kinds of men gathered together under
one roof as in a prison. They are alike only in the fact
•that they have been adjudged guilty under the law. But
since the theories of Lombroso have lost their sanctity, we
are compelled to admit that law-breaking, or criminal be-
havior, is not due to a peculiar quality carrying with it
definite physical stigmata. All sorts of men are criminals
for all sorts of reasons. The problem is well brought out in
the remarkable report just issued by the New York State
Prison Survey Committee headed by Mr. Adolph Lewisohn.
Says the report:
Before the representatives of the committee there were 5,300
Nov. 17, 1920]
The Nation
551
men ranging in ages from fifteen to seventy-eight, ranging in
education from no schooling to post-graduate work, ranging in
intelligence from zero to a maximum comparable to that in the
outside world, ranging in desire to make good from nothing to
100 per cent, ranging in inside vocational assignments from
floor cleaner to the task of imparting knowledge in schoolrooms.
In response to the growing public demand for better con-
ditions in the prisons of his State, Governor Smith, of New
York, appointed the Lewisohn committee to investigate and
report. Their recommendations are of the widest interest.
First of all they urge an effective, scientific system of ex-
amination and classification so that prisoners may be treated
as their mental capacity and their social background de-
mand. This work requires a laboratory and the appoint-
ment of trained psychiatrists and vocational experts, and
already the task of altering Sing Sing Prison over into a
clearing house and reception station is under way — in itself
a wonderful step forward. When one considers the revolting
immoralities and brutalities which have gone on in this in-
stitution for decades past, and recalls that the whole spirit of
that institution has been to confirm old offenders in their
bad ways and to make professional prisoners of first of-
fenders, the sounding of the old prison's knell marks a revo-
lution indeed.
Next in importance to the classification of convicts is
industrial training, a matter usually neglected or carried
on in antiquated workshops for more or less useless labor,
the men working listlessly through processes that make cer-
tain their unfitness for the industrial system in the world
beyond the prison walls. They work as inefficiently as
slaves work, without interest or incentive; their technical
wage is only an insult to their ambition. The committee
recommends a carefully regulated, honest wage system based
on the actual output of the shops. Not only will this pro-
vide an incentive to labor and help produce that habit of
steady industry which so many inmates need, but it will
solve the acute problem of supporting the prisoners' fami-
lies on the outside. That the incarceration of the bread-
winner of a family should throw upon his wife the double
task of housework and financial support or force her to
apply for charity seems grossly absurd. The committee had
the assistance of industrial experts and union leaders in
working out a solution of the problem which would not
injure the interests of free labor. Coupled with proper
equipment and adequate pay, the committee advocates vo-
cational guidance and training to fit the prisoner for a
trade or profession in line with his own interests and
abilities.
The report, of course, urges necessary improvements in
the physical conditions of prisons, in recreation, in diet, in
religious influences; it discusses the use of farm lands for
prison labor. It speaks a cautious word of commendation of
the famous Mutual Welfare League that is worth quoting :
By this time it must be evident that the committee looks with
favor upon any prison organization which introduces a new
set of impulses which emphasize the social aspects of life, and
develop initiative and cooperation of individuals and of groups.
Governor Smith deserves a large share of the credit for
the excellent work of the committee and the reforms already
under way. More than any other Governor he has shown
sympathetic understanding of prison problems. Much of
the work undertaken during his administration will neces-
sarily be left undone when his term expires. The citizens of
the State must see to it that his successor puts into effect
the excellent suggestions of the Lewisohn committee.
The Haul of Fame
FAME has drawn up her quinquennial net on University
Heights and out of 177 men tried for, six unusually
valuable ones have been caught: Samuel Langhorne Clemens,
James Buchanan Eads, Patrick Henry, William Thomas
Green Morton, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Roger Wil-
liams. Of twenty-seven women but one is selected for this
particular eminence : Alice Freeman Palmer. Hardly ever be-
fore has a choice been made by the electorate of the Hall of
Fame to which fewer exceptions could be taken. Mrs. Pal-
mer deserves fame, for she had greatness. If Morton, the
discoverer of ether, should not be famous, few benefactors
of mankind have any right to be. Eads and Saint-Gaudens
in their different ways were both geniuses. It is pleasant
to find Mark Twain in this new list — the first of our
humorists to attract such recognition.
But what are Roger Williams and Patrick Henry doing
in this gallery? Did not Williams lift up his voice against
the anointed heads of Massachusetts ; and did he not contend
with them on points of doctrine and government until they
could no longer endure him; and did they not threaten to
send him back to England till he slipped out and set up his
own plantation in Rhode Island, where — so bitter was his
radicalism — he even refused to persecute the Quakers and
engaged in only literary controversies with them? And
Patrick Henry, of all Americans! He incited to revolution
if ever a man did. And not only was he a rebel against
the distant king in England, but he was remarkably shaky
as regards the gentry and the old regime in Virginia, snub-
bing the rich planters and championing the rights of the
Dissenters. Both Williams and Henry, as it turned out,
were on the winning side in their controversies, and per-
haps some of the harshest feeling about them has died
down. But we cannot believe that any red-blooded Ameri-
can will make allowances for that. These men stood up
against the laws of their country; they desired to change
them ; they were willing to make a row about it.
Or is there something in the effect of time that makes
radicalism harmless as time passes? Roger Williams was a
radical in the seventeenth century, Patrick Henry in the
eighteenth. But in the twentieth century it is different.
For that matter the nineteeth is still not quite safe. There
are the names of Walt Whitman and John Brown and Susan
B. Anthony, among others, on the list of candidates for the
Hall of Fame who got some votes but not enough for elec-
tion. If Whitman is not a great seer and poet, no Ameri-
can is; but his metrical innovations have never been for-
given him. John Brown marched with all the armies in
Europe during the late war, but he fought in a controverted
cause, and agreement as to him is still impossible. The
recent victory of woman suffrage might reasonably have
assigned Susan B. Anthony to the winners, and so to the
deservers of fame; but there are still anti-suffragists
abroad. Long after great men and women have survived
their own antagonists the spiritual and intellectual sons and
daughters of their antagonists live on and in various
fashions temper the fame which naturally seeks the great.
Not even three hundred years, however, seem to have been
enough to win a place in the Hall of Fame for that early
American here known as Pocahontas Rolfe — now in the
Elysian Fields doubtless consoled for her exclusion by the
kindly words of Eve Adam and Cleopatra Caesar.
£^ft>
~
•
552
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2889
The Central European Conspiracy
By EUGENE S. BAGGER
THE publication by the Social Democratic press of
Vienna and Prague of a series of secret documents
taken from the archives of the Hungarian Legation in
Vienna furnishes first-hand evidence as to the reality of the
danger that threatens the peace of Europe — poor unstable
edifice at best — at the hands of the reckless militarists now
controlling the government of Hungary. On September 22
the first batch of these state papers appeared simultaneously
in Vilagossag, the weekly organ of the Magyar (non-Bol-
shevik) Independent Socialist refugees in Vienna, the
Arbeiter-Zeitung of the same city, and the Pravo Lidu, the
right-wing Social Democratic daily of Prague. Further
disclosures followed, and were discussed on the floor of the
Austrian National Assembly ; and although they encountered
a very broadside of denials on the part of the Magyar gov-
ernment, their authenticity is established beyond doubt by
intrinsic and circumstantial evidence, and has been officially
recognized by the Austrian and Czecho-Slovak governments.
Essentially these documents — mostly confidential reports
sent by Colonel Arpad Reich, head of the press bureau of
the Magyar legation, to Dr. Tibor Eckhardt, who occupies
the corresponding post in the Budapest Foreign Office — con-
tain little that was not known and suspected before. That
the government of the Hungarian White Terror is fostering
an irredentist movement and preparing an armed uprising
in Slovakia; that its agents are organizing and financing
anti-Semitic and royalist propaganda in German- Austria;
royalist and disruptionist propaganda in Bohemia, was only
too well known. Nevertheless the documents are astound-
ing, not only because their official character puts the stamp
of finality upon the case, but also because of the over-
whelming bulk of detail and of the unmatched picture they
present of the mentality of the present rulers of Hungary
and the plans of their French abettors.
It is in their bearing upon the intrigues jointly engineered
by French militarists and Horthy's government that the
Vienna revelations possess the greatest importance.
Throughout the documents runs the red thread of what is
at Budapest euphemistically called the "French orientation"
— in other words, the working agreement between the Mag-
yar government and certain very influential circles at Paris
by which the former actually submits to French military
and economic vassalage in exchange for a promise to rectify
the Hungarian frontiers as set down by the Treaty of
Trianon, and a connivance at monarchist-militarist resto-
ration.
The French-Magyar agreements, Az Ember says, grew
out of the treaty negotiating the lease of the Hungarian
state railways — which today are Hungary's soundest finan-
cial asset — to a French syndicate for fifty years. Already
this railroad convention contains a political clause of an
amazing nature. According to Sections VIII and IX, the
Hungarian government is bound to consult the diplomatic
representative of the French government concerning every
measure, those of domestic policy expressly included, which
has a bearing on any clause of the treaty ; and the sugges-
tions of the French diplomatic representative must be an-
swered within three days. If this does not mean the estab-
lishment of a French protectorate over Hungary in the good
old straight Central African sense, it means nothing at all.
The gist of the simultaneously concluded political treaty
is that France agrees to the relegation of the Treaty of
Trianon to the well-known heap of scraps of paper. That
treaty abolishes universal military service in Hungary and
reduces the Magyar army to a strength of 35,000. The
French now authorize Hungary to retain universal military
service. The size of the army is not stated, but Hungary
can apparently suit herself about that, subject only to
French approval. France also agrees to secure for Hungary
a rectification of the frontiers set down by the Treaty of
Trianon — at the expense, it should be added, of Czecho-
slovakia and Rumania, her formal allies. Finally, the third
agreement is a military convention by which Hungary
offers to furnish an army of 150,000 against Soviet Russia
and to put it under French command.
Nothing is more natural than that the French govern-
ment should have issued a denial of these treaties, admit-
ting only the existence of a certain arrangement concerning
the lease of the Hungarian railroads. On the other hand,
Count Teleki, the Magyar premier, in an open session of
the Hungarian National Assembly, boasted of the "alliance"
with France as the greatest achievement of his regime ; and
several of the Paris newspapers, notably the Matin, simi-
larly spoke of the alliance as an accomplished fact. Ac-
cording to Becsi Magyar Ujsag, the organ of the bourgeois
refugees in Vienna, the inconspicuous retirement from the
Quai d'Orsay of M. Paleologue, former French ambassador,
to Petrograd and originator of the French-Magyar rap-
prochement, was due to the realization of this particular
blunder. The same newspaper is informed that the British
government formally protested in Paris against the agree-
ment concerning the lease of Magyar state railways on the
ground that all assets of the Hungarian government are tied
down as security for reparations and cannot be disposed of
without consent of the Reparation Commission.
In a sense the rapprochement of Millerand's France and
the Hungary of Horthy is the consequence and acknowl-
edgment of the debacle of the European "order" created
by the Treaty of Versailles. On the one hand, Czecho-
slovakia and Rumania refuse to be the dupes and tools (to
use the blunt expression of M. Take Jonescu, the Rumanian
Foreign Minister) of France against Soviet Russia, and
have launched, in conjunction with Jugoslavia, a foreign
policy of their own, culminating in the formation of the
Little Entente. On the other hand, France fears the union
of Austria with Germany even more than she hates Soviet
Russia, and is prepared to prevent that outcome by letting
loose the detachments of Horthy's terrorist army upon
Vienna. Collusion with the Hungarian government is the
logical concomitant of a French policy which, in Bavaria,
favors and finances the Wittelsbach restoration regardless
of the fact that the Bavarian royalists, while professing
separatist sentiments in the presence of their French
backers, are at the same time in close contact with the
Ludendorff group of Pan-German restorationists. That this
French policy, if allowed to run its whole length, will land
Europe in another war and France in complete disaster has
been pointed out and requires no repetition here.
Nov. 17, 1920]
The Nation
553
Italy: How the Government Met the Revolution
By HIRAM K. MODERWELL
IN the official version of foreign newspapers, the recent
seizure of Italian factories by the workmen, resulting
in a nation-wide compact for workers' supervision in in-
dustry, was made possible only by the "incredibly supine
attitude of the Italian Government." "Why," asked the
press, especially the French press, "did Giolitti not send
the troops to eject the lawless workers? What can you
expect when a government is too spineless to enforce its own
laws?"
This explanation of the Italian workers' success is suffi-
cient to those who have forgotten (if they ever knew) that
Europe has been shaken by a great war; that revolution is
in reality, and not merely in headlines, stalking abroad;
and that the Peace of Versailles has condemned everybody
to grab what he can get. These truths are obscured from
the American editor, who never really felt the war and who
understands the labor question only in a Palmeresque sense.
They are obscured from the French, who are still shaken
with the reaction from the terror of the German invasion.
The British, who were at the time dealing respectfully with
their Miners' Union, were more sympathetic. But few per-
sons outside of Italy or the defeated lands could quite ap-
preciate how hollow was the fashionable chatter about
"firmness" and "ruthless suppression."
Premier Giolitti's official explanation of the Italian Gov-
ernment's attitude, presented to the Senate after the busi-
ness was settled, was full of good sense. He pointed out
that a social adjustment was taking place the world over,
that government must take account of new facts and not
act merely on the ancient slogans; that if the workers had
temporarily seized private property, they had perhaps taken
the hint from the army of profiteers (including some of the
owners of these same factories) who had seized the public
wealth during the war. He asserted that to have sent the
soldiers to seize and hold all the Italian factories before the
workers' occupation would have been to "lock up" the
greater part of the army in places where it could be be-
sieged and where it would be useless for the maintaining of
public order; that on the other hand, to have dislodged the
workers after the seizure would have been to cause great
bloodshed and to punish with death, in many hundreds or
thousands of cases, the mere misdemeanor of technical theft.
His words were informed with an understanding that the
world is in change, and that it is not safe to keep the law
a lifeless imitation of a bygone age.
But premiers in their public apologies do not admit more
than they must. And Giolitti gave only the least startling
reasons for his action. Indeed, his statement, although re-
ceived by the Senate as "satisfactory," is scarcely convinc-
ing. The public does not soberly believe that premiers,
especially premiers like Giolitti who advertise themselves
as "strong," hesitate to "punish" with death an armed de-
fiance of the authority of the state. Few premier hearts
bleed thus ! If Giolitti withheld the order to seize the fac-
tories by force, it was for more substantial reasons.
Sober middle-class Italian men of affairs say that he
withheld the order because he believed the army was in-
fected with revolution and would not have obeyed. I can-
not believe that this is true. Sober middle-class Italian
men of affairs are anything but sober when the working
class makes unaccustomed gestures. They are quite the
most hysterical individuals in Italy. They see red revolu-
tion where an experienced revolutionist sees nothing but a
demonstration. They have seen half a dozen revolutions
approaching in Italy since the Armistice, where the pro-
fessional revolutionists have seen only one or two. The
bugbear of the "unreliability of the army," therefore, made
headway among the sober middle-class, though it was never
taken too optimistically by the Socialists. The Italian army,
that is to say, the mercenary Guardia Regia or national
police, is, like other armies, composed of workers and peas-
ants who believe most of what is told them, and do not want
to be shot for insubordination. Generally speaking it is
willing to obey orders, but generally speaking it is not
willing to shoot its friends in its own paese or village. The
military authorities are aware of this fact and commonly
assign Sicilian regiments to Milan and thereabouts. Si-
cilian peasants are not mortally averse to shooting Milanese
industrial workmen. The issue in Italy between revolution
and reaction is not yet sufficiently universal and vulgarized
to have penetrated every illiterate Sicilian head. There-
fore, I am inclined to believe that the army would, on Gio-
litti's order, have attacked occupied factories at Milan and
quickly captured them. If the armed resistance had been
vigorous and general, it is of course possible that the army
would have reconsidered before moving to the second at-
tack. But I am convinced that not even the most sanguine
revolutionists anticipated a general revolt and mutiny in
the army. At the most there would have come a period
of uncertainty and anarchy. From such a period anything
might develop. The most daring revolutionists therefore
hoped that Giolitti would show "firmness." As usual, the
utmost hopes of the most daring revolutionists were exactly
the hopes of the French journalists. But the issue would
at most have been doubtful.
The Italian Government was in reality thinking, not in
military but in economic terms. It feared — and its fears
were mathematically accurate — that the use of force would
provoke a retaliation in kind. If the factories were at-
tacked, they would be sabotaged. To have vindicated the
sanctity of private ownership of social capital would have
been to damage that social capital to the extent of in-
numerable millions of lire. It is useless to say that this
social capital was legally private property, and as such
deserving the protection of the state. It was also social
capital, and as such of incalculable value not only to the
capitalist owners but to the nation. It is likewise useless
to say that the workers occupying the factories were com-
mon lawbreakers. If Italian industry were ruined, Italian
export trade paralyzed, Italian exchange shot down to a
level with that of defeated Germany, Italian economy bank-
rupt, and foreign grain practically unpurchasable with
Italian lire, the Italian people would have been little con-
soled to be told that this had been done to vindicate the
dogma that Italian industry was not social capital but pri-
vate property.
For the use of the troops would not have provoked merely
the destruction of machinery within the occupied metal
554
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2889
factories. It would have provoked the occupying of all the
other factories in Italy. The problem of seizing a few fac-
tories would overnight have become the problem of seizing
all the factories. The movement, led by the Anarchists
and extreme left Socialists, to extend occupation to all
Italy, was only restrained by the reasonable attitude of the
Government, which promised immediate returns without
bloodshed. As it was, with all the persuasion the Gov-
ernment could exert, the proposal of the Socialists to ex-
tend the seizure to all Italy was defeated in the Trade
Union Congress by only three to two. Grant that the army
could have done its job. Grant that it could have captured
one factory after another, and could have burst the barri-
cades erected behind it during each operation, yet what
would have been the economic outlook for Italy when each
factory so captured would have meant a factory destroyed?
The result would have been disastrous.
This very material analysis does not take account of the
incommensurable values of proletarian discontent following
such a bloody repression. The "labor morale" of Italy,
already low, because of the popular belief that every em-
ployer is a profiteer, would after the death of several thou-
sand workmen have turned into a permanent strike on the
job. With such a paralysis of Italian production, Italian
credit would have suffered a debacle. The Italian foreign
trade for the year 1919 was, in round numbers, sixteen
milliard lire of imports and five milliards of exports. For
1920, on the basis of the figures for the first three months,
the imports would be thirteen milliard and the exports six
milliard, reducing the deficit from eleven milliard to seven.
This moderate improvement was foreseen without assum-
ing any extraordinary labor trouble. But the recent agi-
tation, it is estimated, took a round milliard off the ex-
ports. What would be the result if the whole Italian work-
ing class were embittered by the slaughter of some thou-
sands of their comrades ; by the sight of Italian finance and
commerce alone flourishing from the ever-rising cost of
living; by the knowledge that the blood and iron of the
state had been sent against them in the service of the
profiteers?
At the very least, production would have slumped as it
has not slumped since the attempt at reconstruction began.
The expected improvement of four milliards in the trade
balance of this year over last, already reduced to three,
would have been wiped out. The foreign value of the lire,
which sank during the dispute from sixteen to the dollar
to twenty-six, would have rushed to join the hopeless mark
and crown. Foreign capital, which the country desperately
needs, would have shunned Italy like a pest. The problem
of buying annually thirty-two million quintals of foreign
grain would have become well nigh hopeless. The collapse
of public economy would have precipitated the very social
anarchy to avoid which the flippant French journalists in-
voked the troops.
We need not, therefore, and should not, put Giolitti's
"weakness" down to fear of the military result of barricade
fighting. What menaced Italy was not full-fledged revolu-
tion, but economic disintegration. Giolitti averted this for
the time. He did more. One of the most expert politicians
in Europe, he knew how in one stroke to avoid defeat and
bid for victory. What he did was not only to avert the
disintegration of Italian economy. It was to threaten the
disintegration of Italian revolution. The Socialists were
nothing less than terrified by the result.
New Irish Commission Members
PREPARATIONS for the inquiry into conditions in Ire-
land, to be conducted by the American Commission on
Ireland, are being pressed rapidly. A special committee
consisting of United States Senator David I. Walsh, former
Governor Joseph W. Folk, and Dr. Frederic C. Howe has
been appointed to arrange for the inquiry, and to draw up
the order of procedure and the schedule of witnesses.
The members of the Commission have expressed much
concern over the new outbreaks of violence in Ireland dur-
ing the past week, including the burning of several towns by
British Black and Tans, and several pitched battles be-
tween Irishmen and policemen. Advices from Ireland in-
dicate the increased gravity of the situation. In view of all
the circumstances the Commission has raised its member-
ship to seven, the better to cope with the tasks before it,
and may add further to its personnel.
The two new members are Raymond Robins, of Chicago,
and Alexander P. Moore, editor of the Pittsburg Leader.
Each of these men was associated prominently with the
late Theodore Roosevelt in the Progressive movement, and
each took an active part in the recent Harding campaign.
Colonel Robins has been a leader in numerous campaigns
for social, political, and religious betterment.
In addition to the delegation of bishops from the Irish
hierarchy, announced last week, the Commission has in-
vited the following witnesses from Ireland:
The Mayor of Belfast; the Mayor of Londonderry; the
Chairman of the Urban Council of Mallow; John Derham,
Town Commissioner of Balbriggan; Denis Morgan, Chair-
man of the Urban Council of Thurles; Mrs. Thomas Mac-
Curtain, widow of the former Lord Mayor of Cork who
was slain in March; Donald O'Gallachain, who has suc-
ceeded MacSwiney as Lord Mayor of Cork; Miss Irene E.
Swanzy, sister of police inspector Swanzy, who was mur-
dered at Lisburn. Members of the Commission believe that
these witnesses and others to be invited will aid materially
in presenting to the public a picture of the state of affairs in
Ireland.
The Commission received through Miss Jane Addams a
message from the Manchester, England, branch of the
Women's International League, which recently conducted a
first-hand investigation into conditions in certain parts of
Ireland, offering to send a delegation here immediately to
give testimony before the Commission. "We feel that the
matter is very urgent," wrote the English women. A cable
was sent to Manchester inviting the delegation to proceed
by the first available boat. Steps were also taken by the
Commission to get in touch with members of the British
Society of Friends, which has been conducting an inquiry
into Irish conditions.
The Commission has sent a letter to the British Am-
bassador asking him to use his good offices to facilitate the
securing of passports for witnesses from Ireland. So far
as is known, none of the Irish witnesses has yet been granted
a passport, though Sir Auckland Geddes assured the editors
of The Nation some time ago that the British Government
would not withhold passports from witnesses on the ground
that they wished to give testimony here. The Commission
can be counted on to press this matter vigorously, if there
is undue delay.
Nov. 17, 1920]
The Nation
555
Cooperation, the People's Business
By JAMES PETER WARBASSE
IN the turmoil and tumult of a world in the throes of eco-
nomic reorganization, one mighty force is playing a part
with system and quiet. The cooperative movement advances
steadily, bringing about as it grows, revolutionary changes
in the organization of society. It does not suffer the dis-
advantages of uncertainty; its policy is well formulated; it
is systematized to the point of standardization. It is today
the most substantially organized international movement in
the world. People who have cared to get the information
are aware that in the European countries about one-third
of the population is now embraced in cooperative societies,
which are carrying on almost every form of social and eco-
nomic activity from conducting their own stores and fac-
tories to running schools and theaters. It is interesting to
recall in this connection that the British Cooperative Whole-
sale Society has become the largest wholesale business in the
British Empire, and that the largest bakeries in the world
are the cooperative bakeries of Vienna and Glasgow. For
three-quarters of a century in Europe they have been stead-
ily forging ahead, building a great economic bulwark
against private greed, whereas in the same period here in
the United States similar cooperative societies have started,
made fatal mistakes and perished. Three big organizations,
the Sovereigns of Industry, the Knights of Labor and the
Right Relationship League, in the last century undertook
to start large cooperative enterprises in the United States.
The magnitude of their undertakings, however, did not
guarantee their success. They failed chiefly because of the
lack of understanding of the fundamental principles of co-
operation.
Cooperation is not an experiment. It is a method. Knowl-
edge of this method is the only sure road to success. The
fundamental principles are: one vote for each member;
invested capital to receive not more than a low rate of fixed
interest; and the savings, represented by the difference be-
tween cost and selling price, to be used for the common
social good or returned to members in proportion to their
patronage. A central organization, the Cooperative League
of America, 2 West 13th Street, New York City, was formed
in 1916 to supply the necessary standardized information
and the technique of administration for societies all over the
United States. In 1918 it called the first national conven-
tion of cooperative consumers ever held in this country. The
second national cooperative convention will be held at Cin-
cinnati in November of this year. So rapidly are societies
multiplying in this country that at least 300 a year are added
to those at present conducting stores and other enter-
prises. The great majority of consumers' societies are organ-
ized according to Rochdale principles, which were worked
out with infinite pains by that little band of weavers in
Rochdale, England, in 1844, and which have been fol-
lowed everywhere by successful societies. Some day these
principles may come to be recognized as the Magna Charta
of the new world of industry. Just in proportion to the
degree in which the letter and spirit of the Rochdale method
are lived up to are societies now prospering. Strict account-
ing and auditing, educational work, expansion into other
fields, and a vision of the aim and destiny of cooperation
are factors which are necessary for success. And then in
all countries today cooperation is closely allied with the
labor movement. The workers of the United States are
awakening to its importance at last, and turning to it to
solve their problems. A significant omen is the fact that
there are now 12,000 agricultural producers' societies in
this country.
Cooperative banks and credit unions have made compara-
tively slow progress in the United States. When we think
of the great cooperative banks of Germany, England,
and Denmark we realize our own weakness. In Massachu-
setts there are about sixty small banking societies and one
large one. A dozen other States are developing these socie-
ties slowly. The principle of the cooperative bank is funda-
mental : the profits go to the patrons of the bank, the lenders
and the borrowers; stockholding is limited; the stock-
holders merely receive a fixed interest on their capital ; each
member has but one vote.
Except in the farming regions, cooperation is generally
strongest where there is the largest proportion of foreign-
born people — in the Northern and Eastern States — and
weakest, naturally, in the Southern States. In some districts
there are groups of distributive societies. The chief centers
of activity are in the lower part of California, in Minne-
sota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin, Washington,
Illinois, and western Pennsylvania. Scattered through
New England, eastern Pennsylvania, and the grain States
also are many societies which have gone into a great variety
of enterprises besides store-keeping. Among them are
bakeries, laundries, printing plants, restaurants, recreational
organizations, banks, milk distribution, slaughter houses,
motion picture shows, canneries, wholesales, telephone com-
panies, housing societies, insurance societies, and schools.
There are 750 cooperative societies in Kansas conducting
retail stores. Yet one obstacle to cooperative growth in
the United States is the large amount of spurious coopera-
tion. In every part of the country promoters are projecting
societies which vary from the wildest and most fanciful
schemes of the well-meaning to the rankest sort of humbug.
These enterprises are taking millions of dollars from the
working people and leaving them forever hostile in their
ignorance to true cooperation.
The common expression of cooperation in this country is
the grocery store. That serves usually as the entering
wedge, but some begin with a bakery, as is the practice in
Belgium. Such an example is the Purity Cooperative Asso-
ciation in Paterson, New Jersey. This latter was organized
in 1906. Private bakers have done everything possible to
destroy it — even to giving away bread. But it grows every
year. Now it has over 1,000 members. During the war
when all of the other bakeries were selling bread at ten
cents a pound the Purity sold it with profit at six and a half
cents. Whereupon the private bakeries succeeded in having
the Food Administration compel the Purity to raise its price
to ten cents. This coercion held for three days ; during that
time an extra profit of $600 was made. This money was
paid back to the consumers, and thus the majesty of the law
was defeated. This society is responsible for keeping down
the price of bread for a million people in northern New Jer-
sey, most of whom, however, have never heard of it. The-
556
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2889
Purity society does a bakery business of $250,000 a year
with a profit to the people of $18,000. It has just erected
an additional building costing $70,000 and has added a
grocery store and meat market to its enterprises. The
profits of this society are divided as follows after paying
five per cent interest on share capital: 25 per cent to re-
serve fund, 30 per cent to members in proportion to pur-
chases, 10 per cent to Labor Lyceum, 10 per cent to certain
educational and charitable institutions, 10 per cent to unem-
ployment fund, 5 per cent to employees' insurance, 5 per
cent to education, and 5 per cent to sinking fund. All of this
is money which otherwise would go into the pockets of pri-
vate bakers. A Finnish society in Brooklyn, New York, has
just completed a bakery costing $120,000. There are 30 so-
cieties with bakeries in the United States. Some are exclu-
sively bread-producing societies; some conduct other enter-
prises.
The laundry has served as the start in some places. Little
Rock, Arkansas, has no other cooperative society, but since
this laundry was started in the spring of 1919 one of the
largest private laundries has gone out of business. At Chat-
field, Minnesota, there is a laundry in connection with a
cooperative creamery. In answer to the question, "How can
we keep the boys and girls on the farm?" the wife of one of
the members wrote, "Start a cooperative laundry and make
the old-time washday a holiday." This laundry pays ten
per cent savings-returns on patronage.
Milk distribution is successfully carried on by a number
of societies. The Finnish Cooperative Society at Fitchburg,
Massachusetts, found that the farmers were killing their
cattle because they could not make a living producing milk
at 7% cents a quart for the private distributing companies.
The society made contracts with the farmers to pay them
S1/^ cents. It now collects the milk with its own trucks,
takes it to its central pasteurizing station, and distributes
it to the 400 members' families at 14 cents, as against 18
cents charged by the private dealers. It is delivered within
six hours of the time it is taken from the farms. Two
deliveries daily are made in the summer. These consumers
see to it that no undesirable milk is taken.
Of the nationalities which have made the best progress
in this country, the Finns are peculiar and supreme. Theirs
are the most substantial societies. The United Cooperative
Society has twenty-eight branches in eastern Massachusetts
at Fitchburg, Maynard, Worcester, and Norwood. At these
places the Finns have cooperative grocery stores, clothing
stores, restaurants, boarding houses, bakeries, community
centers, printing plants, and milk routes.
Of the existing distributive societies in the United States
few are more than thirty years old. The society at Olathe,
Kansas, was organized in 1876. Its store does a business
of $200,000 a year and makes a net surplus-saving of $15,000
a year for its members. A society at Ishpeming, Michigan,
dates back to 1890; it has over 1,000 members, and does a
business of $300,000 a year. The Tamarack Cooperative
Association, of Calumet, Mich., was started in 1890; it
has 1,700 members; every year it has paid savings-returns
on purchases varying from 10 to 13 per cent ; in the last 20
years it has paid back to its members in cash $1,595,185.
The next step in the expansion of cooperation after the
consumers' store is the federation of stores into wholesales.
Several groups of societies have already organized local
wholesales. The Farmers' Educational and Cooperative
Union has a wholesale house at Omaha, Nebraska, which
sells groceries, clothing, hardware and machinery. It has
a mail order department, the illustrated catalogue of which
carries most everything from mittens to mowing machines.
Its annual business runs up into the millions. There are
also wholesale societies with warehouses at San Francisco;
Superior, Wisconsin ; and East St. Louis, Illinois. The latter
is conducted by the Central States Wholesale Cooperative
Society; it has about 90 stores connected with it, mostly
organized among the mine workers ; it has been in existence
only two years, and does a business of $300,000 a month ; it
owns its own building, and last year added a reserve of
$20,000 to its $300,000 capital; its business is not in the
hands of that paragon of astuteness, the "American business
man," but is conducted by men who have come up out of the
coal mines of Illinois.
Besides these a number of groups carry on collective
buying without a warehouse. The New England Coopera-
tive Wholesale, with headquarters in Boston, serves
thirty societies with a membership of 4,500 heads of fam-
ilies. The wholesale supplies these societies with over $2,-
000,000 worth of goods yearly. This wholesaling is carried
on at an overhead expense of one-half of one per cent.
As the cooperative societies in the United States become
federated in the Cooperative League they thus become con-
nected with the world movement through membership in
the International Cooperative Alliance, which holds an inter-
national congress every two years, and represents twenty-
four countries with a total membership of 50,000,000 heads
of families. Already international trade is carried on
among these societies.
Of the 3,000 true cooperative distributive societies in the
United States, those which are most successful are managed
by working people. This is not a movement in which phi-
lanthropy plays a role. The members are developing self-
reliance and a vision of the possibilities of their enterprise.
The cooperative movement is teaching people to administer
their own affairs. When the working man buys at the pri-
vate store the private merchant gets the experience in the
administration of a distributing industry. But when the
working man and his neighbors start a store of their own
to do their distributing themselves, they get the experience.
And when they carry on their own banking and insurance
business and organize their own wholesale houses, and build
their own factories, and provide their own lands and dwel-
lings, theaters and schools, telephones and steamship lines,
they are training themselves in their own school for the
great change; they are developing the system of business
which the world must look to for its safety. European co-
operators are doing all of these things. American coopera-
tors are just beginning.
The weakness of the movement in the United States is
that it is growing faster than it can educate men and women
to administer it. Not propaganda but practical training in
the fundamentals of cooperation is the pressing need. And
the steps are now being taken to meet it. The leaders in the
movement here understand the needs; the members are
learning. Labor is grasping the idea that it can peacefully
and without social shock supplant the present economic sys-
tem of private profit. It realizes that to do so it must raise
up from its own ranks the people who can organize and
administer its enterprises. The cooperative movement pro-
vides the training and the organization for builders of the
new society and offers them invaluable experience. It is
wholly constructive.
Nov. 17, 1920]
The Nation
557
The Confession of John R. Rathom
IN the matter of a complaint lodged by Franklin D. Roose-
velt against John R. Rathom, editor of the Providence
Journal, Mr. Caffey, the United States District Attorney
for the Southern District of New York, on October 28,
stated that in his opinion no one knowing Mr. Rathom's
record would believe his assertions. In this connection,
Mr. Caffey made public the following abject confession
which Mr. Rathom, on February 12, 1916, signed and de-
livered to the Attorney General of the United States, upon
the advice and in the presence of his counsel.
In view of the widespread credence given to Mr. Rathom's
so-called revelations during the war, the importance of his
position as editor of one of the newspapers most widely
quoted while the strife was on, and on account of his pres-
ent position as a member of the Executive Committee of the
Associated Press, this confession has unique value.
Only a small portion of the American press having given
space to Mr. Rathom's account of the manner in which he
humbugged the American public, The Nation believes it a
duty to print the confession in full.
"My attention has been called to the embarrassment which
your Department has been occasioned by the popular impression
which prevails that I or the Providence Journal should be cred-
ited with -the work which has been accomplished since the out-
break of the European War in the suppression of activities of
German agents in this country, which impression has arisen not
from the publication of matter in the Providence Journal, but
from speeches which I have made on a few public occasions, and
from statements which I may have made of similar character
to private individuals, although I do not recall any individual to
whom I made statements of a character similar to those objected
to in my speeches.
"I feel that the general public opinion, which has rather un-
fortunately credited us with the actual bringing to justice of
German spies and malefactors, has been misdirected to the ex-
tent that our only possible claim to valuable constructive work
in the past Zl/2 years ought in fairness to be restricted to the
educational value of our continued efforts, and to the newspaper
enterprise which produced a great number of stories printed
in our newspaper.
"The belief that the Providence Journal has specifically
brought to justice any of these individuals creates an unjust
impression, and does take away from the Department of Justice
the full credit to which it is entitled for this work. We sincerely
regret that this situation has arisen, and frankly declare that
while we have presented a great deal of material of every kind
to the Department of Justice, we have never been able to state
that in any specific case we were adding materially to the De-
partment's own knowledge of the situation, and we have aimed
always to give the Department immediately the benefit of any
information which has come to us which we thought would be
of any value to it.
"The Providence Journal's sources of information have given
us valuable knowledge of a great many matters, and have in
most instances been of such a confidential character that we
have felt compelled to cover them up by intentionally suggesting
sources which did not actually exist. One specific illustration
of this is the statement that the Providence Journal's own rep-
resentatives were placed in the German and Austrian Embassies
and in several of the foreign Consular offices throughout the
country. It is not true that the Providence Journal's own rep-
resentatives ever occupied positions of this kind. It is, how-
ever, true that in many cases we were enabled, through mem-
bers of the Bohemian National Alliance and the Croatian and
Serbian National Societies, to secure information of an im-
portant character from these Embassies and Consulates. My
first connection with these Slavic elements came fifteen years
ago, during my period of work on the Chicago Herald, and by
reason of helpful publicity for them then, the Slavic societies
have continued from that time to show their gratitude. Our
direct connection with these Slavic organizations, however, as
far as the anti-German work was concerned, came to us origi-
nally from British sources, through which we were first intro-
duced to one or two of the leaders in this important work; and
the major part of the documentary evidence which came into
our possession came either through the British, Canadian, or
American Government Intelligence sources. I, in turn, fur-
nished copies of most of the information which came from these
sources to your Department.
"In regard to the wireless revelations, while it is true that
the Providence Journal was enabled to secure direct copies of
all messages sent to and from Tuckerton and Sayville from the
beginning of the European War, its own wireless station was
not utilized in catching these messages. We were aided in this
work by receiving the entire output of two of the highest pow-
ered wireless stations on the North American Continent, both
of them in the control of one of the Allied Governments. We
have worked in company with officials of the Government in
attempting to decipher German codes in these wireless messages,
and have from time to time furnished representatives of the
Navy and Radio departments of the U. S. Government with
copies of wireless messages in our possession, in order to enable
them to check up and correct their own files.
"The statement made in my Boston address with regard to
the arrival of Dr. Heinrich Albert in this country, and which
had never been referred to in the columns of the Providence Jour-
nal, had as its basis the fact that one of our own representatives
had the conversation described with Dr. Albert, but did not
represent himself as coming from the German Embassy. Dr.
Albert believed that he was talking with a representative of the
Hearst newspapers.
"With regard to the typewritten statement which we declared
had been handed by Ambassador Dumba to Ambassador Bern-
storff, and which was supposed to be Ambassador Dumba's un-
derstanding of the attitude of the Administration as stated to
him by Mr. Bryan, we have never sought to suggest and never
have suggested that Mr. Bryan himself knew anything of the
contents of this document. Our only claim was that it was
presented by Ambassador Dumba to Ambassador Bernstorff
in the form of a statement as his presumption from Mr. Bryan's
interview with him. A copy of this document was furnished
us directly through the sources outlined above.
"The suggested interview between Captain Boy-Ed and Gen-
eral Huerta in a New York hotel was printed by us in good
faith, the entire material having been supplied to us from a
source which we considered trustworthy. We have since ascer-
tained, however, by conferences with officials of the Department
of Justice, that it is doubtful if such a meeting was ever held,
and that in any case no report of any such meeting was ever
forwarded to the President of the United States. It came to
our men second hand.
"With regard to the Werner Horn incident, the facts as stated
by me in the Boston speech are practically correct. Any sug-
gestion that the material was gathered by, or that Horn was
arrested at the instigation of, any Providence Journal repre-
sentative, is not true. The information came to us from Mr.
Bielaski.
"I did furnish to the Secretary of the Navy the map in
respect to wireless matters in the Philippines and certain in-
formation in respect thereto which I had secured from a former
superintendent of the Atlantic Communication Company, who
was present with me when I presented this material to Secretary
Daniels.
558
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2889
"In all my references to passport cases, I have never alluded
to the Providence Journal as having any connection with any
of the prosecutions arising from the discovery of passport
frauds, although we were able to secure a great many evidences
of passport frauds through the sources named above.
"I am positive that the stenographic report of my Boston
speech in so far as it attributes -to any of the activities of our
representatives the arrest or internment of Paul Koenig or
any of the Hamburg-American Line employees is inaccurate.
I never made or intended to make any such statement. As far
as we know, the Government officials are alone responsible for
the Hamburg-American Line arrests.
"The statement, by an unfair context wrongly attributed to
me in my Boston speech concerning Dr. Goricar's knowledge of
a plot to blow up the Bremerton Navy Yard, is improper in that
(1) it suggests a plot to blow up a Navy Yard, whereas Dr.
Goricar's instructions simply were to make investigations of the
location and activities of that Yard; and (2) because this par-
ticular incident related to a period prior to the beginning of the
European War. Every statement printed by the Providence
Journal with regard to Dr. Goricar and his relations with his
Government is true.
"With regard to the activities and conviction of Consul-
General Bopp in San Francisco, we did not have any represent-
ative of the Providence Journal in Bopp's office, nor did the
information furnished by us, as far as we know, figure in Bopp's
conviction, although we did succeed in securing and publishing
a great many interesting details with regard to this case, not
only through Canadian sources, but through our own staff; nor
was any of the material developed by our staff in this case
furnished to the Department, with the exception of a most
important affidavit, the existence of which, as we have been
notified only during the past few days, was known at the time
to the Department.
"With reference to the statement in my Boston address re-
garding the celebration of the Du Pont explosion in Wilmington
participated in by Captain Boy-Ed and Captain von Papen, the
apparent suggestion that the revelation of this incident had
anything to do with the elimination of these two Embassy
officials, is entirely erroneous and without foundation, and no
such suggestion has ever been made, with intent, through the
columns of the Providence Journal or by myself. This instance
was reported to us by G. B. Means, who was at that time in the
confidential employ of Captain Boy-Ed, and in most of whose
statements I had at no time placed any credence. The only
corroboration I have now of this statement is the fact that
Captain Boy-Ed and Means did make a long automobile trip
together to Brooklyn on the particular night referred to. Every
attempt of Mr. Means to get into communication with us, and
every specific and improper activity of his of which the Provi-
dence Journal or I ever had any knowledge, was made the
subject of immediate reference to the Department of Justice.
"The source of my information concerning the Ottawa fire
is also Mr. Means. It is my specific recollection that in my
conversation with Mr. Marshall, I told him that the Ottawa
Parliament Building would be the first object of this attack,
although I understand Mr. Marshall states that he does not
remember that any specific place was mentioned.
"The information which we received concerning the damage
to interned ships, and of the meeting attended by Ambassador
Bernstorff at the German Club, came through Bohemian and
Slavic sources.
"The matter of securing photographic copies in a hotel in
Washington from the Embassies is covered by my first statement
with respect to information obtained from the Embassies and
Consulates.
"My source of information with respect to the 'hearts' story
was a set of circumstantial reports made to me through the
Slavic channels above referred to, and the person referred to
who made the markings on the box was a young Croatian
woman, a stenographer in the employ of Consul-General von
Nuber, who was secretly aiding the British Government.
"In connection with my statement with regard to the great
majority of the acts of property destruction, etc., having been
performed by Austrians, I desire to say that this statement
was made by me in the firm belief that it was true, and that my
principal source of information leading me to generalize in this
way was the continual reports made to me by the Bohemian and
Slavic agents, who appeared firmly to believe that this was true.
We have not in our possession, and had not at that time in our
possession, more than a very few specific proofs of this state-
ment.
"The statement attributed to me in my Boston speech about
the Government being in possession of hundreds of cases of
offers made by Austrians to damage plants, is not correct. Our
knowledge of these matters is compassed by a number of com-
munications forwarded by Austrian employees of plants to
Austrian Consular officers, and which communications, inter-
cepted by above-named agents, were sent by us to the De-
partment of Justice. Only one or two of these specifically offer
to perform improper acts, the majority of them asking for
advice as to how they could be of use in performing improper
acts. The total number does not exceed six or eight.
"With regard to the statement in my article as originally pre-
pared for the January, 1918, World's Work, detailing the
method by which information was procured over the wireless,
that I was able to enlist the assistance of persons in whom the
German Embassy had confidence in getting representatives into
the Embassy and Consulates, this was intended to cover up the
situation as above outlined and for the necessary protection of
our sources of information, and is not literally true.
"With respect to the 'World Almanac' wireless message
printed in the February, 1918, World's Work, this message
was taken by us from a sheet dated from Newcastle, N. B., as
being sent out from Nauen with no station named, and was part
of a page of other material furnished through a foreign gov-
ernment.
"I do not mean to give the impression that, by my reference
to the Slavic and Bohemian people, I was directing a large
force of these men in their work, but simply that I secured
from a number of their leaders with whom I was in personal
touch information which they were able to obtain. During our
work in connection with German activities we have at no time
had any staff of people, outside of our own force, in our per-
manent employ. Beyond the activities of our own force, the
work has been covered for us in a temporary way at various
times for brief periods by from forty to fifty persons through-
out the entire country. This number of persons, whose total
special employment reached over one month of actual work,
would probably total thirty, and the employment of none of them
exceeded one year. The regular staff of the Providence Journal
has not increased by more than six or seven. It is, however, a
fact that many hundreds of Bohemian and Slavic people have
been constantly at our call for whatever services we might ask
them to render, and that they have repeatedly rendered such
services directly to us without the intervention or aid of any
other organization of government whatever, always with grati-
fying results and with no thought of reward except the knowl-
edge that the Providence Journal desires and constantly advo-
cates the autonomy of their countries at the close of the present
war.
"The statement with respect to spies attributed to me in the
New York Times, purporting to be a partial report of my speech
before the Society of the Genesee on January 18, 1918, is in the
main a fair transcript of my remarks. I spoke of two men, not
'three,' having been arrested at Detroit. In another part of the
same report, I said, with reference to other persons, 'one of
them, it seems, has a sick wife.' I did not say, as reported, 'but
some of them, it seems, have sick wives.'
"I do not know the names of any German spies taken at De-
troit beyond those which have become public property through
the newspapers and court proceedings in that city. The infor-
Nov. 17, 1920]
The Nation
559
mation with regard to the release of German spies after having
been caught, was brought to me voluntarily in my rooms at the
Hotel Statler in Detroit on the morning of Sunday, December
10, 1917, by an officer of the United States Army, who thought I
ought to know the conditions existing in Michigan with regard
to the running down of spies in that territory. The information,
with the exception of the names of the men referred to, was
specific.
"My informant said that two Germans had been picked up at
the Aviation Field at Camp Custer, after an attempt had been
made to partially saw through the wires of aeroplane supports,
and other wire ropes and guys had been treated with acids so
that any severe strain in fast flights would wreck the planes.
He added it had been discovered that these men had previously
boasted in the Post Tavern at Grand Rapids — 'a place filled with
German agents' — that they were part of the same gang that
had caused a disastrous accident to four Canadian aviators two
weeks prior to that time, at the Aerodrome Camp on Lake
Ontario, and that the work had been done in the same way.
He added that for some mysterious reason these men were
allowed to go free, although every army officer in camp was
convinced of their guilt. He said also that the great trouble
at Camp Custer was that the Battle Creek representative of
the Department of Justice was all alone; that under those cir-
cumstances, with thirty thousand men under arms, he could not
possibly cope with the situation; and that by reason of the lack
of power of the Army Intelligence Division, to which my in-
formant was attached, it was impossible to keep away from the
camp great numbers of suspects who continually visited there
under every kind of pretext.
"With respect to the statement concerning spies who were
freed after arrest, I may say that I did not intend to impute
any improper motives to any one connected with the Depart-
ment of Justice; and since I have received further information
with regard to such cases, I am satisfied that there is now no
such case of which I have knowledge where a person should be
returned to custody.
"There was in my New York address a general criticism of
the methods of the Department of Justice. I have always felt
that the Department was far too cautious in weighing legal
reasons against drastic action toward malefactors. It has been
explained to me by Department of Justice officials several times,
both before and since this particular speech, that the Depart-
ment has always had to consider serious complications that might
follow undue haste or action without complete legal warrant,
even when evidence in hand might be considered by the news-
papers, or by the general public, to amply warrant arrest. I
may have been wrong in my opinion, but my point of view on
this subject remains unchanged.
"There is no specific evidence which I could give, in testifying
before the grand jury, on which action for a violation of any
Federal law could be based; but I have information concerning
a number of matters which I feel, if properly followed up, might
lead to the development of violations of a Federal statute. I
shall place at the disposal of any representative of the Depart-
ment of Justice at any time all matters and information in my
possession having to do with possible violations of Federal
statutes or neglect of duty on the part of any Federal officer.
I also stand ready at any time to furnish you a full and com-
plete statement of facts with respect to any incident which
through oversight was not brought to my attention and is not
covered by this letter, if it be of the character herein outlined.
"I desire to point out to you that almost all of the matters
above referred to, and toward which criticism has been very
properly directed by the Department, relate to speeches made
by me since the United States has been at war with Germany,
and only in an infinitesimal degree refer to the great number
of revelations published by the Providence Journal during that
time.
"As it is the opinion of officials of the Department of Justice,
expressed to me within the past few days, that public addresses
made by myself at the present time with regard to the war
situation may serve to keep alive the mistaken impression that
the Providence Journal has sought to take to itself some share
of the credit that properly belongs to the Department of Justice,
and that such an impression might be created even though no
specific reference should be made to the Journal's work, I have
decided to accept no more such invitations for the time being.
As a matter of fact, several hundred of these invitations have
been declined during the past two months, following a policy
decided on by the president of the Providence Journal Company
and myself some time ago."
(Signed) John R. Rathom
On the Earth and Under It
By GENEVIEVE TAGGARD
For a Tired Girl
Put her away some place between two hills,
Away from the sea and the sun.
She has so much to think of, must she run
On your bright bosom always, Mother Earth?
Put her away, and let some other birth
Bring her back to the sound of the sea, and the sun.
After she ponders under silent hills,
Beneath your swarming bosom, Mother Earth,
She will have words for her beloved one.
Thirst
There is a bird that hangs head-down and cries
Between the mango leaves and passion vines.
Below, the spotted serpent twines
And blunts its head against the yellowing skies.
Along the warping ground a turtle scrapes,
And tortured lie glazed fishes in marsh grass.
Across the sky that burnishes like brass
A bat veers, stupid with the yeast of grapes.
Dead Man
Sap stirs near me, roots stretch and seize
Sundering stones.
And rivers waken, start in monotones
Their later tunes.
Oaks bend their knotted knees
In labor, and the full earth groans
Like women big with their increase;
While underground my body lies,
With open eyes,
In this stiff pose of peace.
Contributors to This Issue
Eugene S. Bagger is a New York journalist who has
made a special study of Central European affairs.
Hiram K. Moderwell is an American journalist traveling
in Europe.
George Soule is a writer on industrial questions for The
Nation.
560
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2889
The Building Scandal
By GEORGE SOULE
AT last we are getting at a few of the facts behind the
housing shortage. The inquiry now being conducted
in New York by Samuel Untermyer and the Lockwood Com-
mittee is beginning to show that there were some decidedly
human elements in the high price of building materials.
What seems about to be proved is that dealers in materials,
building contractors, dispensers of credit, and bosses of
labor were in a conspiracy to keep prices high and restrict
production.
The manifold aspects of the collusion have not all been
made plain as yet, and to recite them in detail would re-
quire many pages. While the people of the city were being
bled white, and overcrowded until they were so exasperated
that a reactionary legislature passed some of the most
radical rent laws that ever came into existence, plumbing
rings, stone rings, rings in almost all of the thirty-two
building trades, were keeping their bids up artificially by
s nding them through central clearing houses, whose task
was to see that no bid was too low and to distribute the
work according to prearranged schedules. Any contractor
who refused to work with these rings was disciplined on
the one hand by national groups who controlled materials,
and on the other by the withdrawal of his labor. On the
side, crooked labor bosses extracted huge bribes as a price
for their complicity. They were protected by the contrac-
tors in spite of these extortions, because they could expose
the evil doings of the contractors, and it was necessary for
the preservation of the rings to maintain dishonest auto-
crats in control of the unions. The few witnesses already
examined have testified that they alone were forced to give
in the neighborhood of $50,000 to Robert P. Brindell or his
agents — Brindell being president of the local central body
of building unions known as the Building Trades Council.
This sum is merely a trifle compared to the probable total
of his extortions from contractors. And from labor itself
he profiteered also. His income from one small union is
shown to have been $40,000 a year. Brindell is by no means
solely responsible for the situation, but he happens to have
been one of the first points of attack. He has had worthy pre-
decessors, such as "Sam" Parks of New York, and "Skinny"
Madden of Chicago. Since his type seems to be one which
often finds root in the building trades, and since its preva-
lence has a bearing on the whole union movement, we may
confine the present article to accounting for Brindell. In
this connection, it is well to understand the political back-
ground. Brindell belongs to the "conservative" wing of the
trade-union movement which opposes the Socialists and the
Farmer-Labor Party. One prominent member of his execu-
tive committee is Alderman Keneally, a strong Tammany
man. Just before the storm broke, the Building Trades
Council had endorsed the candidacy for judgeship of Dis-
trict Attorney Swann, a Democratic nominee. In the labor
movement, Brindell worked hand in hand with Peter J.
Brady, a union official, who was given a $6,000 job by the
Hylan administration, and with James Holland, a Democrat,
and president of the New York State Federation of Labor.
Governor Smith recently appointed Brindell to a hospital
commission, on the recommendation of Holland. The sup-
port of the Building Trades Council in the next election was
offered to Mayor Hylan if he would award the contract for
a new court house to a certain bidder. This series of facts
illustrates the close connection of Brindell with machine
politics.
Two years ago the Central Federated Union, which was
the delegate central body of all the New York local unions,
got out of the control of the Brindell-Brady-Holland com-
bination. It founded a Labor Party, passed resolutions
in favor of trade with Soviet Russia, and otherwise be-
came active in a way displeasing to the old machine. In
particular, its political wing proposed that housing be made
a public utility, and that the profit system in building be
superseded by a building guild. So uncomfortable was its
proximity that the Tammany union officials, making use
of the prestige of the American Federation of Labor Execu-
tive Council, and especially of Samuel Gompers himself, be-
gan a movement for its "reorganization." The plan was to
oust the "radicals" and to install the "conservatives" in
power, under the sacred aegis of "Americanism." Tam-
many wanted to kill the Labor Party, and the Brindell-
Holland-Brady group wanted to scotch its embarrassing
rival. For reasons too complex to relate here, the plan did
not succeed and the "radicals" are now in control of the
reorganized body.
The Central Federated Union, however, was not abso-
lutely necessary to Brindell, since it has no industrial power.
It is merely a consultative body which can pass resolutions ;
its funds are small and it does not call strikes or make
collective agreements. What Brindell had to control was
the central body of the building trades unions themselves.
This used to be known as the Board of Business Agents —
the business agents being the paid union officials who con-
duct negotiations with employers. Where, as in the build-
ing trades, there exist a number of craft unions who work
for the same employers and on the same jobs, there has to
be some central body to facilitate cooperation among them.
The employers, on their side, have associations to regularize
their practice in dealing with labor. The most natural
thing in the world is for collective bargaining to arise be-
tween the central body of the building unions and the cen-
tral association of employers. Such relations are, if honestly
conducted, highly beneficial to all concerned, because they
tend to standardize labor policy and to substitute consti-
tutional government in industry for the constant guerrilla
warfare of small craft strikes. The Untermyer inquiry,
however, has proved the baneful possibilities of this ar-
rangement under the wrong kind of control.
How did Brindell get his control? In the first place,
he established a reputation by winning large concessions
for the union of which he was an official — the Dock Builders.
He seemed to have plenty of money to spend, and created
a personal following. The Dock Builders affiliated with the
Carpenters, who are numerically the largest factor in the
building trades. Depending on this support, he constructed
his machine among the old-line officials. Then he strength-
ened the prestige of the old Board of Business Agents by
changing it into a Building Trades Council — a regularized
body with a charter from the Building Trades Department
of the American Federation of Labor. But he did not abide
by the provisions of that charter. He had himself elected
president of the Council for life. He decreed that mem-
bers of the rank and file of the constituent unions could not
be delegates to the Council, but that all delegates must
be business agents. He decreed that these business agents
Nov. 17, 1920]
The Nation
561
must be elected for a term of three years, and must be
paid seventy-five dollars weekly. He decreed that there
should be only one copy of the minutes of the Council, that
one being in the possession of the secretary — thus pre-
venting the rank and file from knowing what the Council
did. By these few strokes he removed the Council from
the supervision of the constituent locals, and established his
supremacy over the delegates, who had him to thank for a
secure tenure at a good salary. In all these matters he
violated the laws of the national Building Trades Depart-
ment, and of the various constituent unions. Here is the
first point at which organized labor itself is to blame. For
his violations brought forth no effective protests from any
of the higher officials — the "conservatives" — of the unions.
They were not sufficiently alive to the danger of departure
from democratic principles, or sufficiently vigorous in their
guardianship of good administration. As for the local rank
and file, the trading attitude of the old or conservative
unions made them value above democracy the concessions
they thought Brindell could gain for them.
One local group, however, did protest. The Painters,
many of whom are Socialists or Farmer-Laborites, refused
to elect their delegates for more than a year, or to fix their
salaries at Brindell's dictation. Rather than surrender,
they suffered expulsion from the Council. Fortunately for
themselves, the majority of painters work for independent
contractors who are not members of the employers' asso-
ciations. Those master painters who are subject to the
Building Trades Employers' Association, however, were
soon used to discipline the refractory "radicals." When the
painters struck last September, the few organized employers
would not deal with them, although virtually all the inde-
pendent contractors granted the new demands within a few
days. The obdurate employers advertised that they were
fighting the painters in behalf of "the public." They said
the painters were "ultra radical" and were "un-American,"
but that if the public would have a little patience, a new
painters' union would be formed to include the "American
element." Sure enough, in a few weeks Brindell chartered
a painters' union of his own. He had no right to do this
under the laws of the American Federation of Labor. His
new union had no members to speak of. But he was using
his alliance with the employers to bring the regular Paint-
ers' Union under autocratic control. "Americanism" was
simply euphemistic for autocracy and graft.
A similar experience of the House Wreckers' Union has
been fully explained in the hearings. In the case of the
dissenting building laborers, Brindell actually succeeded in
forming a large union in competition with the established
organization, and virtually wiped out its New York mem-
bership, on account of the apathy of its national officials.
The Bricklayers did not join the Council, but apparently
they were too strong for Brindell to defeat until he had
isolated them. The Ironworkers joined the Council on
account of their special situation. Unlike most of the other
trades, they had not been able to eliminate open-shop con-
ditions from New York. Contractors told them they would
be glad to recognize the union, but that the Steel Trust
threatened to withhold their materials if they did so. Brin-
dell promised the Ironworkers that if they would join, he
would not allow work to proceed on any building on which
they were not recognized. This promise induced them to
accept his conditions of affiliation. For awhile he kept his
promise on some buildings, but not on others. The reason
for the lapses appeared at the very beginning of the Unter-
myer hearings, when a builder testified that he had paid a
large bribe for the resumption of work on a building where
a strike had been occasioned by the employment of non-
union ironworkers. To Brindell, the adherence of the Iron-
workers apparently meant not a chance to help them, but a
chance to collect money. At any rate, after awhile all help
ceased and it was rumored among the ironworkers that the
Erectors' Association had "reached" Brindell. Now the
ironworkers, as well as many of the other crafts are ready
to join the painters and the bricklayers in revolt.
It is significant that the element in labor which aspires
to the elimination of private profit in industry is the same
element which struggles against autocracy and corruption
under the present system. The "radicals," the "un-Ameri-
cans" — these are the ones who have fought against Brindell
and his allies in politics, the ones who have proposed a build-
ing guild for the production of houses without profit. They
are also the ones who have striven to preserve democracy
and open diplomacy in the trade-union movement. They
are the ones who have done their best to break Brindell's
unholy alliance with the contractors' rings. It is clear that
the interests of the public and of the radicals are identical
in the building trades at least. It is clear that the chief
impetus toward honesty and cleanliness in the trade-union
movement has in this case come not from Gompers and the
"old crowd," but from the insurgents.
Clearly, the first necessity, quite apart from the punish-
ment of those found guilty under the law, is the reorganiza-
tion of the building unions' central body on democratic
lines, with the leadership of the union officials who under
considerable difficulties have proved themselves honest.
There is no reason why the Council itself should not be
democratically composed, and why the rank and file should
not know what the Council is doing. Delegates to it should
be working members of the rank and file, and should be
elected for short terms. Its minutes should be regularly
distributed to the constituent unions, as is the established
union practice elsewhere. A body of this sort might be
both as efficient and as honest as, for instance, the New
York Joint Board of the men's clothing workers, where
graft is unknown.
Without control of the building unions, the contractors'
rings could not easily operate. The keystone of their arch
would have been removed. Yet the foundation — private
profit and private control — would remain. Until this is de-
stroyed there is danger of a new keystone, and, in any case,
the building industry will not serve the public as it should.
The building unions should go on from an honest beginning
to demand, in common with the public, that the building
of homes for the people be made a public utility under public
control. State credit, at low rates, should be extended for
this purpose, and a non-political commission, composed of
representatives of tenants, unions, and professional men,
should be created to administer the credit. Power should
be granted to commandeer materials, and if necessary, to
manufacture them. The work should be done by a building
guild, composed of practical builders — unions, architects,
and engineers — operating on a non-profit basis. This plan
is the one actually recommended by the local Farmer-Labor
Party, long before Mr. Untermyer began to uncover the
unsavory details of the existing system. And the Farmer-
Labor Party is largely composed of the "radicals" who were
engaged in fighting Brindellism within the unions.
562
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2889
T//£ COUfiSE OF El/ROP£AH ExCHAh
so
45
1314
46
\ ■*
I
i
0
/c
/5
to
i
tA
1
/
Jo
1
^4o
\ 45
tec
70
75
So
8£
(
*k)
3J
/fk\
flAJ
/9J4\
\f1ov. Dec.
/s/e
K/ar?. tet>. Mar. Apr. /day June Jujj Aug. Sept. Oct. /for. DccVJbrr. ted. Afar. Apr. Afafi Ju/rJu/i/Aig.
/9f8
Ap
m
Nov. 17, 1920]
The Nation
563
Wlf R£LAT/Ort TO TH£ AMEMCA/1 DOLLAR
I I I I L^J I I I I i . i -t r—i i I I I I "1 t — 1_
n fed. Afar. Apr. May June Ju/y Aug. 3epf. Ocf. Jlov. Dec. I Jan. Jib. Afar. Apr. May June Ju/y /faff. Jepf. Ocf. /fov. Dec,
/319_ JL (3ZO
564
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2889
In the Driftway
PARIS has lit another seven thousand street lamps. She
is not yet back to her pre-war scale of night light, for
coal is scarce and gas costs coal, but the seven thousand
lights must spell final death to a Paris which for all its
tragedy had something of romance and a dark beauty which
peace-time Paris will never repeat. The Drifter will not
soon forget the ghostly aspect of Notre Dame from the
cobbles by the riverside, on the black nights of the air-raid
spring of 1918, when the towers loomed into the night with
a solemn dignity and gray equanimity which the flaming
gas jets of post-armistice days spoiled. And the vast spaces
of the Place de la Concorde lying dark and unlamped, bare
to the stars, were very different from the flashing square
of peace time. There was a sense of mystery and yet of
comradeship in the black streets those nights when heavy
curtains barred even cracks of light at the windows, when
the midnight wanderer stubbed his toe incessantly against
invisible poubelles, and the sound of every passer's feet
echoed loud in the hollow silence. There is nothing which
so isolates the individual as a crowd ; in those empty streets
one had the same sense of companionship with other belated
pedestrians as unites travelers who meet in a wilderness.
*****
THE Drifter has just returned from a little journey
through the Dark Ages. In the Dark Ages fashion-
able young ladies wore skirts which touched the ground
when they stood erect on two feet, and though the Drifter
does not set himself up as one well versed in feminine fash-
ions, he knows that no present-day skirt could do that. In
the Dark Ages landlords filled columns of the newspapers
with plaintive requests for some kind tenant to occupy their
seven-room flat for twenty dollars a month, or their three-
room apartment for seventeen. And the Drifter regards the
three rooms which he knows most intimately, and thought-
fully multiplies seventeen by several. On the front page
of the Dark Age newspaper, large black headlines announced
that the King of Greece had been assassinated, and in
parallel columns the news of the latest Turkish victory over
the Bulgarians was reported. Apparently there were wars
in those days, too. But the Drifter has been found out:
he had not been to very dark ages at all; he had merely
been reading the New York World for March 19, 1913.
*****
THE ways of prison officials are always incomprehensible
to a mere free man, such as the Drifter counts him-
self, but it is clear to him that the officials of Dannemora
prison agree with the British Government. He is told that
Ben Gitlow is permitted to receive The Nation within prison
walls, but that Jim Larkin is forbidden that privilege.
Obviously the moguls of Dannemora, too, fear an Irish
Nation more than a Jewish.
IN Seattle the integrity of Ole Hanson's law and order is
preserved with all the dignity which blue-coated angels
of the law can muster. Pausing by the totem pole in Pioneer
Square the Drifter recently heard an American Indian say
pointed things about the profit system and Mr. Palmer's
habits. The Indian was interrupted by a policeman, who
pushed his way through the listening crowd and said: "If
ye don't loike this counthry, why don't yez go back where ye
come from?"
The Drifter
Correspondence
A Criticism of The Nation
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: In the past it has been one of the glories of The Nation
that on the whole it has stood for fair play. To maintain this
attitude was easier, I suppose, for the old Nation, with its com-
paratively disinterested critical spirit, than for the new Nation,
with its spirit of crusading radicalism. I am one of those who
regret the passing of that former Nation, though I recognize
the usefulness of the new journal. A skeptical critic may not
attract so wide an audience as a reforming evangelist, but I
suspect that he sees a wider arc of truth. Nevertheless, I be-
lieve that The Nation still intends to play fair, and that it has
done important public service in urging fair play for Russia
and Ireland and Haiti and other more or less distant regions.
But there has been one painful exception. Against President
Wilson, whom The Nation warmly supported in the early days
of the war, it has turned with a peculiar and venomous bit-
terness, as against a lost leader. Much of your criticism of
the President has, it is true, been justified. He has been forced
into many inconsistencies; he has been guilty of grave errors
of tact and judgment; he has kept in high office men who ought
to have been removed. It is possible that at Paris he may have
been overreached and outwitted, though this remains to be
tested by time. Such criticisms may be brought against him
without unfairness; but I submit that to accuse him, as The
Nation has constantly done, of "insincerity," of "hypocrisy," of
"the betrayal of American ideals," is totally and shamefully
unfair. The fact is, of course, that the President created no
inconsiderable part of the idealism which you accuse him of
betraying. His war speeches and messages expressed a lofty
aspiration, and set forth a magnificent ideal program. In at-
tempting to carry out that program he faced a condition, not a
theory, and he accepted a solution with many compromises,
one which fell far short of his ideal. True; but is it fair to
accuse him of hypocrisy, of betraying the ideal, on that ac-
count? Is a man's reach not to exceed his grasp? Is he to
cherish no ideal which cannot be immediately attained, or is he
to refuse to take any practicable step forward because that
step falls short of his ultimate goal? The Nation in its mis-
sionary ardor seems to have lost sight of the truth that, as
Lord Morley once wrote, "politics are a field where action is
one long second-best, and where the choice constantly lies be-
tween two blunders."
The Declaration of Independence expressed certain lofty
ideals. The Constitution of the United States offered a most
imperfect instrument, full of compromises, for approximating
those ideals. Is there any inconsistency between Wilson's ideal
program and the League Covenant more glaring than the in-
consistency between the Declaration's "All men are created
equal" with "liberty" among their "unalienable rights" and
the Constitution's tacit recognition of slavery? If our revolu-
tionary fathers had taken the attitude toward the Constitution
which The Nation has taken toward the Covenant, there would
have been no United States of America.
But this is not all. The most painful evidence of The Nation's
unfairness toward the President is its sneering attitude toward
"Wilson's war." Thus in a recent issue you refer to "Wilson-
ism with its needlessly putting us into the war which has neither
ended war nor safeguarded democracy." Such an utterance
as this fills me, as an old friend and admirer of The Nation,
with indignation and shame; for it seems to me stupid, cow-
ardly, and false. It is stupid and false to say that our en-
Nov. 17, 1920]
The Nation
565
trance into the war was needless, or that a war which crushed
imperialistic Germany and thwarted her designs of conquest
did not safeguard democracy. It is false and cowardly to
insinuate that Mr. Wilson, for some dark purpose of his own,
"put us into" the war. Even the President's political opponents,
even such unscrupulous partisans as Henry Cabot Lodge, have
not descended to this level. They are too intelligent; they know
that such insinuations would react upon their own heads.
Homer E. Woodbridge
Middletown, Conn., November 2, 1920
Atlanta University
To the Editor of The Nation :
Sir: The Ku-Klux Klan has been revived. Its foolish
mummery does not so much terrify the Negroes as it arouses
bitter resentment, hatred, and the determination, if need be, to
sell life dearly.
American democracy fails most pitifully in our treatment of
the Negro. Better laws are needed, no doubt. But beyond and
deeper is the need for the uprooting of hatreds and misunder-
standings that grow their ugly weeds between the races, and the
need for watering and tending the tap root of personal worth
and mutual regard in the youth of both races.
Atlanta University is trying to do just this thing for the
Negroes. Primarily a place for the training of teachers, it has
insisted upon giving a broad and general education that shall
develop men and women with insight and a will to take the
responsibilities of leadership. We must overcome prejudice by
worth. Retaliation will not work. Let the race that is re-
sponsible for the Ku-Klux Klan brand it and shame it out of
existence.
For the past fifty years the graduates of Atlanta University
have shown marked ability as teachers and have filled other
positions of responsibility acceptably. One of them, James
Weldon Johnson, has recently stirred the whole nation by his
account of affairs in Haiti. The graduates are giving generously
for the support of Atlanta University. This year their gifts
and those of other donors must be supplemented by additional
private subscriptions to keep our work vigorous. We are also
seeking $10,000 to secure a like sum offered by the General Edu-
cation Board, in addition to substantial aid, already subscribed
by them, for repairs and improvements of the plant. Will not
the readers of The Nation help us to keep aflame the beacon of
democracy in the hope of peace and good will?
Edward T. Ware
President of Atlanta University
Montclair, N. J., November 2
What Germany Thinks
To the Editor of The Nation:
Sir: What do the Germans think, feel, and say? What do
they think, feel, and say about the War, about the Versailles
Peace, about the possibility or probability of another war, about
revenge, about the Kaiser, about America? I have not interro-
gated every German, but contact with many of them has given
me some idea of Germany's attitude toward the vital questions
of the day. The first man to whom I spoke was our car con-
ductor. "Of course, there is going to be war," he said. "In
less than five years. It is better to die than to live under such
a yoke!" The man who made up our beds in the sleeping car
said: "Yes, we are going to have a war; and it is going to be
Germany, England, and Russia against France." A number
of people of the "lower" classes were sure that another war
was imminent and seemed to be eager for it. "France is too
brutal, too insulting, and no red-blooded man could stand it
for any length of time."
But the business and professional people to whom I spoke,
one and all, pooh-poohed the idea of a war, either in the near
or distant future. Another war would be Germany's coup de
grace, her death blow. While resenting France's wanton bru-
tality and her gratuitous insults as much as the Junkers, they
felt that Germany was through with war forever; that her
salvation consisted in work, in long, steady, persistent work.
The idea of revenge is as far from their minds as the idea of
restoring the Kaiser. While fully aware that Germany was
not the only country that was responsible for the war, they
know that a good share of the responsibility was hers; they
know that German militarism was an obnoxious plant, and they
say that to have uprooted it is worth almost all the misery
they have endured. "If we had conquered," they say, "things
would have been pretty bad. We might have had more to eat,
but we would have been crushed by the heel of militarism."
While the people are not enthusiastic about the Ebert regime,
they know it is doing about as well as any other government
could in the circumstances. They are afraid of revolutions,
strikes, and wars, and very much afraid of Bolshevism. And
I do not believe there is the slightest danger of Bolshevism
gaining ground in Germany. I say this regardless of what
our radicals, in whom the wish is often father to the thought,
may say to the contrary. And what is more, the Russians
themselves do not wish Bolshevism to spread in Germany. What
the Bolsheviki want is manufactured articles. And they can
get manufactured articles most conveniently, surely, and
cheaply from Germany. If Bolshevism should invade Germany
and German industry be, even temporarily, disorganized thereby,
there would be no manufactured articles for Soviet Russia.
That there is great dissatisfaction among German workers is
true. I should like to see anybody, whose insides are gnawed
by hunger, contented and satisfied. But that the German work-
ers want a revolution because they are hungry, I deny. First,
they know that a revolution does not necessarily mean more
food; they hear how terrible the suffering is in Russia; and
second, to make a revolution you have to possess a certain
amount of energy and buoyancy; and they know that they are
too depressed, dejected, and listless to succeed in one. What
they might do under the guidance of a great leader, I don't
know. But great leaders have always been scarce, and since
1914 they have been scarcer than ever.
I have noticed no hatred in Germany against America, Eng-
land, Belgium, Italy, or any of the other belligerent countries —
with the exception of two. They do hate France and they do
despise Poland. They hate France for its insults, its employ-
ment of colored troops in the occupied area, and its enormous
bills for the upkeep of the occupation army. (By the way, the
Germans claim that the bill for the upkeep of the Allied occu-
pation army is sixty per cent higher than the cost of their entire
army before the war! I wonder if it is true; if it is, it is an
outrage and a crime.) As to Poland, they do not hate the
country itself, they just despise the Polish aristocracy and
leaders. They do not believe that Poland will remain an inde-
pendent state for long, and that, not on account of external
attacks, but by reason of internal dissensions. The Polish
nobility, they say, has always been the vilest in Europe; they
are the lowest drunkards, gamblers, and debauchees; they will
gamble their wives and children away; and they are both cruel
and autocratic. How can such people remain at the helm of a
modern state? Let France and America, they say, take away
their financial and military aid from Poland, and the country
will fall to pieces. Perhaps so and perhaps not. This was told
me by a cultivated business man, who claimed to be a true cos-
mopolitan, one who had no antagonism against the Polish people,
but who claimed to know the Polish aristocracy. "No other
country in Europe possesses such medieval types," he said. And
in the meantime, the poor Poles and the poor Russians are kill-
ing each other by the thousands, because certain diplomats are
indifferent to bloodshed and prefer death and destruction to
peace and prosperity.
New York, October 18 William J. Robinson, M.D.
566
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2889
Books
Masters in Search of a Masterpiece
Mitch Miller. By Edgar Lee Masters. The Macmillan Com-
pany.
Domesday Book. By Edgar Lee Masters. The Macmillan Com-
pany.
WHEN the "Spoon River Anthology" arrived, now nearly
six years ago, it was at once everywhere acclaimed as
the first book of a new author. Research in time discovered
that Mr. Masters was already forty-six and that he had been
an author ever since the year of the War with Spain, experi-
menting with verse in various measures, and of course with
disquisition and the drama, to the extent of half a dozen vol-
umes. Since 1915 he has now published half a dozen more,
which have all inherited the fame of the "Anthology" but which
betray, hardly less than the unconsidered ventures of his non-
age, the restless and nervous habit of experimentation which
makes up a large share of his poetical character. There comes
to mind the figure of a blindfolded Apollo, eager and lusty,
who continually runs forward on the trail of poetry but who,
because of his blindfoldedness, only now and then strikes the
central track. During the "Spoon River" episode he held the
track long enough to produce a masterpiece, and since then he
has occasionally, in crossing it, struck out certain bright, me-
morable flashes; but the blindfold continues to impede him.
Mr. Masters's two latest volumes wear the colors of experi-
mentation. In "Mitch Miller" he has attempted to write a new
"Tom Sawyer" for the Spoon River district; in "Domesday
Book" he has applied the method of "The Ring and the Book"
to the material of Starved Rock. The impulse back of the first
must have been much the same as Mark Twain's: a desire to
catch in a stouter net than memory itself the recollections of
boyhood which haunt disillusioned men. But in proportion as
Mr. Masters is less boylike than Mark Twain — an immense
proportion — "Mitch Miller" is less purely and singly a book for
or about boys than "Tom Sawyer." Elegy and argument in-
trude. Mitch and Skeet, the Tom and Huck of this story, live
so much of their lives in imitation of their prototypes that
Mitch can call "Tom Sawyer" the "Bible of grown folks." These
boys in their adventures parallel altogether too singularly the
careers of Tom and Huck; their too mythical excursion to Han-
nibal in search of their juvenile divinity is a mere apologue of
disillusionment. Mitch's pre-adolescent passion for Zueline
sounds like an argument on the side of Freud, and almost as
much like an obsession as the frenzy of Doc Lyon, who brings
into the story its tincture of horrible disease. There are im-
plications, too, of a fierce hatred for the politics and theology
of Spoon River. Can a story of boyhood, that slim, spare,
muscular age, carry such a burden of doctrine? At least this
story does not carry it without penalties. The narrative is
tangled in a snarl of moods. Its movement is often thick, its
wings gummed and heavy. Only in flashes does the powerful
imagination of Mr. Masters shake itself free and burn with
the high, hot light which so often glows in the "Anthology."
The great shadow of Lincoln lies over the book as it lies over
all the books of all Illinois authors; there are touches of ad-
mirable comedy and strong strokes of character and some racy
prose; but as a whole "Mitch Miller" falls regrettably between
the clear energy which might have made it popular and the
profound significance which might have made it great.
The scheme and the machinery of "Domesday Book" are ad-
mirable. Elenor Murray is found dead on the shore of the
Illinois River a mile above Starved Rock. Coroner Merival,
a sort of philosophical amateur in office, undertakes to trace
the mystery not only to its immediate cause but up to its pri-
mary source and out to its remotest consequences. He summons
as his jury his chosen friends and brings before them, in person
or by deposition or letter, all the acquaintances of Elenor
Murray until he has pieced out her tragic story, from the
moment she was conceived to the hour she died, and has placed
it in its larger setting. To Mr. Masters, at times, the tale of
Elenor Murray seems an allegory of America during the
troubled, roiled, destroying years of the war, although he does
not keep the allegory steadily enough in mind to do more than
hint at it. Rather, he intends his book to be a "census spiritual"
of American society. Elenor Murray, as he sees her birth and
loves and sufferings and desperate end, is pure nature, "essen-
tial genius," acting but its fated processes in a world of futile
or corrupting inhibitions. But Mr. Masters has less skill at
portraying the pure genius of Elenor Murray than at arraign-
ing the inhibitions of her society. When he steps down from
his watch-tower of irony he can hate as no American poet
does, and in this book he has piled up his loathings for the
muddy days which the war has left behind. His hates, alas,
do not always pass into poetry; they too frequently remain
hard, sullen masses of animosity not fused with his narrative
but standing out from it and adding a fierce personal rhythm
to the rough beat of his blank verse. So, too, do his masses
of turgid learning and his scientific speculations often remain
undigested. A good many of his characters are cut to fit the
narrative plan, not chosen from reality to make up the narra-
tive. The total effect is often crude and heavy, now preten-
tious, now hopelessly flat; and yet beneath these uncompleted
surfaces are the sinews of enormous power, a greedy gusto for
life, a wide imaginative experience, tumultuous uprushes of
emotion and expression, a restless if undisciplined intelligence,
an abundance of the veritable stuff of existence — all this, and
yet not an authentic masterpiece. "Spoon River Anthology"
still has no rival from the hand of its creator. C. V. D.
Soviet Russia
Barbarous Soviet Russia. By Isaac McBride. Thomas Seltzer.
'T'HE sagacious Dr. Arbuthnot somewhere offers prudent
* counsel on the refutation of lies. If a baseless report is
being circulated that some eminent person is dying, it should
not be countered with an assertion that the person was not even
sick, but with an explanation that in fact the critical point of
the illness had been passed and the patient was well on his way
to recovery. The friends of Soviet Russia should take this
lesson to heart. The misrepresentations and calumnies of in-
terested propaganda are not effaced by a thoughtless applica-
tion of whitewash. Concealment, exaggeration, distortion,
whether used on one side or the other, may be trusted to de-
feat their own ends. In order to gain sympathy for the present
regime, it is not necessary to sanctify its leaders or to repre-
sent its governmental program as millennial. Russia's cause
will gain much more from a presentation which gives evidence
of intelligence and discrimination than from one in which good-
will is the chief ingredient. In the. past year one special corre-
spondent after another has bewildered the public with a version
of Russian affairs irreconcilably at odds with that supplied by
the regular press and diplomatic agencies. Clearly, there is an
important set of facts to be opposed to the daily stories of star-
vation and disintegration issuing from the newspapers; on the
other hand, it is impossible, in view of this smoke of stories,
to visualize as truth the unclouded landscape of the apolo-
gists. One side makes everything of the faults in execution,
the other views only the ideal aim and seldom brings critical
sense to test it. What we have not yet seen is a book which
combines a frank confrontation of the point of view of the
Soviets with a clear-eyed estimate of its principles and a fair
description of the successes or failures resulting in the ope-
ration.
Mr. Isaac McBride has failed to write such a book, but he
has at least shown that the materials for it are not lacking.
"Barbarous Soviet Russia" consists of two parts. In the first
Mr. McBride shows us what a good time he had as a corre-
spondent in that most hospitable of lands, talking with its
celebrities and being shown the interesting mechanism of its
Nov. 17, 1920]
The Nation
567
government. While he reveals nothing new about personalities
and attempts no criticism of institutions, his account of his
own experiences is animated and readable. The impression
that he intends to leave with his readers is that affairs are
organized in the best possible fashion and the machine is func-
tioning with a maximum efficiency. But there is a second part
to Mr. McBride's book, made up of documents, from which a
somewhat different tale may be constructed. The problems and
difficulties with which the government is struggling are patent
in the Code of Labor Laws, the resolutions of the Congress of
Trade Unions, and in the reports of the financial and industrial
officials. Better than from anything in Mr. McBride's story
one can discover in these documents light on some of the ques-
tions which most insistently occur concerning the workings
of the communist plan.
An examination of the Code of Labor Laws shows it to be
inspired by a wholesome interest in the well-being of the work-
man as a person, by the idea that the industry exists for the
workman at least as much as the workman for the industry;
but some of the regulations raise doubts of the efficiency of
the system. The provision for compulsory labor is indeed not
as bad as it is represented by the enemies of the system. The
penalty for refusal to work is only the loss of "right to em-
ployment" and the unemployment subsidy. A more serious fail-
ure of communist theory is suggested by the measures deemed
necessary to insure production. The code itself provides for a
grading of wages according to the kind of labor, the danger,
the complexity, the responsibility, and the standard of educa-
tion and experience required. But not content with this, the
Trades-Union Congress took a leaf- straight out of the capitalist
economics in a resolution for encouraging production, inciden-
tally running directly counter to the principles of American
unionism. "Wage scale regulations must be based on the sys-
tem of compensation of labor power which would serve as an
incentive for the laborers to outdo each other in their desire
to raise the productivity of labor in the nationalized enterprises,
i. e., the piece-work and premium system founded on a rock-
bottom standard of production, with a firmly fixed schedule of
either increased pay or decreased hours of work in compensa-
tion for production above the standard requirements." One
can imagine that a great discrepancy of income would result
between the highest employee in the best paid industry and
the lowest in the most poorly paid. But the Commissariat of
Finance here comes to the rescue with a proposal which "com-
pels the citizen to yield that part of his savings which is above
a certain standard."
There is much matter for discussion in the functioning of
the trade unions and their relation to the government. It needs
to be understood at the outset that these unions, organized
nationally in the same manner as the Soviet of Deputies, are
laying claim to supreme political power. They are the active
civilian army of the Communist Party, a Pretorian army im-
posing its will upon tributary commanders. They boldly pro-
fess their aim to prepare the laboring masses "for the task of
managing not only production but the entire apparatus of
government," and they categorically demand that the Commis-
sariat of Labor be subordinated to them and "be required to
embody in its legislation the fundamental decisions of the Con-
gress of Professional Unions and that all special obligatory
regulations be submitted to the unions for approval." In view
of the strategic position which they arrogate or enjoy, their
tactics assume considerable importance, especially in relation
to the charge of a minority dictatorship. While ostensibly
aiming to organize all strata of workers, they stipulate as a
condition "complete submission to proletarian discipline." No
individual union is admitted into the All-Russian and local
associations unless it recognizes "the revolutionary class-strug-
gle for realization of socialism by means of the dictatorship of
the proletariat." No union may be represented at the Trades-
Union Congresses unless in its activity it is "guided by the
principles of the international class struggle of the proletariat."
It might be presumed that the unions would be hospitable and
not stop to scrutinize converts too minutely; the only question
that would occur is, how ready have all strata of workers shown
themselves to join forces with the new power? It is something
of a shock to find a clause of exclusion like this: "It would
be the greatest error at the present stage of development
of our trade union movement, with its insufficient degree of
organization, to infuse into it the craftsmen and small shop-
owners who, due to their isolation and unorganized state, do
not allow of proletarian control; the same applies to the labor
'Artels,' 'unions of labor communes,' and so-called professional
people who are not wage workers. Being the representatives of
the dying crafts and petty bourgeois industry, these elements,
permeated with the conservative economic ideology of indi-
vidual and small-scale production (artel) due to their numeri-
cal size [reviewer's italics], are liable to disorganize the ranks
of the economically organized proletariat." When it is noted
that the All-Russian Congress which passed this resolution
represented 3,422,000 workmen, it will have to be granted that
those who complain of a dictatorship by the minority are not
complaining without reason.
Mr. McBride's account raises no misgivings about the pro-
cesses of production, but when one turns to the reports of the
responsible officials one meets not only expressions of justi-
fiable pride in progress achieved, but figures which show how
heavy is the burden under which industry is fainting and how
painfully short production still remains. "Our large industry,"
writes Mr. Vindelbot with inimitable frankness, "has been get-
ting into even greater difficulties. A number of crises weigh-
ing on it are breaking down its last forces. Of these the most
acute and serious are the fuel and food crises, the latter de-
moralizing labor." When friendly reporters learn to face
facts with the same intelligence and to declare them with the
same honesty as is here shown by a Soviet official, they will
serve Russia's turn more effectively than by their present
method of blinking partisanship. Jacob Zeitlin
Expo<
>sure
The Romantic. By May Sinclair. The Macmillan Company.
Tension. By E. M. Delafield. The Macmillan Company.
THERE is a faintly bitter savor that means freshness and
health; there is a harshness that is tonic as the sting of an
autumnal wind; there is a brevity of expression that has noth-
ing in it of poverty but is like the agile grace of an athlete's
body. That savor, that harshness, and that grace belong to the
new books of Miss Sinclair and Miss Delafield. Both have put
on the "purged, considerate minds" of Arnold's admonition and
survey the human scene with a vision no less sympathetic for
its clear directness. Their consciousness has lost the last tinge
of the notion that they are shocking anyone. Not theirs to
dumfound the Philistine; they speak in a bright and serene
world beyond his, and, taking a fundamental inner liberation
for granted, address themselves to the small company of equal
minds. Neither has produced a piece of great literature; both
are at once factor and symptom in a cultural process of in-
calculable importance.
Miss Sinclair is serious and quiet. She is still under the
influence of Miss Dorothy Richardson's impressionistic method
and refuses to have any dealings with conjunctions. But her
substance is entirely her own. Her Charlotte Redhead is new
and authentic both as a type and as an individual. The girl's
instinctive view of basic human relations is one that merges
into the virile. For purity she substitutes honor, for sentiment
veracity, and for jealousy justice. It is Gibson, the partner
of her first affair, who is the sentimentalist, the deceiver of
others and himself, and it is he who, in the end, is guilty of both
the sentimentalist's cruelty and his lack of shame. Charlotte
is conscious of the weak but genuine pathos of poor Effie in
the dim background and of the moral slovenliness of trying to
live amid mended shards. Fortified but not thoroughly in-
568
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2889
structed by this experience, she meets the romantic John Roden
Conway. Together, but merely as friends, they join an ambu-
lance unit in Belgium. Here John's image in Charlotte's soul,
and with it their relation to each other, begins to crumble.
Gibson had sentimentalized about love and had "funked and
lied"; Conway had sentimentalized about war. He had been
dashing and radiant and gone as a knight on a great adventure.
All the banners of his mind had streamed. Now he, too, funks
and lies. He abandons the wounded under fire, sends Charlotte
on difficult missions alone, and collapses shamefully at every
crucial moment. When the danger is past he recaptures his
perfectly sincere romanticism of gold and glory; on exposed
ridges he slinks out of sight. A bullet in the back ends the
poor romantic's career. Charlotte, who has been loyal to him
in her own honest fashion, is crushed. But a clever psycho-
analyst heals her inner wound with his explanation. It is the
inferior mind that is sentimental and romantic. It knows that
it cannot meet or endure reality. Its dreams and heroisms, its
persistent glorification of itself and others and the world are
but the activities of a defense complex which it builds up to
live at all and to sustain its own self-respect. The brave and
sane man hates war; the romantic glorifies it to save himself
from flight. The implications of Miss Sinclair's fable and
analysis are of the broadest significance. The hundred bedizen-
ments of life spring from a fear of it; sentiments are cushions
between the world and feeble souls; the romantic does not seek
to remake that world on the basis of reality as given, but to
push its true nature out of consciousness and substitute a
softer and more endurable image. He trims the universe to his
stature and tricks it out to suit his taste. It is these implica-
tions that give Miss Sinclair's book an extraordinary intel-
lectual suppleness and strength.
Miss Delafield is a great deal younger than Miss Sinclair.
She is still a little angry over the discrepancy between feigning
and fact, sentiment and truth. Thus her studiedly cool and
detached manner does not always serve to conceal a remnant
of vindictiveness. This, since Miss Delafield is a very able
artist indeed, takes the form of a sharp and tireless irony.
The chief characters of her fable are subsidiary from the point
of view of her theme. That is embodied in the person of Lady
Rossiter. And Lady Rossiter is a noteworthy creation. She
was large and fair and sweet and, though she would have died
rather than have betrayed it, unsatisfactorily married. Thus
she went about scattering seeds of kindness, bringing a little
radiance into other lives, furiously and fatuously sentimental-
izing a world and a situation that did not please her. Beneath
that sentimentality she was a malignant snob and, as the story
proves with great accuracy, a dangerous gossip. But she was
wholly deceived by her own pretenses. "She often said that
flowers were literally a necessity to her — an opinion frequently
held by those whose financial situation has never compelled
them to regard flowers as an alternative to, let us say, butter
for breakfast." Miss Delafield is not often so explicit. But
that sentence illustrates admirably her chief method in the
exposure of Lady Rossiter. A second and subtler method is her
description of Lady Rossiter's effect on her husband. Sir
Julian had an uncommonly austere and veracious mind, though
enough of generous humanity. His wife's false sweetness wore
on him through the years but could not harden his sensitiveness
to its ugly softness. He fell into a habit of sardonic repartee
and cynical exposure to which she was, of course, wholly im-
pervious. In view of her ' incurable self-deception he came to
despise himself for his futile little shafts, but found himself
pow> rless to resist the temptation. The interplay between these
two temperaments is one of the most searching things in recent
fiction. But, indeed, Miss Delafield, is very rich in creative
vigor. The two terrible children of poor Mark are masterly;
so are the faded yet insolent teachers at the Commercial Col-
lege. Nor is Miss Delafield devoid of the kindlier emotions
which she shows in her portrait of Miss Marchrose. But the
scalpel is her favorite instrument.
Books in Brief
MR. MOORFIELD STOREY'S services to many good
causes have won for him that crown which a republic be-
stows when it calls one of its sons a "good citizen." The moral
qualities which have animated his long career as a private ser-
vant of the state find unconscious expression in the Godkin
Lectures delivered last March at Harvard and now published
under the title "Problems of Today" (Houghton Mifflin). Mr.
Storey is at his best when he is considering conditions that are
not complex, where rightmindedness and neighborly feeling and
a willingness to do one's share are enough to remedy human ills.
His words on participation in politics, on freedom of speech, on
obedience to law, on the treatment of Negroes, and on our rela-
tions with foreign nations make clear the way of righteousness
to the young men to whom they were addressed. What he says
on these subjects is true for any age. When we turn to dis-
cussion of the distribution of wealth and the relations between
employer and employed we find Mr. Storey less adequate. His
simple system of individualistic morals is not the universal
solvent that he seeks to make it. His kindliness of spirit is
unwittingly frustrated by his horror of any other methods than
kindliness of spirit. In making Mr. Gompers the special object
of his opprobrium, Mr. Storey betrays how little he compre-
hends the issues and the alignments in the labor struggle of
today. For a moment he seems to be the apostle of a new order
when he says that "we must not make the idle comfortable at
the expense of the virtuous"; but this soon turns out to be only
an apology for what some of us now enjoy, when we find Mr.
Storey saying that we must give men the inducement to work
to make their children comfortable. Though under this system
some will acquire great wealth and leave children who are mere
idle wasters, "it is always true that any power may be abused,
and anything in itself good may be wasted or misused." The
generation that studied its economics in the day of the Bradley-
Martin ball will be surprised to meet the old fallacy that "no
money can be invested or spent without doing some good" and
to be reminded of the "dressmakers, milliners, waiters, and the
producers everywhere who supply the dainties which are con-
sumed." The economics of these lectures is of value only as it
marks how far we have moved from the unquestioning attitudes
of not so long ago, and illustrates in how short a span the eager
reformer may become the doctrinaire apologist for the estab-
lished order.
T'HE exactness in much of the investigation into natural phe-
*■ nomena and the far-flung imagination of some of the most
distinguished investigators have tempted many thinkers in other
fields to filch the lingo of physics and biology and use it as a
cloak to conceal their inability to pursue the rigorous and con-
trolled methods of genuine science. A fresh instance of failure
to resist this temptation appears in the first of three lectures
given by John Henry Wigmore on the Barbour-Page Founda-
tion at the University of Virginia and now printed in "Problems
of Law" (Scribner). Here Dean Wigmore demonstrates anew the
wide range of his intellectual rummaging and the queer quirks
of his marvelous mind. After rejecting the helix and various
odd circles and lines as analogies to help explain the law's evolu-
tion, the lecturer lights on "the analogy of the planetary sys-
tem, with its numerous local inter-dependent motions." Very
vividly he continues: "To illustrate concretely, I hold here, in
my left hand, a bicycle wheel, free to rotate on its axis." With
his right hand he makes it so rotate, whirling it round and round
as well as over and over, meanwhile elucidating physical for-
mulae as the experiment is going on. The drift of this oral and
ocular duet seems to be that the law's evolution is the resultant
of a conflict of complex social forces which both condition and
direct the motions in which the law indulges. This is rein-
forced by a wealth of references to custom and law from the
Nov. 17, 1920]
The Nation
569
Third Inter-Glacial Period to times nearer our own. Whether
the bicycle wheel could serve any other purpose than to fasci-
nate the audience with dizziness is somewhat doubtful. The
second lecture on Methods of Law Making is intelligible and
sensible. Mr. Wigmore thinks that so long as legislators are
free to put their whimsicalities on the statute book we might
leave a lot more to the discretion of the judges and relax our
reverence for the canon of stare decisis. He would change the
legislature into an expert body, small in numbers, well paid, and
with long terms and continuous sessions. Perhaps with remem-
brance of his hot defense of the court-martial system and his
virulent attack on Mr. Justice Holmes for his plea for freedom
of speech in the Abrams case, Mr. Wigmore avows: "I believe
in democracy. And I would rather emigrate or die than see the
American people Prussianized. But I do not believe that democ-
racy has to be synonymous with incompetency." The conclud-
ing lecture suggests a way for getting uniform commercial law
throughout the world. Congress should allow the States to make
compacts with foreign nations; codes should be drafted by inter-
national conferences in which the American States are repre-
sented; these codes should then be adopted by State legislation.
There is wisdom in the proposal, but it is not likely to be
adopted with undue haste.
PAUL CLAUDEL writes French free verse, says Pierre
Chavannes in an introduction to "Three Poems of the War"
(Oxford University Press), with a "respiratory rhythm."
Breathing has stopped in Edward J. O'Brien's English trans-
lation, so that the poems scarcely at all take effect. They are
said to have affected large numbers of Frenchmen while the
war was on, but they will move few Anglo-Saxons now. Utter-
ance must be more than patriotic if it is to be known very long
as solid and shining and profound, or if it is to travel very far
from the land of its birth.
D
rama
A Note on Acting
/CRITICISM of acting alternates, as a rule, between ungov-
^ erned ecstasy and rough disdain. Whether Hazlitt cele-
brates the praise of Mrs. Siddons or some contemporary that of
John Barrymore, what we get is the impression made by a com-
manding or romantic personality rather than the record of an
artistic achievement. Lesser actors, on the other hand, are
dismissed without a word of interpretation or instruction.
Nothing in their work is clearly defined or accurately under-
stood by the criticism they receive, and little is left them but to
defy their censors and to blunder on. Yet actors deserve help-
fulness and close understanding. Their artistic life is pre-
carious and transitory. An approach to perfection before
middle age is their one hope. Only so can they expect a few
rich and untroubled years before the lights go out upon them
and their audiences.
Nor paint nor pencil can the actor save —
Both art and artist have one common grave.
The matter, closely looked upon, is not forbiddingly intricate.
When toward the end of his life Johnson was asked to sum up
the virtues of Garrick, he said: "A true conception of charac-
ter, and a natural expression of it, were his distinguished ex-
cellencies." We speak more subtly today and deal in finer
shadings; the intimate nature of the modern drama, the with-
drawal of the stage-picture into its frame, and the consequent
abandoning of all declamation, have given the words "natural
expression" a far intenser meaning. But to the substance of
the old critics little need be added. Actors are still, as Colley
Cibber declared them to be, "self-judges of nature, from whose
superficial book is always a disappointment, for the thoughtful reader wants
facts well told, not half truths or shallow imaginings. Oxford books are
never commonplace.
cA selection of those recently issued.
HELLENISTIC SCULPTURE
By Guy Dickins Net #8.00
A scholarly monograph, beautifully illustrated, for the art
lover and student.
BELGIUM
"By H. Vander Linden Net #3.75
An authoritative and fascinating account by the Professor
of History at the University of Liege.
SPACE AND TIME IN CONTEMPORARY
PHYSICS
"By MORITZ SCHUCK Net #2.50
An adequate, yet ctaar and simple account of Einstein's
epoch-making th*orie« of relativity.
ENGLISH MADRIGAL VERSE 1588-1632
By E. H. Fellowes Net #6.25
A selection from the original song books of an important
body of English verse which has not hitherto been collected.
SWIFT'S TALE Or A TUB
Edited by A. C. Guthkelch and D. N. Smith
Net #12.00
A definitive library edition containing much new matter.
Complete catalogue on request.
SPANISH PROSE AND POETRY
By Ida Farnell Net #5.25
A splendid collection of translations, with a critical appreci-
ation of each author.
REDEMPTION : HINDU AND CHRISTIAN
By Sidney Cave Net #5.25
A comparative study of this doctrine in living Hinduism
with that of the Christian Gospel.
THE COLUMBIAN TRADITION
'By Henry Vignaud Net #3.00
The author maintains, that Columbus set sail not for Asia
but in search of some islands about which he had been told.
GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES
By J. Travis Mills Net #2.50
A critical review of their historical relations in lectures
delivered to men of the Army of Occupation in Germany.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPEAN
THOUGHT
Edited by F. S. Marvin Net #6.25
Twelve essays by noted scholars summarizing the work of
the leading European thinkers in the last fifty years.
cAt all booksellers or from the publishers.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS cAmerican 'Branch
35 WEST 32nd STREET, NEW YORK
OXFORD BOOKS
zJne standard of textual excellence "
^d
£h
&*s^&
570
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2889
various lights they only take their true instruction." It is when
they are such that we hear, in the fine words of Lessing, "that
natural music which unfailingly opens all hearts because we
feel that it conies from within and shows us that art has
shared in it only in so far as art and nature can become
identical."
The actor's art, then, however difficult to practice is not
difficult to understand. His intelligence must grasp the poet's
intention and his imagination lend it the concreteness of life.
But his imaginative activity must always be the servant of what
he has observed in himself and others. Nature must be his
teacher and his norm. He has never, to be sure, seen a Hamlet
or an Iago, an Osvald or a Henschel. But he has seen men in
spiritual perplexity, sardonic mirth, bleak despair, and dumb
confusion. Having built up the concrete projection of a char-
acter from his imaginative observation, he must, with that per-
sonal plasticity which alone justifies his calling, melt into the
being which the poet and he have combined to fashion, and
speak and act and live outv/ard from within that being's very
soul. His faults may therefore be referred to a failure in one
of the three basic elements of his art — intelligence, imaginative
observation, plastic expression. Or else he may, yielding to a
frequent temptation of powerful or peculiar personalities, aban-
don the art he is well fitted to practice and depend on a con-
tinuous display of his own self under this or that borrowed
name.
The commonest fault of our actors today is a failure in the
second element of their art. Their eyes are turned upon the
theater, upon some vivid personality of the stage, upon their
careers and persons, upon anything except nature and its spon-
taneous expression amid the varying moods of life. They are
not unskilful in portraying sharp moments of passionate ex-
citement. There are few actresses who cannot weep convinc-
ingly. They have all wept and, like many modern people, in-
voluntarily watched the adequate expression of their grief. But
in the level passages of a play, in attempting to depict the life
from which the passions arise, these very actresses will be of an
insufferable and vulgar artificiality. They have never taken
the trouble to observe themselves or others at common tasks or
in quiet hours; they have no ear or eye for the kind of speech
and gesture by which the subdued but important business of
nine-tenths of life is carried on. They disdain nature and,
rather than observe it, transfer to their private behavior the
metallic graces of the stage, mouthing and languishing at home
and abroad. On the stage they are passable or even eloquent
when the situation is tense. But they say "good morning" or
lay the cloth for breakfast with the air of pinchbeck princesses
R. H. Macy <§ Co.
Herald Square Inc. New Yorl
Herald Square
Maintains the
largest and
most complete
Book Depart-
ment in New
York City.
STEINWAY r;
The Instrument
the Immortals
in disguise. The men are more aware of the texture of common
existence. But instead of observing nature, they substitute
personal mannerisms that are realistic enough but wear thin by
constant and wearying repetition in play after play. Mr. Sidney
Toler has a quaint glance and Mr. Wallace Eddinger an amus-
ing aspect of hurt innocence. But since neither one has ob-
served life, his mannerism has become a mere trick and his art
an exhibition of that single possession. The personal manner-
isms of Mr. Dudley Digges cannot be studied from the stalls.
When we see him we lose him and dwell solely with the excel-
lence and truth of what he has created.
The ambition of the average American actor is not to inter-
pret drama or create character, but to be John Barrymore. In
regard to Mr. Barrymore's artistic intelligence and fascinating
gifts there can be no question. But as Fedya in "Redemption,"
as Gianino in "The Jest," and as Richard III he played but
variations upon the theme of himself. There was the same
morbidezza, the same sense of inferiority becoming fierceness or
malign splendor, the same white profile, the same stricken grace.
In each piece one became primarily aware not of a creature of
a given world and kind, but of John Barrymore's somewhat
hectic idealization of himself. It was not, first of all, acting, but
superb day-dreaming upon the stage. Mr. Lionel Barrymore, de-
void of his brother's poignant charm, is a far more scrupulous
practitioner of his art. His Neri in "The Jest" was shaggy,
boisterous, full of excess and gorgeous wildness; his Mouzon in
"La Robe rouge" was polished, quietly cynical, hard, and grace-
less in an inimitably truthful modern way. The two creations
had nothing in common but his intelligence, his powers of ob-
servation, his ability to project what he had grasped and seen.
The contrast illustrates this brief argument and sums it up. To
emulate John Barrymore is both foolish and impossible; to
imitate his brother is to have a just and fruitful notion of the
actor's art. Ludwig Lewisohn
Bertrand Russell's Great New Book
BOLSHEVISM:
PRACTICE AND THEORY
By the Author of "Proposed Roads to Freedom"
In these luminous pages, based on his articles
which attracted wide attention when they ap-
peared in The Nation, one of the great thinkers
of our age answers two questions: What should
an impartial and unbiassed mind think of the
present masters of Soviet Russia? And what ele-
ments of truth and falsehood reside in the theories
of social reconstruction enunciated by the leaders
of Bolshevism? The answer to the first question
was made possible by a visit to Russia itself, and
Mr. Russell thus sums up his conclusions :
"If Bolshevism remains the only vigorous and effective
competitor of capitalism, I believe that no form of So-
cialism will be realized, but only chaos and destruction.
This belief is one of the grounds upon which I oppose
Bolshevism. But to oppose it from the point of view
of a supporter of capitalism would be, to my mind,
utterly futile and against the movement of history in
the present age."
Just ready, $2.00, by mail, $2.10'
H ARCOURT, BRACE & HOWE, \& 47A5
International Relations Section
Hungary's Intrigues
THE collection of documents printed below was taken
from the office of the Hungarian Legation at Vienna
by an official of the Legation who was in sympathy with the
Socialist refugees. They were photographed and returned.
The texts were published in Vilagossag (Vienna) and in
the Vienna Arbeiter Zeitung.
The Irredentist Plot
THE first report published in Vilagossag from Minis-
terial Councillor Reich of the Hungarian Legation at
Vienna deals with irredentist activities in Slovakia and
other districts formerly belonging to Hungary. It is
headed: "Strictly confidential. File separately, in closed
envelope. To be shown to none except those immediately
concerned. Two copies. Return original." The report is
addressed to Dr. Eckhardt of the Hungarian Foreign Office.
In the matter of the irredentist movement in upper Hungary
the protracted verbal negotiations (which for considerations of
space cannot be reported here) resulted in the organization of
the Irredentist Union and various irredentist committees.
Our authorized agents assigned to the occupied districts have
everywhere achieved connections as desired, have organized the
movement, assigned tasks and roles, and have in most places
fixed things up also on the financial side. Today the situation
is that this skilfully woven network, the fruit of much exertion,
includes practically every hamlet. The whole of the Highlands
[meaning Slovakia, formerly northern Hungary] has been di-
vided, for the purposes of the movement, into four districts, each
in charge of a committee. The territories inhabited by the
Ruthenes, the so-called Ruskaland or Carpatherussia, form a
separate district with a separate committee in charge, which,
although in close connection with the other committees, handles
things independently and within its own jurisdiction. It submits
its reports, however, to the central committee at Vienna as well
as to the Ministry of National Minorities; it has a separate
administrative fund and a separate press fund, its press being
directed from Budapest and informed from Vienna.
I suggest that the four committees be assigned to the follow-
ing four cities: 1. Pressburg, 2. Kassa, 3. Pesztercebanya, 4.
Ersekujvar.
Follows a lengthy discussion of the respective merits of
these cities as propaganda centers, the chief argument
being, in the case of the former two, their ancient Magyar
culture and historic tradition, in the case of the latter two
their geographical situation. The report then proceeds:
In regard to the organization of the four committees I am in
the position to report the following accomplished facts:
The whole movement belongs under the jurisdiction of the
Ministry of National Minorities. Yet this ministry handles mat-
ters only provisionally, since it is engaged chiefly in the affairs
of western Hungary [assigned to Austria by the peace treaty].
The province of the old Ministry of Propaganda has been
divided up in the manner known to you and its work assigned
to two centers (I mean Budapest and ourselves). As I pointed
out in detail in a former report (and I see that my argument
has carried conviction at Budapest) that city is not at all a
convenient basis for our activities, on account of its difficult
communications with the Czechs. On the other hand, we can
handle these things much better here in Vienna, where our press
activities and extended system of espionage are excellently
organized. Pressburg can be reached from here in two hours
by tramcar.
In the Czech legation we have our agents who furnish us
with comprehensive, fresh, and timely information whenever
necessary. These men are absolutely reliable and we need not
fear lest they deceive us with spurious information. As to the
local transactions and political efforts of the Czech legation
we are kept constantly informed by other legations that are
sympathetic with us. It often happens that no sooner is an im-
portant, confidential political parley over, no sooner does Renner
[the Austrian Secretary for Foreign Affairs] leave a room or
does a caller leave than we have accurate information of all that
transpired. Our organization is most complete as regards Czech
affairs. We endeavored from the beginning to lay emphasis on
this side, for we knew that this fruit would ripen for us first.
We also have connections with several of the Prague news-
papers. We receive our information from the Czech parliament
directly by means of couriers, and it is owing to this fact that
we are able to consolidate our results abroad, chiefly in France.
We are now in communication with two additional members
of the Prague National Assembly — both well initiated in affairs.
The value of the activities of these two is inestimable for us.
As soon as a change takes place we shall have to insure the
political advancement of both. . . .
The tasks of the committees are partly political, partly mili-
tary. The military affairs and the military organization are
conducted by high military persons assigned to each committee,
according to reports to date with the best results. I shall later
return to this. . . . Each committee reports to Vienna to the
central committee and receives therefrom its instructions, direc-
tions, and orders.
The outlines of civilian organization have been issued to each
committee. Plans are worked out to the smallest detail and
must be carried into effect in the same way if we want to count
on full results. To sum up briefly, the task of the civilian sub-
committees of the four committees is to enrol the population of
upper Hungary into one organization. This concentration, how-
ever, must not take place within the framework of a society,
but by way of a determined and ostensibly not interconnected
propaganda.
Since the population is very religious — Catholic — the values
of religion must be exploited first of all. For this end it is
necessary to win over every priest except those known to be
expressly pro-Czech. It is from the priests that we can expect
the most prompt results and upon them we must rely. . . .
Besides the priests we must count upon the teachers, male and
female, and the village clerks. Our contact with these is a
matter of course and causes no difficulty. The fate of the
people is in the hands of this so-called village intelligentsia and
therefore we must lay stress, not upon the people, but on these
men. The people belong where these persons belong, go where
these persons direct, and act as they are told. I do not mean
to say that the population should be entirely neglected, but
discontent and with it irredentism must be fostered in this way.
In the several district and county seats we also have our agents
performing duties partly active, partly passive. They keep us
posted on all measures, on the administration, and all other
apparently insignificant proceedings. They also support the
movement among the intelligentsia of the towns and help to
bring discontent to its proper expression.
Above I have outlined civilian organization which is nothing
but the application of the snowball method. It begins in the
villages and reaches its climax through the towns in the terri-
torial committees which again converge in the central committee.
Our work falls into two groups: preparation and action. The
preparations will last until about the beginning of harvest time
and it is absolutely necessary to wind them up by then. It
would be too lengthy and inconvenient to relate here the details
572
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2889
of preparatory work, as plans have been drawn up for each
committee separately. In brief, it will consist partly of press
propaganda, partly of personal canvassing. The result of this
civilian activity will be that the population of the occupied areas
will start trouble in regard to food supplies and will refuse to
sell their produce to the Czech authorities, which will cause
serious difficulties to the Czechs in the work of provisioning
their own country. This will necessarily result in forcing the
Czech Government into terroristic measures, which may even
modify the results achieved, but this is exactly what we want
and our cause is helped thereby. These terroristic measures
will necessarily result in intensifying the discontent and bitter-
ness of the population to the utmost, and we will have an easy
job in exploiting the situation thus created.
Another branch of our propaganda should also be mentioned,
the execution of which has been undertaken by other intermedi-
aries and is already in progress. Those agricultural laborers
who for known reasons have been imported this year from the
occupied territories in unusually great numbers — in fact, in
excess of the actual need — to do the harvesting on the Hun-
garian large estates, will be exposed to the proper influences
and it will be the business of just these men to carry with them
the idea of irredentism in its extreme form, to spread it, and at
the proper moment to act in its behalf.
Here follows a discussion of the Magyar press in Slovakia.
It is pointed out that as the Czechs did not interfere with
freedom of the press,- the old editorial staffs, sympathetic
with the irredentist cause, have remained mostly intact.
The anti-chauvinist, pro-Czech influence of the organs of the
Viennese emigres, Becsi Magyar Ujsdg (the bourgeois
radical daily) and Az Ember (Social Democratic weekly) is
deplored. These two have a large circulation in Slovakia,
as the Czechs recognize them as excellent weapons against
the Magyar plans. The intrigue aimed at purchasing
Becsi Magyar Ujsdg and transforming it into an organ of
Hungarian imperialism is touched upon. The report then
proceeds :
The sympathies of the French have, owing to the great
political changes, turned toward us. The French
know very well that the present Central European situation
cannot last and that everything must be undone. On the other
hand they can merely countenance our activity, or pretend
ignorance of it, or, if necessary, they may even outwardly
oppose it, but in reality they approve of and support our
efforts. As to their political assistance . . . all I want to
say is that my latent negotiations in press matters with French
journalists and politicians have led to the best results. I have
succeeded in securing the support of a part of the French
press, and the realization of this support will set in as soon as
the political emergency permits it. True, the Czechs have their
journalistic friends in Paris, even some influential and leading
personalities, but these will soon have played themselves out
completely, because the whole political orientation will have
passed, and with it passes the enthusiasm of the press. The
French regret that it was just the French politicians who have
Balkanized Europe and that the French press furnished the
accompaniment to this policy; but that was the necessary pro-
cess of war, of exploiting victory, and of the obligations assumed
by the war statesmen toward our renegade nationalities. That,
however, the French say, was the policy of war and victory,
and today the French are pursuing the policy of peace. They
want exactly what Hungary wants. They esteem Our historic
past and no one knows better than they the Czech state's lack
of vitality. To be sure, there are in France plenty of politi-
cians of the opposite opinion, but they are losing influence and
the future belongs to those whom we need and who approve of
our political endeavors.
The civilian propaganda is closely interconnected with our
military activities. I am not in the position to go into details
here, but I shall outline it in order to round off this report and
to complete the impression imparted. Many important officers,
occupants of high positions in the present Czech army, are in
touch with us and accordingly we are in the position closely to
follow every military move of theirs. Only a very few officers
repudiate, out of conviction or fanaticism, the camaraderie of
the old army. Really, it is only now that we can fully appre-
ciate the splendid results achieved by the old military education.
That education even today keeps together the officers' corps
like a big family, and even though compulsion or the necessity
of making a living forces them into foreign service, in their
souls they remain our brethren who even now regard themselves
as officers of the monarchy and not of the Czech state. The
officers secure the future for us. We have in our possession
military secrets which in themselves suffice to awaken in us the
confidence of success. The officers of Slovak origin who served
in the war, be it in Magyar or Slovak regiments, have grad-
uated from Magyar schools, have studied Magyar history, and
have become Magyars who will never repudiate these senti-
ments. Those fragments which, on account of their immaturity,
are still wavering, or which profess other loyalties, may well be
disregarded.
The organization of the reserve officers in the Highlands
[Slovakia] is in progress; most of the officers in active service
are already organized. It is of especial help to us that we
have our men in the [Czech] Ministry for Slovak Affairs, who
are in touch with this organization and can keep us posted as to
the results. Our principal aim is to focus the attention of the
soldiery on the Czech state's lack of vitality and to make them
understand that their present comrades-in-arms, the Czechs, be-
trayed them as they betrayed us in the war, that thousands
of Slovaks perished in the war owing to Czech treachery. We
shall arouse resentment against the long term of military
service, and we shall explain that the Czech state will be
wrecked just by the necessary permanent military preparedness.
Measures have been taken to induce the Slovak soldiers, to
refuse service on Czech territory and to demand assignment
to home districts. This means that in an emergency not only
is military discipline undermined, but that, when the moment
arrives, these troops will come over to us and expel their
oppressors themselves. Those officers who have been picked
for the most important posts — today members of the Czech
army — do their part splendidly. I have no means to give fur-
ther information in regard to details.
The plans discussed meet with the strongest sympathy on the
part of the French, but it would be untimely as yet to boast
of this. Their representatives are already on their way and
will assume with our politicians either at Budapest or, if the
Regent has already left, at Godollo, the necessary negotiations
aimed at effecting an early change. At any event the return
of Kassa and the Pressburg district may be taken for granted,
but the Magyar politicians demand, under the pressure of the
military, full surrender, for it will be no more difficult to make
a tabula rasa than to settle things in instalments.
Our strategic plans, embracing the whole of the Highlands,
are already, completed, and they are so excellent that they com-
pensate for the lack of modern equipment against the Czech
military, especially when they [the Czechs] will awaken to the
surprise of a rear attack from Slovakia.
Under French pressure I believe it will be possible to conclude
an alliance with Rumania, or rather to assume the burden of
forced friendship. To be sure, the Rumanians demand too
many guaranties, but on the other hand we also shall have
our guaranties which under the present circumstances alone
count. The French statesmen and generals have undertaken to
negotiate this friendship, the idea of which was conceived
during the Rumanian Queen's sojourn at Paris. The Rumanian
King received the plan with great enthusiasm, and it is alleged
that he will exert his full influence with the Western Powers in
favor of concluding this alliance against his former allies be-
Nov. 17, 1920]
The Nation
573
cause this is the demand of a sensible policy of the day. They
would not oppose the return of the Hapsburgs, for the Rumanian
King cherishes a personal sympathy for Charles dating from the
days of the war when the latter addressed, in several instances,
friendly letters to the Rumanian King asking him to look after
certain mutual interests. The French politicians will carry
through the plans of this alliance. True, the Czechs are already
advised and I am told details have even penetrated into certain
Austrian circles, and Renner, I hear, is preparing for a counter-
move. The feeling among the Czechs, at any rate, is very
agitated, their legations make constant representations at
Paris, where they are fed on polite, evasive, and diplomatic
answers and where the French strive to down them within the
limits of the political code of honor. We have authentic infor-
mation to the effect that the Austrians, through Renner, have
conducted negotiations to avert the approaching menace, and
that in the nearest future they will conclude an open alliance,
defensive and offensive, with Prague and Belgrade. However,
we need not fear this alliance very much, for a change of
course is certain in Austria after the elections. That will
eliminate Austria automatically; Belgrade will be counterbal-
anced by Italy and won't stir up much trouble even if it isn't.
The local Austrian politicians keep on running to the Entente
missions, who merely feed them with words of which we are
immediately advised.
This, in a word, is our future policy; everything depends on
this. At any event we shall soon see what results will be
achieved by French intervention.
In Slovakia the lion's share of the work belongs to the land-
lords and the Magyar gentry. These gentlemen are the greatest
strength of the movement, and the best of it is that, being
Slovak citizens, it is difficult to check them politically.
As a supplement to my report I attach the plans concerning
the organization of the committee and the assignment of roles.
As regards the propaganda concerning Karolyi, the Social
Democrats, and the emigre activities I shall advise in detail in
my next report.
(Signed) Arpad Reich
Ministerial Councillor
Hungarian Ambitions and French
Support
THE report following, published in Vilagossag for Sep-
tember 22, was headed "Hungarian Legation in
Vienna, Press Department" and was addressed as "strictly
confidential" matter to the Ministry of National Minorities
and the Head of the Press Division in the Hungarian
Foreign Office.
The favorable turn in our favor which the latest negotia-
tions at Paris and Budapest took exerts a great influence on
the activities and direction of our propaganda, for on the one
hand it insures to us more elbow-room, and on the other we
may now invest it with a certain prestige of official foreign
policy.
The French official circles, under pressure of their financiers,
are today openly supporting our policy, and the official and
semi-official newspapers and other press organs of Paris have
already received instructions to boost the new orientation. Our
successes are enhanced by the fact that the Entente is about
to turn away completely from its favorite to date, Bohemia;
and just as the sympathies of the Entente have created Bo-
hemia, the loss of these sympathies will undo her. In Bohemia
this change of sentiment is well known and the change in
Benes's policies is the result of that change of sentiment.
Benes is right in apprehending the loss of the spoils carved out
for the Czechs from our body and from that of Austria, and
having lost his old protector will have to look for a new one.
Thus the idea suggests itself that he had better re-discover
the pan-Slav conception and he is now intent upon forming a
new political bloc on the basis of Slav relationships. The
settlement of the Teschen question, unfavorable for the Czechs,
has greatly decreased Benes's authority and his successes are
overshadowed by this great failure; he wants to mend this and
to this end he regards the alliance with Belgrade and Vienna
as an excellent stunt.
In his uncertainty and fear Benes, who in this represents
the Czechs in general, goes even to the length of seeking rela-
tions with his hereditary enemies the Germans, in order to
forestall a final collapse. Renner on his part is supporting
Benes's policy most effectively, naturally without the slightest
regard for what the Austrian population thinks of it and what
the answer of our policy would be. We have revealed these
things at Paris at the appropriate moment and they were met
with the greatest aversion on the part of the Paris politicians,
who for some time have looked askance upon Renner's policy.
In Paris they are encouraging us, and even regard as one of
our main tasks to supervise and counteract Renner's policy;
this is necessary to the French for reasons of national welfare.
Halmos has been in Paris for several weeks and reports that
not only his financial transactions, but also the accompanying
political negotiations are netting the best results. To be sure,
we'll have to pay for French sympathy with heavy sacrifices, but
we'll be able to compensate ourselves for these sacrifices else-
where.
It would be a good idea if the above points which embody
the most important events of our latest foreign policy were
worked into some shape by the Press Division and put at the
disposal of one of the Christian dailies, to be used as an edi-
torial which also might serve as a semi-official statement of
the Government's attitude.
After settling the economic questions, Halmos, with the aid
of the political agent assigned to him (Cs. from the Foreign
Office) and advised by Major Burjan, would start a new set
of negotiations, ostensibly by way of private conversations, but
in reality this would be the official overture to the policy which
the French would authorize us to pursue toward the Czechs.
This would make it necessary that we should be prepared to
parry certain diplomatic moves of the Czechs. (As regards this
the French absolutely refuse to commit themselves officially;
nevertheless their attitude is decidedly friendly and the counter-
move of the Czechs and their counter-propaganda at Paris will
be fruitless.)
Seventeen copies of documents from the Ministry of Slovak
Affairs have been put at our disposal by D. (the elder) and
there is a prospect that we may receive some day next week
copies of state papers from Prague also, or at least extracts
from the negotiations conducted between Benes and Renner.
You may imagine how important these are considering that
the negotiations are directed against us — that is to say, at the
prevention of the policy of which the Czechs are so afraid,
but which they are unable to prevent, since their calculations
. have been crossed at Paris in every respect. Now is the time
for us to press the button of propaganda, so that our suc-
cesses here may support in all respect our successes in the
diplomatic field.
The monarchist movement is making satisfactory progress.
The local monarchist committee issued to them lately 1,500,000
francs from the Swiss fund; moreover the Swiss courier, ap-
pointed by Chum in his time, is on his way to obtain new funds
from there. As far as expenses are concerned, the propaganda
in Bohemia can hardly be compared to the one here. It would
be a good thing if Windischgratz would admonish them to prac-
tice economy and to do more work. Windischgratz wanted to
concentrate the other propaganda, too, in his hands, but this
was prevented in time by the minister, and rightly, too, because
that would merely have spoiled matters.
The Pressburg sub-committee asks us to detail a few clever
journaliats to them in view of the fact that the local men are
not equal to such tremendous tasks. I think this would be very
574
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2889
sensible, the more so since we have a few excellent men whom
we could very conveniently use in just such a way. The ex-
penditure might be defrayed jointly; it would at any rate not
be difficult to get an appropriation. I should think either we
would have to authorize the outlay, or the Pressburg sub-
committee might assume it, or else the men could receive their
salaries directly from Budapest. I have recommended Mandl
[a prominent Vienna journalist] but he declines, and in a sense
I think it is for the better as we need him right here for he is
a journalist with good connections among the leading papers
here and is in a position to place inspired articles in our favor.
I do not wish to interfere further in this matter; it would be
better to settle it from Budapest.
The other day Santaffy called on me; he had spoken at
Prague with several men in the Foreign Office, but it seems he
did not hit the right ones. For that matter, I have received
unfavorable information regarding this man. I suggest that
he be eliminated altogether or at least not assigned to any
important task. We have plenty of dependable men; why play
with uncertainties? But as a spy he may have his uses. Con-
cerning the army captain from Marienbad, I have had con-
versations and I am sure the thing can be done. Information
as to his person is fully satisfactory. Moreover, he is no Czech,
but a Saxon from Transylvania.
The other day I urged that 150,000 sokols [Czech kronen]
be advanced against the appropriated expenditure. The matter
is urgent, please get action at once. It would be best to transmit
the money for the propaganda division in foreign exchange,
French francs for instance, so as to forego losses.
It seems that the employment of Captain Belumat is a failure
— or perhaps he does not take things seriously. I am inclined
to think this to be the case as he never made the impression
of an energetic person on me. . . . The Prague police
has a few members who could be drawn into the monarchist
movement, but in my opinion this is not yet timely. We might
take this up in the end, for from this source trouble may easily
arise.
I am about to exhaust my discretionary fund (concerning
propaganda) considering that the disposition of the Kassa as-
signments cost an awful lot to begin with. Moreover, the
member of the Czech National Assembly whose coming was
announced over the telephone actually did call. He intimated
in a very subtle yet unmistakable manner that he was hard up
financially. As we can expect a good deal from him I could not
refuse assistance. Please transmit to me the O. K. for this
with a view on the accounting.
I have compiled the list of the newspapers we intend to sup-
port on the occupied territories, together with the sums allotted,
but as the money ^s at the moment not available here, I ask
you to disburse it as soon as possible. I included in the list
only those papers which can actually earn the assistance and
deliver the goods, in the second place those which are in a very
bad hole and whose cessation would hurt our interest. Of
course it is very hard to discriminate in this matter as all pub-
lishers are intent on proving that they are in stressed circum-
stances and that the survival of their respective papers is all-
important for the irredentist propaganda. Nevertheless I think
I have hit the right clew. The expenditures in this field will
amount to about 400,000 Czech kronen, or 2,000,000 kronen in
our money. I could get the Czech exchange at a favorable
rate by way of the Ergon [a Hungarian trading corporation in
Vienna which last summer was involved in smuggling arms to
Hungary].
I have taken steps in regard to the delivery of arms, but
this matter is not pressing. Polivka says they will be loaded
on ships in the port at Pressburg; this he can vouch for as he
has good connections with the workers there and knows the
ways. Nevertheless, I should recommend that this matter be
reconsidered and the weapons left where they are, or else that
they be transported in small shipments to Sarvar, Bartfa,
Kassa, and Locse. Here we still need everything; the other
places, more or less, are provided with what they most need.
On my return from Budapest I shall prepare a report on the
subsidies to newspapers. For the present I want to discuss this
in the Foreign Office.
Our man in the Prague Foreign Office is sick. That's why
I could not get a report from him for two weeks. His Excel-
lency made inquiries yesterday and I reported to him at length.
He had with him the courier and Csapek whose narrative he
heard with interest. We should give a separate assignment to
Csapek.
(Signed) Arpad Reich
Vienna, August 22, 1920 Ministerial Councillor
Agents of Propaganda in Austria
A FURTHER report on the activities of the Hungarian
Legation was published in the Vienna Arbeiter
Zeitung of September 22. It is addressed to the Hon. Tiber
Eckhardt, Head of the Press Division, Foreign Office,
Budapest.
The printing of leaflets for the Vereinigung Tausender gleich-
gesinnter Deutschosterreicher [Union of Thousands of Like-
Minded German-Austrians] has been completed and measures
for mailing and distributing same are taken. I shall send by
courier a certain number of these leaflets to the proper address
at Budapest.
In my opinion we ought to stick to this nomenclature (Ver-
einigung Tausender gleichgesinnter Deutschosterreicher) because
it is rather general, has no pronounced political flavor, and for
the time being is excellent as a camouflage. This name suits
the local Christian Socialist Party, too, and this is the main
thing, after all, for any change of name would concern it in the
first place and would have to suit its purposes. As you -know
the Vienna Social Democratic papers, the Arbeiter Zeitung in
the first place, have launched vehement attacks against the
Christian Socialist Party, accusing the leaders of having re-
ceived money from us for electioneering purposes and charging,
also, that in case of a victory in the elections the party would
assume a friendly attitude toward us in the matter of Western
Hungary [allotted by the peace treaty to German-Austria].
These speeches and articles have been vigorously answered not
only by the Reichspost, but also by Deputy Kunschak. The
suspicion is dispelled and it seems that the attacks will not be
repeated for the time being. The above reasons explain why
the party was averse to having the offensive launched under
its own name, for in that case the Social Democratic papers
would have attacked it sharply and initiated a campaign of
lies which might have alienated from it, in many respects,
the sympathy of the workers which is about to incline to-
ward it.
I believe the publication and distribution of the leaflets
and the whole campaign in general were extremely timely
and were sprung at the right moment. The Volksturm, in
accordance with the instructions received, will similarly start
a powerful offensive. The Eiserne Besen and the Staatswehr
will do the same. Of course, we cannot expect much from
the Staatswehr, as it pursues an expressly military policy,
and as no propaganda is needed to convert its readers (mem-
bers of the former officers' corps and the legitimists) to
our cause.
Just now the chairman of the Antisemitenbund and the edi-
tors of the Eiserne Besen have put at my disposal all the papers,
that is to say, a full list of those Austrian papers whose moral
and, if necessary, financial support would be important and
desirable in the present fateful hour. I shall transmit this
list and some pertinent suggestions.
In view of the terrible dearth of paper and the high wages,
the printing and financing of these leaflets and of the coming
issues will cost colossal sums. As my discretionary fund has
Nov. 17, 1920]
The Nation
575
been raised in accordance with our last discussion at Buda-
pest, I have assumed this expenditure. But I have figured
wrongly, inasmuch as I did not estimate the expenses at such
a tremendous sum. In view of this and also because these
accounts are of a wholly confidential nature, further, because
these items must be accounted for in some acceptable form or
other, I am afraid that these tremendous items will be too con-
spicuous in my accounting and will not be in keeping with the
old province and with the previous expenditure of the Press
Bureau head.
I should deem it convenient if I had less to do with the
finances of this propaganda so as to be able to devote myself
in a larger measure than heretofore to intellectual leadership.
For this reason I make the following suggestion: the whole
affair should be assigned to the political department, so that
in this way the financing of the propaganda — in other words,
not only the personal expenditure but the entire propaganda
expenditure, including printing expenses — may be taken over
by the Minister, as his slush fund will bear such tremendous
expenses more easily and it will be easier for him to account for
such expenses of a political nature.
As to the men of the Antisemitenbund, our contact with them
is restored and we are already tackling the task of their or-
ganization.- The membership is large enough, only it is a pity
their leaders, apart from a few energetic men, are not worth
a damn. But the work of organization is well under way and
justifies the best expectations. Several members of the Awaken-
ing Magyars, men of excellent organizing ability, are now
staying in Vienna. They maintain a constant connection with
them (the Antisemitenbund) and they will reorganize the whole
thing on the Budapest pattern. In such a manner we shall
achieve this end: that the solidarity of the Jews will be counter-
acted by our compact organization and that this society, sup-
ported by our parallel work, will break the local Red wave
completely.
In addition to this the Awakening Magyars have established
contact with the local Frontkampfervereinigung (Union of
Fighters at the Front), but, to tell the truth, I do not expect
much from this direction, for there is too much discord in the
society; the officers would hardly like to join it. Colonel Wolff
conducts propaganda against them. Nevertheless I think it
advisable to cherish this connection. Perhaps they don't need
financial assistance; even if they cannot accomplish much, they
may accomplish something, and in my modest view we cannot
afford today to refuse even the slightest support.
I have seen to it that the leaflets should reach, through our
confidential agents, into the factories, into the hands of the
working people. I have negotiated, furthermore, to the end
of having these leaflets published in the Christian Socialist
newspapers as advertisements. Needless to say, the editors
have granted my request with the greatest pleasure. As to
the business side of the matter, we shall reach some agreement
or other. I shall try to fix a moderate price, but I do not want
to strain this overmuch. The fact is, this is our only chance
to support the poorer papers. Thus, at least, nobody will be
able to say that Horthy has bought the local newspapers — as
the Jewish papers assert — and yet the financial support will be
available.
My accounts for the expenses and outlay and my confidential
financial statement I shall send at the earliest opportunity; I
shall also transmit a confidential report of all these matters.
In view of the fact that these expenditures run into the hundred
thousands I think it necessary that somebody higher up should
assume them.
(Signed) Reich
Press Chief, Ministerial Councillor
Vienna, August 3, 1920
One copy to Budapest
One copy to the Minister
Strictly confidential
Return original to me
Hungarian Propaganda in America
ANOTHER report, of which only the first part is here
reproduced, introduces the United States as a field for
anti-Czech propaganda. It is addressed to Dr. Eckhardt at
the Hungarian Foreign Office from the Press Division of the
Hungarian Legation at Vienna.
1. I have the honor respectfully to advise you that I have
succeeded today in introducing to Dr. Bela Szekely, editor of
the Amerikai Magyar Nepszava, Dr. Charles Bulisza, one of the
local Slovak leaders, and on this basis an agreement was reached
to start propaganda on a larger scale among the American
Slovaks against the Czechs. In the first place the Amerikai
Magyar Nepszava and the big Slovak daily over there will
publish interviews in which Dr. Charles Bulisza and other local
leaders will express themselves to enlighten the misguided por-
tion of American Slovaks as to the oppressive policy of the
Czechs.
Arrangements have been made to the effect that the Ameri-
can Slovaks should organize demonstrations before the Foreign
Affairs Committee of the Senate at Washington, by means of
delegations and memoranda, protesting against Czech rule and
the epithet "Czecho-Slovak"; further they will demand, above all,
a plebiscite in the territories occupied by the Czechs. Arrange-
ments have been made to feature constantly in the biggest
American newspapers the anti-Czech attitude of the Slovaks. . . .
Very respectfully yours,
Charles Lendvay.
The French-Hungarian Treaties
THE following summary of three treaties, reported to
have been concluded by representatives of the French
and Magyar Governments, was published in Az Ember, the
weekly organ of the Hungarian Social Democratic refugees
in Vienna.
1. The Railway Treaty
This document confirms the purchase of the Hungarian state
railways — the most important economic asset left in possession
of the Magyar Government after the Treaty of Trianon — by a
group of French financiers. The agreement was signed on
July 19 at the royal hunting lodge at Godollo, near Budapest,
by the Hungarian Minister of Finance, Baron Koranyi, and the
plenipotentiary of the French purchasing syndicate, Count de
Saint-Sauveur.
Nominally the treaty provides not for the sale, but for the
lease of the state railways. Section I provides that the Hun-
garian Government assume the obligation to have the treaty
accepted and ratified without any change whatever. Neither
the treaty nor any of its provisions must be published within
five years.
Section II. The treaty is valid for a period of fifty years,
but it may be cancelled by either contracting party on a notice
of two years.
Section III. The French syndicate acquired, for the duration
of the treaty, a complete title deed, registered in the Hungarian
State Office of Abstracts, for all factories, plants, and shops and
any other property, movable or immovable, of the Hungarian
state railways. Attached a complete inventory dated May 4,
1920.
Section IV. The Hungarian Government renounces, for the
duration of the treaty, all sovereign rights in relation to the
state railways.
Section V. The Hungarian Government assumes the obliga-
tion to settle all administrative details within three months from
signature.
Section VI. The Hungarian Government shall raise, not later
576
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2889
than January 1, 1921, all railway passenger, and freight rates
as follows: passenger rates fivefold, freight rates eightfold.
Section VII. The Hungarian Government shall guarantee to
the French syndicate all rights enjoyed by the old board of
directors of the railways and pending ratification obliges itself
to submit all measures related to the railways to the syndicate
through the French charge d'affaires.
Sections VTII-IX. The Hungarian Government is bound to
consult the diplomatic representative of the French Republic
as to every measure that can be construed to bear on any pro-
vision of this agreement, including measures of purely domestic
policy. The suggestions of the diplomatic representative must
be considered and answered within three days.
Section X. The Hungarian Government is bound to ratify
without change this treaty, with every clause and implication,
not later than January 1, 1921. It is bound to see that the treaty
is upheld by all successive governments.
On its side the French syndicate agrees to these terms.
1. It cedes 30 per cent of its stock to the Hungarian treasury.
2. It guarantees the yearly net receipts at 400,000,000 francs,
regardless of exchange fluctuations.
3. It is bound to pay over to the Hungarian treasury 20 per
cent of these net earnings, by January 31 of every year.
4. The syndicate is bound to respect, as far as possible, the
advice of the Hungarian Ministers of War and of Commerce.
5. All employees of the railways will retain their positions.
6. Employees' salaries must be in proportion to those of other
public employees.
7. This clause deals — about 200 printed pages — with the obli-
gations of the French syndicate to improve the inventory. Most
important of all, the syndicate is to raise, within ten years, the
rolling stock to its level of August 1, 1914.
8. This clause provides for the composition of the board of
directors. The Hungarian Minister of Commerce is vice-president.
The treaty is signed on the Hungarian side by Regent Horthy,
Finance Minister Koranyi, and Premier Teleki; on the French
side by Saint- Sauveur, Fouche, and Aulier. Attached vouchers
are dated Neuilly, July 21, and signed Millerand and Cambon.
2. The Political Agreement
This document was signed on July 23, 1920. It provides that
inasmuch as the Hungarian National Assembly would refuse to
ratify the railroad treaty the Hungarian Government is bound
to force through a law empowering the Regent to dissolve the
Assembly and to ratify the railroad treaty by decree.
The Hungarian Government is authorized to continue univer-
sal military service in force. It is entitled to supplement its
armed establishment by calling to the colors the classes of 1890-
1900, beginning August 1, 1920. The French Government re-
serves the right to pass upon the numerical strength of the
Hungarian army.
The French Government undertakes the rectification through
the League of Nations of the frontier settlement, as laid down
by the Treaty of Trianon.
The document is signed by Horthy, Teleki, and Kania for
Hungary; by Fouche and Derain-Roul for France.
3. The Military Convention
Signed July 27.
Hungary offers an army of 150,000 to assist against Soviet
Russia. The army is to be under French command.
An exchange of notes is added to this convention, according
to which Hungary is authorized to occupy the territories within
its former boundaries in case a soviet government is established
in any of the border states. Further measures are to be
specified by the French War Ministry. If German-Austria joins
Germany, Hungary is authorized to occupy frontier cities —
including, of course, Vienna. If Hungary is attacked France -
will render active help.
BAiKofTHE HARPER NAEE-103 YEARS of GOOD BOOKS
Baruch's Book
On The Peace
THE MAKING OF THE
REPARATION AND ECONOMIC
SECTIONS OF THE TREATY
By Bernard M. Baruch
Economic Adviser to the American Peace Commis-
sion, Member of the Supreme Economic
Council, etc.
The New York Times says: "It is the first scientific
and realistic account of the procedure by which the
reparation and economic clauses of the Treaty were
adopted. . . . Mr. Baruch is a plain man telling
a plain story, but he has the judgment and sense of
proportion necessary to the historian."
TheWmll Street Journal says: "No one is in better
position than Mr. Baruch to make clear the facts.
. . . There is nothing partisan or political in this
book. . . ."
WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD.
$3.00
Est. 1817
HARPER & BROTHERS
New York
FOR THE BUSY EXECUTIVE
BOOKS THAT TELL HOW, WHEN, AND WHERE
Sent on ten days' approval, ask for them on your letterhead
EMPLOYEES' MAGAZINES
By Peter F. O'Shea, Organizer and consulting specialist on house
organs.
Employees' house organs properly conducted can aid the manage-
ment by promoting cooperation, by education, by improving morale,
and in other ways. Mr. O'Shea tells you the kind of articles that can
be used most profitably and how to get them from the employees
themselves, also practical hints about the editorial staff, scheduling of
work, etc. Practical from cover to cover. $1.80 postpaid.
STANDARD PRACTICE IN PERSONNEL WORK
By Eugene J. Benge, of the Department of Industrial Relations,
Atla7itic Refining Company; formerly Fellow in Industrial Re-
search, Carnegie Institute of Technology.
Mr. Benge has the advantage of practical experience in industrial
employment and Army Personnel Work, plus the results of intensive
study and research of personnel problems — a rare combination. He
presents methods of selection, training, and retention that have proved
successful in practice. About 300 pages and workable suggestions.
$3.00 postpaid.
2400 BUSINESS BOOKS AND
GUIDE TO BUSINESS LITERATURE
An analytical list of books, directories, periodicals, and other worth-
while printed matter on every phase of business, in simple alphabetic
arrangement. Tells you where to find the very book or perhaps only
the chapter of a book that deals with the problem in hand. 456 pages.
$5.00 postpaid.
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS SERIES
3 Volumes by Daniel Bloomfieid, associate editor "Indus-
trial Relations," partner of Bloomfieid & Bloomfieid, Bos-
ton, consultants in Employment Management and Industrial
Relations.
EMPLOYMENT MANAGEMENT )
LABOR PROBLEMS }■ *2A0 each
MODERN INDUSTRIAL MOVEMENTS J postpaid
In these three compact volumes you find the most important pro-
nouncements by recognized authorities, on such questions as : Labor
maintenance : Supply of Labor ; Cost of Labor ; Turnover ; Causes of
friction and unrest ; Labor disputes and adjustments ; Limitation of
output ; Cooperative movements ; arranged in logical sequence for the
busy executive who wants to get at the root of the matter quickly.
Any and all of these books will be sent on ten days' approval
if asked for on your letterhead
THE H. W. WILSON COMPANY
950 University Avenue New York City
The Nation
FOUNDED 1865
Vol. CXI
NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 24, 1920
No. 2890
Contents
EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 577
EDITORIALS :
Should the Democratic Party Die ? 580
Free Trade and Peace 581
War, Waste, and Business 582
The Strolling Player 582
Rome Rolls Around Again 583
OUR DEBT OF HONOR. By Harold A. Littledale 584
BIGOTRY IN THE SOUTH. By Charles P. Sweeney 585
THE RUSSO-POLISH PEACE. By Henry G. Alsberg 587
BIRTH CONTROL AND THE WORLD CRISIS. By S. A. Knopf, M.D. 589
A WESTERN REVERIE. By Natalie Curtis 591
IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 593
CORRESPONDENCE 593
MR. FLOOD'S PARTY. By Edwin Arlington Robinson 594
BOOKS:
The Latest Horrors of War. By Heber Blankenhorn 594
Morale as Morality. By Preserved Smith 595
Real Terror and False 596
Books in Brief 597
DRAMA :
Entertainments. By Ludwig Lewisohn 598
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION:
The South African Native Affairs Bill 599
Native Labor in East Africa , 600
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor
Associate Editors
LEWIS S. GANNETT FREDA KIRCHWEY
ARTHUR WARNER LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ERNEST H. GRUENING CARL VAN DOREN
Managing Editor Literary Editor
Subscription Rates — Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and
Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00.
THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation,
New York. Chicago Office: 1170 People's Gas Building. British Agents for
Subscriptions and Advertising: Swarthmore Press Ltd., 72 Oxford St., London.
IT was rather a rollicking speech that Mr. Lloyd George
made at the Lord Mayor of London's banquet the other
day. Even its solemner periods were pronounced in a tone
of persistent cheer that could not be kept out of the news-
paper reports. The Prime Minister was obviously impressed
with the fact that Mr. Lloyd George was securely fixed
in his heaven and all was right with the world — except, Mr.
Lloyd George was forced to admit, for a general orgy of
hate that seemed to pervade the international atmosphere,
and too many guns on too many Germans, and the existence
of that "ludicrous," "impossible," "crazy" creed of bol-
shevism, and war — he called it war — in Ireland, and labor
troubles in England. These things are as clouds on the
vast horizon that Mr. Lloyd George cheerfully surveys from
his celestial position. And while he shakes a finger at
the Germans, and a gun at the Irish, and holds dignified
conversations with persons of the bolshevist persuasion
who, he realizes, are hardly nice, he keeps his vision un-
troubled and his soul sweet by contemplating the spectacle
of "the greatest empire in the world . . . that empire
in the height of its power . . . that empire in the
greatest day of its glory." No wonder there were "loud
and prolonged cheers" as Mr. Lloyd George sat down.
FORTY-ONE nations have sent their representatives to
Geneva to attend the opening session of the Assembly
of the League of Nations. It is an imposing gathering.
The Hague conferences never brought together so many
nations. But there are two profound differences between
this assemblage and the meetings at The Hague. Two great
nations, Germany and Soviet Russia, are ostracized, un-
invited to the meeting ; and the little nations enter this con-
ference not with equal rights but as lesser partners in aii
enterprise bound to the chariot-wheel of the Entente vic-
tors. It is this stringent domination of the so-called great
Powers which infects the very basis of the League; this,
the difficulty of amendment of the covenant, and the unani-
mity required for important decisions which render the
Council of the League as helpless as the old Polish diet in
which any one member could veto the decisions of all the
others. Article Ten and the six-to-one provisions are harm-
less compared to this essential fault; and even though the
League, to secure the adherence of the United States, should
modify those provisions, the chronic disease would not be
reached. Meanwhile the League, born as a splendid dream
of international peace, is settling down to a task of inter-
national clerking which it can do well and which it is well
that some such organization should do. But success at
settling the Aland Islands question or at regulating cable
control, should deceive no one into believing that this is the
league to end war for a vision of which men died.
AND so, now after all the tumult and all the shouting have
died, and the captains and kings, premiers and presi-
dents have departed, Italy quietly falls heir to Zara, nearly
all of Istria, the islands in the Gulf of Quarnero, a strip of
land connecting Fiume with Italian territory, a strategic
frontier along the north, and a small slice of Dalmatia.
D'Annunzio wins his fight — for Fiume will be an "inde-
pendent state" with boundaries carefully drawn to insure
its Italian character and provision made for its possible
future annexation to Italy. From the point of view oi
"self-determination" and "the rights of small nations" the
settlement is indefensible ; by its terms millions of Slavs will
fall under Italian rule. From the point of view of peact
it is probably the best settlement that could have been se-
cured; and for better or worse the people of the world are
now in a state of mind to welcome peace even at the ex-
pense of pure justice. Whether lasting peace can resuh
from the present arrangements is doubtful. The best that
can be said is that the Jugoslav delegates accepted them witt
a good grace, while the Italians displayed skilful diplomacy
in emphasizing not their triumph but their "generous sacr>-
fices" and in proposing "minimum terms" which were later
modified. Of course, Italy's sacrifices consist only in modi-
fications of the terms of the Treaty of London which stili
leave Italy great areas of alien territory; while the "mini-
mum terms" proposed during the present conferences at
Santa Margherita would have provided the Jugoslav state
with an enormous "Slavia Irredenta."
VENIZELOS'S amazing defeat in the Greek elections-
amazing because of his complete control of the politi-
cal machinery, the strict censorship he maintained, and the
persecution of his opponents as seditious traitors — closes s
stirring chapter in Greek history, and, following close on
the heels of the Wrangel debacle, may mean a turning-
point in Near Eastern politics. It is too early to give
adequate judgment on Venizelos: a fervid Greek patriot.
578
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2890
J
\
imperialist, expansionist, dictatorial, often identifying his
country with himself and his own ideas, he has achieved an
enormous extension of Greek frontiers at the expense of
wars abroad and civil strife at home. Many observers called
him the ablest statesman at the Paris Peace Conference.
He alone among the spokesmen of the lesser Powers was
feared by France and England. If his defeat does indeed
mean the return of King Constantine — we hope not — it is a
terrific blow to both French and British prestige in the
East, for it was Senator Jonnart of France who, with the
aid of French marines, engineered the final coup which
deposed Constantine and set up Venizelos as virtual dictator
of Greece in 1917, while England profited by his campaigns
in Asiatic Turkey. If it means abandonment of the footless
war in Asia Minor and consolidation of the truly Greek
territories which have been returned to their motherland,
if it leads to a policy of reconciliation with Greece's north-
ern neighbors, Bulgaria and Albania, the election day will
be a red letter day in Balkan and Near Eastern history.
NOW that the sovereign state of South Russia with its
leader, Baron Wrangel, has retired in rather bad order
to the deck of the French warship Waldeck-Rousseau, it is
time to analyze this last ill-fated adventure of French im-
perialism. The French continental policy received a serious
blow when the Russian-Polish peace was signed at Riga and
the Russian army was set free to turn on Wrangel. But
Poland and France were publicly so busy gloating over the
terms of the treaty, that attention was distracted from
the almost certain fate of the last White hope. It takes the
final success of bolshevik arms to prove how dead the hopes
of France must be. With Wrangel gone she will have
to seek far for armies to fight her insane battles in the
East. Rumania will certainly look askance at the job; even
Hungary may think twice. Poland, to be sure, is com-
placently in possession of her leagues of alien territory, but
even the childish imagination of the Polish patriot class
can hardly lead it to think that she can keep them. Russia is
wholly victorious on the field; her diplomatic defeat at Riga
was turned to immediate account. Poland remains to be
reckoned with, but the blow to France involved in the de-
feat of Wrangel means that Poland can no longer count on a
bloc of anti-Bolshevik states marshaled under French pres-
tige to support its impossible ambitions. The delegates of
the Soviet Government at Riga ought to use their recent
victory to force a bloodless revision of the terms of that
"Punic peace" with Poland which hands over millions of
Russian peasants to a handful of Polish landlords, and
attempts, as the London Nation has pointed out, to "re-
build the eighteenth century on the ruins of the nineteenth."
SUDRE DARTIGUENAVE, President of the Republic of
Haiti, tells the American correspondents in Haiti that
the Haiti-American treaty "has been violated and not car-
ried out, because Haiti has been under the oppression of the
American Minister and his financial adviser." M. Darti-
guenave took office supported by the guns of American
marines, and has always been regarded as the most pro-
American of Haitians. "Responsible American business
men long resident in Haiti," the Chicago Tribune tells us,
agree that President Dartiguenave has been "constantly
hampered by lack of cooperation and by high-handed meas-
ures. The island has been governed by a clique of which
Minister Bailly-Blanchard is one." Between October, 1919,
and October, 1920, United States Marines killed, on an
average, three Haitians a day, according to the testimony
of Major Turner, brigade adjutant, before the naval board
of inquiry, and prior to October, 1919, there are no records
sufficiently trustworthy to give any adequate estimate of
the number killed. Yet within the same week in which
these damning facts appear, Secretary Colby makes public
the report of his special investigator, Admiral Knapp, who
found the Haitians contented and "grateful." The facts
which, when The Nation first exposed them, were termed
"sensational lies," are being confirmed in sober court testi-
mony almost every day. President Dartiguenave, dissatis-
fied with the naval board of inquiry, has asked for a full
Congressional inquiry; there can no longer be any question
that it is needed.
THE Irish sympathizers in this country who tear down
and burn British flags and manhandle supposed British
subjects, do not serve the cause for which Terence Mac-
Swiney died. They are hoodlums, and their case is one for
the police. But the policemen are often conveniently absent
or looking the other way. If these episodes recur it should
be the earnest endeavor of all true friends of Ireland to hold
their misrepresentatives in check; it is the duty of local
authorities to grasp the grave issues involved and to lend
every effort to protect possible innocent victims and to
apprehend the guilty ; and it is the part of the British public
to understand clearly that these acts of wanton violence have
the unqualified condemnation of all right-thinking Ameri-
cans. As a manifestation, however, of deeper currents of-
feeling, these recent outbursts are not without ominous
significance. The dragon's teeth of violence so long sown
in Ireland are growing to strange crops. Unless some speedy
adjustment of the Irish question is reached and a return to
peace effected, Anglo-American relations will be subjected
to increasingly severe strain. It is precisely with the hope
of preventing such development, and the extension of what
Lloyd George has just termed "war," that The Nation's
Committee of One Hundred was formed.
THE first skirmish over the constitutionality of the rent
laws enacted by the recent special session of the New
York Legislature has been won by the tenant, Justice Ed-
ward R. Finch of the State Supreme Court having upheld
the legislation as a legitimate exercise of the police power in
the existing emergency. We have already commented on
these laws, which substitute the State for the landlord as
the rent-fixing power in the case of apartments, leaving it
to the courts to determine the rental in disputed cases. An
appeal will be taken, of course, from Justice Finch's de-
cision but, apart from the question involved, it is noteworthy
for its recognition that the Legislature is the proper body
to determine the facts at issue. In overruling argument
that the emergency does not justify the legislation enacted,
Justice Finch says, "the court will not substitute his judg-
ment for that of the Legislature." This is good sense and
sound law, especially to be commended at a time when our
courts are under just criticism for their tendency to usurp
legislative and executive functions.
A MAN named Ballin has been indicted in New York City
for violating the postal regulations by writing scare
letters warning of imaginary bomb plots. The incident adds
to the widespread suspicion that many of the so-called plots
have been "framed." The Department of Justice has given
wide publicity to violent anonymous circulars signed "Amcr-
Nov. 24, 1920]
The Nation
579
ican Anarchist Fighters" or with other fire-eating names,
suggesting that radical groups were plotting the destruction
of society. But violence in action has not been proved
against any of the radical groups which Mr. Palmer's agents
have been persecuting. The Communists who now stand con-
victed have been found guilty only of writing manifestos
which can be interpreted as mild or violent, as judge and
jury may see fit, but which were public expressions of opin-
ion, and which have never been connected with the spec-
tacular "bomb plots." The Department of Justice has yet to
show any connection between bomb outrages and the radical
groups. The sensational stories in the New York Evening
World have fallen flat; they have produced not a scintilla
of real evidence, but only a vague chain of circumstances to
suggest a possible motive in the row among the house-
wreckers' unions. Many radicals are firmly convinced that
the outrages have been deliberate "frame-ups" intended to
incite the public against the Reds. This is difficult to be-
lieve ; but later evidence at least casts grave doubt upon the
advertised assumption that the Wall Street explosion was
due to a bomb. The Government expert who analyzed the
street sweepings reported that the explosion was due to
blasting gelatine.
CHILDREN throughout Central and Southeastern Eu-
rope have learned a new and beautiful, but pitifully
half-true meaning for the word America as a result of the
Hoover child-feeding work which alone has kept thousands
of them alive this past year. Now Herbert Hoover writes
that money is in hand to carry on only until January, and
that "three and a half million children call to the heart and
resources of America for these daily supplies, not available
in their own countries, that are vital to their survival and
to the rebuilding of their physical well-being. . . . Twen-
ty-three million dollars must be raised without delay." The
Literary Digest, with an immense circulation, sets itself the
task of raising the fund. It will be difficult, with hard times
imminent, to raise so large a sum; it will be tragic if it is
not raised. Readers of The Nation do not need to be told
of the misery in Central Europe ; we hope they will be gen-
erous in response to the appeal. Checks should be sent to
The Literary Digest Child-Feeding Fund, 354-360 Fourth
Avenue, New York. We only wish that the children of
Soviet Russia were not excluded.
THE Red Cross is appealing for more money. But the
American Red Cross is no longer the generous open-
hearted organization of pre-war days which asked only
where help was most needed, and gave in proportion to the
need. If it be "the greatest mother of them all" in size,
it is a queer kind of mother: a cold, calculating mother,
who inquires, not whether her children be hungry and ragged,
but what are their politics. The Red Cross has become
a propaganda tool of the State Department. It has given
no aid in Ireland; it says it is waiting to be asked. By
whom? By Mr. Lloyd George, forsooth? Its publicity
advertises no help to Haiti or to India. Newspaper reports
indicate that it has concentrated its attention upon the foes
of Soviet Russia. We read of warehouses groaning with
food held in the Baltic provinces to be rushed into Russia —
not when or where starving people need it, but when and
where the Soviet Government is overthrown. It is revealed
that Red Cross supplies were one of Wrangel's best forms
of propaganda, and one of the last acts of that adventurous
baron prior to his hasty flight to a French battleship was
to award to high officials of the American Red Cross deco-
rations which must have something of the same value as an
officer's commission in the Swiss navy. The Red Cross
threw away in the war its fine old motto, "Neutrality —
Humanity," and a different spirit now masquerades under
the name which has such glorious traditions. Money given
to it today is, among other things, money given for a pe-
culiarly mean form of political propaganda — propaganda
by starvation.
DUDLEY FIELD MALONE, Collector of the Port of
New York when the Lusitania started on her final
voyage, revealed, in the course of his campaign as Farmer-
Labor candidate for Governor of New York State, the fact
that the Lusitania carried large quantities of ammunition
consigned to the British Government, including 4,200 cases
of Springfield cartridges containing some eleven tons of
black powder. The revelation is not so important in its
bearing upon the Lusitania case — for it does not lessen the
cruelty of the sinking nor legally alter the status of the
outrage — as in its bearing upon the methods of the Wilson
Administration. The Wilson Administration refused to
permit publication of the fact. One of the principal charges
upon which the attempt to expel Robert M. La Follette from
the Senate was based was that he had falsely declared that
the Lusitania carried ammunition; the State Department
refused to grant the Senator access to the official records to
verify his statement; and the persecution of the Senator
was dropped only when Mr. Malone offered to testify in his
behalf. Upon such sands of hypocrisy was the structure of
war-time "Americanism" built. Gradually the truth is
leaking out and honest foundations are being laid for a truer
patriotism; but there is more to come.
AT the health meeting of the annual convention of the
General Federation of Women's Clubs last June the
five hundred delegates unanimously passed a resolution de-
manding "the speedy removal of all barriers due to legal
restrictions, tradition, prejudice or ignorance, which now
prevent parents from access to such scientific knowledge on
this subject [voluntary parenthood] as is possessed by the
medical profession." The New York State Federation last
month voiced the same demand. Let those who occasionally
despair of progress lift up their hearts. The action of these
representative women, all voters now, signifies the revolt
of intelligence and enlightened citizenship against utterly
senseless and archaic taboo, which years ago inscribed into
our federal and State anti-obscenity laws the scientific facts
about one of the subjects most vital to the human race.
An amendment to the existing law, which will legalize the
dissemination of information now obtainable by practically
all women of means, will come before Congress at its next
session. It is likely to pass — there is no valid argument
against it — for it will have the backing of the Senate Com-
mittee on Public Health, seven of whose eleven members,
including the chairman, Senator Joseph I. France, himself
a physician, are known to be favorable. Elsewhere in this
issue a distinguished scientist discusses a few of the many
phases of birth regulation, the full realization of which
will go further toward promoting human happiness — by
eliminating needless death, disease, poverty, mental anguish,
and physical pain — than any other single reform readily
achievable by present-day society.
580
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2890
Should the Democratic Party Die?
IT was a Wilsonian Senator from the South, not even a
mild reservationist, who prophesied last spring that after
the election there would "not be enough left of the Demo-
cratic Party to make a funeral worth while." It was his
belief that an amalgamation with the conservative Repub-
lican forces would be all that would be left to the party
which Mr. Wilson's policies had even then condemned to
overwhelming defeat. Today post mortems without number
are on, as well as efforts to galvanize the remains into life.
The job of reviving the Democracy is being offered to vari-
ous statesmen and also to some successful financiers of Wall
Street experience in reorganizing defunct corporations. But
there are many who actually believe with the Southern Sen-
ator that hope for a resurrection does not exist.
We must confess that glad as we should be to lay flowers
on the Democracy's bier there are still too many signs of
life to make us feel sure that it is time to send for the priest.
Parties do not die so easily. Theodore Roosevelt was sure
that the Republican Party was as dead as a door-nail after
it "stole" the nomination from him in 1912. He said in so
many words that the party which he had led was so rotten
as to be beyond the last rites, so dead as to be beyond con-
cern. Its managers he declared to be "second-story bur-
glars," and equal to "porch-climbers" in their lack of mo-
rality. Mr. Taf t was "a receiver of stolen goods" ; anybody
who voted for him was "on a level with a receiver of stolen
goods"; "he is a dishonest man and unfit to associate with
honest men." The election of 1912 settled the matter in Mr.
Roosevelt's mind. The Republican Party was beyond hope
done for; in 1916 the Progressive Party would walk off with
the prize. But 1916 saw the Progressives tricked and be-
trayed by Mr. Roosevelt himself, as it saw the election of
Mr. Wilson on the peace issue. More than that, the year
1920 has witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of every
member of the Colonel's immediate family working hard for
the same Republican Party which he had declared to be
"carrion," fit only for vultures — working for it although it
was still engineered by the very same "second-story men,"
"burglars," "crookod bosses," and "rotten politicians" whom
Colonel Roosevelt denounced so vehemently. It takes more
than words or wishes to kill a political party.
So we are not ready to assert that the Democracy is
dead, much as we should like to record its demise. Grave
its plight is, for it is not only defeated, but morally bank-
rupt, and not for a long while can it possibly live down
the taint of its Burlesons and its Palmers and the rest.
It is at this hour practically without leaders who have the
confidence of the nation, and it is without first-rate leader-
ship of any kind ; for this the Wilsonian policy of refusing
to tolerate men of independent judgment and outspoken
faith in the neighborhood of the White House is largely
responsible. But miracles do happen in politics and new
issues and new men spring up suddenly. The enormous and
unwieldly Republican majorities in House and Senate carry
within them by their very numbers the seeds of disaffection.
So overwhelming a party representation breeds dissension
and gives rise to splits within the party between conserva-
tives and liberals precisely as was the case after the great
Republican victory in 1908. If, for instance, a foreign issue
should arise, like the question of Irish independence, and
should be exploited by the Democrats, or if another tariff
law of such flagrant immorality as the Payne-Aldrich Tariff
Law of 1910 should offend the consciences of the people a
year hence, the Republicans might have their work cut out
for them within four years. Indeed, it would be contrary to
all our political precedents if there were not a reaction from
Republicanism in the next Congressional elections.
As every one knows, the election of Mr. Harding was not
a vote of confidence in the Republicans but merely the regis-
tering of a remarkably unanimous vote of disapproval upon
Wilson's record — one not to be glossed over by our success-
ful participation in the greatest of wars. There was no
pledge in that vote of November 2 that the American people
are ready indefinitely to endure further misgovernment at
the hands of the Republicans. If they are disappointed
again they will take a similar revenge, and the only question
will be through what means. If the Democracy can re-win
as much popular faith and enthusiasm as it did in 1912 by
its pretense that it was bent on freeing us from our "invis-
ible government" and bestowing upon us the priceless boon
of that freedom from privilege and exploitation which most
Americans crave, then it may come back into power. If it
cannot obtain that confidence, then some new weapon will
be forged; we shall see that line-up between conservatives
and progressives foretold by the Southern Senator quoted,
an alignment that would clarify the real issues before
the people and give us a choice not between two reactionary
parties, but one reactionary and one truly progressive. No
man can prophesy how long it will take to bring about this
inevitable division; that will depend upon the economic
forces at work far more than upon politics and politicians.
That the day is not far off and that a beginning has really
been made in the Northwest, The Nation devoutly hopes.
We cannot believe that the Democracy will once more fool
people into thinking that it points the way to freedom. For
one thing, we cannot feel that today it has within it even
a germ of the new liberalism the country needs and craves,
just as it has no one to voice that liberalism did it exist.
Its bosses, the Taggarts, the Murphys, the Nugents, the
Roger Sullivans, and all the rest accepted Mr. Wilson's
brand of "New Freedom" when compelled to in 1912, not
because they had the slightest sympathy with it, but be-
cause after his nomination there was nothing else to do,
and then they soon felt that his eloquence and personality
spelled success. His political end finds them more than ever
in control, without having even to fear Mr. Bryan's ill will
as they did at the Baltimore convention. No one is in revolt
against them in their bailiwicks. More than that, the De-
mocracy cannot be a liberal party and remain the party of
the white South as it is today. From the beginning, Mr.
Wilson's liberalism limped because he opposed woman suf-
frage and never lifted his voice in protest against the dis-
franchisement of the Negroes, whose representatives in the
departments at Washington he was the first President to
segregate, thus establishing by an act of the Federal Execu-
tive two distinct classes of American citizens. To woman
suffrage he later turned when it was expedient to do so.
But not in a single utterance of his in eight years is there
any reference to the Negro or his problems, though Mr.
Wilson is ruler over ten millions of them. He is quite con-
tent that they should be taxed without representation and
denied a voice at the Capitol. Just so long as Mr. Wilson's
Nov. 24, 1920]
The Nation
581
party is tied up to the Democratic leadership in the South,
so long is it tied to the body of death. So long as it con-
nives at the disfranchisement of millions of American citi-
zens because of the color of their skin, so long, it is now
clear, can it pretend to be liberal only by sheerest hypocrisy.
Truly, the Democratic Party has been poisoned by the
hypocrisy of its leaders. Its members who believe in holding
down the working classes, in privilege, in government-made
profits, in Protection, and a free charter to "big business"
to govern this country unopposed, belong in the Republican
camp, not merely for this campaign, but permanently. Those
of its members who in good faith were misled by the Wilson
promises, who did ardently desire the "New Freedom" and
all that Mr. Wilson defined it to mean, should now join
hands with farmers and labor men to form a new party, to
voice and to serve the aspirations and ardent desires of all
forward-looking American men and women. Reorganize
the Democratic Party? Let it die!
Free Trade and Peace
THE conference which framed the Treaty of Versailles
has been compared, not without justice, with the pred-
atory group that composed the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
But with all its shortcomings the Vienna gathering took at
least one step in advance of anything attempted by its
modern imitator. Without having held before it fourteen
points alleged to be idealistic or any moral principle what-
ever, it nevertheless took steps to remove from one part of
the world certain economic barriers to trade. To the fail-
ure of the Big Four at Versailles to take similar action may
be justly attributed much of the warfare that has followed
the "war to end war," especially the war between im-
perialist Poland and its Russian, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian
neighbors, and in a large measure the misery and chaos
which reigns in what was once the Empire of Austria-
Hungary.
When the Vienna Congress sanctioned the renewed parti-
tion of Poland it added thereto a provision for absolute free
trade between the politically separated sections. There were
to be no custom houses between the Russian, Austrian, or
Prussian parts of Poland. The use of rivers and canals
within the boundaries of 1772 was made equally free to all
inhabitants of the old kingdom. Thus Polish industry on
all sides of international boundaries was equally free to
obtain coal from the rich deposits in the southwest." The
salt mines under Austrian domination could supply the
wants of Russian and Prussian subjects. Iron ore mined in
Russian territory could be transported free of duty to
Prussia and Austria. Zinc produced under Prussian rule
could be taken to Austria and Russia. Free trade in Poland
had naturally the same results as interstate free trade in
the United States. Industry flourished. There came a won-
derful growth of cities and towns comparable only to similar
growth in the United States. From a small town Lodz grew
into a city of several hundred thousand inhabitants. War-
saw also increased in importance as a manufacturing center.
There were metal factories and furniture factories, lime
and cement works, and many other kinds of industries.
Although the Russian Government proved a cruel, tyran-
nical master in many respects, it was liberal to Poland
in so far as encouragement to trade and manufactures
was concerned. In 1859 the free trade area was extended
from Russian Poland, or the "Kingdom of Poland" as it was
then still called, throughout the whole region from the
Prussian boundary to the Bering Sea. But Russia's pro-
tected interests objected to this. Lodz became at once so
formidable a rival of Moscow that petitions went to the
Czar complaining of the direful results of Polish competi-
tion. Whatever may be said of these complaints they were
free at least from hypocritical pleas in behalf of the work-
ingman. They did not charge the Poles with maintaining
pauper labor. Not that Polish wages were actually high
but rather the reverse. But low as Polish wages were they
were higher than Russian wages ; long as were the hours of
Polish labor they were not so long as Russian hours. In
Lodz the average working day was 11 hours, for which
wages ranged from 30 to 50 cents. But in Moscow wages
were less and the working day ranged from 14 to 16 hours.
Judged by modern standards, of course, there was little that
was wonderful in the better conditions in Poland. And
these conditions had results impairing the value of free
trade. With the growth of industrial centers came increase
of rents to such an extent that it was, and may still be, a
frequent thing for a dozen persons to live in one room. But
that is another story. Just as better paid American labor
today is able to meet poorly paid foreign labor on its own
ground in successful competition, so the products of Polish
labor met successfully the competition of more poorly paid
Russian labor in purely Russian territory. This came to an
end in 1869 when the shadowy "Kingdom of Poland" was
abolished and become the Vistula provinces of the Russian
Empire. Closer political union was then forced upon the
Polish people but economic union was more restricted. Free-
dom of commerce was still allowed with the Ukraine but was
cut off from the rest of the Empire. Finally in 1882 this
remnant of freedom was also withdrawn. It does not appear
that the protective system thus established had any of the
results which the American Protective Tariff League holds
must always follow.
Prussia and Austria did not wait so long as Russia to
violate the trade provisions of the Vienna treaty. In 1861
a Polish representative in the Prussian Landtag introduced
a resolution calling attention to disregard of treaty obliga-
tions demanding restoration of free trade. The plea met
but good-natured contempt. What was this treaty but a
"scrap of paper"? Again in 1879 the Polish delegation in
the Imperial Reichstag demanded of Bismarck the commer-
cial rights guaranteed their country at Vienna. Of course
the attempt failed. Bismarck, with the political and
economic ideals of a Taft, McKinley, or Penrose, could not
be expected to do otherwise than refuse an appeal for free
trade. Protectionism was allowed to have its way, breeding
international friction, bickering, and hatred, and finally
doing its share in bringing about the cataclysm of 1914.
Whether the Polish and Russian representatives, who met
to arrange terms of peace, have taken free trade into con-
sideration has not been reported. Whether Poles and Lith-
uanians will take this matter up when they finally meet is
also doubtful. But the incorporation of such a provision is
essential to permanent peace. The history of Poland makes
this fact so clear that it is hard to see how the delegates
from that country can avoid taking the initiative in its
reestablishment. Those to whom bolshevism is a bugbear
will find in a policy of economic justice a reliable barrier
against its spread, and free trade is an essential part of
such a policy.
582
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2890
War, Waste, and Business
BIT by bit facts are emerging which show that our par-
ticipation in the European War was attended with the
same orgy of graft and incompetence that has been present
in other conflicts. Many persons had hoped that the higher
ideals professed would lead to a better morality in public
service, and available information up to the close of the
war seemed to bear this out. But that was due, it now
appears, partly to the shortness of hostilities and partly
to the fact that the social and legal code which ruled during
the war made it impossible for anybody to utter a word of
criticism without being branded by his associates as pro-
German or prosecuted by the Government for sedition. The
revelations of folly in aircraft construction provided the
first considerable jar to our self-complacence. These have
been followed by evidence of outrageous profiteering on the
part of many of our most patriotic business enterprises;
by charges that the War Department has held food and
other supplies out of the domestic market so as not to lower
prices to the disadvantage of business interests, and has
scrapped or sold for a song a vast amount of material
abroad; and now by testimony before a Congressional in-
vestigating committee which shows the United States Ship-
ping Board's activities to have been redundant with incom-
petence, waste, and graft and its personnel to have em-
braced an extraordinary number of incompetents, scoun-
drels, and plain unvarnished thieves.
It is only fair to allow for a generous amount of igno-
rance and extravagance in connection with our shipping
program. The job was at least second in importance, if
not superior, to that of the War Department, but, whereas
the army had a body of trained officers and an organization
to begin with, the Shipping Board had to create out of
thin air an industry which had become virtually extinct in
America — that of building and operating deepwater vessels.
The need of new tonnage was vital; speed was a prime con-
sideration. How to find or train technically the men to
create and manage this new industry was a stupendous
problem. But it is clear that the Shipping Board's activities
have suffered not merely by haste and lack of knowledge
but by the presence of scores of officers and other employees
who have loafed in well-paid jobs, winked at graft in plain
sight, or deliberately lined their pockets with plunder. And
the worst of it is that this not only took place during the
pressure of the war but has been going on ever since.
According to investigators for the Walsh Committee,
heavy and inexcusable losses were sustained by contracts
for shipyards so far inland that canals would have to be
dredged in order to launch ships. One company was
awarded a contract for ten vessels, but after six months the
only visible construction was a tool house. The National
Shipbuilding Company of Savannah established a yard a
mile from the place where it had represented itself to have
a going plant, and the Government had to supply money to
dredge a marsh before operations could be started. The
yard did not complete a ship. The case is now in the hands
of the United States District Attorney, but it is declared
that every effort is being made to shelve the prosecution.
This same yard, which cost $285,000 and contained materials
valued at $245,000, was recently sold for $39,000, although
the Shipping Board had a standing offer of $65,000 for it
without the materials. One thrifty contractor is cited who
bought lifeboats from the salvage service of the Navy for
$10 and sold them to the Shipping Board for $110. In the
assignment of vessels for operation, well-established com-
panies have found it impossible to get vessels, while inex-
perienced and irresponsible organizations known as "war
babies" have obtained allocations. Among other companies
successful in getting ships was one headed by a dealer in
theatrical costumes. Gratuities and bribes have been com-
mon and political influence has been prominent. The finan-
cial affairs of the Shipping Board are in such condition that
4,000 employees, costing $8,000,000 annually, are still trying
to straighten out the tangle. If we were not dulled to
emotional appeals we should all hang our heads with shame
at this exposure.
The Shipping Board scandals are an indictment of the
methods of present-day American business. For the Ship-
ping Board was above everything else the contribution to
the war of our best business minds. It was organized and
directed by Edward N. Hurley, Charles M. Schwab, and
others of our most eminent captains of industry. American
business has loved to regard itself as the most efficient in the
world. It is true that in the direction of standardization
and quantity production we are leaders, but extravagance
and carelessness made it impossible for us adequately to
compete in the international market — the acid test of indus-
trial supremacy — until the European War gave us a unique
and abnormal advantage. We are now facing a period of
business deflation. If it is met honestly and intelligently,
we shall benefit by it. If, instead, our business men try to
save their faces and their jobs by reducing the wages of
their workers and making organized labor a scapegoat, they
will invite and deserve disaster. To begin at the bottom
and work up is a good way in certain circumstances; but
what our modern business system needs is an overhauling
that will begin at the top and work down.
The Strolling Players
THE strolling players of Scarron have joined those others
who traveled in the car of Thespis. The wandering
comedian belongs to a dying race. Yet it dies hard. The
instinct of the mime is strong and the roads of the earth
are many. We thought we had seen our last company of
such players suddenly and somewhat forlornly descend upon
a Knights of Pythias hall in a Southern village many years
ago, when, behold, in 1914, in Marion, Ohio — as yet unknown
to fame — we came upon another boldly strutting through
a curious two-act play about a Kentucky colonel, a Yankee
villain, and a wronged wife. And two years later, in an
amusement park on the straggling outskirts of a larger city
of the Middle West, there turned up a strange, brave little
troupe playing, of all things, Ibsen's "Ghosts," and playing
it far from contemptibly, before a handful of astonished
yokels, a group of tight-lipped priests who had wandered in
from a neighboring vicarage, and a large bat that whirred
through the barn-like hall and thudded softly against the
hanging lamps. The players slipped away — lonely symbols
of an ancient and perishing mode of life and art. There
may be still other troupes, shadowy and obscure survivals.
No one sets down the story of their doings or their fate.
How many people know that, till but the other day, the old
show-boats still plied up and down the Ohio River? The
crew consisted of actors ; the captain was manager and lead-
Nov. 24, 1920]
The Nation
583
ing man. The boats contained a hall and a stage, dropped
anchor at remote landings and lit their lights, and the villa-
gers came on board to see old melodramas acted and to
listen to sad stories of the deaths of kings. The late David
Graham Phillips introduced a show-boat into his story of
Susan Lenox. But his account is tawdry and episodic and
no reliable history of these strange craft exists; they have
still no Scarron.
It is not the moving picture show that has given the
strolling players their coup de grace ; it is the road company.
The members of these companies are anything but adven-
turous mimes seeking the open roads of a gay world. They
are employees. They might as well be in shops. To them
one-night stands in the Canadian Northwest are as stripped
of essential adventure as working on the "subway circuit"
in Brooklyn or the Bronx. Pullman coaches connect the
houses controlled by the theatrical trusts from Alaska to
the Gulf of Mexico and the players carry the echoes of last
year's Broadway hits from Fargo to Mobile. The wildest
of the ancient arts is organized on a nation-wide business
basis and seventy-five dollars a week plus railroad expenses
paid from the New York office drains the last drop of adven-
turousness from the player's bones. Tales of stranded road-
companies, of shifts and quaint accidents are out of date.
All the hotels serve grape-fruit for breakfast and the same
dishes with the same names in bad French for dinner. The
development of civilization, in flat contradiction of Spen-
cer's definition, is from variety to sameness, and soon the
dusty fellow with a collapsible merry-go-round will be the
last representative of the wandering mimes who were
proud, shabby, and eloquent upon the roads to Babylon and
in the shadow of the great cathedrals.
No wonder that romantic souls have been eager somehow
to revive the long tradition of the traveling show. From
Greenwich Village came last season the announcement of a
Caravan Theater. But no one seems to have summoned it.
A similar message comes from England this season and
they who send it may have better luck. Mr. Stuart Walker's
"Portmanteau Theater" remains, however, the typical ex-
periment of its kind. It, too, has left the roads. But for
certain seasons it fared up and down the land. Only, alas,
it did not go to the people. No square or town-hall was
suddenly lifted into passion, poetry, and wonder because of
its coming. It was cannily summoned with expenses guar-
anteed by Drama League centers and women's clubs. It
lacked robustness, breadth, and popularity in the nobler
sense. The little plays were tenuous and neo-romantic and
far more like millinery than like folk-ballads. Later on
Mr. Walker gave some superb productions and wrote one
very beautiful play. But he was too aloof and also too artful
to revive the tradition of the strolling players. If ever we
are to have such again, they must be more like Vachel
Lindsay in the days when he chanted his rhymes for a
supper and a night's lodging. They must flee the hot atmos-
phere of the scented studio and the "little theater" and all
contamination of experts in the decorative arts. A plat-
form, a passion, a burning thought and youth — these are
their only needs. Perhaps some day a group of young col-
legians— we have seen and known possible ones — instead of
drifting to schools of acting or "arty" cliques, will take to
the road and act both Shakespeare and Ibsen on the Main
Streets of towns and villages and redeem hungry souls from
the toils and graces of the stars of the "Realart," the
"Metro," and the "Universal."
Rome Rolls Round Again
IN the austere days of the Republic the Romans, Senators
and plain men alike, often used the Tiber for their baths,
satisfied, according to Seneca, with a weekly ablution and
not disposed to demand too much in the way of luxurious
surroundings. Scipio Africanus had a warm bath in his
villa at Liternum, and Maecenas went so far as a whole
swimming tank of hot water. But with the Empire came
the fleshpots; baths private and public (balneae) and Im-
perial (thermae) crowded the city. No less a person than
Galen drew up rules for what became a ritual as well as a
regimen, and the thermae grew into centers of fashionable
life. Is something like this going on in Washington? The
Potomac is no longer enough for our Senators. Not even
the private baths of the town seem to suffice. Only eight
years ago, when the power in Congress swung from the
aristocratic Republicans to the simple Democrats, the newly
installed Senatorial baths came under the lash of the Jeffer-
sonians, and for eight years have been undeveloped and
deserted. Now, however, there is a stir in these quarters.
The extravagance of letting the equipment lie unused, some
Senators think, is as great as the extravagance of using it.
A committee has consequently been chosen to save the coun-
try's money by spending that of the Senators, who will have
baths as sumptuous as the toils of their office require.
It is a pretty picture that comes to mind at the thought.
The Senators, if the great Greco-Roman traditions are kept
up, will take off their togas in the apodyterium, move on to
the elaeothesium to be anointed with oil, and thence proceed
to the violent exercise of games such, no doubt, as in modern
terminology are called hand-ball or medicine-ball. Then
through the tepidarium, a room mildly warm, into the cali-
darium, where the heat will amount to something; after
this to the frigidarium, for the shock of a cold bath, which
our Senators can take with accessories of needle and drench
showers which would have frightened Scipio Africanus and
sent Cato Major, in a Spartan huff, back to his Sabine farm.
The climax for the Senators of Washington will of course
come when, having gone in turn through the calidarium
again, they emerge into the laconicum or hot air room,
devised in ancient times by the wise Lacedaemonians. After
that the toga again, and ready for the fray.
It is a pretty picture, and such disturbing elements as the
electric cabinet or shocks from the static machine cannot
spoil the antique look of the picture. Here some conscript
father with whiskers of tender pink sits languidly upon a
slab of purple marble and swaps votes with a rough-hewn
Senator from the State Sherman marched through to the
sea. Here the most literary of the Senators floats lightly
in the plunge bath and talks of the lives of Washington and
Webster to the Republican Senator who most stubbornly
withstood the innovation of suffrage for women. Yonder
the Senator who most violently longs for war with Mexico
thumps the punching bag until the sound of his blows
echoes into the laconicum and even into the apodyterium.
Elsewhere Democrats and Republicans, between whom the
election has drawn sectional lines, fight the Civil War again
with medicine balls. Outside in the vestibule lounge the
secretaries, holding clients and constituents at bay. Life
swarms and eddies round the Senatorial baths; the League
and treaty wait; prices stay up; ideals stay down. Within
the baths the great tradition of government goes on.
584
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2890
Our Debt of Honor
By HAROLD A. LITTLEDALE
TWO years after the Armistice our debt to the soldiers
who were overseas is still unpaid. Whatever the
varieties and shades of opinion of Americans on the war, its
purposes, conduct, and consequences, none will deny that
America's foremost and most solemn obligation is the
proper care of her wounded veterans, the boys who went
forth so bravely, who dared so greatly, who sacrificed so
much, and today are crippled and helpless. Yet America
which loves to pride herself on many virtues, among them
a sense of honor, and on many accomplishments, among
them efficiency, has in this crucial issue been neither hon-
orable nor efficient.
First, more than a year passed before any machinery was
set up to care for our war cripples. Not till June 27, 1918,
was the Rehabilitation Law passed. It established two
classes of disabled soldiers. First, those who because of
disabilities could not return to their pre-war occupations;
these were to be trained and supported by the Government.
Second, those who could ultimately return to former occu-
pations; these were to be trained free, but required to sup-
port themselves. The law placed the important work of
rehabilitation, with its many aspects — medical, vocational,
industrial, social, and human — with the Federal Board for
Vocational Education. This Board had been created long
before the war for an entirely different purpose, namely to
foster vocational education in schools and colleges. As
originally established it belonged to no department of the
Government, owing no responsibility except that of making
a report to Congress, which would be duly printed, pigeon-
holed, and left unread. It was composed of the Secre-
taries of Labor, Agriculture, and Commerce, the Commis-
sioner of Education and three others, representing respec-
tively, manufacture, agriculture, and labor. Now the Cabi-
net members and the Commissioner of Education are vir-
tually ex-officio members. Those who actually control the
Board are the representatives of the economic groups, James
P. Munrie, Calvin F. Mcintosh, and Arthur E. Holder.
The foundation of the rehabilitation structure was there-
fore most unpromising. But that was not all. There was
a joker in the law. A clause gave the Vocational Board
no authority to act unless the applicant had first been found
entitled to compensation by the Bureau of War Risk Insur-
ance, a wholly separate agency located in the Treasury
Department. The story of the War Risk Bureau's failure
at that time is well-known. The wounded began to pour
back. With the coming of the Armistice thousands were
discharged from army hospitals and camps. The Bureau
became clogged, and was utterly unable to take care of the
rush of applications.
During all this heart-breaking delay, the Vocational
Board did nothing. The remedy which it secured a year
later, and could have had then for the asking, it made no
move to obtain. It held up the disabled men, who had been
so speedily and efficiently shipped to the front, on a red-
tape entanglement as cruel and unpardonable as any in
No Man's Land. Finally with the confusion unutterable,
the Board went to Congress and asked to be separated from
the Bureau. Congress acted immediately and made the
Board a free agent, able to put men in training.
Did the Board, freed from red-tape but that of its own
creation, make up for the precious time lost? On the con-
trary, it adopted the policy that all cases must be passed
upon in Washington. Whether a man lived in Maine or
California, his case must be solemnly bruited over by the
Central Office Case Board. Its members never saw the
man. They merely saw papers in a folder. So the total
casualty grist, the documents of nearly 150,000 men clamor-
ing for training, fell upon the Board at once. Meanwhile
the Board came under fire. The stories of neglect filled
the newspapers and reached Congress. At this juncture a
happy inspiration came to a high official of the Board. He
wrote out a list of eleven "Hints" to expedite the work of
his harassed subordinates. Among them were:
The organs used in approving cases are the eyes and the
brain. The ears and the heart do not function.
Be Hard Boiled. Members of the District Office staffs will
beat you over the head with verbal pressure. District pressure
causes all our mistakes. Put cotton in your ears and lock the
door. If you are naturally sympathetic work nights when
nobody is there.
Accept advice from Central Office. Take all the cigarettes you
can get from members of the District Office staffs, but no advice.
This was the famous, or rather infamous, Hard Boiled
Order. For cynical callousness it is unique. The Vocational
Board asserts it was censored. Undoubtedly it was, but
when? And did the censored copy go out? Of that proof
is lacking, but it has been proved that the original order,
unsigned, it is true, did go out. It went out in govern-
ment franked envelopes. That should make it official
enough. Agents of the Board admit receiving it, and some
of them still have it. From one of them the New York
Evening Post obtained a copy and printed it. The ensuing
storm of protest precipitated a Congressional investigation.
This was conducted by the House Committee on Education,
and came to a close the day Congress adjourned. The re-
port recommended certain legislation which can be enacted
only when Congress reassembles. The author of the Hard
Boiled Order was discharged and the system of centraliza-
tion was discontinued.
What is the situation today? Out of 132,644 declared
eligible, but 42,854 are now receiving the training to which
they are entitled. To this number may be added another
7,197 taking preliminary training in hospitals, 9,238 men
who gave up training, 1,753 who completed it, and we find
71,602 men, fifty-four per cent of those declared eligible,
who have been neglected. When one thinks of the thou-
sands of deserving injured whom a "hard-boiled" function-
ary declared ineligible, and of the heart-breaking efforts of
the forty-six per cent who managed finally to secure train-
ing, the record is shocking enough.
Such a state of affairs must not continue. The responsi-
ble men, Munroe, Mcintosh, and Holder, should be removed
at once. Then the work, now so intertwined between the
Vocational Board, the Compensation Division of the War
Risk Bureau, and the Hospital Division of the Public Health
service should be coordinated under one efficient and respon-
sible head, possibly a Cabinet member. Only in some such
way can we begin the repayment of our hitherto sadly de-
faulted debt of honor.
Nov. 24, 1920]
The Nation
585
Bigotry in the South
By CHARLES P. SWEENEY
THE election of Thomas E. Watson of Georgia to the
Senate necessarily calls attention to the growing
menace of racial and religious intolerance in the United
States. Race hatred and prejudice have long festered in our
body politic, and made mockery of some of our most
cherished and highly vaunted professions. Bigots there
have been in important public offices and even in the Senate,
but never before has so conspicuous, so violent, so flaming
an apostle of every variety of race hatred been invested
with the power and dignity of the Senatorial Toga. Wat-
son's election, while due to a variety of circumstances and
a combination of issues, is essentially the victory of a Fifth
Estate, of the sinister forces of intolerance, superstition,
prejudice, religious jingoism, and mobbism. It may be
thought that Watson rode into office on the tide of revulsion
against Wilsonism and the League of Nations, for he bit-
terly opposed the war, fought conscription tooth and nail;
and was both prosecuted and persecuted for it. His oppo-
sition to the League of Nations has been as violent as his
antagonism to the war, but his attacks on the League and
the Treaty were neither those of an intelligent seeker after
peace nor of an ordinary political dissenter. Watson pro-
claimed and induced thousands of his credulous followers to
believe that the League was an agency through which the
Vatican seeks to impress a Romanist and Jesuit super-gov-
ernment upon the world. President Wilson, he painted as
the tool of the Pope whose political agent, according to Mr.
Watson, is Mr. Joseph P. Tumulty, the President's secre-
tary. The reaction from the war and against Wilsonism
undoubtedly played their part in electing Watson, but it
was a small part. For years he has been a powerful figure
in Georgia politics, his violence and his intransigeance
gaining him the role of fearless prophet and leader.
The World War has of course left in its wake a rising
tide of every kind of tribal hate, an intensification of every
primitive human passion, but anti-Catholicism is not a new
phenomenon in the Southern States. Men are swept to
Congress on it, men ride into executive mansions on it, and
whole legislatures and county and city administrations are
elected on that single issue. It stands second only to the
hatred of the Negro as the moving passion of entire South-
ern communities. Already the waves of hatred whipped
up by Watson and his fellow mobbists have resulted in the
midnight burning of a Catholic church and school building
and in several unsuccessful attempts at similar outrages.
Permitted a steady development we might some day expect
to see the burning of Catholics at the stake and such other
of the monstrous delights of inflamed ignorance as are now
practiced on the Negro population. At Watson's door, for
instance, can be chiefly laid the responsibility for the orgy
of anti-Semitism that culminated in the ghastly lynching
of Leo Frank, of whose complete innocence of the murder
charged to him there is not the slightest doubt. In his long
campaign of journalistic frightfulness against Frank and
against all Jews at the time, Watson convinced Southerners
by the thousands that the Jewish faith condoned and en-
couraged atrocious crimes against the children of Chris-
tians. As a result of Watson's carnival of falsehood against
Frank, which led to Frank's legal, and later to his actual,
lynching, the belief became widespread in Georgia that one
of the Hebraic rituals is the drawing of the blood of chil-
dren and the drinking of it by adults. The lives of Jews
were unsafe in Atlanta during the height of Watson's cam-
paign, conducted through his newspaper, the Jeffersonian.
Since that paper was suppressed for alleged disloyalty dur-
ing the war, Mr. Watson speaks through the Columbia
Sentinel.
But the anti-Semitism developed through the Frank case
to improve Watson's political strength and enhance the Jef-
fersonian's circulation has, generally considered, been mild
in comparison with the anti-Catholic madness of Georgia,
Alabama, and Florida. The city of Birmingham, Alabama,
has but 10,000 Catholics out of 200,000 population. Never-
theless, the good people of Birmingham have been led to be-
lieve that Catholics are plotting control of the city, state,
and national governments in the name of the Pope, that
they seek the destruction of the public schools, and that they
are a menace to the existence of the home as the basic unit
of organized society. So firmly do the great majority of
inhabitants believe these things that they go to the polls
and elect men to public office on the single issue of pro-
tecting the Government and the community from Popery.
Thus, the present Governor of Alabama, Thomas E. Kilby,
was elected because he induced the voters to believe him a
stauncher foe of Catholicism than his opponents. One of
the rash pledges he made in his campaign, but has failed
to redeem, was a promise to find legal means to compel
priests to marry. One pledge that he has kept, was for
the enactment of a "Convent Inspection Law." It is now
in force. In its original form it directed sheriffs, upon
written application of twenty-five citizens, at any time of
day or night, to proceed to the convent named in the appli-
cation, thoroughly to inspect the place, and to inquire from
every woman there if she was held against her will. There
were objections to the form of the bill as presented origi-
nally and a compromise was effected. The bill adopted and
signed by the Governor establishes a State Commission to
inspect the institutions at regular intervals. In Florida,
where the grotesque Governor Sidney J. Catts sailed into
office on a wave of anti-Catholic and anti-Negro prejudice,
a similar law has been adopted. The delusion inspiring
this rare statute — that convents are polygamous institutions
maintained for the Catholic clergy — is general wherever
Watson and his associates have carried their campaigns.
The anti-Catholic prejudice is thoroughly organized. In
Birmingham, for instance, if you don't belong to the
"T. A's" you are suspect. "T. A's" means True Ameri-
cans, a vast and rapidly growing secret organization hav-
ing the extermination of Catholicism as its sole object.
"No Catholics in public office" is its watchword. The present
county administration of Jefferson County, which embraces
Birmingham, was elected on an issue confined to the dis-
missal of a Catholic young woman stenographer in the
county treasurer's office. The "T. A's" had ordered the
former treasurer to dismiss her. He refused. The issue
was joined. The treasurer and those who stood with him
were defeated, and the young woman was promptly dis-
missed. The present city administration of Birmingham
586
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2890
was elected because the "T. A's" supported it. When it
took office all Catholics, save two policemen, were dismissed.
In 1916 two public school buildings were mysteriously-
burned in Birmingham. The city became inflamed against
the Catholics, agitators charging that they had burned the
schools in retaliation for the midnight destruction of a
Catholic church and school building at Pratt City, near
Birmingham, two years before. Federal agents warned the
pastors of the two Catholic churches in Birmingham that
a plot was under way to destroy their churches and schools
and on their advice armed guards were employed. On two
occasions parties in automobiles were driven from the
church properties in the small hours of the morning. The
Birmingham anti-Catholics are convinced the Catholics
burned the public schools, just as the Catholics believe the
"T. A's" burned the church and school at Pratt City. The
city editor of the Birmingham Age-Herald, Mr. McKinley,
when the writer asked him, said he believed the Irish Cath-
olics burned the public schools. The newspapers themselves
are not above prejudice. A reporter now employed on an
Atlanta paper was summarily dismissed from a Birming-
ham daily because he openly expressed his opinion that the
"T. A's" were "low-down." The Birmingham Age-Herald
and the Birmingham News, which control the field, not only
tolerate, but by editorial silence and frank news-column
recognition of anti-Catholic activities actually encourage
the prejudice in the community. The efforts to dislodge
Catholics from their jobs was carried out systematically
and with considerable success, numbers of merchants fear-
ing ruin at the hands of the "T. A's" and other secret and
fraternal societies which are parties to the prejudice. Each
employer was visited by a vigilance committee, which de-
manded dismissal of Catholic workers under penalty of a
boycott. It must be said for most of the Jewish merchants
that they invited the committee to leave their stores and de-
fied the threat of boycott. Birmingham, as well as other
cities and towns, abounds in anti-Catholic literature. At
newsstands one buys Watson's paper, or the Menace, or any
one of a number of lesser organs of prejudice, and is given
free a booklet bearing Abraham Lincoln's likeness on the
cover and containing inside the information that Catholics
assassinated all of our martyred presidents, and quoting
Lincoln in an incredibly violent and bitter attack on Roman
Catholics, concluding with an expression of Lincoln's con-
viction that Catholics must not be permitted to enjoy po-
litical freedom in the United States. It so happens that
Robert T. Lincoln has on several occasions branded this
entire quotation as a sheer invention, but hundreds of
thousands of Southerners believe it and are moved by every
word of it. The back cover of the booklet comprises an
application blank for membership, apparently in the
"T. A's," although the name of the organization does not
appear, nor does the name of the printer, or the union label
or any other mark by which the circulators of the libel on
Lincoln can readily be identified.
It has become a matter of almost routine necessity in
Alabama for candidates for public office to make announce-
ment of their stand against Catholicism. The following is
part of the platform of M. B. Grace, candidate for Con-
gress, as printed in the Birmingham papers last April 14.
Americanism
There is said to be in this country a designing and militant
force which is inimical to our Government and American insti-
tutions, which force is dominated by a foreign ecclesiastical
power. Church and state must forever be kept separate. This
is not a religious issue, it is a political issue. I stand solidly for
the Constitution of the United States of America, and I am
against that which is gnawing at the vitals of our American
civilization undermining the hope of universal democracy and
piling up inflammable material for the torch of terrorism and
anarchy. The citizens of this American Republic must always
be free to exercise their political rights as they desire, to belong
to the church of their preference, and to worship their God
according to the dictates of their conscience. ... I am
a member of the First Methodist Church of Birmingham,
Knights of Pythias, Elks, and Odd Fellows.
Governor Catts, of Florida, is responsible, along with
Watson, for the widespread belief that the Pope has planned
an invasion of Florida, there to set up the Vatican which
"is soon to be driven from Italy by the anti-Catholics."
On the subject of Catholicism, Catts has made statements
that can scarcely be attributed to a sane person. As an
illustration of his qualities of statesmanship on issues other
than the religious, the following excerpt from a news article
in the Fort Myers (Fla.) Press is of interest:
Governor Catts, in the course of a speech delivered in the
court-house of Lee County at Fort Myers today sought to arouse
the ire of his hearers against the League of Nations by declaring
that if the United States joined the international family of the
world, nine men, one of them a thick-lipped gazabo from Liberia,
would run everything over here.
"Why feller citizens," he enthusiastically declared, "if we had
a League of Nations those foreigners would take Judge White-
hurst off this bench here and what would they do? I'll tell you
what they'd do. They'd go to your homes here in Fort Myers,
and look at your washing hung on the line in the back yard;
they'd glance into your garbage pails; they'd pry into your
kitchens, and they'd peer into your bureau drawers. And they
wouldn't stop there. What else would they do? These foreign-
ers would peer into your wife's closets and examine her clothes —
her intimate wearing apparel. And you know what would hap-
pen, don't you? I'll tell you. There'd be black eyes and broken
bones next morning. That's what those foreigners would get."
Fraternalism is the machinery employed for organizing
the anti-Catholic prejudice. The Masonic lodges, Ameri-
can Mechanics, Knights of Pythias, Modern Woodmen of
the World, Odd Fellows, Junior Order American Mechanics,
are everywhere in evidence, and, besides the "T. A's," there
have grown up a number of other societies devoted exclu-
sively and actively to anti-Catholicism, among them the
Guardians of Liberty, the Sons and Daughters of Wash-
ington, and the Ku Klux Klan. "These cities and towns are
cursed with fraternalism," said a newspaper man in
Charlotte. "If you don't belong to one of those orders you
might as well be on your way. I joined the Elks but re-
fused to join any other club or society. The boss thinks
I'm a friend of the Catholics, whereas I merely refused to
take part in organized hatred of Catholics or anybody else.
The result is I'm in wrong."
All the while Watson and his associates are ranting about
safeguarding liberty and American institutions they are
largely responsible for the widespread belief existing in the
South today that lynch law is God's law — if the party
to be lynched is black of face, goes to confession, or reads
the Talmud! Intolerance when it joins so many citizens in
a common hatred, and dominates the politics of whole Ameri-
can States, is a proper and immediate subject for serious
reflection by the whole people, for freedom of conscience and
of action are menaced while it continues to advance.
Nov. 24, 1920]
The Nation
587
The Russo Polish Peace
By HENRY G. ALSBERG
Riga, October 12
PRELIMINARY peace and armistice between Russia and
Poland have just been signed. I have just come from
the great Schwarzhaupter Hall, where the merchant princes
of Riga used to hold high revel, and watched the deed ac-
complished. I must admit that the scene, as such things go,
was very impressive, far more so than the hurried and hel-
terskelter signing at Versailles. It took place in a very
large square room, whose walls are covered with huge por-
traits of Czars and Czarinas,. mostly on horseback, including
one of the Great Catherine, beautiful and buoyant, modernly
in knickerbockers and astride a magnificent charger, a
slender and springlike Catherine, indeed, who without rank
might easily have attracted the eyes of mankind. Over the
doors and decorating the balconies, one saw rich carving
and plaster work in which the figure of a Moor, who seems
to have played a prominent part in Rigan history and was
the special founder of this hall, is ever present. The ceiling
is frescoed in the Venetian style. On the afternoon of the
ceremony, the two delegations were grouped in the center
of the room on either side of a long table. Since the Rus-
sians spoke Russian and the Poles Polish, each side had to
have an interpreter. At least, it was considered necessary,
although all the Poles understood Russian and most of the
Bolsheviks could speak Polish. At heated moments during
the previous conference sittings, Dombski and Joffe had
often conversed together direct. At this one, the interpre-
ters sat behind their respective delegations in lonely gran-
deur. Then there were little tables, branching off from the
corners of the long table, at which clustered stenographers
and other anonymous personages. Behind the Polish dele-
gates stood a whole galaxy of showily dressed military offi-
cers, in braid and gilt shoulder ropes and clinking spurs.
On the Bolshevik side there wasn't a single uniform. About
the one end of the room was a half-moon of tables, at which
sat the Fourth Estate. In the little balcony sat the foreign
missions, Colonel Tallents, Mr. Young, and others, all repre-
senting countries not recognizing the Bolsheviki, but in-
tensely interested nevertheless. There were practically no
women spectators, which was, so far as impressiveness went,
an improvement on Versailles. Paderewski's forest of hair,
flaming gray, however, was notably absent.
The ceremony itself was deadly dull, consisting of read-
ings and translations of the treaty and armistice. Then,
just before the inevitable flashlight, the signing took place.
I asked Joffe what he felt about the treaty just a few
minutes after it was signed. Joffe has a wise Egyptian
kind of face, with wide-set eyes and features flattened a bit,
like the little bust done in red granite of a Pharaoh in the
Metropolitan Museum. He is a god of peace who regards
the world of facts patiently, as having to be recognized, and
to which something must inevitably be conceded. He be-
lieves in making peace, in letting natural forces work out
inevitable results. But I know he did not like making this
particular peace. "It might have been worse," was the con-
tent of his reply to me.
On the way out of the building, I crossed Dombski's path.
He came sailing along happy and flushed, with his one arm
full of crysanthemums which some admirer had sent him.
"I told you, didn't I, at our interview, that we'd have peace?"
So said Dombski. And so he had told me when I first spoke
to him. And now he was radiant. This peace, if it lasts
and some Polish marplot does not smash it, will make
Dombski prime minister and will, at the next elections, put
his Peasant Party into power.
Now, perhaps, it will be better to go back to the beginning
of these things. I arrived at Riga from Moscow with the
Russian delegation. The latter had been delayed in Mos-
cow almost a week because the Poles would not state when
their delegation would leave Warsaw. Arrived at Riga, the
Russian delegation waited four days before the Poles ar-
rived. When the Poles finally came, there was another
delay of two or three days before the first meeting came
off. Then occurred only a formal exchange of credentials,
the only notable feature of which was that the Poles did
not object to Manuilski, representative of the Ukraine.
Finally, after ten days lost time, during which the Polish
situation at the front grew all the while better, a real
meeting took place. At this session, to which the press had
access, Joffe won his first strategic victory. He read the
declaration of the Central Executive Committee at Moscow,
by which all the Minsk terms were abandoned, and even the
claims as to a plebiscite in Eastern Galicia were tacitly
although not openly disavowed, and a better line was offered
than the one Curzon had allowed. After this the Polish
declaration in answer to the Minsk terms fell laughably
flat. Dombski, I think, at this time somewhat lost his tem-
per. At the conference itself there were several passages
at arms between him and Joffe. The latter called for the
formation at once of armistice and other commissions. He
pointed out that the Russian offer had only been made to
prevent a winter campaign and untold suffering and, con-
sequently, there was a provision in the offer limiting its
duration to ten days. Hence the need of speed. However,
commissions were not formed, owing to Polish delays. This
was not due really to Dombski's personal unwillingness to
hurry matters. On the contrary, from conversations I've
had with him, I'm convinced he wished to hasten peace, but
he had his own people to deal with. On the Russian dele-
gation, Joffe was the undoubted and undisputed chief. On
the Polish aggregation, Dombski was only one of three
factions. Grabski represented the National Democrats, the
party of the landholders and imperialists; Perle and Bar-
liczki, the Social Democrats. And then Foreign Minister
Prince Sapieha was always hanging about in the offing and
threatening to come up from Warsaw and take matters into
his own hands. During the whole of the ensuing negotia-
tions, Perle and Barliczki, I have learned, were more for
pushing the Russians to the limit than Grabski. They even
went so far as to oppose the signing of any armistice at all.
I was told that their attitude was really shameful and de-
serves to bring them a reading out of even the Right
Socialist parties. Nevertheless, it seems true, as he repeat-
edly told me, that Dombski had the power to force peace as
long as the constellation of the coalition cabinet in War-
saw remained as it was. As a matter of fact, before the
conference finished its sittings, the National Democrats
left the cabinet, thus strengthening Dombski's position.
588
The Nation
[Vol. Ill, No. 2890
The danger at Riga was that a series of minor irrita-
tions, especially unnecessary delays, might keep Joffe and
Dombski apart, and so prevent any real understanding be-
tween them. At this point, perhaps, it is well to state that
Joffe told me, and his first interviews at Riga bear this
out, that he had been against making the concessions to the
Poles contained in the Moscow declaration. In fact, this
document only came over the wires early in the morning
of the day upon which Joffe dropped it like a bombshell
among the chauvinistic Poles. Joffe said that he thought
any settlement which didn't provide for Polish disarma-
ment wouldn't be of much value to Russia. But Moscow
ruled otherwise. Lenin, who has always believed in mak-
ing peace and securing the Russian moral position, at last
rejected the Bucharin, Zinoviev, and the Third Interna-
tional viewpoint of an immediate world revolution, which
had momentarily prevailed during the drive on Warsaw, and
forced the C. I. K. to make peace at any cost, even if a new
Brest-Litovsk treaty were necessary. There is no disput-
ing the fact that at Minsk the Russians squandered the
wealth of good opinion they had earned through three years
of suffering and generosity in foreign politics. At Riga,
Joffe was ordered to do that which would reestablish bol-
ahevik moral credit. It is true, naturally, that Russia
needs peace, yearns for it deeply. Until the Minsk con-
ference the Polish war could have been called the only
popular war Russia has had since Napoleon was driven
across the Niemen. That terrible mistake, which squan-
dered or seemed to have squandered all that had been fought
for, probably deeply shook the Russian people's faith. But
at Riga has been regained the hope of peace, which Russia,
exhausted and stripped bare, needed so much. Had the
Polish terms at Riga been such as to force a continuation
of war, there would have been an end of Poland. Inci-
dentally Russia would have suffered unbelievably as well;
starvation, disease, and suffering would have stalked Dan-
tesque through the land. The point has come where the
Allies may perhaps make an end of Russia as a nation, as
a people, by intervention on a grand scale; but only by a
process of extermination and manufacture of chaos among
120,000,000 people can an end be put to the present gov-
ernment. No other government exists as a possibility to
take its place. This is not merely my own opinion, but
that of everybody .vho has recently been in Russia. It is
also the opinion of leading Russians.
To return to the peace negotiations. Two days after the
session at which the Moscow C. I. K.'s declaration had been
read, a secret session of the Conference was held. Here
Dombski read the Polish answer to this last-named docu-
ment. And by way of parenthesis it may be stated at once
that none of the Polish proposals ever were seriously dis-
cussed, being, as they were, vague and flabby in context,
and for the most part intended for purposes of delay.
At this same meeting, Joffe presented a complete draft of
a preliminary treaty and armistice, including a boundary
roughly known as the Brest-Litovsk line. In order to pre-
vent further mystification and delay, this document by a
studied indiscretion was given out to the press, a thing
which to a certain extent strained the relations between
the two delegations.
I think about now or at some time shortly afterwards,
occurred an incident which rather characterizes the differ-
ence between the two bodies. The Poles presented one of
their proposals, a long document and very complex. The
hope, no doubt was, that a delay of several days would
intervene while the Bolsheviks prepared their answer. But
lo and behold! Joffe and Lorens, his secretary, and the
other Russian delegates went into the other room for con-
sultation, and after half an hour returned with the answer
complete, in pencil it is true and not very legible, but
complete!
Now, however, after this last conference, the patient
took a turn for the better. Joffe and Dombski met pri-
vately, where Perle, Barliczki, and Grabski couldn't mess
into matters. In short, secret diplomacy was inaugurated.
And by the way, right here, although it may be to my disad-
vantage as a pressman, I must state quite frankly that no
peace negotiation is possible except in secret. The open
sessions of the Riga conference showed that. The formal
interchange of speeches through interpreters, often about
matters which could be arranged in a minute's private con-
versation, the inability to be frank and let the other fellow
know what one really wanted because the Argus-eyed one
was hovering about to make a scandal — these things proved
themselves insuperable obstacles to making peace and gave
the mischief makers like Grabski an endless opportunity
for obstruction. But when Joffe and Dombski began to talk
privately, things looked up. Some of the experts at the
conference told me it was laughable to see Grabski and
Perle and Barliczki's anxiety to be present at these talks.
At any rate, despite the formal declarations at the
plenum, the whole problem now resolved itself into a ques-
tion of boundaries. The result is now well known. I think
Joffe hated to yield the corridor between Russia and Lithu-
ania, not so much as an injury to Russia, but more as an
abandonment of the Lithuania with which he had made a
peace more or less providing for communicating boundaries
which would let Lithuania live. The minor questions, par-
ticularly that of the gold payment, occupied many hours
and discussions of the commission. The Poles started by
demanding 310,000,000 rubles gold, and ended up by taking
a hazy promise to have some sort of accounting after peace
is signed. But eventually, despite delays, despite Polish
success at the front, Joffe and Dombski settled the boun-
daries in their private talks, and then came the signing,
I know that the Russians intend to keep this peace and
turn it into a permanent one. I am sure Dombski wants to
do the same. But the Poles are megalomaniac, as the Vilna
affair shows. If they recommence the war, after having
given the Bolsheviki time to settle with Wrangel, the Red
Army will be in Warsaw finally.
From what I learned at very reliable sources in Riga,
this peace is considered by the British as a French victory,
especially with its adjunct of Vilna, a thing which was
planned even during the negotiations. I think the British
are getting ready to shake the French connection. The new
combination, which I have heard mentioned frequently by
Britishers, is Britain, Germany, and Russia.
In the next issue of THE NATION
The New German Spirit
By'Kuno Francke
Nov. 24, 1920]
The Nation
58^
Birth Control and the World Crisis
By S. ADOLPHUS KNOPF, M.D.
NOW, if ever, is the time for the discussion of birth con-
trol, in spite of the recent great loss of manhood in
Europe, and to some extent in our own country. To any
unbiased mind it must be evident that our actual experi-
ence before, during, and after the World War, which has,
alas, not yet come to a complete termination, answers all
objections to judicious birth control in its medical, social,
economic, moral, and even spiritual aspects. What this
world needs now— after the fearful catastrophe which was
started by a nation in which unlimited procreation among
rich and poor, the educated and the uneducated, the well
and the sick, was not only encouraged but officially rewarded
— is not a greater but a better population. The empire
which sought world dominion and the enslavement of other
nations had the highest birth-rate and the most rapid
growth of population, and yet it was France, which by its
birth control had produced not so many but better soldiers,
that withstood the most terrific onslaughts of the enemy.
The world needs now and for all the future the very best
kind of men and women, not servile masses blindly obeying
war-drunk monarchs and militaristic rulers; not a mass of
weaklings, bound to succumb before reaching manhood or
womanhood, unable to serve or to produce. We need chil-
dre 
Live Music
Archive
Librivox
Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland
Museum of Art
Internet
Arcade
Console Living Room
Open Library
American
Libraries
TV News
Understanding
9/11